Erased: A Tale of One Book, Two Letters and Three Libraries

 

St. George's Hall, Liverpool
Colin Lane/Liverpool Echo 

It is Holocaust Remembrance Week 2026 in Liverpool. The 27^th was the actual day. The day when prominent buildings around the Western world are bathed in purple at night; when descendants of survivors go into schools and take to the airwaves to remind us that unspeakable things happened in Europe generations ago, that we must never forget, and that “never again” must it happen. They tell us with great urgency that the scourge of anti-Semitism is as strong as ever, as evidenced by massacres in Manchester, Sydney and elsewhere.

This was the week that Prof. Eve Rosenhaft chose to launch for the first time a new book she has edited for the widow of a remarkable man wanting to share her late husband’s story. Ronald Roberts, the Lad Who Outwitted the Nazis: From Weimer Germany to Windrush Britain is about a man born of a Black (Barbadian) father and a White German mother in Germany in 1921. The title alone indicates that this is one hell of a story, and having read from it in draft form, I was thrilled when Professor Rosenhaft engaged me to read extracts from the finished book, which draws from personal testimony, including many, many letters. We learn for example that in 1940, Ronnie had been captured by the Gestapo, held in an internment camp at Wülzburg, made three futile escape attempts, but was finally liberated by the British Army in 1945. One of the letters recalls his time working in a British-run camp in Judenburg, Austria, not long after:

 

One day with about one hundred and fifty Jews in the camp, the colonel said to me, “Ron there will be some movement in the camp tonight, don’t let it concern you.”  By then we were good friends. I knew what was going to happen. The next morning all the Jews were missing. The Jewish Brigade had arrived in the night and loaded all the Jews onto lorries and taken them away. The Colonel made a phone call to Headquarters reporting the missing Jews and replaced the phone with a big grin on his face.

It was an illegal movement in those days, well according to the British, but if those people wanted to go to Palestine I wasn’t going to stop them, and certainly not the Colonel. The Colonel and I became lifelong friends until his death in the 1970s. He was a wonderful man.

 

A wonderful man indeed, helping persecuted people escape to safety.

Marx Memorial Library, London.

Last week, I was privileged to honour another wonderful man - Paul Robeson - at the Marx Memorial Library in London. He died on January 23, fifty years ago, and on the 20th, the library invited the public to see a display of items from their collection relating to him. One I saw was a letter from a young Scottish man writing home from the battlefield during the Spanish Civil War. Toward the end, he wrote:

Yesterday afternoon we had the pleasure of a visit from Paul Robeson, his wife & Charlotte Haldane. Robeson rendered to us many of his songs, but he gave “Ole Man River” to new words, words of hope & struggle & not of as in the past defeatism & helplessness. Charlotte Haldane brought us news of the British Labour movement & the encouraging interest now being taken in the struggle against fascism in Spain.

 

The library folks had invited me to contribute to their event with some words and music. It was truly an honour to be able to recount how Robeson had literally taken over my life since 1995, and how one particular episode in his life in particular has uncanny and troubling parallels with today. On a tour of Europe in 1949, he made a speech in Paris which would pave the way for his government to silence the former national treasure. He had discussed the absurdity of African Americans, second-class citizens in their country, fighting against the Soviet Union, where he had been treated like a real person for the first time in his life. The press distorted his speech, suggesting that he said he loved the Soviet Union more than America, and by the time he got back home later that year, he was Public Enemy #1. The campaign against him reached its climax at the Peekskill, NY where a concert had to be cancelled because of violence, and the rescheduled concert days later was followed by more violence. The infamous Peekskill riots showed his country at its most anti-Black, ant-Communist and anti-Semitic as it ever was, at its most fascist, until now.

Robeson’s wife was part-Jewish, and his son married a Jewish woman. He spoke Hebrew and Yiddish. The hatred being shown toward him and Jews would have hurt all the more as a result. Just as his own father and millions after him had fled North from the Southern states in search of safety, he understood and supported the desire for Jews to find a haven away from their persecutors in Europe, and, as the Peekskill example showed, America.

 

Coming so soon after speaking and singing at the Robeson event at the Marx Memorial Library, participation in two launches of the Ronald Roberts book was going to be part of a wonderful, meaningful start to 2026. After Toxteth Library in Liverpool on Jan 29, the second place I would be reading Ronald Roberts’s words at was going to be the Wiener Holocaust Museum in London.

Wiener Holocaust Museum

Was; because alas, I was told I would no longer be welcome there, and my details were erased from the publicity. The reason? Palestine. Or specifically, Palestine Action, and my avowed support for the non-violent direct action campaign group opposing the genocide in Palestine. I had told Eve to let them know of my previous pro-Palestine activity for the sake of openness, but that turned out to be a mistake.

 

In the same way as Ronald Roberts was asked not to see Jews being helped to escape to Palestine from Austria in 1945, some descendants of Holocaust survivors are asking us not to see what other descendants are doing in Gaza or the West Bank, or in the rest of the Middle East and beyond.

