tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13184765338141952024-03-05T20:34:04.292-08:00Tayo Aluko's blogTayo Alukohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04629933520426570891noreply@blogger.comBlogger17125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1318476533814195.post-73524926632496343742022-03-10T00:19:00.004-08:002022-03-14T07:15:23.427-07:00How Micro-Aggressions Go Nuclear<p><b>Notes from a sceptical Nigerian in England</b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjfHJIpCC5l-UBf0Hn5upfwQsPAcYc4sthXUYp5pN3EcAg_tmtlvcmN5eZSlQTTGzdeCbf-5Mx_wjOdHZAraVrpMhxNMcPrrtIZybUM6NJLc_5dQm0MxIyJPLQw5_mxy_wxFWadnNywuQ12rtde5bNdSh5QU61HTN3S247Ok_OM3kObAN0JZWdf2bc=s1600" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="1600" height="152" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjfHJIpCC5l-UBf0Hn5upfwQsPAcYc4sthXUYp5pN3EcAg_tmtlvcmN5eZSlQTTGzdeCbf-5Mx_wjOdHZAraVrpMhxNMcPrrtIZybUM6NJLc_5dQm0MxIyJPLQw5_mxy_wxFWadnNywuQ12rtde5bNdSh5QU61HTN3S247Ok_OM3kObAN0JZWdf2bc=w270-h152" width="270" /></a></div>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. <br /><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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<sup>st</sup>
XV, or even report it. I remember him, but when we met decades later, I sensed
his discomfort, even without the incident being mentioned.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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, <a href="http://www.robesonslovesong.com/"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Paul
Robeson’s Love Song</i></a> 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.”</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">At the time of writing, nobody else on the group, save for
the one who replied has said a mumbling word. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Silence can have grave consequences.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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 <a href="https://www.paulrobesonhouse.org/paul-robeson/">Paul Robeson</a>’s
words, written in 1958 during enforced house arrest in his country, ring true
today. Referring to 1930s Europe in his book, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Here I Stand</i>, he recalled that <span style="background: white; color: #222222; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">"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."</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"></p>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.”<div><br /></div><div><br /><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiB-d7ZmS-hJ8pj4QW83kTuMHXEJOo0vhxbCLImOp2GDu3mX_uaMj-UEOqQM7EsKTNAXw6iCRMgw1fES393fdVCz5TpvFk6D82WHzr3Pc10qma3vq1dVaFvdEYZkB6ZPa8rakt0LKWTbSx-gYkc43GIN0SSyaB-bNB0YTXAH0jxI8mL-NcHjZWQnac=s1822" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1036" data-original-width="1822" height="244" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiB-d7ZmS-hJ8pj4QW83kTuMHXEJOo0vhxbCLImOp2GDu3mX_uaMj-UEOqQM7EsKTNAXw6iCRMgw1fES393fdVCz5TpvFk6D82WHzr3Pc10qma3vq1dVaFvdEYZkB6ZPa8rakt0LKWTbSx-gYkc43GIN0SSyaB-bNB0YTXAH0jxI8mL-NcHjZWQnac=w429-h244" width="429" /></a></div> <br />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.<p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">This raises two questions: <br />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 <a href="https://www.blackagendareport.com/ukraine-exposes-white-supremacist-foreign-policy"><span style="background: white; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">to the current situation.</span></a></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="background: white;">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.</span></p><p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="background: white; color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">I remember thinking we were in big,
big trouble when, during the 2016 US elections, this happened:</span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="background: white; color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhGMgPC5fZsIP75ER8nzrfkMrvJYGUJukPiu2b6nILh8swK10IwxaiGEUTdSk-jW-1L-0aN3SYAR_UIrGAw31SrPhiq4G9AV9lEqeOg2GkaCtzUhmpq1ipcfW6r9U_hhPVziqcWrenfZyRihKq0tLIyqLfOxdd1OjclirT-4y8RS3S3MaxoTZY8vLU=s409" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="409" data-original-width="265" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhGMgPC5fZsIP75ER8nzrfkMrvJYGUJukPiu2b6nILh8swK10IwxaiGEUTdSk-jW-1L-0aN3SYAR_UIrGAw31SrPhiq4G9AV9lEqeOg2GkaCtzUhmpq1ipcfW6r9U_hhPVziqcWrenfZyRihKq0tLIyqLfOxdd1OjclirT-4y8RS3S3MaxoTZY8vLU=s320" width="207" /></a></span></div><span style="background: white; color: black; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><br /> </span><a href="https://theweek.com/speedreads/626702/fox-news-cnn-msnbc-all-broadcast-trumps-empty-podium-instead-clintons-big-speech"><span color="windowtext" style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Fox
News, CNN, and MSNBC all broadcast Trump's empty podium instead of Clinton's
big speech</span></a><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">. Hillary Clinton, who had already </span><a href="http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2014/9/hillary-clinton-honduraslatinamericaforeignpolicy.html"><span color="windowtext" style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">admitted
her role in the 2009 Honduran coup</span></a><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">, was the Democrats’ preferred
candidate. </span><p></p><p class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">And as her Party and the media feigned disgust, they completely ignored Bernie Sanders, even as he drew bigger crowds than anyone else. </span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">His thoughts on NATO? Among other things, he was against its expansion to include new member states, </span><a href="https://feelthebern.org/bernie-sanders-on-nato/"><span color="windowtext" style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">“because it risks provoking military conflict with Russia.”</span></a><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"> </span></span></p><p></p><p class="MsoNoSpacing"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /><br /></div><br /><p></p><p class="MsoNoSpacing"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgrjVUgT6LNZvxB9H3OfThld-w0lyTa36s_IRsUG2OCvBkmSu5u9pY0Tlt9jDpahqx7hhfqBfiprxClS5vWz9M5lJqQ-FJeH575BO-tSls43BAn4K75jg0elDaFayZtiZQJwaoxnmjFNR5PCgHzA7d3L53RyRyzgb1tZFNVK8gQXRzLf6REqy1GUls=s511" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="511" data-original-width="403" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgrjVUgT6LNZvxB9H3OfThld-w0lyTa36s_IRsUG2OCvBkmSu5u9pY0Tlt9jDpahqx7hhfqBfiprxClS5vWz9M5lJqQ-FJeH575BO-tSls43BAn4K75jg0elDaFayZtiZQJwaoxnmjFNR5PCgHzA7d3L53RyRyzgb1tZFNVK8gQXRzLf6REqy1GUls=s320" width="252" /></a></div><br />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.<p></p><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Here in the UK, we have Boris Johnson, the compulsive liar with
misogynism and racism challenges, and </span><a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/boris-johnson-russia-report-question-time-election-debate-audience-a9214556.html?jwsource=cl"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">a certain
opacity</span></a><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"> about his party’s links to Russian oligarchs. Two abiding, very
contrasting images from the last two General Election campaigns are: Johnson </span><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lp9XoiFbZcI"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">hiding from reporters in a dairy
fridge in 2019</span></a><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">, and Jeremy Corbyn being cheered by hundreds of thousands at Glastonbury
in 2017. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">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:</span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhn36L_6oW91ZyjED5Abl5TnxgX9vIN6fJmJvdh8C0quSlKyX-JiqQbEPfjqqSyEQlH_Uo2QWYvSoUslaDr2ly2X7YuboOhZybKZADfIGibs23Z6JceB0Sf2GCbOHKEp-io_7DZfaQPcA2Za0bY_yuqDWGHuKhy96y_YRxNB6685F2RBC9MKWy4gAY=s518" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="518" data-original-width="432" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhn36L_6oW91ZyjED5Abl5TnxgX9vIN6fJmJvdh8C0quSlKyX-JiqQbEPfjqqSyEQlH_Uo2QWYvSoUslaDr2ly2X7YuboOhZybKZADfIGibs23Z6JceB0Sf2GCbOHKEp-io_7DZfaQPcA2Za0bY_yuqDWGHuKhy96y_YRxNB6685F2RBC9MKWy4gAY=s320" width="267" /></a></span></div><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><br /><br /></span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal">Q: Who said “NATO should shut up shop, give up, go home & go away.” <br />A: Jeremy Corbyn just five years ago <br />Vote Labour; get a clear & present danger to our Country as its Leader.</p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="text-align: left;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div>
<p class="MsoNormal"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiEQ7thK81kDbMtUz4mpZM3aHc66D5UZkNEOtrhp0wIagq6mkMDnre2YvKbTKRWIvTfzCV0vO8UJ71rKzzkCLGy_CdNiMWz4wNJHXSEEJCJjEUwKE7HjSmdCMNwc_vRI92J7r3essP3UZcGU7V9WIifGhAQ3cDGmXTpaHukbNNRwjB_D1xl0V9HrTw=s567" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="516" data-original-width="567" height="221" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiEQ7thK81kDbMtUz4mpZM3aHc66D5UZkNEOtrhp0wIagq6mkMDnre2YvKbTKRWIvTfzCV0vO8UJ71rKzzkCLGy_CdNiMWz4wNJHXSEEJCJjEUwKE7HjSmdCMNwc_vRI92J7r3essP3UZcGU7V9WIifGhAQ3cDGmXTpaHukbNNRwjB_D1xl0V9HrTw=w243-h221" width="243" /></a></div>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 <a href="https://www.politicshome.com/news/article/excl-labour-membership-dips-below-half-a-million-as-tens-of-thousands-leave-party">tens
of thousands of members</a> since Corbyn stepped down, and we now have the
bizarre situation whereby it is reported that <a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/uk-labour-antisemitism-accused-purging-jews-over-claims">Jews
are almost five times more likely to face<br /> antisemitism charges than non-Jewish
members</a>. Doesn’t such a statistic suggest <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>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, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BCMKkmG2M8s&list=PLzGHKb8i9vTzCgnbENCKuz7fqU12xNBce&index=7">The
Lobby</a>. 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. <p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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 <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">not</i> 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,”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>or “pure Aryans,” in
(neo-)Nazi-speak. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><b>The
Shadow World</b></i> illustrates this beautifully, and its maker very cleverly opens
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKbBLk5EX6Y">the trailer</a> with this
very candid boast from an arms dealer:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>“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.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhWe8XgS7OXjVSJQ46E8INkvgmiczwbCO6soTQC_tMh-5fIfv9pgW4-wWBglJXApeR5WbSeu-k-BtQTjIpzZuFHc88NqztSpHSU9p_64bMdiFPlKeTXsFty7QLl4io83vTTf7NNXFlGhKUrz0EyElkqP1AlWhgItphRBEIMA32Jt0fk1DPfCZc3-Lg=s590" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="350" data-original-width="590" height="170" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhWe8XgS7OXjVSJQ46E8INkvgmiczwbCO6soTQC_tMh-5fIfv9pgW4-wWBglJXApeR5WbSeu-k-BtQTjIpzZuFHc88NqztSpHSU9p_64bMdiFPlKeTXsFty7QLl4io83vTTf7NNXFlGhKUrz0EyElkqP1AlWhgItphRBEIMA32Jt0fk1DPfCZc3-Lg=w287-h170" width="287" /></a></div>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 <a href="https://youtu.be/kv06yyGS4Tk">Julian Assange</a>, <a href="https://www.prisonradio.org/commentary/say-no-to-nato/">Mumia Abu-Jamal</a><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and <a href="https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2022/03/the-universal-boosting-of-putin/">Craig
Murray</a>, 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 <a href="https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/08MOSCOW147_a.html">this wikileaks-shared cable</a>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEibXYrmagEhfSWbM-pqJqwg7efDLc2nuGCi2QGhYgbGAZ7cVDCNaYLmTvDy-ob0J2r7_7-0w0055r_pCK-hsRdB9P8wVu0rhKILExUcFwCqqK-CziLxRrY644F2yvZoHicyeHpqIBrQNBj0oadaPl6yY4jvqJzbLAT4pYmkFn0rF-p92wQVRiBTzq8=s515" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="515" data-original-width="331" height="297" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEibXYrmagEhfSWbM-pqJqwg7efDLc2nuGCi2QGhYgbGAZ7cVDCNaYLmTvDy-ob0J2r7_7-0w0055r_pCK-hsRdB9P8wVu0rhKILExUcFwCqqK-CziLxRrY644F2yvZoHicyeHpqIBrQNBj0oadaPl6yY4jvqJzbLAT4pYmkFn0rF-p92wQVRiBTzq8=w191-h297" width="191" /></a></div>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), <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I am reminded of Moliere’s <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tartuffe">Tartuffe</a>, the impostor.<br /> <p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">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.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Tayo Aluko </p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal">The above is an adapted version of a blog posted in the Bryanston ex pupils Facebook page on 10 March 2022.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p></div></div>Tayo Alukohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04629933520426570891noreply@blogger.com20tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1318476533814195.post-61875739546732039262021-08-08T12:30:00.003-07:002021-08-14T04:00:22.290-07:00Journalism Died, July 2021. Pour the Champagne!<p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">The voices of two great journalists fell silent at the end
of July 2021.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3K_WazvbkCTHVJPXCAuX9Zvyi-1vjJtc1kzaWWYOATL86Vqls1ngOULK5st9gtLmEkzd1vzAHhzoVXrZGXOgHKbjPRcy4jQM1u7LIfi6oHNkPrqZRLG4LYLUja8y3Qk9ZLhDfM3K_rA/s500/glen+ford+image.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: justify;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="439" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3K_WazvbkCTHVJPXCAuX9Zvyi-1vjJtc1kzaWWYOATL86Vqls1ngOULK5st9gtLmEkzd1vzAHhzoVXrZGXOgHKbjPRcy4jQM1u7LIfi6oHNkPrqZRLG4LYLUja8y3Qk9ZLhDfM3K_rA/w176-h200/glen+ford+image.jpg" width="176" /></a></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b style="font-weight: bold;">Glen Ford</b><b>, </b>who died on July 28, was first recruited to read
