Lester Holloway

This blog is moving!

2011-10-17T09:40:00.000-07:00

In fact, it has moved already!

Please check out my new blog:

http://cllrlesterholloway.wordpress.com

For loads more new stories.

You won't be disappointed!

The other 29-year-old father of four shot by cops

2011-08-09T14:59:00.000-07:00

It seems only yesterday since a 29-year-old black father-of-four was shot dead by police in controversial circumstances, sparking civil uprest on the street. The man in question isn't Mark Duggan, but Derek Bennett, killed in Angell Town in Brixton.

The year was 2004 and I was working in the area at the time, for The Voice newspaper. The day he was shot, a picture of Bennett's gun-shaped cigarette lighter loomed large from the front page of the London Evening Standard. It looked real. He pointed it at police marksmen. No wonder cops pulled the trigger, was the clear message. Wouldn't you?

The people knew differently. Something was amiss. It didn't add up. I thought so too. On the Friday of that week, tensions erupted into violence. Stones and bottles were thrown at police and a standoff developed between protestors and riot police. There were some attempts at looting.

At the inquest, it emerged that Bennett was actually moving away from the marksmen at the time he was shot. In fact, all the bullets entered his back. The firearms officer who pulled the trigger testified that he did not recall Bennett raising his replica weapon at him, at any point. While the officer claimed he still feared for his life, to my mind the shooting was totally unjustified.

The street protests took place on a rainy November night. Riot police contained the 200 or so protestors, and the story died away. I'd often thought, what if it had happened on a hot summer night?

Seven years later, another black 29-year-old father-of-four is gunned down by police. Press stories, undoubtedly fed straight from Scotland Yard, stated as fact that Duggan had shot at police, who was only saved because the bullet hit the coppers' radio. Today we learn that Duggan did not, in fact, fire at police. There are now more questions than answers about exactly what happened.

The people of Tottenham were right to disbelieve the police line and media stories. That distrust is the product of decades of deception and misinformation relating to deaths in custody. I've reported on many cases where initial press reports have little in common with the truth as it later emerges. Here are a few examples:

There's Mikey Powell (first report: aggressive crack addict attacks police / truth: smallish man with no drugs in his blood has mental episode, police detain him by accelerating panda car into him). There's Roger Sylvester (first report: super-human strength crack addict detained by police / truth: average-size man with no drugs in his blood his pinned down by eight officers until he is asphyxiated).

There are many more cases just like this. I cannot remember a death in custody case where there weren't serious questions about the actions of the police. Yet it is 40 years since the last officer was convicted of any offence relating to the death of a black man.

In Derek Bennett's case, the coroner instructed the jury they could only reach one verdict despite the evidence - lawful killing. Can the community refer to any case that gives them hope that the family of Mike Duggan will recieve justice? I can't think of any. When the Tottenham police failed to call up a senior officer to speak to his family and other demonstrators, I can fully understand their suspicions of yet another attempted cover-up. Yet another case where the truth seeps out months later, but still does not bring justice.

I firmly believe the Independent Police Complaints Commission only made their statement today because the first uprisings in Tottenham has spread to widespread disturbances and riots across London and the UK. It is damage limitation, pure and simple. We are still awaiting justice in the cases of Sean Rigg, where the IPCC have been quite obstructive; Smiley Culture and Demetre Fraser.

There is no excuse for the looting and arson we have witnessed - particularly last night. And I do not believe that discussing issues of denial of justice in death in custody cases is excusing the disorder. Neither do I believe that talking about grinding generational poverty, discrimination in education, and severely restricted employment opportunities is excusing the destruction and violence.

The protests that faded away in 2004 meant that Derek Bennett's death failed to herald any positive changes. If any good is to emerge from this week of shocking disorder, let us have an honest debate about denial of justice and what needs to happen to break the mould in the case of Mark Duggan. Let us also not shy away from issues of poverty and economics as it impacts on areas like Tottenham.

How to make a silk purse from Swaine's "ere"

2011-08-04T11:22:00.000-07:00

Lib Dem Voice has reported the unreserved apology offered by Reading councillor Warren Swaine after his membership was reinstated following a five-month suspension over a racially-offensive tweet, under his twitter name @waswasere, in January.

Swaine resigned from the council cabinet after claiming that Labour's Chuka Umunna would claim "is it because I is black" as "defense [sic] for being a muppet" while the MP appeared on BBC Questiontime.

The apology, although seven months late, is welcome. His previous failing to show contrition or even just understanding about why he had caused such offence, was in danger of becoming a bigger issue than the original tweet. Lewisham councillor Duwayne Brooks threatened to resign over the issue.

Lib Dem members, and the blog Political Scrapbook, pointed the finger at local Reading party big-wigs who were backing a seemingly unrepetant Swaine.

The apology followed an official complaint to Cowley Street by a local party member, and a number of media articles including The Voice newspaper. Campaign group Operation Black Vote also got involved. It is understood that the BBC and a national newspaper were making enquiries.

And the affiliated group Ethnic Minority Liberal Democrats called for an independent investigation, a plea that was answered by news that the English Party division would look into the conduct of the local Reading party and council group. With such pressure - from inside and outside the party - it was inevitable that an apology would be forthcoming.

While it provides closure on Swaine, there are a number of issues that the Lib Dems would well take heed of. Better procedures for dealing with disciplinary matters may be needed. Certainly,in the context of how far the party lags behind on BAME representation, being seen to take such matters seriously is a small but crucial part of the strategy for gaining lost ground on racial diversity.

If lessons are learnt this episode could be a silk purse made from Swaine's (waswas) ere!

Race to the finishing line

2011-08-04T05:48:00.000-07:00

The contest to become Liberal Democrat candidate for London mayor moved into the home straight last night with a focus on race equality issues.

The four hopefuls gathered at the frayed but historic surroundings of the Africa Centre in Covent Garden for a hustings organised by the Ethnic Minority Liberal Democrats.

Reality TV star and ex-MP Lembit Opik, 2008 mayoral candidate Brian Paddick, City Hall assembly member Mike Tuffery and recycling expert Brian Haley addressed an audience that included many black and Asian party members.

After a fortnight of hustings, all four would-be candidates are very much in their stride now, putting in able performances that play up their individual unique selling points.

In the aftermath of the News International phone hacking scandal, there were questions about community confidence in the police, as well as concerns about the efffectiveness of Operation Trident, the detective team dedicated to tackling “black on black” violent crime.

The hopefuls were asked how they had personally demonstrated zero tolerance against racism. Paddick, who rose to prominence as the openly-gay and popular police commander in Lambeth, reminded the audience about a demonstration demanding his reinstatement after being suspended from his post, and said he had “proved by my actions that I can be trusted by the black and ethnic minority community.”

He added that he backed black and Asian police officers who were encountering problems in the force “100 percent of the time.”

Opik responded that he had challenged racism within the Lib Dems. “One of the things that disturbs me about the party is that despite the words on our membership card, I see prejudice within our own party. I try to challenge it, it's utterly unacceptable.”

Opik added: “Multiculturalism underpins what makes this country great. I don't ask black people to vote for me. I want people to vote for me, and so if I behave in a way you want me to behave then maybe I'm the right candidate.”

Haley, a senior councillor who defected from Labour last year and the only person of colour in the contest, said his background would make him the most interesting candidate in the media's eyes.” He also laid into Operation Trident, saying that it smacked of a “containment field” for inner city gun crime rather than an attempt to eliminate the problem. He would like to see the police unit widened to tackle all gun crime, regardless of which race was involved.

Tuffery, who has two decades of experience in London politics, said that he frequently encounters prejudiced views when telephone canvassing, and always challenges such attitudes rather than take the “easy option” and agree for the sake of a vote.

Tuffery said there was a “real danger” of the contest not addressing issues that young people cared about, and he said that the London mayor should run policies past a panel of youth before implementing them. Paddick said that during the last campaign he was the only mayoral contender to visit school assemblies.

All four candidates highlighted areas of policy that set them apart from other rivals, while maintaining a good rapport with each other.

One questioner asked whether the quartet had any skeletons in their closet. Not surprisingly there were none, and Paddick quipped: “My skeletons and I have been out of the closet for some time!”

Haley was the most improved contender from the previous [LINK] hustings I attended in Wimbledon. He spoke with passion on a range of subjects and even though some of his ideas – such as more bobbies on the beat – needed to be beefed up with more of a sense about how objectives will be achieved, he displayed strength on a range of topics such as housing policy.

In truth, there was little to pick between all four runners this time around. Here is my personal scorecard for the EMLD hustings.

	Charisma	Equality	Policies	Total
Haley	6	7	7	20
Opik	7	6.5	7	19.5
Paddick	6	7	7.5	20.5
Tuffery	5.5	7	7	19.5

Sorry is the hardest word (updated 03/08)

2011-08-01T12:42:00.000-07:00

"What an absolute joke", writes a resident of Reading town in the thread underneath a story in the Reading Post online about a Liberal Democrat councillor who was reinstated without apologising for a race gaffe.

Councillor Warren Swaine tweeted that Labour MP Chuka Umunna would claim "is it because I is black" as "defense [sic] for being a muppet." His five-month suspension ended this week, despite no public apology worth its' salt.

I understand that the group Ethnic Minority Liberal Democrats are now looking into the matter.

The website Political Scrapbook commented: "The party's leader in Reading, Daisy Benson, has repeatedly stonewalled Scrapbook's enquiries as to whether Swaine will demonstrate contrition for his remarks before he is welcomed back."

Swaine has been ordered to attend diversity training, but Scrapbook noted: "What is the point of 'diversity training' for someone who refuses to say they are sorry?"

Similar sentiments have been expressed on Lib Dem Voice (LDV), not just by myself, but also Lewisham councillor Duwayne Brooks and four other readers. One of them, LeeT, said: "If he has not made a grovelling apology it is astonishing that we are permitting him to retain his membership. We all do and say stupid things, but stupidity should have consequences." Two ethnic minority party members wrote on LDV that they were considering their leaving the party in protest.

Swaine's use of the Ali G catchphrase is offensive not just because Chuka Umunna is a well-spoken black man far removed from the Sacha Baron Cohen character, but also because as Swaine watched BBC's Questiontime he was distracted by skin colour as much what the Streatham MP was actually saying. It goes without saying that there should be no connection whatsoever between being black and being a "muppet."

Cllr Swaine's blog, WasWasEre, reveals a seemingly long-running dispute with the Reading Racial Equality Council, who have distanced themselves from him. He is understood to run another blog called Muckspreading, which features a post titled "race riot" a satirical piece which suggests that a local "street games" tournament will turn into an orgy of crime. Another post in May involved a photoshopped image of the mayor Gul Khan.

A Google search reveals an impressive back catalogue of insults and defaced photographs targetting people of all races, including many of his own party colleagues. The question of why such an individual is allowed readmittance back into his party without demonstraing his contrition is beyond me. I suspect we haven't heard the last of this gentleman...

UPDATE!!!

Cllr Swaine has this afternoon given the following apology "I would like to take this opportunity apologise for making derogatory comments during the BBC Question Time programme on the 27th January especially those relating to Chuka Umunna MP. I made a lot of comments that were insulting that night and I regret that.

In respect of one particular tweet, no offense was meant but I absolutely acknowledge that it was recklessly worded and liable to an interpretation that was never intended. For that I would like to offer my sincere apologies to Mr Umunna and to anyone else for any offence caused.

I take the values of the Liberal Democrats very seriously and as someone of mixed heritage myself, I can fully understand why it has upset many people. For that I offer an unreserved apology"

It's only taken six months, but glad he's apologised. There is still a lesson here for the party about how to deal with such matters.

Challenging the media that fed Norway terrorist with hate

2011-08-01T01:17:00.001-07:00

After a full week of stomach-churning radio phone-in shows featuring a string of callers saying "I don't agree with what the guy in Norway did, but..." it was refreshing to be part of a radio discussion from a different perspective.

Last night I appeared on the Dotun Adebayo show on BBC London, alongside NUS black students officer Kanja Sesay and playwright Funke Oyebanjo to pick over issues. Earlier in the week the once-feared Jeremy Paxman had failed to take apart the English Defence League's Stephen Lennon (aka 'Tommy Robinson)' on Newsnight, despite an arsenal of facts linking this far right group to the worst fascists Europe has to offer.

As Nick Cohen pointed out in yesteday's Observer, the Norwegian mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik's hate-filled "manifesto" was peppered with references to articles from the mainstream British press to justify his claim that Islam presents an urgent threat to western civilisation. While the right-wing blogosphere foams against Muslims and immigration, it is the likes of the Daily Mail's Melanie Phillips who provide extremists like Breivik with all the written ammunition they need. Cohen wrote:

The British convince themselves that they loathe extremism.... yet although extremist parties fail as badly in Britain as they have always done, Britain has become the European capital of extremist ideas. Breivik did not only listen to British far rightists screaming out their hatreds in the madhouses of the blogosphere, but peppered his manifesto with citations of articles in the Daily Telegraph and other respectable conservative newspapers. Britain's mainstream media, not the fringe on the web, formed the basis of his claim that readers could find all the evidence they need of the multicultural plot to turn white, Christian Europe into a Muslim-dominated "Eurabia."

Quite simply, English Nationalism is being fed by daily helpings of fear-mongering served up by mainstream columnists and commentators, with the occasional feast laid on by politicians - such as David Cameron's attack on multiculturalism in February. As I pointed out on last nights' show, while there is no denying that Islamic extremism is a problem, the weight of coverage given to it vastly exagerates the issue and gives the green light to the populist red-top tabloids to really go to town on Muslims, and even justify their backing of right wing extremists.

There is virtually no escape from the current state of discourse, not just because left-leaning columnists like Polly Toynbee are also aboard the same bandwagon but also because, with the exception of the Independent's Yasmin Alibhai Brown, there is not a single regular black or Asian national columnist to put another side. Not to side with Islamic terrorism, merely to question whether we are viewing the landscape in perspective and to recognise what the consequences are of our present ways. We are feeding a sense of isolation amongst the general Muslim population, most of whom abore terrorism but feel angry at their faith being stereotyped, frustrated that their opposition to extremism goes unrecognised, and despondent that legitimate grievances about international policies are washed away by the tide of anti-Islamic sentiment.

Just as the current political atmosphere acts as a recruiting sergeant for the likes of Anders Behring Breivik, it also allows al-Qaeda inspired preachers of distorted and politicised Islam to hoover-up the next generation of terrorists. One of the ironies of the current state of mainstream debate is that the vast majority of terrorist attacks in Europe over the past few years have been commited by non-Muslims.

The way I see it, the rapidly-growing mountain of articles about Islam is in direct inverse proportion to the virtual absence of debate about the shocking reality of racial prejudice in British society or the wasted generation of young people killing each other. While every move by Abu Hamza, aka 'Captain Hook', gets reported, scandals such as the disproportionate numbers of black men being made redundant or incarcerated in the mental health system remains off the radar. There is only room for one bogeyman in the British press it seems, and it isn't the ruling elites.

It is true that the black community can also be anti-new immigrants or even anti-Islamic, despite the Islamic traditions of Africa, but that it largely a consequence of being influenced by decades of mainstream debate. What we can sometimes forget, however, is that multiculturalism in Britain is often literally skin deep... probe a little further and you will uncover a potentially frightening willingness of the general population to side with a right-wing agenda that would spell trouble for all peoples of colour no matter how many generations they have lived here.

A survey launched in February by David Miliband found that half of all UK people would support a far right party if they gave up violence. 48% would definately support of consider supporting a party that "wants to defend the English, create an English parliament, control immigration and challenge Islamic extremism." Each part, taken seperately, can be debated but taken together like this agenda screams English Defence League, or British National Party. All they need are respectable leaders. Nick Griffin failed on Questiontime, but EDL's leader is dangerously poised.

Both far right organisations are plugged into the same Europe-wide network of hate and paranoia-filled chatrooms such as Stormfront that allowed Breivik to forge such close links with British fascists. I visited Stormfront yesterday and read dozens of people who sounded just like Breivik. Hatred like this knows no boundaries. This is why we need to take Norway so seriously; not just because potential support for the far right is just under the surface but also because another Brixton bomber like David Copeland could well exist. We have a choice to wait for the next atrocity or begin the road to a different, more informed, discourse about Islam and multiculturalism.

Instead of firefighting whenever the race attacks explode on the streets, our politicians should consider targeting resources proactively at potential hotspots of racial and religious hatred. There is enough intelligence about where tomorrow's Barking and Dagenham's are. If the Big Society means anything, it should be about supporting grassroots projects to bring communities together before trouble occurs. That should involve an element of political - with a small 'p' - education. Nothing will divert disenfrancised poor white communities from scapegoating "the other" than a greater realisation about who is really responsible for their predicament. The Charities Commission must scrap their ban on charities campaigning for economic and political awareness. "Community empowerment" is more than computer and literacy courses - it is knowledge of the power structure and the routemap to change it.