I - and thousands of others - have however chosen not to look away, not to remain passive. Many of us (Jews included) have been arrested. Some have been imprisoned. Some have almost died from hunger strikes as a result of their illegal, harsh treatment by the British state. Some have lost jobs for wearing, instead of purple, the Palestinian colours of red, black, green and white at work. To be cancelled from reading from a book telling a wonderful Black man’s story of survival in fascist times is a small price to pay by comparison.

 

Auckland War Memorial Museum lighting after action by pro-Palestine activists. NZ Herald

Maybe one day, some eighty years from now, someone will stand in a Palestine Genocide Library in a Gaza still being rebuilt from the rubble, and read or sing the words of another Black man who in 2026 penned these words in a song about his own strange times:

 

When the oppressed becomes the oppressor
We’ll still find Paul on the right side
In his rich bass voice he’d declare
I’ll be no part of your genocide
I’ll be no part of your genocide

 From: Wake Up, America! (A Lament for Paul Robeson), a song commemorating the 50^th anniversary of Paul Robeson’s death, premiered online on January 23, 2026.

LABOUR MP RUMOURED TO DECLARE SUPPORT FOR PALESTINE ACTION

 

In a response to a letter from me, Liverpool Member of Parliament Paula Barker’s office manager wrote, “Paula prefers direct action …”

Paula Barker holds a sign...

Really? Has Paula secretly gone and locked herself to the gates of one of the British sites of Elbit Systems, Israel’s biggest arms firm who market their weapons as "battle-tested on Palestinians," to prevent any more weaponry leaving? Has she damaged a fighter jet in the expectation that an emerging barrister will help get her off on grounds of preventing war crimes overseas? Did she walk up to Benjamin Netanyahu and carry out a citizen’s arrest when he was last in Britain? Did she chant "Globalise the Intifada" on the floor of the house?

No. The direct action Paula Barker took (in preference to the ineffective task of signing Early Day Motions) was signing a letter authored by Jeremy Corbyn urging Justice Secretary David Lammy to urgently meet the lawyers of eight remand prisoners who are currently at risk of death from hunger strikes in British prisons. The eight*, being held and treated as terrorists despite at most causing criminal damage to military equipment on behalf of Palestine Action, have been on hunger strike for as many as 46 days (at time of writing), in protest at the draconian treatment they are being subjected to in prison. It is worth restating that they were all arrested prior to the group being proscribed by parliamentary vote.

So, while Jeremy Corbyn writes letters, questions the most senior ministers in Parliament, visits the prisoners and takes to social media to publicise the cause; while Zarah Sultana goes to HMP Bronzefield to protest the refusal of the prison to allow an ambulance to take hunger striker Quesser Zuhrah to hospital, Paula Barker signs a letter.

I am at least grateful that she has shown such bravery by associating herself with Jeremy Corbyn so openly, since that can be construed by her current party leader and the BBC as antisemitism still festering in the Labour Party.

Talking of the state broadcaster, perhaps Paula can use her position to get the matter seriously covered by the corporation and then threaten to initiate legal action against it for (what was it?) malicious, defamatory and biased broadcasting, as typified by the Panorama programme Is Labour Antisemitic? which caused serious reputational damage and indeed the loss of the 2019 General Election. Quite a bit of money can be raised in the process, which will help the party assuage its increasing unpopularity and dwindling membership, and certainly give Ms. Barker’s career prospects a massive boost. Win, win!

This might be the biggest ask, but Paula could finally acknowledge that the proscription of Palestine Action (a peaceful protest movement) was wrong, and join those campaigning for it to be deproscribed, for Elbit Systems to be permanently shut down, and for all those fellow politicians who enabled the genocide to be made to face justice.

If she takes those steps and describes them as direct action, I won't challenge her use of that definition (others might), and I’ll even begin to be grateful that she is my representative in Westminster, the so-called mother of all parliaments.

Tayo Aluko. Parliamentary Constituency of Wavertree, Liverpool

* two ended their strike on 17 December

The Best of British to the Lowest of British. A Liverpool (and Westminster) Story.

 

I was pleasantly surprised to find recently that The Guardian had published the obituary of a dear old friend of mine, John Gibson in late 2003, and that it is still available on its website. “You need to talk to John Gibson” was something I was repeatedly told when I had announced to people in Liverpool that I wanted to research and write something about Paul Robeson. This would have been back in 1996/7. Sure enough, I soon found myself in the Aigburth home of John and his wife Veronica, being treated to lovely food and conversation, listening to Robeson records and all kinds of music from the former Soviet Union, and meeting people from all walks of life, from many countries. It was also at their home that I first met Marika Sherwood - whose passing earlier this year was also carried in The Guardian, and featured on BBC Radio 4’s Last Word. John proudly talked of meeting the great man himself in the 1940s, thanks to their shared involvement in Communism.

John and Veronica had three sons and one daughter. I am still in touch with two of them: Paul (named after Robeson, in fact) and Ralph. The obituary mentions nine grandchildren. One of those in particular would have been eight years old when John died, and I remember her having a bubbly personality. That grandchild is now known to many around the world as Amu Gib.