the news on his father’s music radio programme in Georgia in 1961, at the age
of eleven. By the late 1980s, Glen had co-founded a Rap Music radio syndicate which
provided a platform, on 66 radio stations, for many young Black American artists
to express themselves artistically and politically. The independent music
labels associated with the syndicate were slowly bought up by corporate
interests, and before long, the politics was overtaken by the misogyny and
profanity that is now more commonly associated with the genre.</div><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Ford went on to co-found the Mutual Radio Network in Washington
DC; America’s Black Forum – a weekly television programme, then The Black
Commentator (blackcommetator.com), and finally, <a href="https://www.blackagendareport.com/">Black Agenda Report</a>, of which
he was Executive Editor until his death, and which also had a radio and a TV
component. With his experience and track record, Ford could have been a media
mogul, but his intention was always to provide news, analysis and commentary of
national and world events from the Black Left perspective, and he was therefore
accepting of, and philosophical about the fact that he would hardly ever be
seen on mainstream media. Even Democracy Now! stopped inviting him on after <a href="https://youtu.be/3K0iEAWRkT4">a frosty debate</a> with then-Obamite Michael Eric Dyson. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">He was especially unpopular with avid supporters of Barack
Obama. When Obama first started being noticed as an Illinois senator, Ford and a
colleague at The Black Commentator were immediately suspicious of the sudden
removal of an anti-war speech from the politician’s website. They questioned
him constantly over a period of weeks (they found him a willing, accessible
interviewee, at first) and finally sent him a last set of questions about his
intentions were he to become a US Senator. Ford would say years later, “I’ve
never regretted a political decision as much as having passed Barack Obama when
he should have failed the test.” He would later refer to the president
constantly as “not the lesser evil, but the more effective evil,” when compared
with Bush, or his Republican rivals, McCain and Romney. Furthermore, Obama's and Martin Luther King, Jr.'s legacies were diametrically opposed, <a href="https://blackagendareport.com/mlk_obama_opposed_legacies">F</a><a href="https://blackagendareport.com/mlk_obama_opposed_legacies">ord o</a><a href="https://blackagendareport.com/mlk_obama_opposed_legacies">pined</a>, and he argued that Obama's effect on the continent of his father's birth <a href="https://blackagendareport.com/content/obama-summons-africa-washington-talk-trade-and-how-cut-out-china">was disastrous</a>.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Ford was particularly
scathing about other Black American politicians, dubbing them “<a href="https://blackagendareport.com/you-cant-shame-shameless-black-misleadership-class">the Black Mis-LeadershipClass</a>,” for what he saw as their complicity in the exploitation of the global
majority. Always part of a very small group of lone voices in the wilderness
(he estimated that BAR had an audience of about 25,000), he lived relatively
unscathed to the age he did probably because with such figures, he never posed
a real threat to the establishment.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgw0Riv6OJl_2w1MH7gD8poAKpS3_LH31vzSR0FA5Cg4sdwOJ0OUXWP-3jZg073bwusghvbzZrfSHq3tx07Z_69nvN_BxUUIw9iKTO4MfOeey6lLT1pm7xF2BQjvZf-i8QVsbconk6QQw/s300/craig+murray.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="168" data-original-width="300" height="154" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgw0Riv6OJl_2w1MH7gD8poAKpS3_LH31vzSR0FA5Cg4sdwOJ0OUXWP-3jZg073bwusghvbzZrfSHq3tx07Z_69nvN_BxUUIw9iKTO4MfOeey6lLT1pm7xF2BQjvZf-i8QVsbconk6QQw/w275-h154/craig+murray.jpg" width="275" /></a></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The same cannot be said of <b>Craig Murray</b>, who has over 93,000
followers on Twitter. By comparison, the editor of the Times has 7,000, and the
Guardian’s has 113,000. Thanks to social media and to the sheer quality of his
blog (<a href="http://www.craigmurray.org.uk">www.craigmurray.org.uk</a>), he has a reach of literally millions. He had
lost his job as British Ambassador to Uzbekistan after turning whistle-blower
and exposing the Tony Blair government’s complicity in torture programmes. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Since
then, his blog has been a counter to what he describes as relentless state
propaganda. Three examples of stories he has very rationally demonstrated the
untrustworthiness of mainstream media’s coverage of are 1: <a href="https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2020/10/your-man-in-the-public-gallery-assange-hearing-day-21/">The case against Julian Assange</a>; 2: <a href="https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2021/04/pure-ten-points-i-just-cant-believe-about-the-official-skripal-narrative/">The Skripal affair</a>; and 3: The Alex Salmond trial. His
dispatches regarding this last case strongly suggested that Salmond, the former
leader of the Scottish National Party and First Minister of Scotland, was set
up by his successor and those around her. The defence case was that these people concocted false allegations of
sexual impropriety by Salmond against several women. This would have landed Salmond in jail, had a majority-female jury not cleared him of all charges. On all
these, Murray’s journalism was in <a href="https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2021/01/only-a-corrupt-lord-advocate-stands-between-peter-murrell-and-prison/">a class above all the major outlets</a> - the BBC
included - and adds credence to his suggestion that the Scottish and UK
governments are corrupt, the SNP hierarchy has little interest in Scottish
Independence (the reason for which the party exists) but is maintaining a
charade in collusion with Westminster, and finally, the mainstream media does
little more than just spread government propaganda.</div><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"></p><div style="text-align: justify;">In many countries, such brave journalism could send you to
an early grave, or to jail. Scotland has shown itself to be one such country, for Murray was found guilty of contempt of court, for the curious charge of "possible jigsaw identification" of Salmond's accusers. The trial was held in Scotland (without a jury), and the Supreme Court in London refused to hear his appeal, giving him and his supporters the sense that this was very much a political conviction arranged between London and Edinburgh.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxpwvti6HE2yHfnazMS06dTGJa-1SN7vRFXV8jkYWPBg5MDNyuowPJGRUKiBYPanS1ojI3nd_AEcF82Maa-Q6a2TbD92C6fosF38eVFor7qL80bnhX1nymrXUN14biaoQPsxDpnhfM-Q/s1199/scotland+jails+journalists.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="388" data-original-width="1199" height="104" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxpwvti6HE2yHfnazMS06dTGJa-1SN7vRFXV8jkYWPBg5MDNyuowPJGRUKiBYPanS1ojI3nd_AEcF82Maa-Q6a2TbD92C6fosF38eVFor7qL80bnhX1nymrXUN14biaoQPsxDpnhfM-Q/s320/scotland+jails+journalists.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"></p><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Tremendous outrage was shared on social media, and demonstrations were held in Edinburgh, Inverness and Aberdeen. Murray finally surrendered himself to police in
Edinburgh on August 1, amid dozens of supporters who had gathered to wish him well.
They sang <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Auld Lang Syne, </i>and raised
a toast to him over champagne. </div><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Mainstream media reported none of this. The British public, on the whole, does not know that a journalist has become the first media person to be imprisoned for contempt of court in Scotland in 70 years, or that the charge
was designed to ensnare him alone among all journalists.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Rather worryingly, the National Union of Journalists
has been totally silent on the matter. This is hardly surprising, as the NUJ’s
leadership, in apparent contravention of the union’s rules, prevented Murray
from renewing his membership in 2020, citing objections from persons unknown.
This reminds me of a quip I heard once: that bosses of a construction union,
and many of its members, would happily agree to build a prison for construction
workers only, just to keep themselves in work for a while.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">One is also reminded of Pastor Niem<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;">ö</span>ller’s poem, “<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">First, they came,” </i>to which there is
this pithy adaptation:</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 14.2pt;">First they came for the
journalists<br />
And I did not speak out, because<br />
I was not a journalist.<br />
We don’t know what happened next</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">But we do: authoritanianism and fascism. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Journalists like Glen Ford and Craig Murray have given us,
at huge personal sacrifice, valuable weapons with which to fight: information. Thankfully,
there are others in their mould still standing. Murray will be out in a few
months, and even though Ford won’t be back, there is this line of inspiration
from a dissident Greek poet:</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 14.2pt;">You tried to bury me, but you
forgot I was a seed.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Rest in Power, Glen Ford. We pour some drops of champagne
into the earth in your honour. And see you again soon, Craig Murray.</p>www.tayoalukoandfriends.com<p></p>Tayo Alukohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04629933520426570891noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1318476533814195.post-83963743302286097392019-07-02T09:12:00.005-07:002022-10-24T22:30:31.904-07:00Washing Away All African Blood.<span style="font-size: large;"><b>A Personal Study of Historic and Contemporary Institutional Racism As Revealed in Some of Liverpool’s Buildings and Spaces.</b></span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><b><br /></b></span>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><b>“I have not come here
to be insulted by a set of wretches, every brick in whose infernal town is
cemented with an African’s blood.” </b><o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
So George F. Cooke, 18<sup>th</sup> Century actor, is supposed to have responded to an audience admonishing him for being obviously drunk at Liverpool’s <a href="http://click%20image%20for%20more%20info/">Theatre Royal</a>, Williamson Square sometime in the early 1770s. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><a href="http://www.victorianweb.org/art/architecture/liverpool/32.html"><img border="0" data-original-height="484" data-original-width="833" height="185" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3sjyFL_QLzNt5gJbfOsqnU2EUOjNjmm7HxDDZH-p_gEJkxCw8Sw9bGpICg-Gss-SHFN7HjkJwwe30j-nM7YF1HcPkQg34NA0eD6sX2WcyFxz4cFqk7y5l4aDIscg-IyyNVxvl3Xw8Kg/s320/Theatre+Royal.jpg" width="320" /></a></span></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Theatre Royal, Williamson Square. <br />
Source: The Internet Archive and University of Toronto. </td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
Though the building no longer exists, the story lingers to remind us of the truth of Liverpool’s unquestioned central role in one of the major forces that shaped the world as we know it today. </div>
</div>
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgpFuQPfiQyGCnKF4zFwn1FX5J1o-aKeEezLHXDh9SNircMu-eAFjf8ufnjKVl9O9YVA7hBYtrxUHIcL2wTBf34jqW2dVZDkLpTIbqExJJAegnU5tY111BiQZl-_0FG54VxqFxIV2YFw/s1600/Shakespeare.JPG" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="271" data-original-width="340" height="159" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgpFuQPfiQyGCnKF4zFwn1FX5J1o-aKeEezLHXDh9SNircMu-eAFjf8ufnjKVl9O9YVA7hBYtrxUHIcL2wTBf34jqW2dVZDkLpTIbqExJJAegnU5tY111BiQZl-_0FG54VxqFxIV2YFw/s200/Shakespeare.JPG" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><div class="MsoNormal">
The Shakespeare Theatre.<br />
Source: liverpoolpicturebook.com</div>
</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Over a century later, in another theatre- <a href="https://www.liverpoolpicturebook.com/2013/01/TheShakespeareTheatre.html">The Shakespeare</a> - a
stone’s throw away, a young Black American actor was appearing in a play in
which his character was required to whistle. He was totally incapable of doing
this, so he was asked to sing instead. Somewhere on Fraser Street, Liverpool,
where there is now only a car park, was heard on the professional stage for the
first time in Britain, the glorious singing voice of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Robeson">Paul Robeson.</a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
</div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1D8rc6Nq-DDuqYgkyyeCA0UGew6p7bdchSc_-RXbT9N8k8x9Zs7tBGxxfU5BAxniDgUzPuOpqNrj5sLW4xRy3s7rwjk9lNAhEH2UTmdbDZBye5rIvwIxb9gveg5LPvnFMq9UuEwo4xw/s1600/Wotten+plaque+Dan+Lewis.jpg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1080" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1D8rc6Nq-DDuqYgkyyeCA0UGew6p7bdchSc_-RXbT9N8k8x9Zs7tBGxxfU5BAxniDgUzPuOpqNrj5sLW4xRy3s7rwjk9lNAhEH2UTmdbDZBye5rIvwIxb9gveg5LPvnFMq9UuEwo4xw/s200/Wotten+plaque+Dan+Lewis.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><div class="MsoNormal">
Charles Wotten plaque</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Image: Dan Lewis</div>
</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal">
One wonders how welcome Robeson felt on that his first visit
to the city, for only three years earlier - June 5, 1919, the city had witnessed a race riot in which a young Black man was chased by a mob into the river at Queen’s Dock, pelted with rocks, and drowned. His name was Charles Wotten, and he has been memorialized on a plaque on a three-foot-high stone dock bollard since early 2017. Some may consider it unsatisfactory that Liverpool’s first race riot of the 20<sup>th</sup> century - and its only victim - should
be marked in so remote and seemingly so insignificant a spot, but that was not
always the case. In 1974, with support from Liverpool City Council and in
recognition of the fact that there was poor representation of Black people in
higher education, the Charles Wootton [sic] College for Further Education was