The intellectual narrative underpinning the street struggle between Unite Against Fascism and hardcore racists rarely gets an airing, but the reasons why black and white people unite to drive away the unpatriotic fascists is a crucial missing part of the national discourse.

It is no surprise that Breivik's ideas mirrored so closely British mainstream conservative debate. Melanie Phillips and her ilk deploy words as weapons to churn out column after column soupping up the Islamic threat. But this can be countered by a coming together of the anti-racist movement with the progressive intelligensia, the youth and voluntary sector. We, the people, have power in unity to shift the debate away from stereotyping Muslims towards real policy priorities for equality and economic justice.

As the Right go on the defensive over the continuum linking far right terrorism with mainstream debate, now is the window of opportunity to change the very nature of the debate. Before we get distracted by the forthcoming outrage over how light Breivik's prison sentence might be should he be found 'insane', now more than ever we must challenge the accepted wisdoms that keep racial and religious prejudice and class discrimination in firmly entrenched for the economic and political benefit of the Wizard of Oz men behind the curtain.

By Lester Holloway

I'm a celebrity... no, I am!

2011-07-20T18:35:00.000-07:00

The race to be the Liberal Democrat mayor of London candidate crackled into life with the first public hustings meeting last night, as Brian Paddick and Lembit Opik both claimed to be household names.

It was a case of 'I'm A Celebrity, Get Me To City Hall' as former top cop Paddick competing with fellow reality TV star Opik to paint themselves as famous enough to shift some of the media spotlight away from the Ken and Boris show.

The other two candidates in the contest, London assembly member Mike Tuffery and recycling expert Brian Haley, were resigned to talking about policies and the need for the 2012 election campaign to involve 'the party' instead of being personality-driven.

The 35-strong audience of party members who gathered at a Wimbledon church last night (20^th July) failed to witness any fireworks; that may come at bigger hustings meetings planned for the next few weeks. Last night was more of a limbering-up session than a full-blooded competitive game.

The contest itself was much delayed, as figures in the party's Cowley Street HQ racked their brains for an anyone-but-Lembit candidate. Meanwhile the big beasts of London, Boris Johnson and Ken Livingstone, have been in place for many months.

Whoever gets to wear the yellow rosette in early September will have just eight short months before polling - not much time to be heard above the rutting egos of BoJo and Red Ken.

That's a tall order. Lothario and former MP Opik said party members needed to pick someone who had the experience and personality to hold their own in the ring.

Paddick, the party's candidate last time around, had a similar message too. He had got the measure, not just of Ken and Boris, but of Jeremy Paxman too. Nothing could phase him now. Significantly, he was the only man on the night to claim he could actually win next May, on second preference votes, especially if one of the front two were to have a campaign disaster.

Both Paddick and Opik have been victims of phone hacking, which has guaranteed both recent column inches amid the national scandal. As if to prove the point, an ITN van was parked outside church venue to interview the pair. Sadly, the broadcaster was not interested in the Lib Dem contest – at least not for the moment.

Paddick and Opik also had a bit to say about policies too. But first to speak was veteran activist Tuffery, an ex-accountant who is looking a bit sharper these days in a dark charcoal suit. Tuffery threw his hat in the ring after being egged-on by Mark Pack of the blog Lib Dem Voice and has been tipped to win the nomination. Quietly-spoken, solid and effective, he certainly has supporters among those who fear Opik will make the party a laughing stock.

In keeping with his subdued style, Tuffery said house-building was a key priority. There was enough spare land, he said, for 350,000 new homes; enough to almost single-handedly wiping out the housing waiting list. He also wants big firms to pay a living wage rather than minimum wage to reflect the extra cost of living in the capital.

And on a night when the four contestants were reluctant to lay any blows on each other, Tuffery did at least put some clear yellow water between himself and Paddick by promising to criticise the coalition government as well as praise it. Earlier, Paddick has claimed that the key to a successful campaign was to make the public realise how successful the Lib Dems had been in Government.

Haley, who was a senior Labour councillor in Haringey before defecting last year, said his slogan was “it's not about me, it's about the party.” He was at his most animated talking about how Labour had failed the inner cities over many decades, and was also most scathing about Livingstone. “I think Ken is burnt out”, he said. “I don't think he has the policies or the drive to work this thing through.” Haley's top priority was job creation.

Opik adopted a serious tone far removed from his reputation as a part-time comedian and dater of young women. He spoke about a referendum on a 24 hour tube service, and promised that he would “say things even if they are unpopular.” As if that were ever in doubt.

Paddick's key promise was that he would run a better campaign than 2008. He had learnt valuable lessons and was ready to hit the ground running.

Opik noted that he was “100 percent Estonian” and that his failure to be included as an ethnic minority in the past was “racist.” I think the last comment was slightly tongue-in-cheek, but I can't be sure. Opik said immigrants had made a great contribution to Britain, and that “multiculturalism actually works if you take away the prejudice.”

None of the four candidates had very much to say about immigration and diversity beyond the well-worn platitudes that new communities make a valuable contribution to society. One hopes all four will raise their game for the Ethnic Minority Liberal Democrat hustings on 2nd August at the Africa Centre, Covent Garden.

It's early days yet, but here's my scores for the opening exchanges:

	Charisma	Policies	Diversity	Total
Brian Haley	4	4	5	13
Lembit Opik	7	7	5	19
Brian Paddick	6	6	4	16
Mike Tuffery	4	7	4	15

by Lester Holloway

New citizens ready to make their mark

2011-07-16T14:48:00.000-07:00

The waiting room was nervous with anticipation. 30 soon-to-be-British citizens sat beside their relatives and friends in an historic mansion. A large Union Jack and a picture of the Queen was offset slightly by the traditional Greek music playing in the background. This was my first experience of a citizenship ceremony.

As a councillor in Sutton, Surrey, I had volunteered to lead one of these ceremonies which are traditionally fronted by a local dignatory. I had completely rewritten the prepared speech that was suggested to me and was ready to go.

Talking to many of the citizens, I was immediately struck by how long they had to wait to get to this point. Six years was the minimum, nine years quite typical, and one new citizen had come to the end of a 13 year journey. Amazingly there was not a hint of bitterness in their voices, they were just happy to be there. I wasn't so pleased that Britain had kept them on tenderhooks for so many years.

As you would expect, the new citizens hailed from all over the globe - from Uganda to Uruguay, literally. A man born in China was an extremely highly-qualified university lecturer. One owned a boiler-installing company, one was an IT technician. The official photographer, Mario, had made a point of learning a phrase in everyone's home language. This impressed the older generations, although some of the younger new citizens were slightly bemused to be confronted by their mother-tongue from a stranger in this setting.

I began my speech by remembering my mother, Gertrude, who came to Britain from Zimbabwe (then Rhodesia) to be a singer in the 1960s. She never made it as a singer, bar the odd 78rpm demo record, and like many immigrants had to work jobs that some 'indigenous' Britons shunned. She faced hostile attitudes for years. The story of overcoming such obstacles before eventually fitting in and even being appreciated is a common narrative that persists to this day.

In fact in my council ward, the police and housing officers recently tackled a resident who had let out their shed to Eastern European workers. Up to seven immigrants took it in turns to sleep in this shed, without water or sanitation.

While some struggles remain, Britain has also changed for the better since the 1960s. Yes, there is still a long, long way to go to achieve equality and respect, but for newly arrived immigrants there is more awareness and less open hostility than there was 50 years ago. I reminded the new citizens that this did not come about naturally. Progress was thanks to the battles fought by immigrants, who became trades union officials, community activists and politicians. Race equality laws came into being. Local councils embraced new policies and formed special committees.

Political progress towards equality owes much to the passion and dedication of those who were born abroad but made Britain their home. From Lord Bill Morris to Bernie Grant, Lord David Pitt to Rudy Narayan, they all made their mark. And the political process, in its' widest sense, must continue to be refreshed by the new perspectives and demands of immigrants to reflect the changing nature of society.

After my speech, I had to lead the National Anthem. As an anti-Monarchist I managed this through gritted teeth! And then it was over. I was pleased to meet many friendly individuals who will enrich Sutton and the whole nation. A really enjoyable experience.

Walking the walk with Akala

2011-07-16T11:00:00.000-07:00

Well over an hour after he had finished his lecture / performance, Hip-Hop artist Akala - the younger brother of Ms Dynamite - was still surrounded by young people. But this time I felt it had nothing to do with his 'celebrity' or his looks - the people were hungry for his knowledge.

Akala, who also goes by the moniker 'the black Shakespeare', had delivered an accomplished set mixing the history of pre-enslavement Africa with the evolution of Hip-Hop, and some of his own conscious rhymes backed by Kora-playing Griot Sona Jobarteh.

I was impressed by the maturity, soul and analysis that lay behind his presentation about the great civilisations of Africa before he even began talking about Hip Hop. This included the magnificient jewel-rich city of Carthage that thrived in the BC years before the Roman Empire, the mighty learning centre of Timbuktu , six-story buildings in the now-wrecked Mogadishu and breathtaking temples carved down into the rock by first-century Christians in Ethiopia.

Some of the slides he used were borrowed from Robin Walker's book Before the Slave Trade. I want to get this and can certainly recommend his first book When We Ruled.

The 27-year-old award-winner then took us on a tour of early influences of Hip Hop and made links between these recordings - from the call-and-return of Cab Calloway and the scat-singing of Ella Fitzgerald - and the music of Africa that survived the Middle Passage. Not forgetting the remarkable Pigmeat Markham, whose 1968 track Here Comes the Judge is undeniably early rap.

Akala then spoke about how this musical form, so influenced by Africa, had become corrupted by the industry. He highlighted the track Jungle by Professor Green, accompanied by a video that goes the extra mile to portray black people as menacing and violent. One scene even has the lyrics "you look like fresh meat to an ape" as a black man is shown in lying in a coffin.

The presentation was the epitome of edutainment, with the emphasis on "edu". The future cannot be too grim when young Griots like Akala are bringing real history to the people, using the medium of music to pay homage to ancestors, reflect on our current predicament and point the way ahead. The fact that so many of the audience at the South Bank Centre wanted to discuss the issues with him afterwards also left me with hope and inspiration.

The need for historians is today more crucial than ever, to counteract the torrent of negative, even demonic-influenced music that the mostly non-black executives running the musical-industrial complex feed us. Akala revealed, in his talk, that he had been to parts of the continent to see for himself the ancient monuments that he spoke about. Now that's walking the walk.

July 2011

Blackman know yourself, don't forget your past

2011-06-15T11:36:00.001-07:00

This Saturday will see many black men and women gather for a Black Men in the Community conference. I'm looking forward to attending, not least to find out where it all leads.

As the organiser Tony Harrison explains in this video, the conference aims to explore how black men engage with family, work, and the wider community as well as exploring intergenerational tensions.

Tackling such deep and wide-ranging topics in six hours is no mean feat. The event is sure to pull a crowd and I can envisage a lot of passion about the challenges facing the black man today.

Earlier this week Lee Jasper wrote about how the black man is demonised by society and faces discrimination at every turn. Much of this is true, but raises the question about whether we need to focus on changing the system or have a conversation about black men in more of a 'village discussion' about the role of black men.

Jasper is firmly of the view that the black man is not the problem, it is the (British) world that he lives in. Others, I'm sure, will want to put more of an emphasis on whether the black man is - in a general sense - acting as a role model? How does his behaviour, attitudes towards woman and himself, measure up?

The Facebook group promotes the conference's purpose:

to look at the Black Man through 3 different perspectives; as a son, as a partner and as a father. It will explore the stereotypes that attach themselves to these titles, it also seeks to expand on the facts and realities that both empower and disempower black men in these positions.

That's a hugely ambitious task - a necessary one, but one that surely involves ongoing discussion? If anything, it underlines the failure of our black media to facilitate this debate.

To shape this debate there will need to be more than a large crowd - there will need to be a guiding hand so that a few memorable conclusions that can be taken forward. These could happen organically throught the day, but I hope that Tony Harrison and others provide this leadership, so that participants do more than express themselves... they go away feeling like there was a solid outcome. That it made a difference.

My own feelings are that we should start by listening to our elders. By looking at the historical position of the black man in the family, community and society and how this has changed over the centuries and generations. How this has been shaped by Britain and by the advent of a cultureless 'urban' culture. To what extent has the 'community' been complicit in the changing circumstances affecting the black male, or has this all been out of our hands? As Femi Kuti sang "blackman know yourself, don't forget your past."

Bringing our proud historical roots to the conference will illuminate the way forward out of the current negative predicaments affecting the black man, and help elevate - in the right context - all that is positive about the black man. To that extent, the conference should be led by Griots!

I would like to have seen the likes of Paul Obinna and other social historians on the panel. But instead there is Katharine Birbalsingh, a teacher who 'sold out' her children for a some cheap applause at a Conservative party conference, someone who refers to "Black People's Time" and "lunchboxes." A superfan of the neo-con education secretary Michael Gove, Birbalsingh recently spoke at a Fabian Society event about her belief that it was acceptable to "write off" children who misbehaved. These expelled pupils - some of them geniuses - are disproportionately black.

We really don't need such self-seeking Right Wing agendas at a conference about the black man, much less from someone who may harbour questionable attitudes towards black people.

I have respect for others on the panel - Viv Ahmun, Bishop Wayne Malcolm, Ray Lewis and Sonia Brown - but I remain sceptical about a conservative agenda, albiet with a small 'c'. Where are the Lee Jasper's, the Barbara Campbell's, or the Diane Abbott's of this world - all of whom have dedicated years to black education from a culturally-aware holistic perspective, a world away from Ray Lewis's prescription of bootcamp-style discipline.

Anyway, I do not wish to approach Saturday's conference with too much scepticism! Where it will go or what agenda it will follow is anyone's guess, but we must collectively put our foot forward - perhaps our Left Foot! - and gather under the village tree to have an ongoing conversation about the black man.

By Lester Holloway

Naomi Campbell and the Chocolate Masticators

2011-05-29T09:47:00.000-07:00

Is it just me, or do Cadbury's have an uncanny knack of generating national media coverage with a good old fashioned 'race row'... which has the happy side-effect of raising the profile and commercial success of their products?

I pose the question because, right now, we are all encouraged to feel emotions over a 'controversial' chocolate advert making reference to Naomi Campbell. The assumption is that public opinion will polarise - with black activists branding the ad 'racist' while radio presenters accuse the supermodel of having a chocolate chip on her shoulder.

But what I find fascinating is whether this so-called race row is in reality as manufactured and packaged as the chocolate products being flogged.

I, for one, was barely aware that there was a bar called Bliss on the newsagents confectionery shelves until I read it in connection with this story.

Launched last year, Bliss has failed to embed itself into the nation's consciousness. Cadbury's claimed it was splurging £2.2 million on an advertising campaign. If that is the case, they should surely have won greater brand awareness by now, or be asking for their money back.

Let's be honest, Bliss needed a boost. And, as every PR toad knows, the best ads make the news. It gives the company priceless column inches and a brand awareness that, frankly, money can't buy. How to achieve this? Create a flamable advert playing with the issue of race, hand community leaders a match and watch it light up the media.

The trouble is, this is not the first time Cadbury's has offended in this way. Yet each and every time their products have emerged unscathed with a higher profile. First there was Trident chewing gum, launched with a manic Caribbean man dashing about with a megaphone blasting the catchphrase 'mastication for the nation.' That particular race row stuck Cadbury's gum on the map, and it is now an established top-selling brand.

Then there was the giant hovering head to promote Cadbury's fair trade bars, which drew criticism about the portrayal of African villagers who came out to dance wildly as the head appeared. That story did no harm to the product itself.

And it's not just Cadbury's. Their rivals, Masterfoods, were involved in chocolate-related controversy after Operation Black Vote protested about an advert for Galaxy ice-cream which featured the rhyme 'eeny, meeny, miney, mo...'.

Looked at in a broader perspective, one could be forgiven for concluding that chocolate companies were using the issue of race to create artificial rows and news copy that does the power of good for public brand awareness. All they need is for race activists to unwittingly react, like a doctor tapping a knee, and the money rolls in.

Of course it could be the case that each controversy is unconnected, a result of shocking but unsurprising ignorance about race from an advertising industry that is overwhelmingly white. Yet if that were the case, why does this scenario keep repeating itself in a multi-million pound chocolate confectionary industry where product image is everything?

Could it be that these ignorant mistakes are not really errors at all, but instead carefully planned attempts to promote goods in news print? Are Cadbury's and their hired marketing hands just chocolate masticators, taking us for a ride?

The bigger issue, for me, is that these stories trivialise the issue of race and racism. The large number of column inches the various Cadbury's and Masterfood 'race rows' have collectively generated over-shadow coverage given to far more serious issues of racial inequality, like the huge and growing employment gap between working age black and white men, or the 'ethnic penalty' of less pay for black workers compared to similarly qualified.