‘Who is Amu Gib?’ you may ask. You won’t find the answer in the Guardian. Not for now, anyway. If however Amu were to die at the hands of the British state in coming weeks, this liberal establishment publication may finally carry their story. It is really quite disgusting (but no longer shocking, sadly) that Amu’s story is not part of mainstream news reporting right now. Not shocking, because the same newspaper that revealed industrial-scale spying by the American National Security Agency (NSA) on its unsuspecting citizens would metamorphose, over subsequent years, first into a part of the media eco-system that would lead to Julian Assange almost being delivered to certain death at the hands of the American state for revealing how dirty Western and other governments are, and then be part of the political assassination of Jeremy Corbyn. And once he was safely out of the way, the Guardian would go on to participate in the normalisation and acceptance of Israeli propaganda during the genocide in Palestine that is now into its third year.

For information on who Amu Gib is therefore, one will have to go to social media and independent outlets. From there, one will learn what has reached tiny proportions of news seekers around the world: that they are one of the Prisoners for Palestine: The Filton 24 - a band of concerned citizens who under the Palestine Action banner carried out an attack on an Israeli-owned arms factory in Filton, north of Bristol, and four who broke into RAF Brize Norton and sprayed two aircraft with red paint. They have been held on remand in prison since August 2024 under the terrorism act, without having been charged with terror offences. Amu and seven others of the Prisoners for Palestine have gone on hunger strike in protest at the brutal conditions under which they are being held. Two of Amu’s colleagues have been admitted to hospital, and there is no guarantee that one or more of them will not die as a result of their protest. Perhaps only then will outlets like the BBC and the Guardian finally name these brave souls who represent the absolute best in British humanity.

One of them asked in an interview, “Are you willing to let us die before you stop arming a genocide?” Sadly, with Justice Secretary David Lammy falsely denying any knowledge of the hunger strike, then refusing to meet Members of Parliament wanting to urgently discuss the matter, it seems the answer to that question is Yes. 

For the Guardian and others to allow such cynical, murderous behaviour to continue in the dark is utterly disgraceful, but as the existence of John’s obituary shows, the truth is out there, waiting for people to find it, however long it takes. It includes this statement from Amu: “Maybe I do have one wish: that every year of my life will act as a handful of sand in the gears of this imperialist killing machine. And that we live to see the day it eventually, inevitably, grinds to a halt.”

It is rather frightening that we live in a world in which acting on such a belief can be a death-wish, but we can only hope to be infected by the bravery of Amu and their fellow hunger strikers so that we can defeat these murderers. John would be proud of his grandchild, but I pray that he is not reunited with them before their time.

Solidarity with Amu Gib and the other hunger strikers. Free the Filton 24. Freedom and Justice for Palestine. End the Genocide. Shut Elbit Down.

Terror on Liverpool Streets as Palestine Supporters Hijack Team Bus

On 25 May, the day before the Liverpool Football Club victory parade, our regular pro-Palestine march through the city got unusually dangerous. A taxi, unhappy about the march delaying the traffic on Hanover Street, tried to force its way through the marchers, thankfully not at speed, so whilst I personally came into contact with the front of the taxi, I wasn’t injured, nor did it get through. The sound of an ambulance approaching provoked a very beefy Liverpool fan (definitely a scouser, unlike hundreds who had literally flown in from around the globe) to take matters into his hands and forcibly remove some of us from what he assumed would be the ambulance’s path. He clearly thought that these terrorist-supporters wouldn’t have the decency to make way themselves. Again, I came into contact with the man’s bulging muscles, but again I was unharmed. We carried on to our destination: Derby Square, chanted, and listened to speeches and announcements, including what was planned for the victory parade the following day.

I must confess that I was ambivalent and conflicted. I don’t really like huge crowds. And I’m not that much a fan of premiership football, what with the eye-watering amounts of money surrounding the game, generally swimming out of ordinary fans’ pockets into millionaire players’, directors’ and billionaire owners’ pockets. I went, however, and got lost in the crowd , because Liverpool Friends of Palestine had hit on the idea of spraying the LFC logo onto Palestinian flags and waving them along the route, hoping to get them noticed as much as possible. And they succeeded. There are even some photos and footage of the star Mo Salah acknowledging the flag and the activists. Result!

Apart from those images however, I don’t recall Salah or anybody else in the squad saying anything about the genocide. I don’t recall seeing any photos of Palestine flags flying during Liverpool home games in anywhere near the quantities seen at Celtic, up in Glasgow. That’s why I was conflicted.

When, later, news came of a vehicle running down fans, I hoped the driver wasn’t Black, wasn’t Muslim, and wasn’t doing it as part of a misguided protest against British foreign policy. That would only provoke more race riots, of which there have been a few in and around Liverpool over the last few years.