set up, and it catered primarily to Black people from the Liverpool 8 area, and
the city. “The Charlie,” as locals called it, was housed in a converted
Georgian building at 248 Upper Parliament Street and became something of a
landmark in the city: one that not only kept the young man’s name alive, but
also became a symbol for Black self-help and advancement in a city that has
always struggled with its slave-trading history. Sadly, the Charlie closed its
doors in 1994, for reasons too numerous and complex to address here, seemingly
reflecting a halt in the progress that it represented. The building is now an
anonymous block of flats, with no indication that it was ever a significant
part of Liverpool’s Black History.</div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhg5ba5AjtTaz_YmABWCDva4s-04lMnaYO9yWPL_Qgi95MCiVztv2bOB1o1fRUGm9U1sOFdqrxQ7U7nsE-rfp-JySqjbaDGKxPbi2wEEAQQ_PmxPat29XXY5DFP76S7_CXIdMPAuAewAw/s1600/Stanley+House+2+-+Copy.jpg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="720" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhg5ba5AjtTaz_YmABWCDva4s-04lMnaYO9yWPL_Qgi95MCiVztv2bOB1o1fRUGm9U1sOFdqrxQ7U7nsE-rfp-JySqjbaDGKxPbi2wEEAQQ_PmxPat29XXY5DFP76S7_CXIdMPAuAewAw/s200/Stanley+House+2+-+Copy.jpg" width="150" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><div class="MsoNormal">
Stanley House Youth</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Source: Liverpool 8 and Liverpool 1 <br />
Old Photos Group (facebook) </div>
</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
A few blocks away, one comes to a much more modern building,
Gladstone Court - another block of flats. It occupies the site of what was
once Stanley House, a community centre opened in 1946 for the local Black
community, with funding from the Colonial Office.<br />
<br />
At its height, it provided
activities and facilities for all ages, literally from cradle to grave. In its basement,
a Black vocal group called <a href="https://nostalgiacentral.com/music/artists-a-to-k/artists-c/chants/">The Chants</a> was formed in the early 1960s.<br />
<br />
They so
impressed two white musicians that they persuaded the singers to let their
group of four white boys be their opening act in one of their gigs some weeks
later.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuCnvl6tb8j1eBRwzpyve19cn1-khgOFZCm2tVq1Nfo7fwUX2kbYFRHQNUierPf5XGgWjWx1BZz-wR6tvniVYaXVI7rZTuU0umkki_CgTWYukieHwwmtU5J6PHyyq07c1OFegXbVJ_Fw/s1600/Stanley+House+3+-+Copy.jpg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="359" data-original-width="500" height="229" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuCnvl6tb8j1eBRwzpyve19cn1-khgOFZCm2tVq1Nfo7fwUX2kbYFRHQNUierPf5XGgWjWx1BZz-wR6tvniVYaXVI7rZTuU0umkki_CgTWYukieHwwmtU5J6PHyyq07c1OFegXbVJ_Fw/s320/Stanley+House+3+-+Copy.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><div class="MsoNormal">
The Derelict Stanley House</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
replaced by Gladstone Court<br />
Source: Philip Mayer, flickr</div>
</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
John Lennon and Paul McCartney, like countless other white musicians<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">,</b> had also been regular attendees at
many of the dozens of clubs on and around Upper Parliament Street – like the
Gladray, The Pink Flamingo, The Beacon, The Somali, Rachael’s, The Nigerian, where Black musicians from Liverpool and beyond, played all kinds of music from
the US, the Caribbean, Africa and elsewhere - on their way to creating what
would eventually become known as the Mersey Beat. It is likely however that most
tourists travelling from the Cavern Club or the Beatles Museum to Penny Lane
would drive along Upper Parliament Street or Princes Avenue without realizing
how much modern Pop Music was spawned behind the facades and in the basements
of the buildings they were driving past.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWnVC6fz9hFalhfdc7baeWTGqsLHzLAkf4Jq0Od4yxY_nWs456-Y8ydTo7Cz37PA3-uw6_K0hChW_vYkROoT1HbPR27QgGdmSOFYjqQ656wReYF2OQctRwFPY7HhnrFGeHXT-75laddQ/s1600/Pastor+Daniels+-+Copy.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="215" data-original-width="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWnVC6fz9hFalhfdc7baeWTGqsLHzLAkf4Jq0Od4yxY_nWs456-Y8ydTo7Cz37PA3-uw6_K0hChW_vYkROoT1HbPR27QgGdmSOFYjqQ656wReYF2OQctRwFPY7HhnrFGeHXT-75laddQ/s1600/Pastor+Daniels+-+Copy.jpg" /></a>The father of the founder of the aforementioned group, The
Chants, had first arrived in Liverpool from the Gold Coast (Ghana) around 1930,
and soon became organist and choirmaster at a church called The African
Churches Mission, started in 1931 by a Nigerian man called Pastor Daniels
Ekarte. From the Mission, Pastor Daniels provided food and shelter to the poor
of the Dingle area of Toxteth, to many Black immigrants who found themselves
homeless or destitute, and to children abandoned by white mothers because they
were the result of liaisons with Black men, some of them American GIs stationed
nearby in WWII. For 33 years, he heroically continued with this work despite
being repeatedly denied assistance from the City Council, and finally the
Mission was demolished in 1964. In the early 2000s, a housing association built
a block of flats on that site. It would have been nice if they had named it after
Pastor Daniels, but they didn’t.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjn8U66G8ZDN7Xrzd3oJT2-7uFnp0R4X7M5Z-Ii-HKozRTLmD0JfHLKs09UbVIFlqYpFQKvaE-brBMLneXMK4pwlk5_JQHja9YFqFxxWakMWqzmqJP1RJkKPIG5wXmyxfZS-e7ZvbCGA/s1600/John+Archer+Hall.jpg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="329" data-original-width="522" height="201" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjn8U66G8ZDN7Xrzd3oJT2-7uFnp0R4X7M5Z-Ii-HKozRTLmD0JfHLKs09UbVIFlqYpFQKvaE-brBMLneXMK4pwlk5_JQHja9YFqFxxWakMWqzmqJP1RJkKPIG5wXmyxfZS-e7ZvbCGA/s320/John+Archer+Hall.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">John Archer Hall<br />
Source: geograph.org.uk</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
One building nearby actually bears the name of probably
Liverpool’s most illustrious Black son. Born near the Brownlow Hill Workplace
in 1863 to a Barbadian father and Irish mother, John Archer became Britain’s
first (or second, if recent research is correct) Black mayor, in the Battersea
borough of London, fifty years later. <a href="https://artuk.org/discover/stories/john-archer-londons-first-black-mayor">A fine portrait of him</a>, painted about
fifteen years ago by a Liverpool-born Black artist hangs proudly in Liverpool’s
Town Hall, and at the junction between Upper Hill Street and Windsor Street in
Toxteth, John Archer Hall is a well-used building, among whose uses are as an
arts venue, offices for some Third Sector companies, and a community garden.
Mr. Archer would be proud that his name is associated with such worthy causes
so long after his death, but it would ironically also support the argument that
as a Liverpool-born Black person, you often have to leave Liverpool to succeed
professionally.</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
Many immigrants do thrive though - right there on Upper
Parliament Street itself, one will find several African doctors working in the
Women’s Hospital. In my own case, having completed my training at the Liverpool
School of Architecture in 1992, I fared pretty well as a self-employed
architect in the years leading up to, and following the millennium, with
buildings here and around the North West. When I decided in the mid-2000s to
become a developer however, things began to unravel, to such an extent that in
2009 I was forced to liquidate my architectural and property development
companies. I did keep a community-interest company dormant, with the aim of
resurrecting it at some future date, in case any of my “dreams deferred” looked
like they might one day come to fruition.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-mRbAd4nNmGPfHwlPZJ9kEn8_jgLfK6V3qYKd-t84RNNujHvG7LArgQfSV1cVhLYO6EqL3f-tzkG99oUdifGgfEMjIPpIu1RW4x7vMGrRT6e7jPnV_Eb0EIGR5ztSM-BJ1g7H8mnASQ/s1600/Upper+Parliament+St+Sales+image.gif" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="250" data-original-width="177" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-mRbAd4nNmGPfHwlPZJ9kEn8_jgLfK6V3qYKd-t84RNNujHvG7LArgQfSV1cVhLYO6EqL3f-tzkG99oUdifGgfEMjIPpIu1RW4x7vMGrRT6e7jPnV_Eb0EIGR5ztSM-BJ1g7H8mnASQ/s320/Upper+Parliament+St+Sales+image.gif" width="225" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><div class="MsoNormal">
52-56 Upper Parliament St. <br />
Sales Brochure (2008)<br />
The site remains undeveloped</div>
<br />
<br />
<br /></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="text-align: center;">Prior to that, shattered dreams included a showcase green block of flats which needed financial support from Liverpool City Council to fill a funding shortfall due to the expense of green technologies. After about two years of asking, the Council finally said they would consider providing some funding the following year, but this came too late to prevent the site being repossessed by the lending institution. Elsewhere, I was gazumped by a Housing Association on another site owned by Sefton Council, without correct due diligence procedures having been followed. I tried to stand my ground, and eventually an investigation was commissioned by the Housing Corporation (now Homes England). The association’s own auditors were engaged, and they never asked me a single question. Their report, obtained only after an intervention by my MP, confirmed lack of due process but still cleared the organisation on a technicality. A few years later, Cosmopolitan Housing Association went bust, and the ratings agency Moody’s downgraded the credit rating of the entire Social Housing sector, citing </span><i style="text-align: center;">poor regulation</i><span style="text-align: center;"> as a major factor in their decision. After about five years out of the game (I have been touring nationally and internationally as a <a href="http://www.tayoalukoandfriends.com/">theatrical performer</a> since 2008), another idea emerged – for a multi-generational housing community on a site owned by Liverpool City Council in East Liverpool, for which I negotiated a three-year Option to secure planning approval, partnership and finance. I revived my community-interest company (CIC) and very, very slowly (almost three years) got to a position where I accepted a lucrative partnership offer from a private-sector developer, although they weren’t interested in the initial idea, and even less so in the CIC. I requested more time from the council, and permission to change the CIC to a Limited Company. They took four months to grant a three-month extension and to inform me, without explanation, that I couldn’t change the company status. That developer walked away, and I was left with a few months to find alternatives. I was making progress with that, but the Council wouldn’t give any more time and withdrew the Option in February, reclaiming the site with the benefit of the planning permission I had obtained and paid for, with the loss of five years’ work and thousands of pounds to me personally.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNx8gnGwEaVOPGHN9uSW8diIhCXB0e0Dyg6QnO3sUBCsURfyDJczehyphenhyphensSZXPrnDXHelK0ur0guHArylLJU5S91WC0lzJmU4-8K935i3rM6Nx73mj2EKsR2b3-JfVk-TG_Ty4i3y7P_Sw/s1600/62+Rodney.jpg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="640" data-original-width="477" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNx8gnGwEaVOPGHN9uSW8diIhCXB0e0Dyg6QnO3sUBCsURfyDJczehyphenhyphensSZXPrnDXHelK0ur0guHArylLJU5S91WC0lzJmU4-8K935i3rM6Nx73mj2EKsR2b3-JfVk-TG_Ty4i3y7P_Sw/s200/62+Rodney.jpg" width="148" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">62 Rodney Street<br />
Source: ipernity.com</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Someone suggested that if I had drugs money to launder, it would have been a different story. I won't comment other than to say that even here, one can find historical precedent. One particular house on Rodney Street (named after the Admiral that saved Jamaica for the Crown against France), No. 62 was built by one John Gladstone, owner of slave plantations in Jamaica and Demerera. When the Slavery Abolition Act was passed in 1833, Gladstone received the largest compensation on record - <span style="font-family: inherit;">£83 million in today's money. His son William would become British Prime Minister four times.</span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<span face=""arial" , "sans-serif"" lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Had my dreams come to fruition, I wouldn’t have been the
first Black developer, or entrepreneur, in the city. Most of the clubs
mentioned earlier were Black owned, though they no longer exist. It would be difficult
to list the number of Black-owned lodging houses (where else would Black people
find accommodation up to the middle of the last century?) that were compulsorily acquired in a so-called slum clearance, and made way for the expansion of the University in the 1960s. Much more recently, another
Nigerian made national headlines when his company succeeded in developing many
homes for some housing associations in the city in the mid 2000s. His company
sadly no longer exists, and his recounting of the difficulties he had along the
way may suggest one of the reasons. Sneaking a peak at his file during a
meeting with a bank manager once, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/2003/mar/09/raceintheuk.theobserver">he told the Observer</a>, he saw a card on
which was written, 'Black, Nigerian, Liverpool, Living in Toxteth, High Risk.'</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Following the Liverpool 8 uprising (the local description of
the “Toxteth riots” of 1981), the Granby Triangle, the former centre of
Liverpool’s Black population, is only now recovering from over thirty years of blight, as the
vast majority of millions of pounds of regeneration money that flowed into the city
as a result of the uprising seemed to bypass the area.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The 1989 Gifford Report on the uprising confirmed what the
community had warned about in the years leading up to the riots: that such an
explosion was inevitable because racial discrimination in the city was
“uniquely horrific.” This would certainly have been at the back of the minds of
the city’s leaders when in December 1999 they issued a formal letter of apology
for the city’s involvement in the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade. It reads in part:
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“The City Council hereby commits itself
to work closely with Liverpool communities and partners and with peoples of