It distracts from ongoing issues of race inequality in education, health, housing and service delivery, and suggests that tackling racism requires nothing more than white people to tip-toe carefully around the 'race issue' for fear of causing offence, as opposed to debating real measures to eliminate the pernicious and endemic racism that denies life-chances to many. The results of which we witness in mortality rates and disproportionate incarceration rates.

The Bliss advert itself does makes me uncomfortable - more of that later - but I really couldn't care less about whether Naomi is personally offended or not. While she has proven a role model and an inspirationsimply by virtue being the most prominent black supermodel, she herself has not taken advantage of her position and influence to uplift others.

We are proud to see her at the top, but why has she not extended a ladder for others to join her at the summit? Too busy cavorting with billionaires, partaking in fashionable refreshment, or watching mobile phones bounce gracefully off the foreheads of her personal assistants, I shouldn't wonder.

I do recognise that Naomi has undoubtedly battled racism in the rarified and pretentious fashion world, as well as putting her neck on the block by challenging a columnist who called her a 'chocolate soldier'. I sympathised with the supermodel over her case against Sue Carroll. Councillors have had to resign after using the term "n***** in the woodpile", and to my mind Mirror the columnist committed a similar offence.

Given her battle with the Mirror, ir surely cannot have escaped Cadbury's attention that Naomi might take offence if they invoked her name in connection with a chocolate bar. It was as predictable as a placing a wannabe WAG next to Spurs striker Jermain Defoe. Details are bound to appear in next morning's papers. Instant and guaranteed coverage.

As for the Bliss advert itself, any association of chocolate with black people will inevitably draw attention to skin colour, and while we do not know the intentions behind it, there will always be the suspicion of traces of unwitting racism at the very least. The advert in question also suggests that Naomi Campbell is being replaced by the chocolate, as if there is only room for one (black?) diva at any given time. Which is probably true as far as the fashion industry is concerned.

So it's possibly racist, and was always going to cause offence. That may be the case, but I remain deeply suspicious about the motives behind yet another story about race and chocolate adverts. Wispa it quietly, but I reckon those Milky Bar kids at Cadbury's are trying to be Smarties, forcing us to take Time Out to digest their advert while they have a Picnic at our expense.

by Lester Holloway

Stephen Lawrence represents more than the need to convict his killers

2011-05-18T15:17:00.000-07:00

The prospect of justice at last in the case of Stephen Lawrence will be greeted with much hope. If Gary Dobson and David Norris are convicted of the infamous murder, we could see the kind of outpouring of relief and joy that greeted President Obama’s victory.

Like the historic presidential election, symbolism matters greatly. It touches emotions and changes things profoundly in ways we can only hope to measure with an historical eye. While Obama’s victory lifted the spirits of the world – with a deeper and longer lasting effect in the black world – the reality of realpolitik is slowly but surely putting symbolism in its’ place.

And so it may prove with the Stephen Lawrence suspects (as as we are calling them these days, as opposed to Stephen Lawrence’s killers). Trying them, and convicting them, will feel good. It will feel like justice over 18 long years, of watching the pain and determination of Doreen and Neville Lawrence. We have all felt part of the campaign, part of the family. We are so familiar with Stephen’s image, it’s almost like we knew him.

The world knows him. And Britain’s failure to put away the killers remains a stain on our justice system. Rev Al Sharpton made a point of visiting the Stephen Lawrence centre in Deptford during his last visit, accompanied by Doreen. Obama will know all about the case. Luckily, he is visiting Britain next week. It will doubtless be a topic of conversation as he chats to David Cameron, in between talking about the aftermath of Osama bin Laden’s slaying.

I’m sure Obama will be pleased Britain has got it’s man – well, two of them at least. While Cameron will no doubt congratulate Obama for getting his. The trouble about ‘taking out’ iconic hate-figures, whether in the courts or with an American gun, is that it still leaves behind the movement that spawned them. Be that the worldwide existence of al Qaeda-inspired terrorist cells, or the bubbling undercurrent of racism that still swirls on the UK’s city streets where cars containing five white men cruise around looking for a victim.

Such scenes are rare in richly multicultural neighbourhoods, but visit the poor white working class estates on the outskirts of towns and cities, and you will witness the lingering menace that is another Stephen Lawrence waiting to happen. Any joy we feel at the prospect of justice in this iconic case may – in the long run – be overshadowed by society proclaiming ‘case closed’, when Stephen’s killers are in reality the symptom of racism, not the cause.

For me, and many others, Stephen Lawrence was always about much more than justice in this individual case. It was about the ‘Stephen Lawrence agenda.’ An agenda that reached its’ high water mark with Labour’s Race Relations (Amendment) Act 2000, but has been in retreat ever since. In retreat from constant attacks on multiculturalism and everything that represents. If it isn’t the daily discourse in the Daily Mail, it is Trevor Phillips declaring multiculturalism is dead, or Jack Straw announcing that all the recommendations of the McPherson report had been achieved, or Met police commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson boasting that his force no longer suffered from institutional racism.

I fear that as the cell door slams behind Dobson and Norris, so will Britain feel that naked racism of the kind embodied by this crime, has been locked up too. The right-wing perspective on race, fed by Phillips, Straw et al, will have had the final word. But while history will have indeed been made by a successful conclusion of this case, the everyday consequences of racism will remain. Be that double the proportion of black man out of work compared to white, or the disproportionately negative impact of poor housing and health in poor inner city neighbourhoods.

In other words, it will be business as usual. When the confetti of pious statements about the tragedy of Stephen Lawrence’s murder has floated away, how many of the powerful – in politics and the media – will stick around to remind Britain that the Lawrence agenda was for everyone of colour who is not treated equally?

The fact is, Stephen Lawrence represents more than the need to convict his killers. His legacy, including the spirit of the McPherson report and the 2000 Act, represents the need for true race equality. Not just freedom from street attacks, but the elimination of colour bars at every level of every profession from the police to top Whitehall civil servants. The excitement around the Lawrence case today must not blind us to attempts by defenders of the status quo to bury the progressive race agenda. Let's hope and cheer for justice, not just for Stephen Lawrence but for what he has come to symbolise.

It was like déjà vu, all over again

2011-04-29T05:58:00.000-07:00

Like Pimms, the royal wedding proved itself over-rated and over-priced, leaving me somewhat underwhelmed and with an ever-so slightly bitter taste in my mouth.

Had I suspended my critical faculties and given in to the media hype I might have just about got into the mood.

But with my normal brain switched on and my gray-matter firewall repelling the nasty viruses telling me how excited I should be, the "royal wedding experience" proven merely to be a boring retread of 1981, minus the cuteness. A fairytale with the fairy wings picked off.

There was the Queen-in-training, her demure dress a nod to the economic hardships faced by the commoners, finally sealing the deal for which she has striven - and waited for - all her adult life. The handsome prince was no longer a picture on her wall. Whether his head is metaphorically mounted on her wall remains to be seen, of course! But she's certainly bagged her prince.

Then there was William, rejecting his dull RAF uniform for a red Irish Guards number with its' Ulster-like sash, surely an attempt to look as stiff and boring as his father while hopefully avoiding Prince Charles' dithering pomposity. Let's hope William's threads also help smooth the upcoming visit of the Queen to the island of Ireland.

In stark contrast to the wall-to-wall media blitzkrieg, I've noticed Union Jack bunting has been in general short supply across London. Yes, the infamous red, white and blue was in evidence from the Goring Hotel (NB: not Göring) to Westminster Abbey, crowds seemed somewhat thin on the ground at several points along the route. Not a great return on the reported £20 million this event has cost us taxpayers.

Could it be that the Great British Public wasn't quite so ecstatic as we are being led to believe? Could it be that we haven't quite brought the dream we are being sold, at a price of £180 million a year - for that is how much the monarchy costs us, aside from all the hidden extras.

Predictably enough broadcast reporters discovered a sizable proportion of the crowd to be tourists taking in the stereotypical postcard-like spectacle. But most chose to watch it at home, Facebooking and Tweeting critical analysis of guests clothing, and the bizarre choice of wedding guests (Joss Stone but no Gordon Brown, Sir Elton John but no Tony Blair).

Michelle Obama might have expressed barely-disguised disappointment at not being invited, but she really did not miss much. It was essentially an unimaginative rerun of Charles and Diana Spencer, only this time with a groom who didn't look like he was about to face the gallows.

Coming from America, Michelle will understand that the most often repeated mistake Hollywood makes is to believe they can recreate the magic by churning out a sequel while neglecting to update the plot. And so it was today - déjà vu, all over again. The acting was passable, the marketing budget may have got bigger, but there was just something missing. The stirring music score from a fawning media corps toyed with our emotions, but the tunes were just not catchy enough to stick in the memory after the curtain came down.

Talking of gallows, that reminds me; it is with some sadness that I read that Chris Knight, the eccentric but harmless anarchist who has a penchant for wearing an undertakers uniform - he founded the 'government of the dead' group - was arrested for attempting to bring a fake guillotine to the party and behead Our Wills. Whatever one thinks of his tastes, arresting Knight smacked of state intolerance to dissent of the kind that people across the Middle East and the Cote d'Ivoire have been rebelling against lately.

How democratic is Britain when the Facebook group Reclaim the Royal Wedding had to abandon plans for a peaceful protest after demonstrations were banned. And then there was the police raid on squats in Camberwell, south London, no doubt on the hunt for colourful ironic and humorous banners which may constitute a threat to the peace. It seems we have the right to assemble, but just so long as we all think alike and wave flags at those who believe they were born to rule over us, anointed by a god who may or may not exist.

What we witnessed today was not merely a modern remake of the fantasy - a pre-hyped blockbuster that failed to live up to expectations - but also an operation at manipulation. The denying of enough oxygen to give breath to the sceptics. The right of protest was denied on the streets and squeezed out in the media. The dominant view - that the wedding was a tear-jerking success - was all pervasive. Yet this fails to convince. It does not feel right, does not tally with the lack of excitement on the streets.

Something has changed. Perhaps deference to the role of the monarchy as natural rulers of the common people has grown since Diana, Queen of Hearts, perished. Perhaps Kate / Catherine does not have the X-factor to win it back and the jury is still out on William.

Could it be that we tuned in to the wedding, at times getting carried away with the mood music, but deep down the public were left ultimately unfulfilled by the performance. We had seen it all before. This time, however, the boring plot had left us time to dwell on how and why the movie was made in the first place. Perhaps, despite all the pomp and circumstance of today, the Republic is not so very far away after all?

By Lester Holloway

Light-headed magazine must be skinning up

2011-04-18T08:14:00.000-07:00

Attempts to separate, categorise and divide black nation by skin tone has been in evidence for centuries. From enslavement to colonial and apartheid regimes, the collective black skin still bares the scars of shadeism today.

Today, unspoken and informal 'caste systems' remain alive and well across the Caribbean, south America and parts of Africa - the legacy of a philosophy that placed the white man at the top, Indians, 'coloureds' and Creoles in the middle, and dark skinned people at the bottom.

Jonah's Complex - a fear of greatness - ensured that great black civilisations, from ancient Egyptians to the world's greatest medieval university in Timbuktu (Mali) were erased, or the evidence lightened.

When I served as Editor of the black newspaper New Nation in 2009, we published a front page headlined "The whitening of King Tutankhamun" after new evidence - a facial reconstruction - showed unmistakable Nubian features. First Jesus and now King Tut, here was yet more clues as to how the greatest historical figures of all time had been artificially lightened to sell them to Europeans.

With this in mind, I was saddened today to read that the American black hair magazine Carol's Daughter (see above picture) had decided to make three light-skinned black women their new ambassadors. The magazine's chairman Steve Stoute is quoted as justifying this on grounds that readers "don't see colour." If that were true he might as well use models with jet-black skin, after all no-one would notice.

A more likely story is that the magazine have taken leave of their principles to pander to melanin-adverse corporate advertisers, or the really are seeing the world through blue eyes in believing that lighter-skin is more appealing.

One of the models, Selita Ebanks, has talked about the fact that black people are "blended." That is a truism of course, a fact brought about historically by force on the plantations - 70 percent of African Americans carry white genes. Post-emancipation it continues by choice, with half of all people of Caribbean heritage in the UK in a relationship with white partner.

Yet the observation that black people are blended is meaningless without explaining what it means. When 70s band Blue Mink sang about a great big melting pot turning out "coffee coloured people by the score" it sounds like the kind of a naive fantasy that the magazine Carol's Daughter subscribes to.

Multiculturalism, at least in my definition, is a peaceful and cooperative coexistence of multiple 'races' and identities, each preserving and celebrating their own culture, food and histories. Not inevitable mixing and blending, but a deepening process of understanding.

In stark contrast to Blue Mink, Peter Tosh's tune 'African' locates blended blood and genes firmly within a political context. "No mind your complexion, there is no rejection. Don't matter where you come from, if you're a black man you're an African." As an African, I love black skin. Light-skinned as I am, it offends my sensibilities for lighter skin or European features to be

As a black, mixed-race, man I am by my very nature in favour of mixed (black - white) relationships; after all I wouldn't exist had it not been for one! I believe love should have no colour or class bars. Yet we should not shy away from exercising the right debate why black - particularly Caribbean - men and women are so much more likely to be in mixed (black - white) relationships than any other community. Is this explained purely by love and sex, or does shadeism and the legacy of the past play a part?

It does play a significant role, and publications like Carol's Daughter have a responsibility to stand against this. To stand for a positive image of black women not based on what shade they are, but one based on the true and historical power of the black woman.

That joke isn't funny anymore

2011-03-14T12:52:00.000-07:00

A funny thing happened on the way from the World Comedy Clash, in Camden, last night. I was reflecting about a stage rant by the evening's host, US comedian Will-E Robo (pictured). Halfway through the show the compère abandoned his gags and started fuming.

He was angry and looking daggers at a woman in the stalls. The atmosphere was tense. "It's called comedy!", Robo protested, trying to win the audience on his side. A handful of people clapped.

Before the interval, Robo had told a string of jokes that denegrated black women. One involved how he likes to pull white girl's hair when having sex with them before bemoaning how he cannot do the same with black women. In the manner of Charlie Chaplin he fell over stimulating sex as a black woman's weave came off. That was an early gag and probably the biggest laugh he got from the mainly black audience all night.

Had he progressed to other material, Robo might have got away with it. But he stuck with his theme of black woman. The laughs got less.

Some say that comedy is best when it pushes the boundaries and shocks. This debate in itself creates the room for dubious attitudes, which was probably why the audience laughed despite - in all probability - being stunned at Robo's view that having sex with white girls is better because he can pull their hair.

But whatever latitude Robo had, he quickly used it up with a joke about how miserable he believes black women are when they wake up in the morning compared to white or Asian woman. After paying a complement to beautiful Asian women, he then kept up the insults against the sistas. I felt ashamed at myself for laughing at his earlier joke, despite feeling it was out of order. Now my stomach was turning. My guest, a black woman, was disgusted.

When Robo took the stage immediately after the interval he was no longer smiling. Two black women had taken him to task over his act. But it was one of those women that had really got under his skin. He was angry at her and let the whole audience - perhaps 400-strong - know about it. Protesting that comedy was a hard business, Robo said it was a release for hard-working folk. He appeared to be urging the audience to side with him, as he kept shooting hard glances over at her. "Guess what, she's still here!", he said. "You pay to come in, but it's free to leave." There weren't many laughs in that.

I wasn't privy to the conversation between Robo and the woman during the interval, but I understand that she did not shout or swear at him. She approached him with knowledge; of the historical status of black women and said she did not appreciate black women being compared unfavourably with white women. Robo was so annoyed at hearing this, he attacked her for a second time from the stage between introducing the night's acts.

They say truth hurts, and her critique of his comedy had clearly stripped away the veneer of edgy comedy to reveal a lazy and unoriginal act quite possibly built on a genuine dislike, or certainly disrespect, of black women. Like misogynistic Hip Hop, the opportunity to uplift, celebrate and edutain had been squandered in favour of cheap thrills. Like the music genre, black self love had been readily sacrificed.

I was also disappointed by the fact that many of the comedy acts last night rarely strayed away jokes based sex or caractures about their own nationalities or others'. Much of the comedy was simply poor, and not worth £22 a ticket.

Bernard Manning was relegated to performing at his dingy Manchester comedy club in the twilight of his career. His stew of gags, based entirely on racial stereotypes, and sexist mother-in-law jokes had run thin. Multiculturalism at brought a new understanding to the British about the people Manning had been poking fun at since the 1950s. The caricatures no longer rang true. As the Manc Morrissey sang: That Joke Isn't Funny Anymore.