We know now, of course, that the suspect is a 53-year-old white man. A businessman. A family man. So out of character. There is talk of drug abuse. There is talk of far-right allegiances. But no talk of riots. No talk of deaths. No talk of historic violence by white men across the globe. Life will go on, it seems, and the next football season will be upon us soon enough. As one of Liverpool’s most illustrious managers, Bill Shankly, said, “Some people believe football is a matter of life and death, I am very disappointed with that attitude. I can assure you it is much, much more important than that.” 

Needless to say, I don’t agree with that. But I am not the only one. On the day the Palestine supporters were being attacked in Liverpool, a cup final was taking place in London. It was not at Wembley or any of the Premier League grounds. Maidstone United’s Gallagher Stadium was the setting for the London & South East Regional Women’s Football League Trophy Final. 100%-fan-owned Clapton CFC Women’s First Team were leading Dulwich Hamlet Reserves by 2 – 0. Palestine flags were flying in the stands. One banner railed against the genocide in Palestine. Another called for the Filton 18 - Palestine supporters who had carried out direct action – to be freed from jail. The stadium’s officials asked for the flags and banners to be put away. The fans refused. The players refused to play behind closed doors. Eventually, the game was abandoned.

 

As far as those female players and their fans were concerned, therefore, Palestinian life and death are very much more important than football. That warms my heart, and I for one will happily travel a few hundred miles to join the victory parade of the winning team, if the match is replayed. If I don’t end up in jail for protesting a genocide.

"Palestine: Utterly Destroy Them," Saith the Lord?

An African Man Observes an Inter-Semitic Genocide

It is night time in a London park, during the pandemic. A young white woman stares up into the camera from her prone position on the ground. Kneeling around her as they handcuff her from behind is a faceless group of police officers, male and female. The woman’s crime? Peacefully protesting the rape and murder of someone just like her, by a policeman.

That striking photograph encapsulates the truth that wherever one may be in the world, the citizen matters less to the state than one would think or expect. That’s true even in England, the country whose policing methods were adopted throughout the British Empire, including my home country, Nigeria.

A few months before that arrest in London, the Nigerian Army had been ordered to open fire on young people peacefully protesting police violence, killing at least twelve of them.

Police violence against European citizens is probably at its most alarming and appalling when the German police confront pro-Palestine protesters, leaving no doubt in anyone’s mind that the mere act of calling for a stop to an ongoing genocide is considered the most contemptible and heinous of crimes, deserving of the harshest possible treatment, short of indiscriminate machine-gun fire.

The brutality visited upon German protesters is mirrored by the Israeli Police against those protesting the genocidal prime minister and his government; and singled out for the harshest of treatment are the ultra-orthodox men who refuse to serve in the armed forces, and in some cases even openly express solidarity with the people of Palestine. These men suffer merciless beatings similar to those seen against Palestinians prior to October 7, 2023, and they should indeed be grateful that the Israeli armed forces never shoot their own citizens.

Don’t they? Really? The Hannibal Directive is a policy whereby the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) will kill any of their own (along with Palestinian combatants if necessary) rather than allow them to be taken hostage. There seems to be overwhelming evidence that this policy was extensively used on October 7 and in the days after, including, for the first time, on Israeli civilians – in kibbutzim, the music festival, and in numerous cars as they were being driven toward Gaza.

In December 2023, three Israeli hostages were shot dead by the IDF, and untold numbers would have died in the relentless carpet-bombings during the genocide.

It seems that Hamas, already aware of the brutality of the IDF, assumed that by taking as many hostages as they could into Gaza, they would be able to bargain with the Israeli regime in relative safety, both for themselves and the people they represented. This was clearly a big miscalculation, as the flawed assumption within it was that the IDF command and the Israeli government gave two hoots about their own people.

Back in the West, we are reminded of this, not just in how the armed forces treat protesting civilians, but also in how war-mongering – and genocide-enabling governments – simply ignored the outrage, protests and opprobrium of their citizens, and continue to support Israel diplomatically and militarily, even as pre-ceasefire activities have spread to the West Bank.

It is interesting that the African country with the most-recently-defeated system of Apartheid should have been the one to spearhead the international legal challenge against Israel, even if the ANC government would subsequently, in a bid to cling to power, get into bed with the parties that variously oppose affirmative Black empowerment, or are vigorously anti-immigration, rather than join with parties that grew out of the African Liberation Movement. This leads one to wonder how much more than political expediency was behind their championing the ICJ case against Israel in the first place.

Another troubling thing to observe is how so many people of African descent occupy prominent positions among Western genocide-enablers. When candidate Barack Obama prostrated himself before AIPAC in 2008 and then in 2012 as incumbent president (categorically declaring his position to be on the side of the Israeli occupiers), he set a precedent. 

Perhaps most recognisable among recent players were United States UN Ambassadors Linda Thomas-Greenfield and Robert A. Wood. The world has watched aghast as they single-handedly (literally) did their masters’ bidding by vetoing resolution after resolution calling for ceasefires, recognition of Palestine or sanctioning Israel’s bloodlust. The Haitian-born press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre was also steadfast in justifying the unjustifiable on behalf of the previous administration.