those countries which have carried the burden of the slave trade. The Council
also commits itself to programmes of action with full participation of
Liverpool's Black communities which will seek to combat all forms of racism and
discrimination and will recognise and respond to the city's multiracial
inheritance and celebrate the skills and talent of all its people."</i> <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Twenty years on, I am sorry not to be able to offer myself
as an example of this commitment having been met, nor does anybody else readily
come to mind. I can however try to see what else is happening in the heart of
Black Liverpool, in the world of property development. Let’s go back to Upper
Parliament Street. </div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The Merseyside Caribbean Centre is a small building on a
large piece of land owned by the City Council, leased to the Caribbean
Community since the 1960s. In its heyday in the 1990s, the centre attracted
visitors from all over the country to the annual carnival and to multiple
year-round events, but it closed in 2013, the site now serving mostly as a car
park for the Liverpool Women’s Hospital </div>
opposite.<br />
<br />
A community-interest Company called the African Caribbean Heritage Centre recently took up responsibility for its residual affairs, which now include dealing with a private developer (introduced to them by the council) who has drawn up a scheme for over 400 residential units, on the understanding that a new Caribbean Community Centre will be included somewhere in the development, although affordability of the flats to the local community didn’t appear to be uppermost in the developers’ or Council’s minds.<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTYI0huQOYf0fmwI_A3fe7nogP7FS1gw388u3RndjZMI5Aa_dxzzQnFCG1jxIVZS8aTbQD8aGqpUOFAqQSqZIO7zVmhHLNwv5snbfSCBVdXEbhu65BHO3h1fGM-vYi40RmywOa2Gq6Uw/s1600/Caribbean+-+Copy.jpg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="540" data-original-width="960" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTYI0huQOYf0fmwI_A3fe7nogP7FS1gw388u3RndjZMI5Aa_dxzzQnFCG1jxIVZS8aTbQD8aGqpUOFAqQSqZIO7zVmhHLNwv5snbfSCBVdXEbhu65BHO3h1fGM-vYi40RmywOa2Gq6Uw/s320/Caribbean+-+Copy.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Source: Save the l8 Caribbean Centre (facebook)/<br />
Barbara Ainsworth</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
One tragic story associated with the Caribbean Centre concerns
the son of one of the Jamaican men who was a regular there in the 1980s. In
2005, Anthony Walker was brutally murdered by a pair of racists, in a case that
gripped the nation as much as Stephen Lawrence’s murder in London had, just
over a decade earlier. In addition to charitable educational foundations, these
two young men are memorialized in buildings: Walker in a large room – the
Anthony Walker Education Centre in the International Slavery Museum at Albert
Dock, and Lawrence in a building at Greenwich University. In Liverpool, it
seems that as a murder victim, you have to have been world famous and foreign
to be accorded such an honour: the International Slavery Museum renamed one of
their buildings after Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in 2013, and there is a Steve
Biko Court in Liverpool 8.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-XmcXCZL1ewR9bNOTWaslG06lp3BkK7DVo2UJvfjAXivogNcKQntDPGQx9Po8L1jDpYv8boFIabo9yz4NlxLVBqf3Hfp6losj0WIbLcCHMsxTFG0wow0wam11cEThTH89YSYllxSAUA/s1600/Dr-Martin-Luther-King-Building.jpg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="394" data-original-width="700" height="112" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-XmcXCZL1ewR9bNOTWaslG06lp3BkK7DVo2UJvfjAXivogNcKQntDPGQx9Po8L1jDpYv8boFIabo9yz4NlxLVBqf3Hfp6losj0WIbLcCHMsxTFG0wow0wam11cEThTH89YSYllxSAUA/s200/Dr-Martin-Luther-King-Building.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">MLK Jr. Building<br />
International Slavery Museum<br />
Source: The Guide, Liverpool </td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Dr. King famously spoke of his dreams of racial equality,
peace and justice. Stephen Lawrence dreamed of being an architect, Anthony
Walker a lawyer. One can only speculate what Charles Wotten’s dreams were
before the salt water of the Mersey filled his lungs in June 1919, but they
would certainly have been similar to most people’s: to be healthy, happy and
well fed, and to do good for oneself, one’s family and for society in general. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
I am grateful that my own dreams of developing property
for social and environmental good have cost me only money, time and faith in
the city I call home, and not my life. I have seen my local MP about the series
of resistances I have experienced, and she has taken it up with the new Chief
Executive of the Council. While one cannot expect a finding similar to that
which followed the enquiry into the police handling of the Stephen Lawrence murder
(in which the Met was described as “institutionally racist”), I can’t help
feeling justified in describing my treatment by Liverpool as “institutional
cruelty” at the very least.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Nonetheless, I have one new dream to share. I have a dream
that in a few years, the site of the former Caribbean Centre will be developed
into social housing primarily for people of African descent, regardless of financial
means. I have a dream that the development will be led by a community-owned
company, using Black developers, architects, builders and the like. I have a
dream that it will be self-sustaining, spawning several thriving community-interest companies. I have a dream that little Black boys and little Black
girls will live and play there together, with their mothers and fathers, their
grandmothers and grandfathers, all caring for one another and enjoying together
beautiful music, art, stories and good, clean air. I have a dream to share. I
have a dream that Liverpool City Council, with several Black men and women in
its leadership, will be a national and international example of excellence in
promoting community cohesion and prioritizing people over profit. I have a
dream that all the contributions that Black people have made to Liverpool, and
to the world from Liverpool, will be properly recognised in the naming of
streets and buildings, and that people will come from far and wide to celebrate
and marvel at their achievements. I have a dream to share.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I’m sure many Liverpudlians – Black, White, Brown, Yellow,
whatever - would share this dream.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And the council? Well, if the extent of their creativity is
to use a community-interest company’s legal status to thwart a great idea, I
fear that they might be institutionally incapable of sharing this dream.<br />
<br />
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Dedicated to the memory of three men whose funerals I attended in the
space of a single week at the end of June 2019:</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Alhaji Captain Miftah Osi-Efa</b>, one of the
founder-members of the Al Rahma Mosque, Liverpool.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Paul Agoro</b>, one of the founders of the Granby
Residents Association, who successfully resisted plans for the wholesale demolition
of the Granby Triangle.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b>Bala Lloyd-Evans</b>, whose first business idea was in employment for ex offenders, but was knifed to death in an unprovoked attack. His funeral reception was held at
the Caribbean Centre.<br />
<br />
<b>UPDATE 1, 20 Nov 2019. </b>On September 6, following an email from Dame Louise Ellman MP to Tony Reeves, the Council's Chief Executive, a meeting was convened which included David Turner and Pauline Iveney of the Property and Asset Management Services Department (PAMS), the Council solicitor Brian Beattie, Dame Louise and myself. In the meeting PAMS stated, disingenuously, that they had informed me through my solicitor of the reasons for denying the change to a limited company. At Dame Louise's request, they promised to forward proof of this. As of November 1, this had still not been sent, and Dame Louise repeated her request, to no avail. She has now resigned as an MP.<br />
<br />
<b>UPDATE 2, 2 Dec 2019. </b>The prospective Labour Parliamentary Candidate to replace Ms. Ellman is Ms. Kim Johnson, who happens to be a local Black woman. If she decides to take on this case, another piece of information she will have is that at the aforesaid meeting of September 6, PAMS confirmed that the party they were selling to (no tender, advertising, anything) is Cobalt Housing Association, with whose John Westerside I had been negotiating when the Option was terminated. What communications there had been between Cobalt and PAMS during that negotiation process will probably never be known, but my reluctance to trust housing associations is probably vindicated.<br />
<br />
<b>UPDATE 3, 19 Dec 2019. </b>The Liverpool Echo reported today that <a href="https://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/liverpool-news/city-property-developer-council-regeneration-17445045?fbclid=IwAR2qEBmUEV-dIMfiQeZPN_vX3UAjOZH7V_UL2aOjiWqwZlbSMOycarK621Y">two arrests</a> were made by the police: one is the managing director of Elliot's the developer behind the thwarted take-over of the site of the Merseyside Caribbean Centre and to whom a site previously earmarked for a Slavery Memorial, St. James's Church, had been sold, for housing. The other person under investigation is the Council's Head of Regeneration, under whom PAMS serve.<br />
<br />
<b>UPDATE 4, 28 April 2020. </b>My new MP, Kim Johnson, finally made contact three weeks ago. It appears that the allocation of staff to her following her election to Parliament has been particularly tardy. We have started liaising, and Covid-19 notwithstanding, I remain hopeful that her intervention will help get to the bottom of this.<br />
<br />
<b>UPDATE 5, 12 May 2020.</b> On the advice of a local councillor, I submitted a formal complaint online. If not resolved to my satisfaction, it could eventually get to the Local Council Ombudsman. In going back through historic correspondence and writing it up, it seems that the case is even more shocking than I realised! It can be read <a href="https://www.tayoalukoandfriends.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/complaint-3941025.pdf">here</a>.<br />
<br />
<b>UPDATE 6. 3 July 2020. </b>Complaints procedure in motion with Liverpool City Council. It is currently being investigated by a Council officer. Letter <a href="https://www.tayoalukoandfriends.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Letter-4-1823477-Statement-of-Complaint-17-June.pdf.pdf">here</a>.<br />
<br />
<b>UPDATE 7. 9 July 2020</b>. <a href="https://www.tayoalukoandfriends.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Response-Letter-Complaint-1823477-July-2020.pdf.pdf">Letter received</a> today from the Council, rejecting my complaint in its entirety. I will proceed to the Local Government Ombudsman.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b>UPDATE 8. April 6, 2021.</b> Local Government Ombudsman, after much correspondence, states (contrary to much apparent evidence of foul play and Council withholding of evidence) that she won't investigate the case, as she is "<a href="https://www.tayoalukoandfriends.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Ombudsman-Assessment-final-decision.pdf" target="_blank">unlikely to find fault in the Council's actions</a>." I requested a review of the case, pending receipt of information requested from the Council under the Freedom of Information Act, being strangely delayed. Ombudsman <a href="https://www.tayoalukoandfriends.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Ombudsman-correspondence-re-extension-of-review-request-deadline.pdf" target="_blank">would not confirm</a> that I would be granted an extension of time in which to request the review. I referred the matter to the Information Commissioner's Office, who eventually compelled the Council to release documentation, finally received 30 October. Of the 80 pages, only 5 were of any interest, and they were heavily, or <a href="https://www.tayoalukoandfriends.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Tayo-LCC-iNFORMATION-relevant-pages.pdf" target="_blank">completely redacted</a>. This basically provided me with no more information than I had at the beginning of the process. A further complaint to the ICO was referred to them, and on 29 March they wrote to say that my complaint was <a href="https://www.tayoalukoandfriends.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/LCC-to-TA-re-Complaint-to-ICO-Not-upheld-29-Mar-21.pdf" target="_blank">not upheld</a>.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b>UPDATE 9. October 25, 2022.</b> 18 months after first complaining to the Information Commissioner, LCC has finally released what it referred to as unredacted copies of the previously redacted documentation. Despite my drawing the commissioner's attention to the fact that very little new information revealed and that further concealment of information was obvious, the commissioner has issued a decision notice favouring the Council. I have lodged an appeal to the General Regulatory Chamber of HM Courts and Tribunals Service. It includes what I call <a href="https://www.tayoalukoandfriends.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/First-Tier-Appeal-HM-Courts-and-Tribunals-Service.pdf" target="_blank">the evidence</a> of concealment.</div>
<span style="font-size: large;"><b></b></span>Tayo Alukohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04629933520426570891noreply@blogger.com29tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1318476533814195.post-22739978477701012632018-08-03T04:45:00.002-07:002018-09-02T06:17:52.196-07:00Blackface in Wales? Bryn Terfel Sings Paul Robeson<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilGUp8uMhCqC7FBXZy7GnzVnsiP42dehT31RthNmpCTduqghSxGsDTOMjCe-fSQRGcewkccovJWBogXj_niWVwRy6wXNvcNkRMnzyBI_0VKpIpzbFPcZ97U5JvEwQcVkVRVs6Ji2gBtg/s1600/Bryn+Robeson.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="173" data-original-width="292" height="118" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilGUp8uMhCqC7FBXZy7GnzVnsiP42dehT31RthNmpCTduqghSxGsDTOMjCe-fSQRGcewkccovJWBogXj_niWVwRy6wXNvcNkRMnzyBI_0VKpIpzbFPcZ97U5JvEwQcVkVRVs6Ji2gBtg/s200/Bryn+Robeson.jpg" width="200" /></a>My eyebrow rose involuntarily the other day when I read that
a show about Paul Robeson with Welsh opera star <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bryn_Terfel">Bryn Terfel</a> in the lead role