The 1980s saw Lenny Henry hit our TV screens with a series of comedy characters, from Delbert Wilkins to Fred Dread, characters he later defended as "self-depreciating", but felt like the flipside of Jim Davidson's Chalky. Today, thankfully, Delbert and Chalky lie buried in comedy's grave. The howls of outrage that greeted the Trident chewing gum TV ad in 2007 laid down a clear signal - cartoon characterisations of Caribbean people are unacceptable in today's society.

There's a parallel between Will-E Robo and Manning. Robo's distain for black women, wrapped up in comedy, finds an echo in Manning's disrespect for 'foreigners' in general. Both ignore the good, the rich, the beautiful. Racism and self-hate; a bellyfull of bile towards mothers-in-law and our sistas. They would enjoy each others' acts. The tragedy is that while Manning's crude comedy has been driven out of town, too many in the black community are prepared to tolerate Robo's brand. I felt that quite a few of the audience last night were uncomfortable about the performances, but can it be good enough simply to silently not applaud? Don't we have to take a stand, as the likes of Russell Simmons have done to clean up rap?

This was my dilemma on the way back from the gig. Because I did not protest. I did not approach Robo to make my feelings known. I started off laughing, before falling silent. I was weak, my better instincts suppressed in a desire to try and enjoy the evening. Principles, even leadership, had failed me.

Luckily two women took a stand. One of them was my guest - my girlfriend. I had no knowledge of what she had done during the interval. But I am immensely proud of her. She took a stand and - I am certain - spoke for a lot of people that night. For her efforts, she was subjected to a tirade (twice) from the evening's host. Robo had shown himself up and alerted the crowd to the fact that there had been dissent about his disrespecful comedy. One small action had raised a wider question: can it be right to joke about black women in this way? The answer, clearly, is "no."

Eastern Eye broadside against South Africa is pure prejudice

2010-11-19T13:05:00.000-08:00

A quite shocking editorial in this week’s edition of Eastern Eye, the biggest-selling Asian newspaper in Britain, over the tragic killing of newlywed Anni Dewani in South Africa.

The leader column, which is normally written by the editor, in this case Sailesh Ram, begins: “When there are so many other equally beautiful places in the world to visit, why take a risk with South Africa?”

If this read like a mealy-mouthed way of saying Asians should boycott the rainbow nation over this one, albeit tragic, murder, it got worse.

“It is hard to save South Africans from themselves when killing occurs for the sheer pleasure of killing”, the editorial continues. This line sounds very much like the paper believes the whole nation of South Africa enjoys nothing better than a good slaying of the innocent.

“Which Asian is going to visit the country now, despite all the hype about the ‘safe’ soccer World Cup?”, the leader asked. Well, given that the World Cup was largely safe – despite all the pre-tournament hype about it not being safe – I would have thought that this spoke for itself. But Eastern Eye could always get a second opinion from the large south Asian community that live in the country as naturalised South Africans.

But the newspaper wasn’t satisfied with just discouraging tourism. “Only a foolhardy Indian or British-Asian company will now be willing to risk its’ investment and staff in such a dangerous and lawless society”, the column continued. So British-Asian businesses should boycott South Africa too, over this murder? Apparently so.

“To be sure, the honeymooning couple were unwise enough to wander near a black township at night… Anni wanted to see the ‘real South Africa’. Sadly, she did”, the paper concluded.

The implied black savagery underpinning this column could have come straight from the worst colonial-era propaganda, and smacks of anti-black racism. As a former news reporter on Eastern Eye I am ashamed of the nasty under-current and gross over-reaction of the paper.

The paper has clearly learnt nothing from the Press Complaints Commission finding against the African and Caribbean newspaper The Voice for calling for a boycott of Asian businesses in Birmingham in the wake of rape allegations that turned out not to be true.

I slammed The Voice immediately after they published their editorial column, writing a scathing article which I headlined “Voice of Hate”. Some were shocked that I was so strident in my condemnation. But it was a point of principle; even if a rape of a black girl had occurred – which it later transpired wasn’t the case – that would still not have justified the Voice’s call to boycott Asian businesses.

By the same standard, Eastern Eye are completely wrong to effectively call for a tourism and business boycott of South Africa on the basis of the Anni Dewani murder.

Both the Eastern Eye and Voice columns are prejudiced and out of place in modern society.

Second anniversary vigil for Sean Rigg who died in police custody

2010-08-22T13:04:00.000-07:00

Looking like we mean business

2010-07-04T11:11:00.000-07:00

The Liberal Democrats are showing signs of getting serious about tackling the chronic under-representation of black and Asian talent in elected positions – and about time too.

In a groundbreaking move that was sadly unreported, the London Region recently agreed to introduce positive action in a bid to get at least one BAME hopeful onto the London Assembly, a body that represents a city where over a third of the population is from an ethnic minority.

The decision to reserve places – quotas by another name – on the ‘top-up list’ means the Lib Dems have gone further than any other political party in this area. There is no doubt that we, more than any other, needed to take concrete measures to tackle the current woeful lack of BAME representation.

I believe the London Region is establishing an important principle: that drastic situations call for brave measures. If we fail to address the image of an all-white party our reputation alone will put off future black and Asian people from joining, and the vicious cycle will continue. It’s what happened to the Conservatives until David Cameron broke the chain by taking unofficial positive action by stealth.

Let’s not kid ourselves about exactly how big the elephant in the room has grown. Just the mention of ‘Liberal Democrat’ to many black and Asian people now frequently brings a retort about how unrepresentative we are.

That’s why we need change now, because while the backroom measures put in place by Nick Clegg, such as the Diversity Unit and the New Generation initiative, are welcome they are aiming at the medium to long term. We cannot afford to wait that long; our brand will become too toxified.

That is why I am pleased the London Executive of the party has agreed to designate one place in the top four spots for someone from a BAME background, and two in the top six. Two of the top four places will be for women.

Although the party currently has just three seats in City Hall there used to be five, so while these changes don’t exactly guarantee a BAME Lib Dem assembly member, it is nevertheless one giant leap away from the status quo. Under the existing selection system I would have bet my house on seeing another all-white London team in 2012. Now there is more than an evens chance it won’t be.

I hope the action taken in London encourages other areas of the party to embrace changes needed to bring about a genuinely representative party. It needs to be a springboard for further action elsewhere.

Not only do we lack a single BAME Member of Parliament, but also any Euro MEPs, Welsh or London assembly members, and Scottish MSPs. And there’s a serious issue at local council level too, including some boroughs with a high proportion of BAME residents.

As Ben Moody noted recently on The Guardian’s Comment Is Free, objections from Lib Dem members to positive action often places a greater value on the rights those who are excluded – mainly white, middle-class men – than the need to reflect the diversity of society.

At a time when we have had to swallow a good number of sometimes unpalatable Tory policies for the greater good of Britain it would be perverse it we then drew the wagons around protecting internal selection procedures which continue to produce results that make us the most unrepresentative party.

The embarrassment of having an all-white Commons team before the election was intensified by Labour and the Conservatives almost doubling the number of BAME MPs at the poll – up from 14 to 27. We have now failed to elect any MP of colour at a general election since 1892, when Dadabhai Naoroji made history as the first.

Individually we may believe our intentions are good but the bigger picture tells us that exclusion is going on. The outcome is illiberal, and reluctance to do what is necessary to improve the situation deeply conservative.

As a party founded by Methodists who were at the forefront of the struggle to abolish slavery in the 19th Century I see no reason why we cannot today be a party that is fully representative of society – including race and gender. We should also lead the debate nationally on equality, yet how can we be expected to be taken seriously when we do not practice what we preach.

Addressing an Association of Liberal Democrat Councillors conference recently, deputy leader Simon Hughes urged those present to consider reserved places for BAMEs, and added he was not opposed in principle to all-BAME shortlists. Encouragingly there was no opposition from the floor, hopefully a sign that we have now turned a corner.

Before the general election, Clegg said that if all-BAME shortlists were legal he would consider adopting them for “the election after next” if other programmes did not deliver results. That’s now the forthcoming election. I support the recommendations of the Speaker’s Conference, in particular the call for enabling legislation to give parties the option of introducing all-BAME shortlists if they wish.

It is no longer acceptable to simply raise objections about measures being ‘illiberal’. We need to hear what alternatives are on offer that will equally deliver the results needed.

As a member of the Ethnic Minority Liberal Democrats, I can reveal that we are proposing a motion to Annual Conference that calls for a reserved place for at least one BAME member on the shortlist whenever a sitting Liberal Democrat MP retires, any by-elections where a Liberal Democrat MP resigns, and seats which require a five percent or less swing.

EMLD is also calling for reserved places for all multi-member ‘constituencies’ for selecting candidates for MEPs, MSPs, AMs and local council candidates, based on Office of National Statistics populations in each area.

The old nostrum that “we want them but they just aren’t coming forward” is not quite true. We already have a good deal of the excellent emerging BAME members, and positive action measures will allow their talents to shine. I confidently predict that local members will be impressed by many hopefuls who, at present, are just not getting to selection contests.

As a party we need to grasp the nettle in order to promote the talent we currently have and attract the next generation. But we need to act fast before the legion of future MPs, who were inspired first by Barack Obama and then by Nick Clegg, are not lost to politics, or at least to us.

To miss out on this huge pool of talent doesn’t make business sense. But it’s not just about getting black and brown faces elected, it’s about what they can contribute. People from BAME backgrounds bring experiences and perspectives that can enrich politics, contributing to ‘mainstream’ issues and bringing expertise on how to tackle the entrenched unequal racial outcomes.

* This article was first published in Lib Dem Voice

Bernie's dream still a long way off

2010-06-11T06:14:00.000-07:00

We’ve come a long way. We still have a long, long way to go. The words of Dr Martin Luther King as he took stock of gains made in the civil rights movement. Yet the sentiment equally applies when reflecting on the increased numbers of black and Asian MPs at this years’ general election.

Since the big breakthrough of 1987 - when Diane Abbott, Keith Vaz, Paul Boateng and the late Bernie Grant made it to parliament - progress has been painfully slow at each subsequent election… until this year. On 6th May BME MPs almost doubled, up from 15 to 27, while the number of Asian women rose, from zero to six.

The recent gains are impressive on the face of it, yet put the figures in context and it’s a different story altogether. Collectively all the black and Asian MPs still only represent four percent of the House of Commons, well short of the total BME population in Britain, now estimated to be between 13 and 15 percent.

When Labour’s Harriet Harman campaigned for the Labour deputy leadership in 2007 she said Britain needed “four times more” BME MPs for Westminster to reflect the society it served. That was using old census data from 2001. Take the new Office of National Statistics figures into account and currently we still need three and a half times more MPs of colour. That’s half a percent progress! Still a long way to go.

I remember feeling immense pride as a teenager when I saw Bernie Grant turn up to the State Opening of parliament wearing traditional African robes, and when Paul Boateng declared: “Today Brent South, tomorrow Soweto!” It felt like the dawning of a new era and the end of years of struggle. That new era faced its’ first setback when Grant’s attempts to set up a parliamentary Black caucus floundered as Boateng refused to join in.

Grant realised it wasn’t just about getting black and brown faces into the club – representation was about recognising that the hopes of BME communities rested on their shoulders. And if they were serious about tackling racism and disadvantage they couldn’t do it alone, they needed to organise. Grant was saying, in effect, we still have a long way to go.

Today we seem to be going full circle with talk of a US version of the Congressional Black Caucus. With so many new black and Asian MPs surely it is possible this time? Well, I wouldn’t bet on it. Most of the new intake is likely to shun Black self-organisation just as Boateng did 23 years earlier.

Fooled into believing that the patronage of their party’s elite, and their own talents, are enough to guarantee them success, I predict the MPs will overlook the achievements African-American politicians have made courtesy of the Congressional Black Caucus in favour of the ‘mainstreaming’ approach fashionable now.

But mainstreaming needs to be judged by results. Has mainstreaming equality in the workplace worked as disproportionate levels of BME unemployment have rocketed during this recession? Has it worked in the police, were disproportionality in stop and search has also increased inexorably over past years? I think not.

Race, gender and religion of candidates does have an impact on politics whenever there is a critical mass. Labour introduced all-women shortlists in the 1997 election, resulting in over 100 new women MPs – the so-called ‘Blair’s Babes.’ This positive discrimination produced our first woman Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith.

But more importantly it gave parliament a critical mass of women, used effectively by Harriet Harman to introduce new measures on childcare, maternity leave, domestic and sexual violence, and forced marriages. Representation has led to results.

How different might life have been for BME communities today had Grant been successful creating a caucus? Sadly, lack of unity between MPs of colour has cost the very communities who most looked to them to combat race discrimination. This cost will only be magnified by the increased numbers of MPs, while the status quo remains the same.

This is where voter participation counts, not just at election time, but holding our MPs to account on a daily basis. Criminal justice, unemployment and mental health data all show disproportionate numbers of BME people fairing much worse than their white counterparts, and the figures are getting worse. If 27 BME MPs are not able to make inroads into these issues, serious questions need to be asked.

Black communities can, and should, play a greater role in selecting MPs. Open primaries offer one route, as does the idea of an Apprentice-style talent search first floated by Sunder Katwala of the Fabian Society. We must not let talk of “inclusive politics” put us off recognising how much BME talent there is out there - and the need to find it. Especially MPs who are going to view representation in a wider context than their local constituency or serving their political masters.

Just as there is a head of steam building to demand a fair voting system, so too should we also demand fair representation from a race perspective. Because while proportional representation delivers an accurate reflection of party preferences, it does not directly affect the background of the candidates’ parties pick.

As an issue, Black representation is too important to be left to party apparatchiks picking candidates behind closed doors. Not only has progress been too slow but the BME MPs who have been successful have often shied away from directly tackling ingrained racism in society. In an era of ‘new politics’, now is the time to grasp just how much there is to do.

Kingston corruption goes better with Coke

2010-05-29T04:00:00.000-07:00

For anyone confused about why the Jamaican government would sacrifice so many soldiers lives in a so far futile effort to arrest one drug dealer, and why locals are prepared to sacrifice their lives to protect him, yesterday’s Times is worth a read.

The newspaper reports allegations that the Jamaican Prime Minister Bruce Golding had close links with Christopher “Dudus” Coke, the outlaw at the centre of the crisis which has already claimed 74 casualties and counting, and which some are predicting could escalate into a civil war.

Many Jamaicans believe that Coke was on the ‘government payroll’ as reward for crucial support of Coke’s Tivoli Gardens stronghold which delivered Golding’s Labour Party victory in the general election.

While these allegations are not proven, what is not in doubt is that many residents of Tivoli Gardens see Coke as “a Robin Hood figure who provides them with food, pays for their children to go to school and mediates in their disputes”, in the words of the Independent lead article.

Coke’s wealth flows from the evil drugs trade and his ‘rule’ has been enforced by violence since the 1980s, but to some Jamaicans he is the man who buries their grandparents when the government won’t help them.

He is the man who keeps guns out of Tivoli Gardens and who’s supporters crack down on criminals, and the man who makes sure children are back home by 8pm each evening.

None of this justifies the crimes Coke has been associated with, but does explain why Jamaicans compare him to God, and declare their willingness to die to protect him.

So why, then, would the Jamaican government who apparently have such strong ties – even debts – towards this revered Robin Hood figure seek to suddenly capture him now in the face of such passionate opposition?

Why would Golding apparently risk everything - even exposing his own close ties to Coke - just to acceed to an extradition demand by the United States?

Part of the answer can be found in the sky. Because flying above Tivoli Gardens are American and Canadian fighter jets, betraying the interest of these two countries in Jamaica.

Can there be a connection between the intervention of the US and Canadian military and the recent influx of wealthy US and Canadian citizens to areas near Tivoli Gardens? We can only hazard a guess.

If Coke has done anything else to upset America or it's interests, only time and history will tell. But whatever has gone on, Western interests are upset with Coke and appear to be trying even harder to remove him than they did with Hugo Chavez, president of Venezuela.

Diane Abbott - she was the future once

2010-05-19T09:42:00.000-07:00

Diane Abbott for Labour leader? This unlikely idea was floated today by Simon Woolley of Operation Black Vote, in a Guardian Comment Is Free piece.

I hazard a guess this is not a serious suggestion but merely a means of promoting the need for black politicians and women at the highest level in politics. If so, it may be better to stick to the arguments rather than personalising the issue around one occasionally divisive personality.

The fact is, Britain does not have an Obama yet. Maybe one of the new intake will eventually rise to the top – my money is on Chuka Umunna – but until such apples float to the top of the barrel it’s probably best not to rummage around at the bottom.

As Woolley points out, Abbott has indeed done some sterling work over the education and black children, and promoting black women in business. She is undoubtedly a good constituency MP. But having never rested her posterior on the frontbench in 23 years, she is clearly not a potential leadership candidate. True, less able politicians have made it to Cabinet, but at least they have Cabinet experience.