The UK’s foreign minister, David Lammy, is also a descendant of Africans enslaved in the Caribbean. As a young Labour politician he showed radical promise but has more latterly been so captured by Zionism that its racist, white supremacist ideology causes him to be quite literally an apologist for those who justify the wholesale massacre of Palestinians by referring to them as ‘Human animals,’ just as European enslavers referred to his and my ancestors as apes.

Drafting this in Lagos, Nigeria, I was troubled by the number of people who have bought into the narrative that the genocide has its roots in the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack. It is now widely accepted that the background and history are important, though it might surprise many that Africa features in these.

At the sixth World Zionist Congress in Basel, Switzerland in 1903, Theodor Herzel presented to the delegates an offer made by then British Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain, of land in British East Africa, for a Jewish Homeland. Apparently, this offer was considered seriously but eventually rejected in 1904. One area that objections to the idea came from was white British settlers already in East Africa, but the majority of the disquiet was from other Zionists who preferred Palestine. What the Africans knew or thought about the plan appears not to have concerned any of the other players, despite the fact that it was their own stolen ancestral land that was being considered.

The Balfour Declaration would eventually come in 1917, granting the Zionists Palestine: supposedly “a land without people for a people without land.” It was either wilful deceit and self-delusion at play (it is inconceivable that the British didn’t know that Palestinians already occupied the land in question) or it was plain racism, in that they didn’t consider the Palestinians people.

Whilst Africans have particular reason to empathise with Palestinians, the majority of us will be as baffled as the rest of humanity (many Jews included) are, by descendants of Holocaust survivors behaving in such unashamedly and unapologetically barbaric ways, in full view of the rest of the world.

The bafflement is not total though. In Nigeria, a relative with intimate knowledge of the Bible reminded me that Gaza today is not as bad as Jericho of biblical times: the Israelites, newly emancipated from slavery in Egypt (and emboldened by the act of God obligingly parting the Red Sea for them), were ordered by Joshua to carry out God's commandment as passed through Moses: Utterly. Destroy.Them.

Old Testament scholars likely still debate whether by the time the texts first came to be written (not to talk of the versions available to us so many centuries later), the words ascribed to Moses and Joshua remained a true and accurate account of the instructions that came from the heavens, and not the result of any misinterpretation, manipulation or misrepresentation by the long line of priests and scribes. 

Scepticism about religious officials is justifiable considering that in late 2024, the Archbishop of Canterbury (the leader of the worldwide Anglican Church) resigned from his post, and one of his predecessors defrocked himself, due to their involvement in covering up sex scandals. The Roman Catholic Church’s record on that front is famously also shameful.

My relative believes, like many, that the Jews are God’s chosen people, and that what is going on in Palestine is preordained. Interestingly, they don’t accept the biblical justification of African slavery (the curse of children of Ham), dismissing it instead as an excuse for greed and exploitation. We each choose what narratives to believe and how to interpret them, of course.

Had the East Africa Plan of 1903 resulted in a Jewish State there instead of in Palestine, it is conceivable that the situation there could be worse still than contemporary Gaza (unimaginable as that may be): the genocide could potentially have started earlier, and one can only speculate about whether the levels of outrage (and indeed indifference, particularly of international leaders) would have been the same as we see now. And, mirroring the complicity of neighbouring Arab States in the Palestine genocide, it is also likely that neighbouring African states would have turned a blind eye, as they calibrated their interests not according to African brotherhood, but to the dictates of Israel and the West.

Where, for example, would Rwanda stand in a Zionist genocide of Ugandans and Kenyans? It is rather sobering to realise that their 1994 genocide claimed more lives in its 100-day duration than Israel achieved in 15 months, and without the Western-supplied high-tech weaponry used by the IDF. That genocide, itself a by-product of Rwanda’s history and continued Western (and Chinese) meddling, and the rebuilding of the country under Paul Kagame, is now almost universally described as the Genocide Against the Tutsi. This is indeed an inaccurate description because it ignores the four-year civil war that raged in the country before the genocide began, with one side being led by then-General Paul Kagame. It also ignores the fact that during the civil war, through the 100 days, and up until 1996/7 in Rwanda, Congo and Zaire, there was also a Hutu genocide – one that has been officially recognised by international human and civil rights organisations. And yet, the prevailing narrative remains the Tutsi genocide, in a reminder that the African proverb, “Until the lions have their historians, stories of the hunt will always glorify the hunter” applies as much to inter-African conflict as it does to European domination of Africa.

Challenging accepted narratives would therefore lead to some searching questions: Why, for example, did Paul Kagame address the Israel lobbying group AIPAC in Washington DC, and later visit Jerusalem during the Palestinian genocide and speak in support of Israel? Could there be some truth in the suggestion that there is an ongoing, underreported genocide happening in Congo, and that this is fuelled by Kagame’s neighbouring Rwanda aiding and abetting the plundering of the country’s resources by Western and Israeli interests?