had sold out months ahead of its premiere next weekend as part of the
National<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Eistedffodd in Cardiff. A
mistake, surely? Reading the blurb, it turns out that the production has the
blessing of the Robeson family and that it received generous corporate
sponsorship. One other tiny detail was that Sir Bryn plays Mr. Jones, Robeson’s
“greatest fan.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(Sigh of relief).<br />
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
As someone who has been performing my own Robeson play for
over ten years, and putting aside the slight envy of such a large audience,
corporate sponsorship and all, I am pleased that he is receiving this renewed attention,
over forty years after his death.<br />
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Paul Robeson’s story not only deserves to be told, its
retelling is, to my mind, desperately urgent in today’s divided world. However,
there will be those who question the legitimacy of a white man being the teller
of this important tale. I happen not to be one of those, for if Robeson taught
me anything, it is that the human condition demands that all people struggle
together for justice and for peace, that this involves sharing each other’s
stories, and that those stories are often most effectively <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">sung</i>. <br />
<br /></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCvrXgT5Kzbf3-dsTmxv1cg2SZqh5Ahhm1q4vAtRS6t7D6baAu2Np0hStCCCHt4YL6KcGfSwhrdcCS6ukW05SpZSaeaFpSqV4tpk7OT72XNqEjCbZyNmV4tWbc4wzZY3ZvqqwUzE7tFQ/s1600/MissLittlewoodRSC2018SophiaNomveteClareBurt.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1067" data-original-width="1600" height="133" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCvrXgT5Kzbf3-dsTmxv1cg2SZqh5Ahhm1q4vAtRS6t7D6baAu2Np0hStCCCHt4YL6KcGfSwhrdcCS6ukW05SpZSaeaFpSqV4tpk7OT72XNqEjCbZyNmV4tWbc4wzZY3ZvqqwUzE7tFQ/s200/MissLittlewoodRSC2018SophiaNomveteClareBurt.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Miss Littlewood</i>, RSC</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div style="text-align: right;">
</div>
Many British theatregoers will be familiar with the power of
this combination of words and song in the work of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joan_Littlewood">Joan Littlewood</a>, that famous
revolutionary of the theatre, whose life story has been told in a musical <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Miss Littlewood </i>at the RSC recently. Seven
singer-actors share the title role. Three of those actors happened to be Black,
and interestingly, the reviews I have seen don’t mention that fact. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
A recent theatrical production I had the pleasure to attend also
illustrates the power, not just of song as a weapon of struggle, but of people
of different races and nationalities getting together to tell historical
stories which have a powerful resonance today. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><b><a href="http://www.coliseum.org.uk/plays/bread-roses/">Bread and Roses</a></b></i> at the Oldham Coliseum told the story of the 1912
strike in Lawrence, Massachusetts where an almost entirely immigrant population
of workers who had long suffered extreme exploitation at the hands of the town’s
mill owners were supported by the IWW (Industrial Workers of the World – the
“Wobblies”) who used song as one of the weapons that eventually contributed to
their victory. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><br />
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Bread and Roses</i>,
the multiracial cast included a Black woman taking the part of the white
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Gurley_Flynn">Elizabeth Gurley Flynn</a>. The back story for the Black Flynn differed from that
of the real woman, but added another dimension to the tale – the existence of a
Black middle class, and solidarity and empathy across the race and class
divide. That the strike was led and won by women and that it united people of
disparate origins (strike meetings were reportedly held in twenty-five
languages) are historical facts that can provide inspiration and instruction to
us today, as our leaders continue to try to divide us and scare us with the
threat of unbridled immigration.<br />
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Bread and Roses’s </i><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>run in Oldham was short, and it would be a
travesty not to revive it for a national tour and a long run in London (Miss
Littlewood’s Theatre Royal Stratford East would be a fitting home). Over a
century after the story it brilliantly told unfolded, all the issues are with
us today, thanks to the divisive economics and politics of the ensuing decades.
For those lamenting the ongoing decline of Trade Unionism here and
internationally, the show will be nothing short of inspiring, and can even be
used as a recruiting tool with which to revive the movement, as the stories of
numerous brave individuals, told beautifully through song, will certainly touch
the hearts of all but the emotionally dead.<br />
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Trade Unions and song are central to the bonds that link
Paul Robeson to Wales, for it was the singing of members of their miners union
who had marched to London to highlight their plight that drew Robeson’s
attention, and won them his unrelenting support subsequently. It is<br />
therefore
absolutely fitting for a Welshman to tell his story today. <br />
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEik62Td1nGPmbumV2rqm8cbLO5a1ihwzqod_oCffJfXTsT0XFFsssjZbTaAcLAyt0SVswYvvennd4cmXyJj8xNE0TMOWYkAkLl9WzZSAw8u8PqzSSwXNIDztxOC6x1it7bixzqzCIjaFg/s1600/All+black.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="270" data-original-width="480" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEik62Td1nGPmbumV2rqm8cbLO5a1ihwzqod_oCffJfXTsT0XFFsssjZbTaAcLAyt0SVswYvvennd4cmXyJj8xNE0TMOWYkAkLl9WzZSAw8u8PqzSSwXNIDztxOC6x1it7bixzqzCIjaFg/s320/All+black.jpg" width="320" /></a>In the film that Robeson made with the miners telling the
story about that strike – <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><b><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Proud_Valley">Proud Valley</a></b> – </i>when
in response to one miner objecting to a Black man being given a job down the
mine, one leader retorted, “We’re all black down ‘ere, aren't we?”<br />
<br />
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So sing on, Sir Bryn, and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">pob lwc.</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Tayo Aluko is the writer and performer of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="http://www.callmrrobeson.com/">Call Mr. Robeson</a></i> and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="http://www.justanordinarylawyer.com/">Just An Ordinary Lawyer</a></i></div>
<br />Tayo Alukohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04629933520426570891noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1318476533814195.post-60468363122641648592017-01-04T04:42:00.001-08:002017-01-05T10:02:21.526-08:00The Fictions, The Truths, The Songs of Empire<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">"My client, a petty criminal, was accused of involvement in a jewellers’ robbery. For once, he had a cast-iron alibi, but presenting the truth in court would jeopardise British national security. You see, on the night in question, he was in Nairobi, not London. He had gone on His Majesty’s service, with a sack full British Pounds. His mission was to recruit willing Kenyans to testify against one Jomo Kenyatta, implicating him in being a leader in the Mau Mau."</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">This scenario is described by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunji_Sowande">Tunji Sowande</a>, a Nigerian barrister in London, referring to his most memorable case, from 1954.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">Actually, it’s fiction. Most - well, some of it. The fictional parts are the character of the petty criminal, the robbery and the impending court case. The first of the two “truths” is that the British Government of the day indeed manufactured evidence against the man who eventually became the first President of independent Kenya. They bribed Kenyans to present this “purchased evidence” in court, and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jomo_Kenyatta">Kenyatta</a> was thrown in jail for seven years. The seeds had been sewn in the British psyche that the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mau_Mau_Uprising">Mau Mau </a>(or the <a href="http://kenya%20land%20and%20freedom%20army/">Kenya Land and Freedom Army</a> to use the name they gave themselves) – the movement resisting the occupation of their land by White settlers were not freedom fighters but terrorists wantonly massacring innocent people who had the misfortune of belonging to a race that went to spread civilisation, Christianity and farming knowledge to this part of “the Dark Continent.” The fact that the climate was particularly favourable, and the land extremely fertile and rich in precious minerals was “purely coincidental, your Honour.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">Evidence that Kenyatta and his “co-conspirators” presented in their defence probably included that of a man who claimed to have had his nails and buttocks pierced with a sharp pin, been suspended upside down with his hands and legs tied together, and had his testicles crushed with parallel metallic rods - by White British officers. The circumstances were extraordinary of course, because as we all know, the British are otherwise kind, decent chaps. The victim, on the other hand, has a lot to answer for: had he not evaded capture for so long, a Trump Presidency would be the product of an overly-fertile imagination.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">Let me explain: castration was a weapon by Whites against Blacks (and others) – in Africa, the Caribbean, the United States and elsewhere. If that victim had been successfully castrated, say just ten years earlier, he wouldn’t have fathered the boy who would eventually travel to America and impregnate the White woman who would then give birth to one <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/deadlineusa/2008/dec/03/obama-grandfather-maumau-torture">Barack Hussein Obama</a>. I rest my case...</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">The second “truth” is the fact that Tunji Sowande really did exist. Born in colonial Nigeria in 1912, he chose a different path to Kenyatta, studying law in London and staying. Overcoming the predictable racism of the time, he became a barrister, later Britain’s first Black Head of Chambers and eventually first Black judge. He also loved cricket, and in 1978 became a full member of a club you practically have to be born into – the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC), whose ground is Lord’s, and whose committee used to select England Test sides.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">How more “Establishment” could a Nigerian become in England? Once “in” however, Sowande revealed his revolutionary side, and opened doors for others. Long before the word became part of liberal parlance, his chambers was the epitome of diversity – by race, gender and even sexuality. This according to one of his protégés - a woman who before meeting him had struggled for long to get a tenancy because her father was Sri Lankan. <a href="http://www.bvi.gov.vg/media-centre/kim-hollis-qc-appointed-next-bvi-director-public-prosecutions">Kim Hollis</a>, Britain’s first ever minority female QC is now Director of Public Prosecutions in the British Virgin Islands.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">Outside of law and cricket, Sowande travelled Europe and the UK as a musician, equally at home in jazz clubs as a drummer and saxophonist as he was singing in nursing homes or the Temple Church in London’s Inns of Court.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8rYXyYh_d-7G5tMJnz6nKG_pJzT-f18FTPEt_JOQIffP8tzyF3YnCiqmCjSelNjsfU6FFfORcbfwHb4pT0iDEr3p4k9nDpj50_OQ1g4lWWu_ogfpjtKabLAZhSR6wD-0gzr2mf7o1Rg/s1600/Sowande+photo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8rYXyYh_d-7G5tMJnz6nKG_pJzT-f18FTPEt_JOQIffP8tzyF3YnCiqmCjSelNjsfU6FFfORcbfwHb4pT0iDEr3p4k9nDpj50_OQ1g4lWWu_ogfpjtKabLAZhSR6wD-0gzr2mf7o1Rg/s200/Sowande+photo.jpg" width="160" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">Never seen in public without a fine jacket and bow tie, this dapper, quiet, unassuming man was apparently not a political animal. However, one assumes that he observed the events of the day – the jailing of that well-known terrorist, Nelson Mandela; the Vietnam war; King’s assassination; anti-colonial struggles and civil wars in Africa – with considerable interest, even if not with as much passion as cricket.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">
<span style="font-size: medium;">One can only speculate what he would make of today’s world, but I humbly submit that beyond reasonable doubt, even the most strident of “little-Englanders” would accept and welcome Tunji Sowande as “a good immigrant.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="http://www.justanordinarylawyer.com/"><br /></a></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><i><a href="http://www.justanordinarylawyer.com/">Just An Ordinary Lawyer</a>. A play, with songs,</i><span class="m_2465812267086974472gmail-m_-488469099523133430gmail-apple-converted-space"> </span><span style="background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial;">written and performed by Tayo Aluko is at <a href="http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/2718827">Theatro Technis</a>, 38 Crowndale Road, London NW1 1TT between 11 and 28 January, at <a href="http://www.theatreroyal.org.uk/page/3029/Tayo-Aluko-in-Just-an-Ordinary-Lawyer/1376">Theatre Royal, Bath</a> on 16 January 2017, and touring. </span> </span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxGPXvdZaaonBEDIH2BrCgWUPv1O8cVcaJTBp24tn_a__Nd1kQsbiPyQEQo1eeDkCexVk7CQYJq0BRq-vaaghwgTazzVFDODGOjIkF2jQBEH2xuC3y8KMgRpvxSowIGRbyBcYoNLR7EQ/s1600/Lawyer-1st-photo_007.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxGPXvdZaaonBEDIH2BrCgWUPv1O8cVcaJTBp24tn_a__Nd1kQsbiPyQEQo1eeDkCexVk7CQYJq0BRq-vaaghwgTazzVFDODGOjIkF2jQBEH2xuC3y8KMgRpvxSowIGRbyBcYoNLR7EQ/s320/Lawyer-1st-photo_007.jpg" width="212" /></a></span></div>