So, what of the real issue – the lack of leading black and female politicians? Well, many potential leaders are not in politics at all, they are in business. Michael Eboda’s PowerList proved that. The rest are church pastors. How to tempt such high-quality talent into Westminster is the six million dollar question.

Removing the barriers that prevent talent getting through would be a start. Nick Clegg and David Cameron have talked about a “new kind of politics.” That should mean developing a clear analysis about the factors that work against black politicians. Our focus should, however, remain fixed on allowing the new generation to take their place at the apex of politics, not looking backwards at yesterday’s figures.

Abbott has longevity, for sure, but it makes more sense to champion those who have an opportunity to rise through the ranks so that when they are touted as potential party leaders they have a formidable CV to back up that claim.

Tory marriage tax plans will hurt black families

2010-04-10T03:32:00.000-07:00

When David Cameron announced his marriage tax break plan, critics rightly pointed out that this would penalise single parents who are often bringing up their child or children alone due to no fault of their own.

The Liberal Democrats have today come out with a new, and equally valid, line of attack. They accuse the Tories of also discriminating against non-white children, on the basis that black children are far more likely to be raised by one parent.

The Conservatives put more flesh on their proposals today by announcing today that married couples will benefit to the tune of £150 per year.

Or – put another way – a single parent who finds themselves in that situation due to their former partner cheating on them, are £150 less well off compared to their married neighbours.

The Tory tax break will also go mainly to white married couples, as 62% of white children live with two parents, compared to just 39% of black children.

Cameron’s plan seems to hark back to an outdated stereotype of single parents – feckless, chavvy, young mums in their teens and early twenties trying to secure a council flat.

But as we know, the reality is quite different.

The majority of single parents are older, and a high proportion of them are professionals with careers. They are single parents because of relationship breakdown, something that can happen to any couple.

And where affairs have contributed to the breakdown, the parent left to take care of the child is all to frequently the spouse that was cheated against, rather than the cheater.

Co-habiting couples who have lived together for years but chosen not to get married will also lose out under the Tories.

Within African and Caribbean communities there is also an additional dynamic at play, particularly among the younger generation, where attitudes to casual sex are sometimes bound up in music industry-manufactured images of playas, and a culture of misogyny and disrespect for women. But even here, we are talking about a minority of young black men.

However these are the very issues that community activists and leaders have spent years trying to tackle. For decades there has been a slow process of persuading young black men to respect and understand themselves, their roots and their destiny, and thereby show respect to women.

This process needs encouragement from political leaders, but sadly Cameron’s marriage tax plans will make this so much harder by stigmatising single parenthood rather than searching for positive solutions.

There is another reason for a higher proportion of black single parents; the carefully weighed-up choices of professional black women in their 30s. These choices are often made according to the family support network and having enough money to raise the child well.

Although some commentators decry the gradual erosion of the extended black family – and this is true – by and large black families still have larger networks of relatives who help in the raising of children than the average white family. The culture of aunts, uncles and grandparents taking on small, or sometimes large, parenting roles is historical and very much alive today.

And there is a strong case to argue that a child raised in a loving extended family – including positive male role models for black boys – is far more positive than that child living with an isolated married couple in a dysfunctional relationship.

Everyone nods to the saying ‘it takes a village to raise a child’, so lets not go back to the 1950s notion of a ‘nuclear family’ where rowing couples stay together for the sake of the kids, or the 1980s haranguing of single parents. In fact when Britain last had tax breaks for married couples, in the 80s and 90s, there was actually a drop-off of marriage rates.

Loving relationships do not just come in one package, and neither do family structures to raise children. And where problems of behaviour need to be tackled, this demands encouragement from the State, not negative financial penalties.

A Lib Dem spokeswoman said today: “The Conservatives’ proposal to ‘recognise’ marriage in the tax system is a con. The majority of couples would see no benefit and non-white children are least likely to benefit. Hard-working families where the parents are not married will be made to pay simply because they decide not to marry.

“Children in vulnerable households, who, through no fault of their own, live with single parents, will get nothing. People whose partners have abandoned them and their children. A widow whose husband has died in Afghanistan.

“Yet the people who would benefit from the Tories plans are those who have separated but are still legally married, or somebody who abandons their partner and children and then remarries.”

It's clear that Cameron's proposals are both nonsensical and discriminatory, and go some way to showing that the mirage of modern, caring Conservatism hides the true instincts of the Tories, that were all to visable under Margaret Thatcher and back-to-basis John Major.

By Lester Holloway

Time for Cameron to come direct about overseas aid

2010-04-07T06:22:00.001-07:00

Are the Tories intending to do a U-turn and cut overseas aid? Up to now, the NHS and overseas aid are two areas of spending David Cameron has promised not to cut should he win the general election.

Interestingly Gordon Brown, in his last Prime Ministers questions this afternoon, took time to trumpet Labour’s achievements in doubling aid to developing countries, and significantly ended with a comment that he hoped that the aid budget would be protected.

It sounded more like a plea than a political point.

But if Brown fears that the Conservatives are not genuine in wanting to make the aid budget immune from a cash squeeze, he’s not the only one. Activists from across the political spectrum have wondered aloud about how long Cameron’s commitment to protecting aid would last.

The pledge was originally made as an effort to shed the Tories ‘nasty party’ image of the uncaring rich, but lately whenever Cameron has been questioned about which areas of spending the Tories would not cut, overseas aid has been left out.

If it is still a firm commitment, why does the Tory leader not mention it nowadays... or has this promise been dropped by default?

The first sign that overseas aid might be facing a cut from an incoming Conservative government came in the televised Chancellors Debate when the shadow chancellor George Osborne said that he had identified £12 billion of savings from defence, health and – you’ve guessed it – overseas aid.

Unease in Tory circles about Cameron’s pledge to ring-fence the development budget has been an issue way before the financial crisis kicked in, when Stephen Crabb MP questioned his leaders’ strategy.

Last year a poll by ConservativeHome found that 81 percent opposed the plan to protect aid. More recently Philip Davies MP has also spoken out against Cameron’s policy.

Until Cameron clarifies the matter it remains as clear as mud whether his pledge still stands. Sadly, the lives of many thousands of people across the developing world may depend on this policy being transparent.

We know that the Tories have certainly been thinking about the issue. In January they announced a plan to target Britain’s £9 billion aid budget at Commonwealth countries rather than purely on the basis of need, raising the spectre of a French-style neo-colonialist approach that has seen Paris intervene far to readily in their former African territories, sometimes with military force as in Chad.

A couple of months beforehand Sajid Javid – now a Tory candidate in a safe seat – wrote on ConservativeHome that overseas aid caused dependency and corruption, and suggested that the UK would be better off promoting private investment in poorer countries.

Aside from the fanciful notion that businesses will invest in emergency aid, water-pumps, schools and clinics, Javid seems oblivious to the fact that private enterprise won’t get involved unless there is a working infrastructure in place, something they expect the state to provide beforehand.

And even then, some of the world’s most impoverished developing countries have to wave tax income by setting up ‘free trade zones’ where businesses from the rich countries can have their cake - the cheapest labour - and eat it, by keeping all the profits.

In addition to aid, the Tories seem to have a worrying position on so-called ‘vulture funds’ that buy up the debt of developing countries at only a small proportion of the value, and then sue the debtor country in the courts for the full amount.

Last month Conservative MP Christopher Chope filibustered a private members bill out of the Commons aimed at tackling this inhumane industry. Does that mean Cameron approves of vulture funds? We need to be told.

One of the Leaders TV Debates between Cameron, Brown and Nick Clegg is on international issues. Let’s hope some of these questions get an airing, because I am far from alone in suspecting that the gulf between what Cameron has been saying on international aid, and what his party would do once in power, is wider than the Grand Canyon.

By Lester Holloway

Let's hear the real immigration story

2010-03-31T01:08:00.000-07:00

It’s hardly a surprise that Gordon Brown felt the urge to try and take the heat out of immigration before calling a general election by making his third speech on the issue.

Alas, his plea for sanity in the debate is unlikely to be heeded. Indeed today’s speech by the Prime Minister coincides with MPs from both sides of the Commons calling for an end to “mass immigration” in order to help the unemployed.

Dig a little deeper, however, and it quickly becomes obvious that the link between foreign workers and the British jobless is both crude and inaccurate. Studies have shown that many of the immigrants are doing work that the British unemployed are unwilling to do – often for less money.

Evan Davis’s BBC documentary last month explored what happened when jobless Brits tried their hand at the work currently being done by migrants. The factories and the farms were just too much like hard labour for UK citizens.

Yet the association between the prospects for British workers and the influx of Eastern Europeans, and the claim that health services and schools are also under strain as a result, is a potent cocktail for voters.

As opinion polls show, the public has long rated immigration as their number one issue, a startling fact. Immigration has now been overtaken by the economy on the list of concerns, but it is still routinely raised as a subject with me on the doorsteps during this election campaign.

I must confess, when it comes to migrant workers from Eastern Europe, I had not given much thought to the challenges they face in Britain. There were so many newcomers from Poland and elsewhere, my lazy assumption was that they must have been doing okay.

But that’s not necessarily the case. In fact there are many startling parallels with the experiences of the first wave of Caribbean immigrants – the Windrush generation – that arrived on these shores over half a century ago.

Comparing the switch between Asian women and Eastern Europeans working in factories preparing ready meals for airlines at Heathrow, Neal Lawson states: “One generation
of low paid and exploited immigrant workers were being replaced by another.”

That quote, from a report by the Migrant Rights Network, neatly sums up the position of migrants from the old Soviet bloc – willing, hard workers whose determination to get ahead triumphs over the economic exploitation they face.

The Trades Union Congress estimates a 7% negative gap between the average wage of Eastern Europeans and the general population. That figure, however, masks wider disparities.

Higher pay packets of successful plumbers, builders and businesspeople contrasts sharply with the much lower income of the army of low-paid Eastern Europeans working in care homes, hospitality and agriculture.

In fact almost a third (28%) of care home employees are from the so-called ‘A10’ group of ten nations, admitted to club Europe. There is only one explanation for this – the bosses who run care homes for the elderly are benefiting from an influx of qualified labour who are prepared to work hard for not much money.

Yet amid Brown's call for a sensible debate, he also announced a tightening of immigration rules, excluding care homes from the categories of work when applying to enter Britain. So are British workers really relishing the prospect of going back to such low-paid and demanding work? I doubt it.

I remember a BBC Newsnight report in which an employer openly admitted that his Eastern European workers were over-qualified for the job. A TUC report Overworked, Underpaid and Over Here, noted the high standard of education of recent migrants.

For people of Caribbean, African or South Asian descent, this is a story we recognise. The Windrush generation were well-educated academically and trained in Empire-era schools to identify as British.

Several decades on, the cliché of African graduates driving cabs is as much a reality as a stereotype in my experience.

But the parallels don’t end there. The Rachman slum housing of Notting Hill in the 1960s are no more, yet today many newly-arrived Eastern European migrants live in overcrowded conditions, either as individual workers or as families.

The realities of life for migrant workers is a world away from the public and political discourse we see in the media and Westminster, as it was 50 years ago. Yet the manner in which Britain discusses and treats immigrants will no doubt shape issues of identity and Britishness for decades to come.

Just like the first wave of immigrants from the Caribbean and South Asia, many of the migrant workers arrive on these shores believing they will return home, yet many will stay.
And the migrant workers of today will become the immigrant communities of tomorrow, and their children will be British, quite possibly hyphenated, like black-British or British-Asian.

We need to hear their stories, to personalise the issue of immigration. Today, the Windrush generation are dying. The death of actor and pilot Cy Grant last month brought home the contribution of those first pioneers, and challenged us about how much we really know of their struggle to settle in Britain.

I was pleased to perform Master of Ceremonies at an excellent conference last Friday, organised by the Ipswich and Suffolk Racial Equality Council, about migrant workers. The event was a salutary reminder that, contrary to what we read in the newspapers, immigration is not about undercutting British workers or taking all the housing and filling the hospitals; it is about a brave bid to work hard and succeed against the odds.

It is about achieving this in the face of exploitation and suffering, and quite often a public climate of hostility.

So while Britain self-evidently needs a properly administered immigration system, above all we need to understand the reality a little more while putting aside negative gut reactions about ‘our’ jobs and housing being taken.

Just as with past immigration, the new migrants have not come here to do either. They have come to make a contribution. And that contribution will grow many times over as the years go by. The question is, shall we appreciate it now or leave it until it's almost too late?

By Lester Holloway

Pharisees eye a place at David Cameron's table

2010-03-24T06:12:00.001-07:00

Watching David Cameron speak to a predominantly black audience in Peckham last week, I had a flashback.

Looking around the hall of Peckham Academy, I was struck by how many black church leaders were gazing up at the Tory leader.

Back in 2006 I remember the then Prime Minister, Tony Blair, visiting a large evangelical black-majority church in south London.

At the time, Blair was extremely unpopular, in the country and inside his party, but in the Brixton auditorium he was seemingly transported back to the day he first stepped into Downing Street.

As the congregation whooped and cheered him it was like witnessing the Second Coming. The choir even sang Father We Welcome You before he took the stage.

I wrote about Blair’s visit at the time. I was a practising Christian then, but even I was shocked at the naivety of the congregation.

Here was a Prime Minister with the deaths of thousands of Iraqi citizens on his hands - first from sanctions and then from an illegal war - yet none of this seemed to matter.

Of course Labour were not the only party to support the war. Back then so did the Conservative Party. Yet the Tory leader Michael Howard could not dream of enjoying such a reception.

Both Howard and William Hague tried and failed to woo the black churches but with their party still tainted by racism, they could only get through the doors of the smallest charismatic churches.

How things have changed. Not only has Cameron gone some way to detoxifying brand-Conservative by picking a range of black and Asian candidates, but he looks like a winner who’s about to pick up the keys to Number 10.

Perhaps this, more than anything, has brought the bees to the honey. The same church leaders who I witnessed traipsing through Downing Street to worship at the feet of the PM, were now spellbound by a new hero, the Tory leader.

But what the pastors seemed to lack in 2006, and are equally lacking today, is the very discernment that we are led to believe God gives them.

They appear to be worshipping power in a manner described by KRS One in his track Higher Level.

The legendary rapper was breaking down the relationship between politics and religion, and how both have deceived us. One section of the lyrics is this:

You either vote for the mumps or the measels / Whether you vote for the lesser of two evils, you vote for evil / Politics and God are not equal.

While I don’t believe politics is evil per se, I agree with KRS One that politics is not of God.

It might draw on Biblical principles, but in the final analysis politics is about the pursuit and exercise of power based on a program designed around what will appeal to the public regardless of religion or spirituality.

And it is a system riddled with compromises determined by power dynamics, not Christ’s teachings. Politics also produces a trail of victims of decisions – such as economics and war.

I believe in the political process because it is, in the main, a force for good and the most important means to bring about positive change.

But if I was a pastor, the non-religious aspects of politics would be more than enough to keep me away from Caesar’s table, at least in public.

The book of Matthew quotes Jesus telling the Pharisees and Sadducees they were wrong to “love the place of honour at banquets and the most important seats in the synagogues… [and] love to be greeted in the marketplaces and to have men call them 'Rabbi.'”

As someone who observed evangelical church leaders meet and greet government ministers inside Number 10 a few years ago, it was clear the pastors relished the attention. It was a banquet, only with finger-food.

Now the Pharisees and Sadducees are eyeing up a new banquet, one hosted by Prime Minister Cameron.

But just as Jesus criticised them for hypocrisy two thousand years ago, today our African and Caribbean church leaders show every sign of repeating history.

Those leaders have not produced a narrative about why the Labour government failed to address inequality and social mobility, or institutional racism, or the sliding morals in our society.

They appeared as unconcerned about rising abortions as they do about Iraq and Afghanistan.

But they are not politicians, so why should they have views on these issues? Because when church leaders sit around the table with Prime Ministers, they are part of the system and should have a view.

Pastors of the larger churches have enjoyed unprecedented access to Blair and Gordon Brown over the past few years. And with a change of government likely, it seems they are making moves to ensure they are kept in a style to which they have grown accustomed.

As they have failed to hold Labour to account, why should we have any faith in those self-same church leaders to influence the Conservatives?

Until we hear the church manifesto for a Tory government, setting out publicly what policies and principles Cameron must deliver, they should not be seen in public with him.

I want to know what the church’s policies are on child poverty, unemployment and deprevation and dealing with discrimination. Not platitudes, but policies.

And just as importantly, where are the church’s red lines? What is their measure of a government’s performance, and when will they walk away and condemn the government for not delivering?

If charismatic church leaders want to sit at the top table they must be part of the scrutiny as well as the scrutinising.

“Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy.” I, for one, won’t be taking their bread unless I know what they were doing in the kitchen with the Prime Minister.