African fratricide is also devastatingly evident over the hills in Sudan, where a civil war has been raging since April 2023, but overshadowed by Gaza and Ukraine. That situation is particularly tragic because just over a decade ago, the Arab-Spring-inspired popular protests led to the ousting of the dictator Omar al-Bashir, and the people got tantalisingly close to establishing something close to people power, thwarted only by the army’s insistence in retaining a big stake in government. Two generals, falling out and being encouraged and supported in their violence and equipped by external actors (including Egypt, UAE, Saudi Arabia, the Wagner Group, Russia and the USA), have left the country in blood-soaked ruins.

One also worries about the answer to questions surrounding Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the current Nigerian president. With an origin story and educational background shrouded in mystery and doubt, and a history allegedly involving major drug-dealing and money-laundering in the USA, Freedom of Information requests into his past submitted by a Nigerian investigative journalist have been blocked by the CIA, the FBI and the DEA – Drug Enforcement Agency, all of them citing or suggesting that their releasing such information (regardless of whether or not the Nigerian public are entitled to it) would not be in the best interests of the United States. In other words, according to people who know better than me, the Nigerian president might be a “CIA asset.”

While on the one hand he called for a ceasefire and condemned Israeli aggression, a recent state visit made by him to France, in which he declared that Nigeria is “open for business,” might cause a collective eyebrow to rise in suspicion. The two presidents, Tinubu and Macron, have been keen to assure the public that the “business” in question does not include the establishment of French military bases in Northern Nigeria, in the wake of their expulsion from the former colonies of Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger, following popularly-supported coups.  Firmly anti-imperialist, anti-French and even anti-ECOWAS, those three countries have joined together to form the Alliance of Sahel States (AES) – a mutual defence and trade bloc. That they should want to defend themselves against France is one thing, but their neighbours? 

Well, Tinubu it was whose Senate prevented him from sending Nigerian and ECOWAS forces to reverse the coup in Niger in August 2023. Whether other countries will voluntarily join and expand the AES remains to be seen, though there will be those who hope for other soldiers to follow the example of the Sahelian triumvirate and take power. 

Traore,Goita and Tiani will be well aware of the fact that popular anti-imperialist leaders have historically been assassinated by order of Western powers, but one hopes that they and those around them are adequately prepared to repel the attacks when they inevitably come.

Those protectors must include the masses whose protests and actions helped propel them to power. In Western citadels there are masses on the streets too, protesting against their governments’ complicity in the Palestinian genocide, in the wars in Ukraine, Sudan, Congo and elsewhere; but the people in power, owned and controlled by personal ambition or huge business interests, care more about their positions and sponsors, than they do about their citizens.

Nowhere was this more obvious than in Israel, where, despite mass protests calling for a deal so that Israeli hostages could be freed, Netanyahu, in a bid to avoid incarceration, used those hostages as pawns in his sick game, causing and prolonging untold suffering and death in the process. 

All over the world, we the people are effectively hostages to our governments and the interests they serve, and our futures under their control are bleak. There are numerous examples of people fighting back to inspire us to act – from the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising to the actions of uMkhontowe Sizwe, the armed wing of the ANC, who contributed so much to the downfall of the Apartheid regime in South Africa. There are also smaller groups and actions. Sometimes we win, sometimes we lose; but if we don’t fight, we don’t win.

One small group is proving to be an effective part of the fight against the Israeli regime. Started by two individuals in England, Palestine Action has grown into a movement that has through the actions of several ordinary people of all ages, shut down three sites owned and operated in the UK by the Israeli arms and technology firm Elbit Systems. They have also caused the company and its subsidiaries losses of millions of pounds in revenue, cancelled contracts, and security costs, through a sustained campaign of disruptive activity. An American factory has also been forced to close by Palestine Action Cambridge (Massachusetts).

Elbit is also active in Africa. It is probably more difficult for a Palestine Action Nigeria or Rwanda to achieve similar successes, since the authorities in most African countries are less likely to hesitate to order their minions to shoot activists on sight, or to deal with them in other violent and unjust ways. 

This is where another historical internationalist example can inspire new ideas. Oliver Tambo, uMkhonto weSizwe leader-in-exile, organised a clandestine mission in which young white volunteers from around Britain entered South Africa and carried out a dramatic operation, the purpose of which was to announce to society, to the subjugated African population as well as to the Apartheid regime, that, despite the apparent total defeat of the resistance, the ANC was still active. The psychological effect on both sides was tremendous, not least in resurrecting hope among the African population. 

This internationalism is arguably easier to generate in this digital age. Palestine in particular has made it abundantly clear that there are two sides to our struggle: the global elite and the rest of us, and that we are their hostages. It is only we, acting in solidarity with each other locally and globally who will liberate ourselves from elite tyranny.

As Nelson Mandela famously said, “We know full well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians.”

On pro-Palestine marches worldwide, one of the most popular chants is "In our thousands, in our millions, we are all Palestinians." 

We must hold this particular truth to be self-evident, be we young white women in London, England, or middle-aged Black men in Lagos, Nigeria.

How Micro-Aggressions Go Nuclear

Notes from a sceptical Nigerian in England

I arrived at Bryanston (a boarding school in Dorset) in September 1978, from King’s College, Lagos. It was my first time in England, I found myself in a school with girls for the first time since puberty, and I was one of only three Black students. I survived, and even thrived, though not entirely unscathed.