Tayo Alukohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04629933520426570891noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1318476533814195.post-17045609050811707832016-01-22T22:40:00.000-08:002016-02-10T10:39:31.982-08:00Paul Robeson: 40 Years Dead<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjai_RLcz8wNMIktmnGuhzTnbbQCHy8pMkFgX0BbHMvNKuUXHgUBR16TS0yEZvI-29-7P4E_mj3XfdYaoctsWBADHZdO6q-Yt_mSN8f2QnYEbikFRacX0uzUwk3n9yf73MKlvWLSNUSWQ/s1600/40Yrs+image.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjai_RLcz8wNMIktmnGuhzTnbbQCHy8pMkFgX0BbHMvNKuUXHgUBR16TS0yEZvI-29-7P4E_mj3XfdYaoctsWBADHZdO6q-Yt_mSN8f2QnYEbikFRacX0uzUwk3n9yf73MKlvWLSNUSWQ/s400/40Yrs+image.PNG" width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">“'Kill the N****r Commie.' One of
the placards said that. There were dozens of them, but that’s the only one I recall
(I was only seven). And they were all screaming and shouting, those white men
and women. Then he started to sing, with this impressive, commanding, deep
voice. By the time the second song started, the placards had all come down, and
they were all listening. I thought then
that if music can do this, I want to play music.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">77-year-old retired drummer and
plumber Roger Blank related this story last Sunday, after a Martin Luther King
Day musical celebration at a Baptist Church in Brooklyn which included excerpts
from a play about Paul Robeson. That encounter of his with Robeson had taken
place in New Rochelle in 1946, at a rally in support of Henry Wallace’s unsuccessful
campaign for President under the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_Party_(United_States,_1948)">Progressive Party</a> ticket. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Three years later however, another
mob was less susceptible to Robeson’s artistry, and the outdoor concert
resulted in what would become the infamous <a href="http://www.historytoday.com/roger-hudson/peekskill-riots-1949">Peeksill riots</a> - arguably one of the
lowest points in modern American history, and an episode that lurks too dangerously
in the subconscious, given its contemporary resonances. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText3" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Robeson, apart from being probably the most famous
American artist in the 1930s as a singer of hundreds of songs and spirituals (<i>Ol’ Man River </i>being his most famous),
and as a stage and screen actor, was also a forerunner of the civil rights
movement. He was referred to as “The Tallest Tree in Our Forest” by Blacks at
the height of his fame. It seems something of an injustice that he remains largely
hidden from public consciousness when compared to Dr. King, or even Malcolm X,
who was himself assassinated days before a scheduled meeting with Robeson – requested
by the young minister in recognition of the older man’s pioneering activism and
personal sacrifice. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText3" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText3" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Today, most young activists (and even many middle-aged
ones) of any complexion would struggle to recognize Robeson’s name, despite the
fact that many of his sayings in the first half of the twentieth century can be
applied to today’s national and international situation. Which supporter of the
Black Lives Matter Movement would argue with such dramatic action as leading a
delegation to the United Nations in 1951 to lay <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/We_Charge_Genocide">a charge of genocide</a> against
Black people by their own country – not just through police and civilian
brutality and violence, but through wide economic and health disadvantage? And
for those who stress that <i>ALL </i>lives
matter, he wrote of his personal <i>“belief
in the oneness of humankind, about which I have often spoken in concerts and
elsewhere, [which] has existed within me side by side with my deep attachment
to the cause of my own race ... There is truly a kinship among us all, a basis
for mutual respect and brotherly love.”</i> And peace campaigners today would
surely agree with his 1946 speech in which he declared that <i>“</i><i>The absence of peace in the world today is
due precisely to the efforts of the British, American and other imperialist
powers to retain their control over the peoples of Asia, the Middle East,
Europe and Africa.”<o:p></o:p></i></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoBodyText3" style="text-align: justify;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><i><br /></i></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The sudden and dramatic slide in
his popularity began in April 1949 when he made a speech at the World Peace
Congress in Paris suggesting that African Americans would not fight against the
Soviet Union because they remained second-class citizens in their own country.
Such a stance continues to land people in trouble decades later (most notably
Muhammed Ali), illustrating how far ahead of his time he was. His mass appeal
as an entertainer, when combined with his love for the Soviet Union, his
socialism and internationalism, transformed him into one of the most dangerous
people in the country in the establishment’s eyes, and the campaign to
discredit and denounce him went into full gear immediately after that Paris
speech. Those efforts to suppress his story have been largely successful, and in
fact, it can be said that his character, career and reputation were
assassinated and buried years before he actually died forty years ago - on
January 23, 1976.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Despite whichever of his views
can be considered to have been mistaken (particularly his unrelenting support for
Stalin, some argue), or the phenomenon of Barack Obama, the fact that Robeson’s
words ring so true today suggest that he needs to at least be part of the
national conversation. He embodied the truth that through art, people’s hearts,
minds and souls could be transformed. The 7-year-old Roger Blank would grow up
to tour the country and the world with great artists like Sun Ra, Clark Terry and Sonny
Rollins, not to make money, he says, but to “spread peace and be part of
changing the rhythm of people’s lives, their spirit.” <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Mr. Blank would agree with the
beautiful words of the playwright Marc Connelly, who wrote this in tribute to
Robeson on the occasion of his 44<sup>th</sup> birthday: <i><span style="background: white;">“I suppose by that dreary instrument, the
calendar, it can be contended that you are the contemporary of your friends.
But by more important standards of time measurement, you really represent a
highly desirable tomorrow which, by some lucky accident, we are privileged to
appreciate today.” <o:p></o:p></span></i></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="background: white; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">He would also agree that even though it would be
pure fantasy hope for a day for Robeson in the national calendar, the fortieth
anniversary of his death should not go unmarked today.</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="background: white; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<i><span style="background: white; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">Tayo
Aluko is the British-Nigerian writer and performer of the award-winning play
<a href="http://www.callmrrobeson.com/">Call Mr. Robeson. </a></span></i><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<i><span style="background: white; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Some 40th anniversary events: </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="background: white; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">23 January 2016: <a href="http://www.unitytheatreliverpool.co.uk/whats-on/paul-robeson-40-years-dead.html">Paul Robeson: 40 Years Dead. Concert at Quaker Meeting House, Liverpool </a></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">27 January 2016: <a href="http://www.blackhistorystudies.com/our-services/film-screenings/">Paul Robeson: Celebrating his Life, His Art, His Legacy. PCS Union Headquaters, London</a></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">12 February 2016: <a href="https://www.facebook.com/events/533362993487299/">Paul Robeson: 40 Years Death. Marx Memorial Library, London</a></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
Tayo Alukohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04629933520426570891noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1318476533814195.post-12643627896722605182014-04-20T22:10:00.001-07:002014-04-20T22:37:35.981-07:00EXCULSIVE: The World's Most Famous Political Prisoner Isn't Dead After All.<div class="MsoNormal">
He was convicted of terrorism and treason. According to the
trial judge, the death sentence was an option, but in what some probably
regarded as the greatest error of judgement in modern legal and political
history, he passed a life sentence instead, probably calculating that the accused
would be forgotten in time as he languished in jail for the remainder of his days.
Nelson Mandela eventually became the most famous political prisoner in the
world., and the South African government came to realise the extent of his
appeal when a 70<sup>th</sup> birthday tribute to him at Wembley Stadium in
June 1988 reached a global audience of hundreds of millions, and hastened his release. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Now that Madiba has joined the ancestors, it is interesting
to consider who has inherited that dubious title of the world’s most famous
political prisoner. A number of people come readily to mind: Chelsea (née Bradley)
Manning, who is currently serving a 37-year sentence in a US military jail for
leaking thousands of highly embarrassing US documents, for one. Many believe he too was lucky
to escape the death sentence. The same sentence has also been demanded by many
American patriots for Julian Assange, head of WilkiLeaks, now sheltering under
the protection of the Ecaudorian Embassy in London, for publishing those
documents. These two individuals are, as many have secretly hoped, only rarely
in the news these days. Not quite so with Edward Snowden, who would also face
the death sentence were he to return to the US, as many pundits have also
declared him guilty of high treason for leaking information on US mass
surveillance on its own citizens and on millions of people around the world. He
isn’t in jail either, but continues to cause damaging embarrassment to his
country from his exile in that enemy state, Russia.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
For me, there is no question that the most famous of all
contemporary political prisoners is a man who is entering his sixty-first year in
the State Correctional Institution in Mahanoy, Pennsylvania. It would be a
pleasant surprise if the forthcoming sixtieth birthday of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mumia_Abu-Jamal">Mumia Abu Jamal</a> makes it onto mainstream media the way Mandela’s did, for Abu Jamal’s
supporters are convinced that the media are complicit in consigning this remarkable activist to the dark, shadowy
margins of world consciousness. <br />
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Who is Mumia? Instead of the “terrorist” label that was placed on
Mandela’s head, Mumia is known as a “cop killer”, period. According to his
supporters, he was framed for the murder of a policeman and sentenced
to death, way back in 1982. His real crime? Speaking truth to power, first as a
member of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Panther_Party">Black Panther Party</a> and later as a radio
journalist who bravely used his popular broadcasts to highlight police brutality
against Blacks in Philadelphia and around the USA. It is not at all surprising that
32 whole years after his imprisonment, the Fraternal Order of Police are at the forefront of moves to keep him demonised in the American psyche.
When in 2012 the NAACP Legal Defence Fund finally won a decades-long battle to
have Mumia taken off death row (where he had spent thirty years) and his
sentence commuted to life imprisonment, the FOP must have been very displeased.
It seems they got their revenge when a few months ago, they led a successful campaign
for the Senate to reject President Obama’s nomination for Chief of the US Justice
Department’s Civil Rights Division, as
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debo_P._Adegbile">Debo Adegbile</a> had for a time been acting head of the LDF as Mumia’s appeal was
being prepared. Some would say that
Adegbile’s nomination was a presidential error of judgement too. The coverage
of this episode in <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMXLjHHo60g">Democracy
Now!</a> is quite instructive, as that show’s guests touch on the history of
Mumia’s case as well as the implications of the nominee’s rejection on the
practice of civil rights law in the USA. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
A cursory listen to any of Mumia’s broadcasts from prison will reveal
why he is so reviled by many influential entities in the United States. In his
quest to speak truth to power, few of the world’s most powerful individuals and interest groups have escaped his incredibly wise and incisive analysis and criticism.
Few would have heard his radio commentary last December, tilled “<a href="http://prisonradio.org/media/audio/mumia/mandela-sanitized-600-mumia-abu-jamal-two-shorter-versions-also-recorded">Mandela
Sanitised</a>”, where he paid his own tribute to the great man, but reminded
the world that <i>“</i><i>South African independence ...
opened the door to elective office but closed the door to South Africa’s vast
wealth by putting it in private hands. Dr. Nelson Mandela was hired to
consolidate this state of affairs”. </i>If Mandela’s worshipers couldn’t be spared this “inconvenient truth”
about their hero, and if Abu Jamal is brave enough to buck the lionising trend
in such a public way (as with for example <a href="http://prisonradio.org/media/audio/mumia/land-grab-crimea-303-mumia-abu-jamal">his
recent commentary</a> on the current crisis in Ukraine), it is little wonder
that the powers-that-be in the US want him confined to the obscurity of prison for
the remainder of his days. <o:p></o:p><br />
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
There will be no
Wembley-style celebration of Mumia’s birthday in the UK. There will be some
celebrations in the US. Certainly, Mr. Obama is unlikely to even mention Mumia’s
name – that would be an error of judgement too far. However, as Obama so
happily accepted his role as star turn at the global media circus that was Mr.