By Lester Holloway

BNP use Trevor Phillips to boost membership

2009-12-18T03:08:00.001-08:00

In what must be a new “first”, a large picture of a high-powered black man adorns the British National Party’s website!

Alas, Nick Griffin’s BNP have not abandoned their racist views, but are attempting to use equality chief Trevor Phillips’ image to get their members to renew.

Featuring Phillips with a Santa’s hat on, and reminding their supporters that the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) took the BNP to court over the far right party’s ban on Black and ethnic minority people joining, the website promises a “membership upgrade.”

It remains to be seen whether Phillips face will inspire the BNP’s activists. But hopefully they haven’t forgotten that Griffin was forced to capitulate in the face of EHRC legal action and agree to allow non-white people to join.

Although if any new Black BNP members were denied this “membership upgrade” then it sounds like another legal case in the making.

Finally, we include this image from the BNP’s home-page, of Griffin adopting a statesman-like pose that always fails him in public - an Olay-style makeover if ever there was one.

Given that he normally looks more like a scruffy junior accountant who lives alone, it’s about time the BNP stopped airbrushing their leader.

Toad of Toad Hall

2009-12-15T07:14:00.000-08:00

I’ve just discovered that there is a political party called Idle Toad which actually has a councillor elected to the South Ribble council.

In line with his party’s name, Tom Sharratt (pictured) only sits on two committees.

This is not strictly fair. Idle Toad is the name of a 25-year-old community newspaper in the area, featuring a main editorial by “Lord Toad.”

This paper has now branched into politics, hence Cllr Sharratt getting elected.

Although given how much effort it takes to run a newspaper (I know!), my guess is that Cllr Sharratt is a lot busier than local politicians from more well-known parties.

Kwasi Kwarteng de-mob happy

2009-12-11T04:10:00.000-08:00

Fresh from sticking up for Rod Liddle in the Daily Mail, aspiring politician Kwasi Kwarteng has made the final shortlist for the Conservative-held seat of Spelthorne in Surrey.

Kwarteng, who stood unsuccessfully for the Tories in Brent East at the last general election, has now made it to the final six in contest to become the official candidate in a seat that covers Staines, spiritual home of Ali G.

Like Gosport, where Sam Gyimah put up a strong fight, Spelthorne will be an open primary which means non-members can register to vote.

Kwarteng wrote in the Mail that Liddle was the victim of the “anti-racist mob”. We hope that Conservative members will not see such anti-racism bashing as any kind of recommendation for someone’s suitability to become an MP.

Councillors are GO

2009-12-01T05:50:00.000-08:00

Harrow councillor Eileen Kinnear is, we're sure, a first class representative of the people.

Equally, Brains from Thunderbirds is second-to-none when it comes to mastering puppet technology.

They are both so good at what they do, it makes me wonder whether they could be related?

City Hall marketing director living up to Boris's praise

2009-11-05T06:56:00.000-08:00

Boris Johnson’s regeneration chief Nick Hoare, accused of using the n-word, today claimed he had been misheard, and that he actually said “bigger.”

We will await the outcome of the appeal against his sacking from the London Development Agency.

However, in the spirit of seeing the best in people, we wish to heap praise on Boris Johnson’s young marketing director at City Hall, Dan Ritterband.

The 33-year-old former advertising executive at Saatchi & Saatchi, who worked as a troubleshooter for Michael Howard and as a member of David Cameron’s Conservative leadership bid was praised by the London Mayor in March.

Speaking at Mayor’s Question Time in March, Boris Johnson said: “Dan Ritterband does a very, very good job of trying to add what we can to the general business of promoting London.”
Ritterband has previously worked at the right-wing think-tank Policy Exchange, just like Johnson’s cultural adviser Munira Mirza.

Dave Hill revealed on his Guardian blog that Ritterband wants cultural groups to raise more funds from sources other than the GLA, while another blogger, Guido Fawkes praised him as “a charmer.”

That’s some praise, Ritterband. Don’t let us down now!

Time to impeach Nick Griffin

2009-11-05T05:45:00.000-08:00

It's now time to impeach Nick Griffin as an MEP following the outcome of yesterday's court case

The British National Party leader has already been shown himself on Question Time to be shifty and evasive when challenged about whether he is a Holocaust denier.

And yesterday a court effectively branded him a liar after it cleared an Asian man of racially abusing him.

Nick Griffin’s allegation that Tauriq Khalid had made a gun gesture at him was dismissed. And Griffin’s claim that Khalid called him a "white b******" was similarly disbelieved.

The verdict means that the far right North West MEP had either made up the allegations or was mistaken in believing they had occurred, when they didn’t. Almost certainly the former.

Khalid said that he had shouted at the BNP leader, calling him a f***ing w*****." And yesterday Khalid walked free from court having been found not guilty of racially abusive threatening behaviour.

This is in fact Griffin’s third appearance in court. In 1998 Griffin was convicted of distributing material likely to incite racial hatred, for which he received a nine month prison sentence which was suspended for two years, whilst in 2005 he was acquitted of separate charges of inciting racial hatred.

In was in the witness box at his 1998 trial that Griffin said: “I am well aware that the orthodox opinion is that six million Jews were gassed and cremated or turned into lampshades. Orthodox opinion also once held that the Earth is flat . . . I have reached the conclusion that the ‘extermination’ tale is a mixture of Allied wartime propaganda, extremely profitable lie, and latter day witch-hysteria.”

Following the latest court case, questions must now be asked whether Griffin is fit to continue as a member of the European Parliament.

Unfortunately the EU parliamentary ombudsman’s website is set up to register complaints about institutions rather than elected representatives.

But there has to be a way of making a formal complaint over Griffin’s fitness to continue as an MEP in light of this case. We will investigate, and let you know what we find out.

Iain Dale flips his lid

2009-10-01T09:10:00.000-07:00

Blogging star Iain Dale blew his top yesterday after I posted a mild wind-up comment on his site questioning whether Tories were justified in taking the “moral high-ground” on Black political representation

The website, Iain Dale’s Diary, is one of the most recognised and respected right-wing blogs, but last night Dale became almost hysterical after I suggested that lack of progress in selecting BME candidates in winnable seats, prior to David Cameron becoming party leader, hardly qualified Tories to lecture other parties on these matters.

Dale (above) quickly descended into venomous name-calling, telling me I was “a bigot” with “nasty views” and twice telling me to “go away.” Throughout the exchange, I refrained from throwing insults back at Dale, aside from describing the Conservative blogger’s views as “patronising” towards Black communities.

I was completely taken aback at the hostility from Dale, which he felt was totally unjustified. You can read the full thread and the original article that prompted the exchange here.

The debate between Dale and myself is also reproduced below.

The spat started when I posted a comment over a story on Iain Dale’s Diary, which criticised the Lib Dems their lack of progress in selecting a Black MP. I have previously criticised the Lib Dems over this issue himself.

However I felt that a number of reader comments on Dale’s site were failing to appreciate the experiences of Black Conservatives, from Lord John Taylor to councillor Enley Taylor.

I was not explicitly accused the Tories of being racist, and had previously criticised all political parties over institutional racism.

There was certainly no mission to portray the Tories alone as the problem.

In fact OBV Blog had carried far more positive articles about Conservatives than negatives ones, and in the past two months alone had praised Wilfred Emmanuel Jones and defended Shaun Bailey, both Tory general election candidates.

I said Dale had completely over-reacted, and had become unnecessarily abusive. Dale would be advised to speak to any number of Black Tories to find out more about the problems before issuing outright denials of any racism in the Conservative Party.

Dale should also reflect why he flew off the handle at the merest suggestion that his party has a troubled history on race and Black representation.

THE EXCHANGE

Lester Holloway said...

How satisfying it must be for Conservatives to suddenly, for the first time in their lives, take the moral highground on ethnic minority representation.

Not, you understand, because anyone here did anything to bring about the change in the Conservatives. That was Cameron.

But now you actually have Black candidates, "we selected them on merit". Except, that didn't appear to happen before. So were Tories selecting on merit then, but the BME hopefuls just didn't measure up?

Iain Dale said...

Lester, your comments show you up. BME candidates were selected in safe seats long before Cameron. In Windsor and Cambs SW for example. So get off your high horse and welcome the fact that the Conservative Party is welcoming to everyone. Rejoice!

Lester Holloway said...

Iain, if you think two ethnic minority MPs selected before Cameron is all the evidence anyone needs that the Conservatives are down with modern multicultural Britain - MPs who were only elected in 2005 - then that really takes patronising attitudes to new heights.

Prior to 2005, you have to go back to 1992 to find a single BME MP elected on the Tory benches. I was simply pointing out that everyone here appears to be on a high horse, when the historical evidence does not justify such attitudes.

I've also seen more than enough evidence in more recent times of a residual resistence to BME candidates in your party to know that large swathes of the rank and file are simply gritting their teeth and bearing it; so the notion that the Tory party as a whole welcomes everyone, as you say, is evidently a whopping untruth.

Iain Dale said...

What utter rubbish. It seems to me you are the one with attitude problems, not people in the Tory party. I seem to remember exposing your rather nasty views on this site once before.

Lester Holloway said...

Engage with the argument, Iain.

Iain Dale said...

There isn't one. You are trying to paint the Tory Party as racist and it is anything but. From where I am standing it is you who is the bigot. Rejoice in the fact that the Tories had more BME candidates than Labour last time, and will do so again and that at least 7% of our MPs will be BME next time. That's not David Cameron's doing. That is the local associations who you seem to think are racist. You disgust me. Now go away and spread your lies somewhere else.

Lester Holloway said...

I'm the bigot, for pointing out that prior to 2005, the Tories elected ONE MP from a visable ethnic minority in my lifetime??? I think there are many Black Tories - who I assume don't frequent here - who would disagree with your implication that the Tories are spotless. I know, I've spoken to many of them, who've told me what they've gone through. But that's now forgotten, right?

Secondly, the number of BME candidates doesn't mean diddly-squat; it's the candidates that are elected that matter. Reason: because sticking BME candidates in hopeless seats is not progress. To suggest otherwise is simply patrionising.

I also know that it is central office who have led the way in the drive to select more BME MPs. Hence the reason why this did not happen before.

So, whilst I sympathise with the fact that an alternative point of view disgusts you, and brings out the need to tell me to "go away and spread your lies somewhere else", I just want to point out that some people - like myself - have been taking a close interest in this area for some time and have written both positive and negative articles about all parties regarding Black representation.

So before you double-over in frothing disgust at me, I suggest you take a cursory look at the recent history of the Conservatives, and a balanced look at the way I have been pretty equal handed about all parties in this regard.

I trust you won't censor this.

Lester Holloway said...

Are you censoring my last comment?

Lester Holloway said...

Iain doesn't like a debate on race. If he did, he'd have the courage to post my last substantive comment...

Iain Dale said...

Prat. I was away from my computer. I remember who you are now...

"A couple of months ago I threatened to sue a website called Blink. They were critisising Boris for the so-called Watermelon remarks and were insinuating that Tory bloggers like me, Tim Montgomerie and others were racist. It was written by a chap called Lester Holloway. After I eventually caught up with him the piece was withdrawn from the Blink website. I'm told today that Lester Holloway has resigned from Blink, saying all the things he was forced to write about Boris in the way that he did. Nice people, these Livingstone supporters. Thugs is another word."

I see you haven't changed much or indeed learned anything. How sad.

Lester Holloway said...

Considering that the "watermelon smiles" issue never got much attention from the mainstream media or right wing blogs, I think it was right that Blink and other ethnic minority media outlets should raise the matter, as a matter of public interest.

Secondly, you've got your facts wrong about me. I never said you or Tim Montgomery were personally racist. I said that too often racially offensive comments from your readers appear on those blogs.

Thirdly, another fact you've got wrong is that I claimed that I was forced to write things about Boris Johnson. I never claimed that. I have never retracted anything I've written about Boris or alleged that anyone told me to write it.

Fourthly, you've also got your facts wrong about me when you say I resigned from Blink. In fact, I resigned from The 1990 Trust, and when asked about it I have always said that it was an amicable departure.

It's amazing that such a short paragraph about me can contain so many inaccuracies. Truly staggering.

So, is writing something critical about Boris what makes me nasty, and a bigot, and leads you to hysterically tell me to go away?

Looks like a massive overreaction Iain. As well as a whole bunch of misinformation about me personally.

Iain Dale said...

Funny how you never queried it at the time.

Please go away.I am just not interested in your ridiculous views, and nor, I suspect are many other people.

{Holloway did make indeed challenge Dale’s remarks at the time making the same points, on Iain Dale’s Diary, in 2007 in response to the above quote}

Lester Holloway said...

What's ridiculous about campaigning for race equality?

You may not agree with what I say, but that's no reason to heap abuse on me, or tell me to go away (twice).

Iain Dale said...

You are not campaigning for race equality. You are trying to paint the Conservative Party as racist, which you know full well it isn't. And you don't like being called on it. Tough. Night night.

Lester Holloway said...

Here's what I've written about your party in the past month:

A positive article about (ahem) Conservative candidate Wilfred Emmanuel-Jones

http://operationblackvote.wordpress.com/2009/09/07/no-porkies-with-straight-taking-wilfred/

An article defending (ahem) Conservative candidate Shaun Bailey

http://operationblackvote.wordpress.com/2009/08/25/bailey-defiant-over-personal-attacks/

A positive story about a defector to the (ahem) Conservative party, Denise Headley

http://operationblackvote.wordpress.com/2009/08/21/community-champion-defects-to-tories/

An even-handed article about Ali Miraj, who many Conservatives spit at in print

http://operationblackvote.wordpress.com/2009/08/24/grammar-test-for-miraj/

A critical article about the Tories by David Lammy

http://operationblackvote.wordpress.com/2009/08/21/tory-distortions-about-the-anc-dont-fool-us/

So, you see contrary to your assertion I'm not out to portray the Conservatives as racist.

I could post many more links critical of Labour and the Lib Dems if you like.

All of which serves to prove that your feelings about me trying to claim the Tories are racist is simply untrue.

I am critical of all parties, sometimes constructively, other times perhaps more directly.

Iain, quite simply you're mistaken about me.

Taking back what is ours

2006-11-17T01:28:00.000-08:00

by Lester Holloway 9/10/2006 New Nation & Blink

Cain Wall is 108 years old. Despite his advanced years the frail great-grandfather is at the centre of a long-running legal struggle to reclaim the “ill-gotten gains” of slavery.

For many he has come to represent the living face of the African Holocaust, proof that traditional forms of slave labour existed well into the 20th Century.

Wall is among the plaintiffs challenging 17 companies, including Lloyds of London, whom they accuse of knowingly profiting from the horrific trade which claimed millions of lives.

Although born some thirty years after abolition, Wall and his family were kept in bondage conditions until the 1960s in the Deep South states of Mississippi and Louisiana.

Insurance companies named in the lawsuit are accused of oiling this system by insuring slaves as collateral, and of owning thousands of slaves themselves.

If successful the case would open the door to compensation claims from descendents of African slaves worldwide, including from this side of the Atlantic.

Campaigners led by New Jersey lawyer Deadria Farmer-Paellmann took their case to an appeal court in Chicago last Wednesday demanding a fair share of wealth generated from the forced free labour and the oppression of stolen Africans.

Farmer-Paellmann, 40, is among seven appellants can prove a direct DNA link between herself and ancestors exploited by corporate companies.

As a legal student she discovered her great-grandfather Abel Hines, a slave on a South Carolina rice farm, was insured by Aetna Inc. to the benefit of the slave-master.

She set about investigating the connection between insurance firms and the transatlantic slave trade, and discovered predecessor firms to the giant corporation JP Morgan insured over 13,000 enslaved Africans, and owned another 1,250.

They must have known of the horrors faced by slaves because they refused to pay out for people who were lynched or beaten to death at work, she concluded.

‘Millions of Africans were enslaved. Many never made it to the Americas, they were lost in the sea, their bodies dumped because Lloyds had policies where if you are sick and you make it to the shore, if you die on the shore, you don't get compensation for the enslaved African’, Farmer-Paellmann said.

Ed Fagan, a lawyer who has successfully represented Jews seeking compensation for stolen Nazi gold from Swiss banks, added: ‘Lloyds knew what they were doing led to the destruction of indigenous populations.

'They [slave-masters] took people onboard slave ships and wiped out their identities. There is ongoing injuries that these people suffer.’

Lloyds of London are one of the few insurance companies who have not publicly acknowledged their role. A spokeswoman said the firm is refusing to comment until the end of the Chicago trial.

By contrast many of their American counterparts have not only admitted to complicity in the trade, but have actually apologised.

Chief executive of JP Morgan William Harrison, whose subsidiaries include Morgan Stanley bank, issued an apology last year and admitted: “the slavery era was a tragic time in US history and in our company’s history.”

The admission came after pressure from campaigners led to several US cities passing ‘Slavery Era Disclosure Laws’ forcing companies to research their own history and make it public.