In Summer term 1979, a group of about thirty of us went on a school trip to France, by ferry. At Calais, our teacher went through customs and continued ahead to make some arrangements. I, coming up near the rear, was taken to one side after it was noted that I had no visa in my Nigerian passport. I was detained, summarily manhandled like a criminal, and then thrown unto the next ferry back to Dover.

That memory came back as I was watching scenes of Africans being prevented from fleeing Ukraine, following what most pundits have called Vladimir Putin’s “unjustified, unprovoked act of aggression.” What’s happening to Africans (some of whom will be King’s College OBs) in Eastern Europe right now puts my experience into perspective, but reveals some interesting parallels. 

Back at Bryanston, there was a trip to Greece the following March (I had a visa this time!), from which I have two distinct memories: first, remaining on the coach and watching “those crazy white people” going into the sea at the beach (in March!), just because it was Greece. The second was being harassed throughout the trip by another boy, on account of my race – he made that clear. The matter was resolved when I went into his room one night, locked the door, beat him up and left.

On another occasion, I was called the N-word to my face by another boy. I didn’t fight him, partly because he was in the Rugby 1^st XV, or even report it. I remember him, but when we met decades later, I sensed his discomfort, even without the incident being mentioned.

Fast forward to late December 2021, forty years after leaving Bryanston to study architecture. By now, I have switched from architecture to being a self-producing touring actor/singer. I often post my events on Facebook groups that I belong to, including the Old Bryanstonians group and a small subgroup called Sundaylunch8. Imagine my surprise when one of the admins responds to a post on the next online sharing of my radio play, Paul Robeson’s Love Song with the following comment: “I think you’ll find that one way of getting kicked off this group is by promoting yourself on it.” To this I responded, “Oh, is that so? Happy New Year to you too.”

A week later, I posted another comment, asking the general membership if I was the only one to wonder what made the admin think it was acceptable or appropriate to address me in that way, saying I hoped it might start an interesting conversation. A few (three, I think) responded with some thoughts. Days passed, and I did another post asking for more comments. Some days later, I couldn’t find the group, so I messaged four friends asking them to tell me what they knew. One responded privately to confirm that I was indeed no longer a member.

At the time of writing, nobody else on the group, save for the one who replied has said a mumbling word.

Silence can have grave consequences.

With that in mind, I would now like to zoom out from the personal to the global, of which the treatment of Africans in Ukraine is but a part.

I would argue that many silences – especially the deliberate silencing of voices of peace and reason – have brought us perhaps to the brink of World War III, and perhaps of a nuclear catastrophe. It is sad to note how Paul Robeson’s words, written in 1958 during enforced house arrest in his country, ring true today. Referring to 1930s Europe in his book, Here I Stand, he recalled that "The years that I lived abroad witnessed the rise of fascism: the crash of martial music and the sound of marching jackboots drowned out the songs of peace and brotherhood."

He talked of fascism. Today we talk (or we don’t talk) of neo-fascism. Let’s talk about it. As recently as December 2021, a vote was held in the UN on a resolution “Combating glorification of Nazism, neo-Nazism, and other practices that contribute to fuelling contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance.”

 
121 countries (mostly Global Majority countries, and including Israel, not surprisingly) voted in favour; 53 (mostly Eastern European and many Western European: England, France and Germany included) abstained, and 2 voted against the motion: United States and, er, Ukraine. This despite the much-lauded President Volodymyr Zelenskyy being Jewish.

This raises two questions:
1. Zelenskyy notwithstanding, could this explain the vicious, murderous treatment of Africans at this time of grave threats coming both from bombs and from neo-fascist, white supremacist groups now being armed by other Western countries? 2: Does this illustrate some kind of benign hold that the US has over Ukraine? Many suggest that the Ukrainian government is a puppet regime installed after a US-inspired coup in 2014, and that this (and not Putin) led directly to the current situation.

Putin is not the Russian people, yet they – whether at home or in the Diaspora - are starting to suffer as a result of having an evil, despotic tyrant in power. That he was genuinely democratically elected is of course open to question, but what about leaders of the great Western countries that teach the world how to do democracy, by force if necessary? Were there no alternatives? It might be instructive to hear two voices “of peace” that were drowned out by the noise that brought us some of our current NATO leaders.

I remember thinking we were in big, big trouble when, during the 2016 US elections, this happened:

Fox News, CNN, and MSNBC all broadcast Trump's empty podium instead of Clinton's big speech. Hillary Clinton, who had already admitted her role in the 2009 Honduran coup, was the Democrats’ preferred candidate. 

And as her Party and the media feigned disgust, they completely ignored Bernie Sanders, even as he drew bigger crowds than anyone else. His thoughts on NATO? Among other things, he was against its expansion to include new member states, “because it risks provoking military conflict with Russia.” 