Mandela’s memorial service, one cannot help but be struck by the
appropriateness of the words that he so eloquently used at Madiba’s send-off if
they were to be applied to a Mumia tribute on his birthday:<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>“... He accepted the consequences of his actions,
knowing that standing up to powerful interests and injustice carries a price.”<o:p></o:p></i><br />
<i><br /></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 14.25pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; vertical-align: baseline;">
<i>“He understood that ideas cannot be contained by
prison walls, or extinguished by a sniper's bullet.”<o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 14.25pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; vertical-align: baseline;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 14.25pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; vertical-align: baseline;">
<i>“Around the world today, men and women are still
imprisoned for their political beliefs; and are still persecuted for what they
look like, or how they worship, or who they love. That is happening today.”<o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 14.25pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; vertical-align: baseline;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 14.25pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; vertical-align: baseline;">
<i>“There are too many leaders who claim solidarity
with [his] struggle for freedom, but do not tolerate dissent from their own
people.”<o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The last person to
speak at Mandela’s funeral ceremony (Obama and thousands had left the stadium by
then) was the venerable Archbishop Desmond Tutu. His contribution to the event
is nowhere near as memorable as Mr. Obama’s but what does exist elsewhere (on the
<a href="http://freemumia.com/">freemumia.com</a> website in fact) is a video which some might consider to be a most
venerable, most reverend error of judgement: <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=ZoWYfxPkR4g">a
demand for the release of Mumia Abu Jamal</a>. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
If it's good enough
for Archbishop Desmond Tutu, it's good enough for me.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
Sixtieth Birthday Greetings
to Mumia Abu Jamal for April 24, 2014.<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
Tayo Alukohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04629933520426570891noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1318476533814195.post-50718507947241904422014-01-19T16:20:00.000-08:002014-01-20T03:57:20.958-08:00Let's Criminalise The Gays<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
Just over a year ago, I wrote an article which was published (though edited somewhat unfavourably) in a Nigerian newspaper, and I was subjected to much online abuse as a result. I was also told by people close to me that it was very ill-advised. One friend even said that it was good that I was leaving home at the end of a holiday from the UK the day it was published!<br />
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
The recent decision of the Nigerian president to sign an <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/13/nigeria-anti-gay-bill-law-_n_4589227.html">anti-gay bill</a> into law, and the myriad wicked comments one reads in condemnation of gays and those who dare to support them makes me want to share the article afresh. </div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
People keep saying we deserve better leadership. I wonder if they're right after all?</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
I post the original article (published accurately on a Ghanaian website) after this new poem. </div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<b>Let's Criminalise the Gays</b></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<b><br /></b></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
Mr. Mandela made us proud again</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
Made us walk straight and tall</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
Look good in the whole world’s eyes</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
Now let’s criminalise the gays</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
He and others went before</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
Fought so we could be free</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
Accepted hardship, prison, even death</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
But let’s criminalise the gays</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
They have passed us the baton</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
It slips from our oily hands</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
We lose it in polluted waters</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
Still, we’ll criminalise the gays</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
Our leaders are raping our nations</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
Selling our bodies and our wealth</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
Stealing our children’s future</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
Heck - let’s criminalise the gays</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
We who are holier than they</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
Have nothing to declare or hide</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
We’re not major or minor sinners</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
If we criminalise the gays</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
Our God is a merciful God</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
He said "Blessed are the meek"</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
He will be the one to judge</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
But <i>we’ll </i>criminalise
the gays</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
When we criminalise the gays</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
Then look in the mirror and smile</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
Truth stares back unacknowledged:</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
We are <i>UGLIER</i> than the gays</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
Wouldn’t it be funny</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
If when we meet our maker</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
He sends us “the wrong way”</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
'Cos we criminalised the gays?</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
©Tayo Aluko, January 2014</div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
<a href="http://www.modernghana.com/news/437269/1/diet-of-homosexual-fish-to-save-africa.html">Diet of Homosexual Fish to Save Africa?</a></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing">
Modern Ghana, December 27, 2013</div>
Tayo Alukohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04629933520426570891noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1318476533814195.post-61987953624461982152012-12-31T07:33:00.000-08:002014-01-22T06:22:43.114-08:00Chickens Coming Home to Roost Over Cosmopolitan Housing?<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I
understand that Liverpool's Cosmopolitan Housing Group have “experienced
significant challenges” recently, so much so that they may only be rescued by a takeover by Riverside - another Registered Social Landlord (RSL), though this takeover is in itself now doubtful (see <a href="http://www.insidehousing.co.uk/finance/cosmopolitan-deal-in-doubt/6524931.article">Inside Housing 7 December, 2012</a>) . </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I believe that a certain Bill Snell recently resigned as
Chair “for personal reasons”. I happen to have a letter from him which included
a threat of legal action if I didn’t desist from making “spurious and false”
allegations about impropriety in Cosmo, and suggesting that their board were
less than perfect in their duty of scrutinising the staff’s activities. I had
written to Mr. Snell in the hope that he as a new broom would sweep cleaner
than his predecessors who had refused to deal with a complaint I had brought to
them several years earlier. Their imperviousness had caused me to write <a href="http://tayoaluko.blogspot.co.uk/2009/05/no-blacks-no-greens-no-hawks.html">a blog</a>
in frustration in 2009, one line of which now seems prescient: <i>“...With scrutiny of
this level of intensity, would it be unreasonable to fear that if one searches
behind Marybone House's clean facades, one might find festering there much more
malignant malpractice?“</i> I had written to every member of the board
individually, suggesting that “...you and your Board colleagues may want to
satisfy yourselves that CHA’s “normal procedure” does not consist of
intentionally sabotaging - without justification - the innocent and best
intentioned efforts of ordinary professionals to provide decent affordable
housing to the people of Sefton, while earning a decent return in the process.”
I know the board never discussed the matter, and I never once received a
response, until Mr. Snell’s dismissive letter, several years later.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">An
HCA official is quoted as suggesting that poor governance may have a part to
play in Cosmo’s current troubles. I felt a long-overdue vindication for my lonely
campaign when I read that, because it had long been clear to me that governance
appeared to be a problem within the organisation. It is however also troubling
to see how far this appears to extend beyond Cosmo into the regulatory sector. Having had no
satisfaction from Cosmopolitan’s board, I appealed to the Housing Corporation
and found them wanting. They were replaced by the Tenant Services Authority who
were no more helpful. I am doubtful about at least certain sections and/or individuals within the current regulator, the Homes and
Communities Agency, because as recently as this August, despite the proverbial
brown matter hitting the fan at Cosmopolitan, someone from their regulatory
department could write to me stating with apparent confidence that “... there
was no evidence of a breach of regulatory standards in relation to the matters
raised...” </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This suggests that today, all these years later,
there are several individuals and organisations who may have serious questions
to answer about how effectively they have been regulating Cosmopolitan, and
probably other RSLs. We have enough recent examples of victims of crime and malpractice being ignored by
those whose duty is to protect the public and ensure justice for the maligned,
oppressed and abused – the </span><a href="https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&ved=0CDUQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FHillsborough_disaster&ei=56zhUNfqMs-XhQeJg4CoBg&usg=AFQjCNGrpNbvbwy_9FOlOx_NxtAsC8rqhQ&bvm=bv.1355534169,d.ZG4" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Hillsborough Disaster</a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> and </span><a href="https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=5&cad=rja&ved=0CEYQFjAE&url=http%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FJimmy_Savile_sexual_abuse_scandal&ei=YKzhUInLBI2HhQeItoH4BQ&usg=AFQjCNHS864pEU9-oag5sxkNx5ki0PBoSQ&bvm=bv.1355534169,d.ZG4" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Jimmy Savile Scandal</a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> revelations are just
two. My own cries for help fell on deaf ears, and I now feel that I was a potential proverbial canary in the coal mine that was ignored right from the start. </span></div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Thankfully, I lived to tell the tale and sing a different song, but I still
consider it a shame that we are now watching the chickens coming home to roost
for Cosmopolitan, when good governance within the group and in the regulatory
system could have prevented this. I also read somewhere the HCA’s director of regulation
is quoted as referring to Cosmpolitan’s troubles as a “one-off”. Let’s hope,
for the sake of the social housing sector and their tenants in Merseyside and elsewhere, that he is right. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Calibri, sans-serif;">Update: Podcast of BBC Radio 4 Programme, File on 4, "<a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03dslf1">What Price Social Housing</a>?" Broadcast 27 October. Puts Cosmopolitan's demise in a very worrying, larger context.</span></div>
</div>
Tayo Alukohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04629933520426570891noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1318476533814195.post-73752058369084181342012-07-16T03:05:00.000-07:002012-07-16T03:32:06.525-07:00Ontario: A Safe Haven for All?<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
Passing through Ontario briefly recently, I was
particularly pleased and proud to have made small headline news with the
success of my play, <a href="http://cmr.tayoalukoandfriends.com/">Call Mr. Robeson</a> at the London Fringe. I understand that
positive stories about Africans are relatively rare front page items in
Canadian papers, so I will always have good memories of Ontario.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Talking of recent stories of foreigners on these shores,
people will be more aware of the Toronto Eaton Centre shooting from early June
involving members of East African and Guyanese immigrant families, or, if we go
further afield geographically and racially, of the gruesome murder of a Chinese
student in Montreal, and the subsequent mailing of his dismembered body parts
around the country by his killer.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Whilst the colour of the murder victim should be irrelevant
to any discussion, these examples of White-on-Yellow or Black-on-Black violence
are rightly front-page news. In the short time I have been here, there have
been no reports, thankfully, of a White person being killed by a Black person,
so I am pretty sure that hasn’t happened, for it would almost certainly be
national news too. As for a White person killing a Black person, we need to
cross the border and head all the way down to Florida to find such a well known
case – the slaying of Black teenager <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Trayvon_Martin">Trayvon Martin</a> by a white man. What
brought that case to the eyes and ears of the world was the fact that the
killer was known to the police, but was not even arrested, and was able to
enjoy liberty until protests all over America and elsewhere (including one by
Black Law Students at University of Windsor) shamed the Florida authorities
into arresting and locking him up.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It would be good to assume that this wouldn’t happen in
Ontario. That wouldn’t be accurate, however, for on a visit to my Nigerian
cousin in Kitchener/Waterloo, I heard of the sad story of Jany James Ruach, a
19-year-old boy from an immigrant Sudanese family, knifed to death by a White
Kitchener resident. Admittedly, I have heard only one side of the story, but
there are disturbing similarities between what I have heard and read in this
case, and the Trayvon Martin one. First, the killer is free to walk the
streets: he was granted $2500 bail (with
few conditions) the day after the killing. Second, what little press coverage
there has been repeatedly mentions the victim’s criminal record (he apparently
spent six months in jail for punching a hole in a wall during an argument with
his girlfriend – seriously!) Third, the confessed killer’s protestation of
self-defence has been accepted as reason enough for him not to be seen as
posing a threat to anybody else. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Where the similarity ends, sadly, is in the fact that this
case is not receiving the coverage that other killings have received. Protests
by the local African community in Kitchener are being dismissed as playing the
race card (again) and the white youths who come out in support of the victim’s
family are being labelled as gang members. It is as though the taking of the
life of a promising, ambitious young man is not serious enough, and the central
issue here. It is conceivable that the story would be very different if the
white boy had been killed by the African (if his six-month sentence for
damaging a wall is anything to go by) but we all know that this should not be
the case.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The existence of thousands of Canadians of African descent
is testament to the kindness and bravery of hundreds of strangers (black and
white) who conducted their forebears along the Underground Railroad to the safety
of Ontario and other parts of Canada a few centuries ago. Their descendants,