No similar law exists in Britain, giving a cloak of protection to the likes of Lloyds of London and other UK companies who remain silent about their shameful past.

While many US companies have come clean they are still refusing to offer compensation. The defendants in the Chicago case are collectively arguing that the case is “out of time” because 150 years have passed since slavery was abolished.

The companies claim there is no direct link because the appellants themselves were not actually slaves, and that it would be practically impossible to define who was a slave ancestor and how they have personally suffered. Some people even argue that ‘reparations’ have already been given in the form of affirmative action.

Cain Wall, and his daughters Mae and Annie, are presented as living evidence that slavery survived after its official abolition, and that the legacy extends to the present-day disadvantages suffered by African heritage people.

Annie ran away from the plantation aged nine, but was forcibly returned under the threat that her whole family would be killed if she did not.

Sister Mae described their life: ‘They beat us. We ate like cows, we didn’t eat like dogs because they bring a dog to a certain place to feed it. We had to drink water from a creek.

‘Picking cotton, pulling corn, picking peas, picking butter beans, picking spring beans, digging potatoes, whatever it was that’s what you did, for no money at all.’

The family lived in an out-of-the-way plantation were authorities did not pay much attention to, but US government records show slave-masters being prosecuted right up until the late 1950s.

The South’s addiction to slavery was one of the main causes of America’s civil war with Abraham Lincoln officially abolishing it 1863, in the midst of the fighting.

Despite this, “involuntary servitude” continued because farm owners exploited ignorance of life and laws beyond the plantation.

The lawsuit estimates the “market value” of each slave to be $850 million, putting the total figure into the trillions. Banks, rail and tobacco companies had amassed great wealth while enslaved Africans had lost 450 years of paid labour.

But according to Esther Stanford, a UK-based reparations campaigner, the case is “flawed” because it focuses too heavily on African

Americans instead of slave descendents worldwide.
Isolated legal actions left the door open for institutions to offer token gestures and cheap ways of washing their hands of blood.

PJ Morgan set up a $5 million scholarship scheme for African-American students last year. Plaintiffs in the US case have calculated that $1 trillion is owed in reparations.

They want to cash to be paid into a mega trust fund to combat urban poverty and go towards health, housing and education improvements for descendents of slaves.

Author H. Khalif Khalifah, from N’COBRA (National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America), predicted the case would almost certainly fail but thought the exercise was useful to build public awareness.

‘I have no faith in any structure that was built on slave labour’, he said.

Campaigners were furious to discover on Wednesday that a white man had mysteriously replaced Ann Williams, the black woman judge who was part of a three-judge team.

The hearing was an appeal against the judgment of a lower court in 2004 when Judge Charles Norgle dismissed the case because there was “no-one alive today” who was affected by slavery.

Stanford has recently returned from a Global Pan-African Reparations and Repatriation conference in Ghana where likeminded activists agreed to work together across the Diaspora.

Instead of tackling individual companies, attention is shifting to the United Nations where they plan to present a ‘Genocide Petition’ next year, coinciding with the bicentenary of slavery abolition in Britain.

Talks have been taking place with officials in Zimbabwe and other African states as campaigners seek support for a new international tribunal to tackle the issue of reparations.

‘Unless we adopt a global strategy presenting a united front we will never have success in any one region. We have to start with contemporary crimes against humanity that are being committed against African peoples and then trace it right back to enslavement.’

The American action may prove ultimately unsuccessful – the result is due in November – but it looks to have provided a platform for further public debate around slavery and reparations.

One voice typical of those demanding some form of restitution for slavery is genealogist Antoinette Harrell. Speaking outside the Chicago court, she said: ‘I am here seeking justice. We were left in poverty. My family’s hardship and free labour was not in vain.’

British theologian Dr Robert Beckford, who presented the Channel 4 documentary “Empire Pays Back” last year looking into the issue of reparations, agreed.

‘It still is an important process which should be seen not just as financial, but as psycho-social healing the past through educational programmes and developing new strategies for combating discrimination.

‘If you’ve done wrong and continue to benefit from that wrong you should make amends. If you are concerned about justice in the present you’ve got to make sure that things which were done wrong in the past are atoned for.’

Panther liberation fire still burns

2006-11-16T05:51:00.000-08:00

by Lester Holloway 26/10/2006 New Nation & Blink

SURVIVORS OF AMERICA’S war against black leaders regrouped last week as they marked the Black Panthers 40th anniversary.

The reunion was missing some important names – Fred Hampton, Huey P Newton, Eldridge Cleaver, Lil’ Bobby Hutton – the heads of a once-powerful organisation that was decapitated by the state.

With their trademark berets, rifles and revolutionary zeal, the Panthers embodied the black power movement and liberation struggle.

What scared Washington the most, their armed self-defence militancy or their social programmes to fed and clothed poor African-Americans, is open to question.

Whichever it was, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover launched COINTELPRO, a covert counter-intelligence operation followed by wave after wave of arrests and shoot-outs.

The end of the 1960s cops had shot over 20 Panthers dead, including Hampton and Hutton. Others like Newton and Cleaver ended up in exile after being charged with killings themselves.

A long line of tragedies saw the Panthers eventually fold in the mid-80s, long after they had ceased to be a major player.

The days when Cleaver ran for US president, when they fed 10,000 hungry mouths every day with a Breakfast for Children programme, and when armies of uniformed men patrolled neighbourhoods to deter police brutality seem long gone.

Militaristic images now seem frozen in time, overshadowing their extensive social programme that delivered healthcare and education to thousands, and a radical ten-point plan for justice and freedom.

200 or so veterans of the war who gathered in Oakland, California, last week surveyed their legacy and perhaps pondered what could have been if their ideological mission had not been disrupted by the might of government.

Some, like David Hilliard, entered academia to teach a younger generation the ideals and faults of the Black Panthers.

Hilliard was one of the original Panther founders and its chief of staff. He became leader when Newton was arrested in 1968.

He is also lucky to be alive after being ambushed by Oakland police in the same incident that saw Hutton shot ten times despite surrendering with his hands in the air.

The killing occurred just two days after the assassination of Dr Martin Luther King Jnr.

Hilliard told said that the Black Panthers had lost the propaganda war. ‘Without a doubt victors write the history and we don’t control media. We were a political movement with clinics and educational programmes.

‘It was the government strategy to criminalise our movement and to discredit us. Even the militancy was just self-defence responding to Americas violence.

‘The reunion is not just about celebrating of the existence of the movement. I’m more interested in how we translate that historical phenomenon into something contemporary.

‘Like how do we develop programmes for ex-offenders, housing, education and jobs. I’m about a living organisation, not just nostalgia.’

One of the Panthers great achievements was fusing the political philosophies of Karl Marx, Chairman Mao and William Du Bois with practical and well-organised community outreach social action.

They ran door-to-door tests for Sickle Cell anaemia in an age when the state hardly recognised the condition, delivering groceries to thousands of homes, and persuading local gangs to clean up their act.

Many of the original Panther leadership were students of Malcolm X who broke away because they believed bearing guns was necessary to carry out their programme without interference.

The Panthers burst onto the national consciousness with a regimented march on California’s state capital Sacramento while carrying loaded weapons.

Patrols by armed Panther units achieved instant success with a sudden reduction in police brutality in black neighbourhoods.

But the image that so terrified white America also presented a ready-made excuse for the state to use arms against the Panthers.

Minister Hilary Mohammad, leader of the UK’s Nation of Islam, said: ‘We knew that it would give the government justification to shoot and kill them.

‘The US were threatened by the coming together of black men to protect their community and the emergence of strong black leadership.

‘Forty years ago our organisations were under attack, but what is happening today? The minister Louis Farrakhan is till banned today in Britain. What is this indicative of?’

By 1969, just three years after its birth, America’s war against the Panthers began to divide the organisation.

Not long after Hoover denounced the group as “greatest threat to the internal security of the country”, Hampton was shot in his bed during a police raid.

Fellow Panther Mark Clark was also shot dead. Over ninety bullets were fired in the operation with just one coming from Clark.

After Newton was imprisoned for manslaughter, a conviction later overturned, a dispute flared about whether to allow white people in.

Stokley Carmichael represented one strand of belief encapsulated by a speech when he said: ‘we are to proceed toward true liberation we must cut ourselves off from white people… [otherwise] we will find ourselves entwined in the tentacles of the white power complex that controls this country.’

But others, influenced by Mao’s Red Book which was compulsory reading, saw the Panthers as part of a wider class war.

At the height of their power, the group has 45 chapters and 5,000 dedicated members while their newspaper had a circulation of 100,000.

But as they entered the early 70s the movement faced more strife with dozens of members indicted for murder, many of them trumped-up charges, and Hilliard prosecuted for threatening President Richard Nixon.

An FBI campaign of forged letters widened internal splits between Cleaver and an exiled Newton in Algeria.

Bobby Seale’s bid to become mayor of Oakland, when he came second with 40% of the vote, was one of the last highs before factional fighting and resignations took hold.

The Black Power concept, that empowered and emboldened a whole generation of black people survived, but a structure that allowed young African-Americans to stand up to oppression did not.

Today the New Black Panther Party, led by Malik Zulu Shabazz, carries forward some of the legacy although Hilliard thinks the NBPP have been sold the “militaristic” Panther image but lack the underlining socio-political bedrock.

Hughie Rose, leader of the UK branch of the NBPP, disagrees. ‘We are now standing on the shoulders of these original Panthers.’

He said: ‘A lot of conditions that existed then still exist today, bad housing for our people, bad healthcare, overt and covert racism, and the rise of white supremacists around the world.

‘They wanted to ultimately crush the ideology of the Black power movement but fortunately we’ve been able to re-ignite it again and step back up on that same programme.’

Krishna in last ditch appeal

2006-11-16T05:38:00.000-08:00

by Lester Holloway 20/10/2006 Blink

A MAN CONVICTED of a double-murder many people believe he did not commit is due to make a last ditch appeal.

British citizen Krishna Maharaj clocked up twenty years behind bars last Monday , many of them spent on death row, since the date of his arrest.

Scores of politicians and lawyers believe he is the victim of a miscarriage of justice in the United States.

Maharaj is now gearing up for a last ditch appeal for clemency to Florida governor Jeb Bush, the younger brother of the US President. If his appeal fails he will almost certainly spend the rest of his life in jail.

An increasing number of people are convinced Maharaj, 67, was framed for the killing of big-time money launderers Derrick and Duane Moo Young, who are suspected of being major figures in a global drugs empire.

Maharaj insists he was lured to a Florida hotel for business meeting with another man who failed to turn up.

Maharaj has six witnesses who claim he was 40 miles away at the time the Moo Youngs were gunned down in that same hotel room. They were never called to give evidence at his trial.

Maharaj's trial was beset by attempts to bribe the judge, poor legal representation, and the non-disclosure of evidence of multi-billion dollar deals involving the Jamaican victims.

Trinidad-born Maharaj was taking the Moo Youngs to court over an unpaid bill but was advised he would win.

His counsel argue Maharaj had no motive to kill the pair but his court dispute made him the best fall-guy available at the time.

The only forensics linking him to the crime were his finger-prints on a coffee mug and newspaper. Maharaj has always admitted being in the Miami hotel room but insists he was set-up.

Lawyers at Reprieve, an organisation representing Maharaj, plan to submit a bid for clemency in a fortnight. Governor Bush can issue a full pardon, conditional pardon, reduce the sentence or reject the appeal altogether.

Bush Jnr does not have a reputation for compassion in law and order matters. He has signed 38 death warrants since 1999 including two for prisoners who later had their convictions overturned.

Maharaj was sentenced to death in 1986 but had his jail term commuted to 50 years imprisonment after three hundred British parliamentarians petitioned a Florida court in 2002.

A BBC documentary last year found that the prosecutions star witness Tino Geddes originally claimed to have been in Fort Lauderdale but later changed his story claiming he saw Maharaj in the hotel at the time of the murders. Gun-running charges against Geddes were dropped.

Neville Butler, the only witness to the shootings, was seen leaving the hotel with blood-stained clothes and a broken watch. Butler was granted immunity from prosecution in return for testifying against Maharaj.

The prosecution failed to tell the original trial that a suitcase belonging to the victims contained papers pointing to the Moo Youngs giving loans of up to US$1.5 billion each to several Caribbean governments, and a transfer of US$5 billion in Yen bonds.

The papers also revealed evidence of a millionaires lifestyle seriously which was seriously at odds with their modest bathroom fittings business and US tax returns declaring a total household income of just US$20,000 a year.

In February 2004 Miami judge William C Turnoff rejected an appeal by Maharaj claiming innocence was not enough to warrant a retrial. He said: 'Newly discovered evidence which goes only to guilt or innocence is insufficient to warrant relief.'

Maharaj came to Britain penniless in 1960 but built up a fruit import business and became a multi-millionaire. He encountered the Moo Youngs after establishing two newspapers in the Caribbean.

White flight causes segregation

2006-11-16T05:34:00.000-08:00

by Lester Holloway 30/10/2006 New Nation & Blink

HEAVYWEIGHT RACE CAMPAIGNER Lord Herman Ouseley turned the tables over segregation saying ghettos were caused by white flight.

In a major speech to mark Black History Month the peer put clear water between himself and his CRE successor Trevor Phillips who questions multiculturalism.

Lord Ouseley’s comments come as the first anniversary of the Birmingham riots added extra spice to the debate over integration and diversity.

Two men died last October last year when black-Asian tensions exploded after rumours swept through Lozells and Handsworth that a young Caribbean girl had been gang raped. There is no evidence to substantiate the claims.

The prospect of further riots in Britain was raised last week by Phillips who warned that anger over the veil could boil over into violence.

Lord Ouseley, who led an inquiry into the 2001 Bradford riots, hit back saying that such talk shifted the burden of blame from “those who are powerful and have resources to the have-nots”.

Speaking at the TUC conference centre on Monday he said “white flight” was a major problem.

‘Integration is a two-way process. How do you integrate with boardrooms that only want you to make the tea?’

Last year a survey found that 4 out of 10 people did not want a black neighbour, while a separate poll revealed that 9 out of 10 white people did not have a black friend.

Lord Ouseley said it was understandable that newly-settled communities would want to live near each other, but questioned why so little attention was given to whites moving away.

White flight has been blamed for British National Party council victories in out-of-the-way places like Broxbourne in Hertfordshire and Epping Forest.

The BNP have also increased their vote on the southern fringes of London as more black people moving into places like Croydon has led to whites going even further out to Surrey.

Campaigners say the debate about “sleepwalking into segregation” and talk of ghettos implicitly blames black communities for not wanting to integrate.

But they say the issue was not a failure to integrate, it is the failure of government to make a racism-free society a top priority.

Maxie Hayles, from the Birmingham Racial Attacks Monitoring Unit, agreed with Lord Ouseley. ‘Back in the day the Tories used a slogan “If you want a n****r for a neighbour vote Labour”. I feel there are still too many white people who carry this attitude.

‘White flight is not the fault of black people. No other peoples are more integrated that black people.’

London Mayor Ken Livingstone added: ‘If some white people are choosing to live outside London that’s a terrible loss for them.’

Meanwhile as Birmingham marked the first anniversary of last years’ riots, the suburbs of Paris looked ready to explode once again.

Youths across France, many of them Africans, torched cars to vent their frustration at racism and lack of opportunities.

The country-wide uprisings happened just days after Birmingham was gripped by violence after tensions blew up over false rape claims.

But while the English midlands enjoyed a peaceful anniversary last week, the situation was not as calm on other side of the channel.
A car and a bus was set alight last week on the Grigny estate south of Paris, and there are fears that a repeat of 2005 may be on the cards.

Nicolas Sarkozy, France’s hardline interior minister, boosted his chances of running for President last year by calling the rioters “scum.”

Last week he was still talking tough as the opposition accused him of making political capital out of the tensions.

Lucky Star Madge getting "preferential treatment"

2006-11-15T11:13:00.000-08:00

by Lester Holloway 30/10/2006 New Nation & Blink

TWO BLACK FAMILIES facing hurdles to adopt kids from Malawi last week attacked Madonna for short-cutting the system.

Unlike Madonna’s baby David, Erykka Mambala is both a genuine orphan and close relative of a West Midlands family who want to adopt her.

The Gladstone family from Walsall were forced to leave Malawi empty handed after red tape prevented little Erykka joining her aunt Charity in Britain.

A second black family who are also having problems adopting Malawian children came to light last week.

The Lee family from New Cross, in south London, are close relatives of orphans Bruno and Stella Kajombo but Malawi immigration have denied the pair permission to travel to the UK.

David Lee attacked Madonna for getting “preferential treatment”, adding: “It’s clear money speaks volumes.”

They are appealing to entry clearance officers for a change of heart to allow the children, aged 8 and 9, into Britain.

Charity Gladstone said: ‘There seems to be one law for the rich and another for the rest of us.’