Bernie was thwarted by the media and by the Democratic Party (and Obama) both in 2016 and 2020, and now we have Joe Biden, despite a rather bad smell emanating from his and his son’s dealings in, er, Ukraine.

Here in the UK, we have Boris Johnson, the compulsive liar with misogynism and racism challenges, and a certain opacity about his party’s links to Russian oligarchs. Two abiding, very contrasting images from the last two General Election campaigns are: Johnson hiding from reporters in a dairy fridge in 2019, and Jeremy Corbyn being cheered by hundreds of thousands at Glastonbury in 2017. 

Corbyn’s rock-star-like popularity saw him miss becoming Prime Minister in 2017 by less than 2,500 votes, which was such a shock for the Establishment and Corbyn’s own fellow Labour MPs that they went into overdrive in their efforts to damage him politically. The media and the Establishment ridiculed him on any issue at every opportunity, this tweet from Lord Digby Jones being a perfect example:

Q: Who said “NATO should shut up shop, give up, go home & go away.”
A: Jeremy Corbyn just five years ago
Vote Labour; get a clear & present danger to our Country as its Leader.

The Establishment hatchet job was completed when in the final days of the 2019 race, the Archbishop of Canterbury lent his weight to Anti-Semitism allegations against Corbyn’s Labour. Strangely however, Labour has lost tens of thousands of members since Corbyn stepped down, and we now have the bizarre situation whereby it is reported that Jews are almost five times more likely to face
antisemitism charges than non-Jewish members. Doesn’t such a statistic suggest  that whatever the truth or falsehood of allegations of anti-Semitism under Corbyn, Labour is certainly manifesting it much more under Keir Starmer? If one wants to examine with an open mind whether the extent of the problem during Corbyn’s time was exaggerated, one could watch the trailer for an undercover documentary, The Lobby. It never made it onto any major broadcasting channels, and I presume the American version also remains largely unseen. They point the finger at Israel, suggesting that Corbyn was the biggest victim in a well-designed, deliberate campaign to besmirch her critics.

Ukrainians are currently suffering as badly as any people anywhere can suffer. We all feel for them, as is abundantly clear from the amount of coverage their plight is getting. The pictures are indeed horrific. So too, however, are similar pictures that we are not currently seeing coming out of Yemen, Afghanistan, Palestine, Somalia or Tigray, for example. This is troubling, and we should ask ourselves how complicit we are in the singling out of Ukrainians for compassion because they are, to quote their deputy chief prosecutor, “European people with blue eyes and blonde hair,” or “pure Aryans,” in (neo-)Nazi-speak.

Furthermore, because of their crazed, despotic president, millions of ordinary Russians at home and abroad are also suffering, but it seems for the moment that they don’t matter as much as Ukrainians. Among the Russian victims are artists: people who enrich, inspire and transform other people’s lives with their words, music, dance, art and so on. As they contemplate dwindling incomes, certain other operators are making a killing (pardon the pun): arms dealers, and the many politicians around the planet in their pockets. A wonderful documentary, The Shadow World illustrates this beautifully, and its maker very cleverly opens the trailer with this very candid boast from an arms dealer:  “The thing about politicians is that they are very much like prostitutes, but only more expensive.” The cast list in the trailer alone includes, in order of appearance, Tony Blair, Barack Obama, George W Bush, Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, George H W Bush, Richard Nixon, and South Africa’s Thabo Mbeki.

If it were possible to find anything positive from the current situation, it would be the hope that the desperate plight of so many “Aryans” might increase empathy for people fleeing terrible situations elsewhere. One could hope for more scepticism from citizens about what their politicians and their media feed them, and point to why journalists like Julian Assange, Mumia Abu-Jamal  and Craig Murray, but not others, end up in jail. Epithets like Cop Killer, or Rapist (respectively in the case of the first two) exist to discourage you from accessing their output, such as this wikileaks-shared cable. 

When I heard snippets of Zelenskyy’s speech to the UK Parliament, and the rapturous reception it received, a certain play came to mind. Considering him alongside most recent and current so-called leaders of the free world (many of whom use great oratory to profess to be peace makers),  I am reminded of Moliere’s Tartuffe, the impostor.

What has all this got to do with Bryanston OBs? The treatment of my fellow Africans in Ukraine triggered that memory of my experience at Calais in 1979. In 2022, I am addressed in a disrespectful, offensive way in a Facebook group, given no explanation or apology and then kicked off the group with hardly a murmur in my defence. Three of the four people I subsequently asked for help didn’t respond. In my opinion, such apparent disinterest in abuses of power leads, at a macro level, to the kinds of politicians we have today. The admin provoked me, and I felt justified in identifying him on the Bryanston ex pupils Facebook page.

On a world scale, Putin was provoked - maybe even goaded - by generations of (mostly) men who belong with him in jail. The rest of us should use whatever peaceful weapons we have at our disposal to spread love and peace, and to seek justice for victims of corruption and war, whether they be blue-eyed and blonde-haired, or Black like me.

Tayo Aluko

The above is an adapted version of a blog posted in the Bryanston ex pupils Facebook page on 10 March 2022.