They are awaiting immigration clearance despite months of delays to be reunited with Erykka, 4.

The American singer has reportedly had baby David’s room decorated with a “jungle mural” to remind him of Africa.

She told Oprah Winfrey that the baby was suffering from severe pneumonia, a claim not supported by photographs of the one-year old.

She also revealed it was Live8 that got her thinking about adopting an African child, and accused the media of “terrorising” the baby’s father Yohane Banda.

A petition to halt the adoption was launched by a coalition human rights groups last week, who argue say the child could suffer from a celebrity divorce.

Africa: the Chinese Takeaway

2006-11-15T11:04:00.000-08:00

by Lester Holloway 4/11/2006 Blink

CHINESE PRESIDENT Hu Jintao is touring Africa, but is the continent being stripped of its natural resources to fuel China’s economic boom?

Hands of Chinese President Hu Jintao and Omar Bongo, of Gabon, who was awarded 'full military honours' in Beijing.

Experts are increasingly concerned that China is waging a ‘neo-Colonial’ resource-grab potentially as damaging as Western exploitation.

President Hu arrived in Morocco yesterday and will travel on to Nigeria and Kenya as China accelerates the pace of its economic engagement.

Today Bob Geldof urged the West to speed up efforts to eradicate poverty before Beijing takes the initiative.

Speaking from Johannesburg, he said: ‘It's going to have to happen now because China will be all over Africa...and they will embrace any government.’

David Nyekorach-Matsanga, head of the UK-based think-tank Africa Strategy, told Blink that African states had turned to China because it was not associated with the West’s legacy of oppression.

But he warned that China risked being seen as a ‘neo-colonial power’ if terms of trade were unfair to Africa.

Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe visits the Chinese president last year.
The newly emerging Asian superpower of 1.3 billion people, a quarter of the world’s population, is poised to overtake Britain as the fourth-biggest economy by the end of 2006.

China has been accused of going on an oil safari with billion-dollar deals with Nigeria, Sudan and Angola, in addition to mineral mining and timber logging.

But China is also credited with raising the market price of commodities benefiting Africa, investing in infrastructure such as roads and hospitals, writing off debts and providing quick loans with few catches.

The Chinese approach contrasts with decades of neglect and marginalisation towards Africa from Western governments and institutions.

China’s trade deals are free of ‘good governance’ clauses favoured by the West, a factor of particular importance to Sudan and Zimbabwe.

China shares the same bitter experience of being bullied and oppressed by the West
Lui Guijin, Chinese Ambassador to South Africa
The only ‘condition’ appears to be support for China’s reunification agenda. Just six African states recognise Taiwan today, compared to 20 in the early 1990s.

And while China is busy hovering up Africa’s oil and other natural resources, a wave of cheap manufactured goods from China is flooding into Africa – most notably TV’s and other household appliances, and textiles such as shoes and clothes.

With Chinese businesses way more efficient than African textile factories, many businesses in South Africa, Ghana and other states have closed with thousands of jobs losses.

Another complaint against China is its importation of labour rather than developing African skills. China has 10,000 workers in Sudan alone including, according to Human Rights Watch, Chinese prison labourers involved in building a US$8 billion pipeline from Sudan to the Red Sea.

China are building on Cold War links with many states in the continent. For the African leaders China is still proving a valuable bulwark against US and British imperialism even as old Communist ties are being replaced with capitalist ones.

The Chinese are not shy in playing the anti-colonialist card. Lui Guijin, Chinese Ambassador to South Africa, was quoted recently as saying: “China is the biggest developing country in the world [and] share the same bitter experience of being bullied and oppressed by the West.”

But Princeton N Lyman, senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and expert in African studies, told Blink that while China was building infrastructure in Africa that was counter-acted by the illegal logging of timber in Gabon, Central African Republic, and the Chinese use of their own labour.

Speaking from Washington, he said: ‘China is a major importer of timber from central Africa, and much of that is coming out illegally and violating environmental standards.’

President Hu’s Africa tour this week is one of many high-profile political visits. Two years ago he visited Algeria, Gabon and Nigeria.
Last month the China National Offshore Oil Corporation brought a 45% stake in Nigerian oil fields for US$2.3 billion.

China the second biggest oil consumer after the United States, has also tied up oil deals with Sudan. This has been matched by China’s use of a United Nations veto to block Western sanctions on Khartoum over the Darfur ‘genocide.’

Angola is the third major oil producing nation for China, which was given a major boost with a US$3 billion oil-backed loan made by China's state-owned Eximbank in 2005.

A deal which occurred after Angola rejected IMF demands for greater transparency in its published oil accounts. Some three quarters of Angola’s oil output is destined for China.

Esther Stanford, convener of the Forum of Afrikan Descendents Against Racism, said: ‘This is a development that we must watch with keen eyes. Ultimately we do not want to exchange one oppressor with another.’

She said there were many potential advantages to China’s involvement in the continent but the terms of trade must be determined by African leaders.

Chinese investment can be beneficial to Africa. China is Helping Uganda’s anti-malaria effort, and cancelled Senegal and Liberia’s debt while investing millions in their infrastructure.

They are building railways in Angola, roads and bridges in Rwanda, a dam in Ethiopia, and are helping Nigeria launch a communications and weather satellite into space.

Experts say Africa is grown-up enough to be aware of potential pitfalls in its relationship with China, but concerns remain that patterns of exploitation by the West could be repeated from the East.

An enigma destined for the White House

2006-11-15T11:01:00.000-08:00

by Lester Holloway 6/11/2006 New Nation & Blink

YOU CAN BE forgiven for not knowing who Barack Obama is. Most Americans don’t know who he is either, but that doesn’t stop them wanting to make him their first black president.

When he revealed he was considering running for the White House, the US media and political establishment lavished praise on him.

In stark contrast to the hostility Rev Jesse Jackson faced during past campaigns, this relatively unknown rookie senator is enjoying an extraordinary honeymoon with the American public.

Yet he remains an enigma, his views on many crucial issues are unclear, and he is deeply mistrusted by African-Americans.

So can the son of an immigrant goat-herder from Kenya really become the world’s most powerful man?

Filmmakers have long warmed to the idea of a black president. Morgan Freeman in Deep Impact and Dennis Haysbert in the drama “24” challenged the world to think about it, at least subconsciously.

Hollywood has acclimatised the public to black presidents, but until recently many still assumed that America, with its deep racial divisions, remained unready for a black man or woman in the White House.

But that assumption may have to be revised as the Obama bandwagon propels his star into political orbit, including the front cover of Time magazine.

And while Freeman’s president Tom Beck had to steer a panic-striken country through the trauma of an asteroid attack, Obama appears to be playing similar cards in real life.

At a time when the US is gripped by fears over Iraq, Afghanistan and the war on terror, the smooth-talking Harvard lawyer offers a cocktail of patriotism and American values to dull the pain and anxiety felt by the public.

Obama is now considered a serious challenger to Hillary Clinton for the Democratic ticket in 2008, and he promised to decide after the Congressional elections this Tuesday.

There is even talk of Obama running against Condolezza Rice, George W Bush’s hawkish Secretary of State whom many believe stands a fighting chance of winning the Republican nomination.

If the prospect of an all-black shortlist for the post of US president sounds stranger than fiction, political insiders are not ruling it out.

Walter Fields Jnr, a political consultant and former speech-writer for Bill Clinton, said the Oval Office was “the last bastion of white privilege” and was, symbolically, a glittering prize for African-Americans.

Speaking from Manhattan he said Obama’s apparent cross-over appeal could be a mirage because while white voters admire him many will balk at the idea of putting him in the White House.

‘There were many Americas who said no matter how much they admired Jesse Jackson they were never going to vote for him.

‘I think a lot of Americans will have trouble thinking about President Obama.

'In large parts of this country race is still a factor, so while polls may indicate that they like Senator Obama it’s a totally different story in the privacy of a polling booth.’

The 45-year-old first came to national attention with a barnstorming speech to the Democratic convention two years ago that eclipsed John Kerry, the party’s candidate in 2004.

The next year Obama won a landslide victory to become the only black Senator in Capitol Hill. His meteoric rise has stunned Washington, yet Obama is not quite the outsider he portrays himself to be.

Far from the embodiment of the American Dream, he is actually an insider, the polished product of an elite education a world away from most black voters.

His father may have been a Kenyan farmer, but Barack Obama Snr won a scholarship as a foreign student to a Hawaii university and was later offered a place at Harvard.

Obama Snr married fellow student Ann Dunham, a white Kansas woman who gave birth to Obama Jnr.

Recalling his childhood, he wrote: “That my father looked nothing like the people around me – he was black as pitch, and my mother white as milk – barely registered in my mind.”

After graduating from Harvard, Obama married black lawyer Michelle Robinson and had two children.

Obama came through a crowded field to win his Senate seat.
His charmed political life is in marked contrast to Carol Moseley Braun, the outspoken former Illinois senator, who was consistently attacked in the media.

Obama retains a squeaky-clean church-going image despite admitting he had smoked cannabis – “I inhaled” – and hinting at past cocaine use.

Bill Fletcher Jnr, a visiting professor at Brooklyn College and writer for the Black Commentator, warned that Obama cannot take for granted the support of African-Americans.

He said black voters demanded to know where he stood on issues like affirmative action, which the civil rights movement hard fought for but were now being rolled back.

‘He has to win that support from black voters. I don’t think it will come automatically. He needs to be seen as a figure who is truly speaking out as an advocate for black people who are oppressed in this country.

‘He is running a risk where he is perceived as being a candidate that maybe white people will like because he makes them feel safe.

‘This will hurt him because African-American’s are looking for people who will speak up on issues.’

Fletcher is not alone in calling for more clarity from Obama. A frequent criticism is that “Motherhood and apple pie” may have got him this far, but only clear policy positions will open the White House door.

Herb Boyd, editor of The Black World Today, said: ‘Where do you stand on race issues? That is the number one question. He tends to play that down and find some space in the middle. It’s the Tiger Woods syndrome. They have a lot in common.’

Despite being a Democrat Obama is not certain of winning the active support of heavyweights like Jackson and Rev Al Sharpton.

They control vast social networks like Rainbow Push that can mobilise black and working class voters, but also come with a long agenda for racial justice, and hard-left positions that could costObama support from the white middle classes.

Rev Jackson mounted grassroots campaigns in 1984 and 1988 and came close to winning the Democratic primaries. Other black candidates, before and after, have failed to match that performance.

Preacher Channing E Phillips was the first serious black candidate in 1968, followed by Congresswomen Shirley Chisholm in 1972.

Scoring lower on the Richter scale, Black Panther leader Eldridge Cleaver (1968), NAACP president Kwame Mfume (1996) and Rev Sharpton (2004) failed to get lift-off.

Haysbert’s President David Palmer in “24” plotted his way through intrigue, but the task before Obama is no less difficult.

Obama has to win over scepticism of black communities while simultaneously keeping white America inside his rodeo pen.

He has already shown a remarkable talent for fundraising, an important factor in US elections, and could yet win.

But the smart money on Obama to run a strong, but ultimately unsuccessful campaign, and become a running mate to the winner.

Just being in the race will force the other candidates to compete harder for the black vote. And after 2008, vice-president Obama could be well positioned in future years to ‘inherit’ the crown.

The great Aids conspiracy

2006-11-15T10:53:00.000-08:00

by Lester Holloway 13/11/2006 New Nation & Blink

THE WEST cannot be trusted to control Aids vaccinations for Africa because of fears the medicine will be contaminated.

Speculation about past smallpox jabs being laced with an immune system destroying virus were revived last week when Chancellor Gordon Brown launched a new mass-inoculation programme for the continent.

The Geneva-based World Health Organisation (WHO), at the centre theories about the origin of Aids, will be responsible for vaccinating 500 million children over the next ten years.

Black academics and activists urged African nations to take control of the vaccines instead of leaving it to the global institution.

Conspiracy theories advanced by a handful of scientists over the past two decades are remarkably similar, yet their allegations have been largely ignored, rather than rebutted, by the wider scientific community.

Most anti-Aids campaigners have also sidestepped the issue, choosing to focus on tackling the present-day pandemic, which claimed three million lives last year alone, the majority in Africa.

On Monday the chancellor attended the star-studded launch of a cash-raising bond scheme to “front-load” £2.1 billion of aid for a continent-wide vaccination programme to combat malaria and Aids.

But while the scheme to spend future development money now was widely welcomed, fears persist over the role of WHO.

Professor Clarence Lusane, from the American University in Washington DC, said: ‘I’m certainly not ruling it out.

‘Whether it was a deliberate conspiracy or a medical experiment that went awry is a moot point.

‘But there is a long history of medical experiments against black people, so when we’re talking about new vaccination programmes it does come down to a question of trust.’

Suspicions about smallpox vaccinations given to 100 million Africans in the 1980s gains added weight when Dr William Campbell Douglass revealed that WHO stated in a 1972 bulletin of the need to develop a virus to “impair” the immune response, a key characteristic of HIV.

The coincidence of Aids starting almost simultaneously in Haiti, Africa, Brazil and amongst the gay community in California have also prompted searching questions.

Scientists maintained for many years that Aids jumped from a green monkey to humans after one bit an African who passed the disease to a prostitute.

Respected primatologist Preston Marx has cast serious doubt on whether the virus can be passed from a monkey to a human.

Dr Douglass, in his book ‘AIDS: The End of Civilisation’ called that theory “mathematically preposterous.”

Another scientist, Dr Alan Cantwell, who alleges that WHO polio vaccinations in Nigeria, India and the Philippines were laced with sterility-causing hormones in the 1990s, agrees.

He wrote in a paper: ‘The government does not want people to question the safety of vaccines, and it wants to blame Africans and African monkeys for a disease that is most likely caused by covert primate virus contaminated vaccine experiments.’

And in 2004 the Kenyan Nobel Peace Prize winning biologist Professor Wangari Maathia claimed Aids was a “weapon of destruction” used against black people.

Abdul ‘Abu’ Jakarta, who presents a discussion show on the pirate radio station Galaxy, said: ‘History is the best teacher. They infected Africa with Aids as a population control measure.

‘It’s a case of once bitten twice shy. I don’t think they should be allowed to go in again.’ Iqbal Nandra, a spokesman for WHO, dismissed such fears.

‘No one should even give credence to wild and wacky theories. ‘There are some crackpot scientists who want to make a name for themselves but they’re not taken seriously by anyone.’

Three leading African anti-Aids campaigners, based in London and Amsterdam, refused to be drawn insisting that the focus must remain on tackling Aids today. There are fears that “blaming the white man” will detract from the need to promote changes in individual sexual behaviour.

Dr Kwame Adanse-Pipim, from the AFAPAC Foundation, said that despite politicians and the media taking about Aids vaccines this, and microbicides – gel which women can insert instead of using a condom, was still some years away from completion.

A Comedy of Errors

2006-11-15T10:46:00.000-08:00

by Lester Holloway 14/11/2006 Blink

POSTERS FOR African-American comedian Reginald D. Hunter's show "Pride and Prejudice and N****s" have been banned from London Underground railway hoardings because they were deemed offensive.

Producers for the show's three-week December run in the capital called the decision "an act of overt censorship" and said it could severely affect ticket sales.

A spokesman for London Underground, which carries three million passengers a day, said it works closely with billboard and poster site proprietor Viacom to ensure advertising is appropriate.

"On this occasion it was felt that the poster is likely to offend so we took the decision to turn it down," the spokesman said in a statement.

The producers of the show complained: "Viacom, in an overt act of censorship, have deemed the title of the show to be too offensive for public tastes and have stated they will only allow posters for the show to be displayed at their sites if the word N****s is removed from the title."

Pride And Prejudice And N****s, premiered at this year’s Edinburgh Fringe, where little fuss was made about the title.

But producers bringing it to London’s Arts Theatre for a three-week run next month were stunned to be told it could not appear on London’s Tube network.

Hunter’s publicist Paul Sullivan called the ban ‘an overt act of censorship’, saying: ‘It could severely affect this critically acclaimed show.’

He added: ‘Interestingly, Pride And Prejudice And Niggas is a show in which Hunter tries to make sense of the way society deals with such emotive subjects as racism.’

Producer Mick Perrin has also hit problems trying to arrange a regional tour in the new year, with at least half a dozen venues refusing to programme the show because they did not want the additional hassle they thought its allegedly incendiary title may cause.

London Underground said: ‘We carry more than three million passengers a day, including Londoners and visitors from all walks of life.

‘When we consider advertising appropriate for the Tube, we take into account words or phrases that may offend some passengers. On this occasion, it was felt that the poster is likely to offend, so we took the decision to turn it down.’

Hunter previously used the contentious word in his 2004 Edinburgh show, A Mystery Wrapped In A N****.

http://www.blink.org.uk/aimages2/prideandprejudice.jpg