including those who have arrived here directly from the Mother Continent,
whether passing through briefly or not, would like to be assured that Ontario
remains a place of safety for all. A demonstrably transparent, fair and
accountable justice system is one requirement for this. So are the interest of
the general public and their outrage in the face of perceived injustices on
their doorstep.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Facebook Page: <a href="http://www.facebook.com/JusticeForJanyJamesAndSaferCommunitiesForAll">Justice for Jany James</a></div>Tayo Alukohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04629933520426570891noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1318476533814195.post-34964102088234689622011-09-27T16:13:00.001-07:002011-10-14T17:13:10.163-07:00Who Wanted Troy Davis Dead, And Why?I looked up the <a href="http://www.pap.state.ga.us/opencms/opencms/">Georgia Pardons and Paroles Board</a> the other day and was a little surprised and disturbed by what I saw. I then looked at the <a href="http://www.supremecourt.gov/about/biographies.aspx">U.S. Supreme Court</a> website, and found the same thing. Members of these two bodies were Black! So much for my simple, convenient explanation that the failure, or refusal to halt <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troy_Davis_case">Troy Davis's</a> execution was down to these institutions being the preserve of racist white men.<br /><br />How then does one explain their decision to overlook clear evidence that showed that Troy Davis DID NOT commit the murder for which he was wrongfully convicted in 1989? Why did they ignore the appeals of hundreds of thousands of people in America and all over the world, including distinguished religious and political leaders from all over the world, and human rights organisations to do what was right, and not bring international shame and disrepute on themselves and their country?<br /><br />I decided to make my own enquiries. A few calls, and the answers started to emerge. It turns out that among the membership of these bodies, one or two might have had an interest in seeing Troy dead.<br /><br />Here is the evidence:<br />According to a source known to one of my informants, one member is believed to be a director of an munitions company who sold arms to Gaddafi and other Middle East dictators. Another is rumoured to be very close to a corrupt, murdering Russian oil oligarch, and their families were once photographed holidaying together in Saudi Arabia, although those photographs were allegedly burned in a mysterious fire at a fashionable London address. A third has a name which is incredibly similar to someone who has had allegations of child sexual abuse leveled against them (a thin disguise, surely?) And the name of one prominent member was apparently once glimpsed on a list of major shareholders of a company that builds prisons in Georgia and other states, and also supplies guards to these jails. More damning, irrefutable evidence is likely to come to light, but I think I have enough already.<br /><br />Now, as you can imagine, I need to protect my source, especially as his/her recovery from drug addiction is likely to be set back if he/she is exposed. Suffice it to say that (s)he tells me that his/her source heard directly from a fellow prisoner sometime around 1997, that someone passed all this information to Troy, and this information might have come out if he was freed. Indeed, that former prisoner is known in the criminal underworld to be the current or recent lover of one of the individuals in question.<br /><br />Using the Davis case as a benchmark for the quality and admissibility of evidence to be relied upon at any serious trial, I am satisfied beyond doubt that these individuals are totally guilty of the charges leveled, are unfit to continue in their positions, and should be immediately dismissed. They should be tried before a jury made up of representatives of the Davis and other executed Death Row inmates' families, and summarily punished, with no recourse to legal representation.<br /><br />The verdict reached shall be binding and final, and the form of punishment shall be at the discretion of the members of the jury, whose verdict will be seen as totally unbiased.<br /><br />So shall justice <a href="http://www.inthelandofthefreefilm.co.uk/">in the land of the free</a> be seen to be done.<br /><br /><br />PAUL ROBESON: WE CHARGE GENOCIDE<br />Click on link to read <a href="http://cmr.tayoalukoandfriends.com/recent_performances/Newport%20programme.pdf">programme note</a> from a recent performance of Call Mr. Robeson on the case.Tayo Alukohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04629933520426570891noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1318476533814195.post-87521163127818630912011-07-22T04:44:00.000-07:002020-08-03T14:37:13.683-07:00PISSING ON GRANBY“It’s a great way to share a piss” said Donald Gallagher, as we left the legendary gents’ toilets at Liverpool’s <a href="http://www.nicholsonspubs.co.uk/thephilharmonicdiningroomsliverpool/">Philharmonic Pub</a>. His appreciation of the marble “walk-in” urinals, the tiling on the walls, the craftsmanship on the wooden urinal doors was almost (dare I say it?) sexual. And when we saw the tiling below the bar and the stained glass above it, I feared I was about to see, and hear, the, er, “climax” of his visit to Liverpool. Thankfully, he regained his composure once the first drop of local beer touched his lips. <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Donald is a member of the “<a href="http://www.revbilly.com/about-us/biographies/the-stop-shopping-gospel-choir">StopShopping Gospel Choir</a>”, whose inspirational “service” I had just attended. They were on the “Church of Earthalujah UK tour, with powerful, comedic gospel singing and preaching about anti-consumerism, environmentalism, neighbourliness and community. It’s all so skilfully done that as happens in “real” churches, some people “testified” that they had been converted that night! <a href="http://www.revbilly.com/">Reverend Billy</a>, the charismatic leader of the Church was even able to make the congregation shed all British inhibitions, clapping and hollering along, “Preach, Reverend, Preach!” “That’s right!” “Earthalujah!”, “Granbylujah!” </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Granbylujah? Yes, earlier in the day, the choir had gone to “minister” in the Granby Triangle, that famous part of Liverpool at the centre of the <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/jul/03/toxteth-liverpool-riot-30-years">Liverpool 8 uprising </a>30 years ago. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Since then, the City Council, Housing Associations and private developers have succeeded in reducing the Triangle to a wasteland. Most of the houses have been demolished after (the residents allege) deliberate neglect of perfectly decent houses and a flawed consultation process which “found” that most residents would prefer modern houses. Not so on <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/31450272@N02/sets/72157623720677263/show/">Cairns Street</a>, where the last remaining residents are refusing to move, and have transformed one of the last surviving streets in the Triangle into arguably the most beautiful street-garden in the city. The occupied and bricked-up houses have been painted in bright colours, flowers of every type adorn the walls and pavements, and children from 6 to 80 “hang-out” and pass the time of day. Many people choose to walk or cycle along Cairns Street on their way to work – it’s that beautiful, and the atmosphere that warm.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">At the corner of Cairns Street and Kingsley Road, the residents (and some outsiders) have this week started a picket to stop the demolition of two more houses by the council’s preferred developer. In place of those two are proposed four more “little boxes”. The residents say they should instead be refurbished, and that they know local families that would happily occupy them. The developers, who haven’t built any new houses in the Triangle for a few years now, are however intent on demolishing them anyway, because refurbishment is not an option. The fact that VAT (Value Added Tax) is now 20% means that preservation and conservation is that much more expensive than new-build, which attracts zero VAT. Just as <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/southern-cross-collapse-leaves-elderly-care-in-limbo-2312648.html">Southern Cross</a> found that care of the elderly is not “economically viable”, so property developers will argue that sensitive neighbourhood development is economic madness.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">One could argue that the economic madness is not just the <a href="http://unlockingthepotential.blogspot.com/2009/03/vat-on-refurbishment-fantastic-news.html">disparity of VAT</a> on new-build versus refurb, but the billions spent on defence and war-mongering by our governments who try to persuade us that there isn’t enough money to take care for our elderly, our communities, our jobs, the environment. This was agreed by all in the Philharmonic pub last night. Donald, the white Bhuddist New Yorker; Dragonfly, the Black Texan woman; I, the Nigerian adopted scouser <a href="http://cmr.tayoalukoandfriends.com/">architect-turned-actor</a> and Eleanor, the “grandmother from Granby” in the thick of the picket. She said a powerful thing too - that it was so inspiring that an American “Church” can take their story, sing about it, twitter and youtube it (whatever that means), and show that they understand, and care. Even if they managed to get a mention on Radio Merseyside a few days ago, and <a href="http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/liverpool-news/local-news/2011/07/11/toxteth-residents-save-four-victorian-properties-from-bulldozers-100252-29033723/">the Echo</a> ran a story about it the following day, these Americans came and sang to them on their street, sang and preached about them, about the power of community.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Even if they lose their battle to save those houses, and they put up four little boxes that will not be worth travelling any distance to share a piss in, the memory of this day is one she will carry with her to her grave. The day when people from the other side of the world used their art as a weapon in defence of the voiceless, like, as Reverend Billy preached, the great <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Robeson">Paul Robeson</a>. </p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">Amen, and Granbylujah to that!</p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiv685cakgKbF5o5VnBAoJBKsNv1R7bRdW6vcLkCgvDuIN0zhyphenhyphenABGnqBvwsYSprAfQizgTJwwhhZiIuQqm4Q8JzE9APBFKINTuHJbWRG6jsO-oXEpl1IfZdXYkIfn7oHM0rSD0Op0AGvw/s1600/granby_4_streets.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5632153258786113554" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiv685cakgKbF5o5VnBAoJBKsNv1R7bRdW6vcLkCgvDuIN0zhyphenhyphenABGnqBvwsYSprAfQizgTJwwhhZiIuQqm4Q8JzE9APBFKINTuHJbWRG6jsO-oXEpl1IfZdXYkIfn7oHM0rSD0Op0AGvw/s320/granby_4_streets.jpg" style="cursor: pointer; float: left; height: 175px; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; width: 234px;" /></a><p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oaFx58J3kXc">Click here to view video of the choir at the demolition site</a>
</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"> </p><span style="font-family: calibri, sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SAfont-family:"; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">
</span>Tayo Alukohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04629933520426570891noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1318476533814195.post-73013767794347754102010-09-29T12:40:00.000-07:002010-11-01T13:18:59.656-07:00Raising A Toast to Nigeria on Her 50th<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgO06d6v_ZOB_xyQF3bBbsHwCbigKgo_ZXiBzcxs2jySKcHh0fx8x7HPeyU4z1qu-PipGNsLnkRwI4racLzou72C3glQK6MbQP6SkYk9BYagYNOrQxld25jSxzJNYVCqoD0HLpV-1Wo_w/s1600/Patricia's+mug.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 111px; height: 166px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgO06d6v_ZOB_xyQF3bBbsHwCbigKgo_ZXiBzcxs2jySKcHh0fx8x7HPeyU4z1qu-PipGNsLnkRwI4racLzou72C3glQK6MbQP6SkYk9BYagYNOrQxld25jSxzJNYVCqoD0HLpV-1Wo_w/s320/Patricia's+mug.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5522423259573799874" /></a><br /><br />Patricia, grandmother of two, is “dead proud” of her mug. It is almost as old as she is. She was one of five children in her family when they each got one, and hers has survived intact, with the inscription as clear and proud as it ever was: “NIGERIA. INDEPENDENCE. 1ST OCTOBER 1960." <br /><br />The Black Tie affair was held at the Federation Club, a building purchased and run collectively by Liverpool’s Africans; an establishment so respectable that one had to dress formally to go there. They welcomed whites too, despite the fact that the courtesy was hardly ever reciprocated elsewhere in the city. That evening, Black and White rose together to toast the future of Africa’s newest and most promising nation.<br /><br />Well, the nation born that day has grown up into quite a dysfunctional 50-year-old. The most widely touted and accepted reason for this is said to be the serial corruption of its leaders. Of course, there is no corruption anywhere else – certainly not in Britain: not in the House of Lords, not in the House of Commons, in Local Government, anywhere. Ministerial office (and certainly that of Prime Minister) has never been, and never will be used as a vehicle for personal enrichment, during office or afterwards. No corruption in America either – not in the Senate, the House of Representatives, or the White House. The Presidency is always attained by transparently free and fair elections, and nobody ever needs a well-placed relative to help swing an election, or needs to break into opponents’ offices for any reason whatsoever. And Presidential resignations will of course be seen as a high, honourable standard to which future Nigerian Presidents should aspire once in a while.<br /><br />And talking of election rigging, it has never been proven that the outgoing British Administration engineered the <a href="http://www.libertas.demon.co.uk/magazine.htm#dorril">rigging of the elections in 1956</a> which prevented the man regarded by many as easily the best candidate from becoming the first Prime Minister of Independent Nigeria. Many wonder what might have happened if <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obafemi_Awolowo">Obafemi Awolowo</a> had assumed office, just as they wonder what might have happened in Congo if <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrice_Lumumba">Patrice Lumumba</a> had not been assassinated with the compliance of Belgium and the CIA, eventually ushering in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobutu_Sese_Seko">Mobutu Sese Seiko</a>. <br /><br />But of course, we must move forward, not dwell on the past, or blame others for our problems. All Nigeria’s ills are definitely Nigerians’ fault after all. All that oil and foreign aid, and the money ends up being stolen and spent abroad. The British and other European bankers gladly take all this loot for safe-keeping: better to use it to “create wealth” in Western “casino banks” than to provide health in Nigerian clinics. The European and other oil companies that make billions while leaving nothing but pollution behind them do so because it is Westerners’ God-given right to have as much oil as they want for their cars. Look closely enough in the Bible, and you might find the justification, just as justification was somehow found there for the enslavement of Africans. <br /><br />This historical landmark will hopefully make us take a hard, honest look in the mirror. By “us” I don’t mean just Nigerians. When for example we see Cadbury’s - that great, previously British institution which gets much of its raw material from Nigeria - sold to an American company with the loss of hundreds of British jobs (not to America but to Poland), we are reminded of how closely connected we remain, and how it is in all our interests to solve Nigeria’s and Africa's problems together, by recognising and tackling greed and corruption everywhere, and promoting fair trade, everywhere. <br /><br />So, how to mark this anniversary in Liverpool? The Federation Club is long gone, and Africans have lost all the buildings they once owned that were big enough to hold a celebration of the size held in 1960. Not that anything remotely similar could be successfully organised, for the solidarity and fraternity between Nigerians and other Africans in Liverpool has, like in the Motherland and elsewhere, dissolved somewhat. Besides, they would probably need Local Authority funding for such an event now, and that is in desperately short supply these days.<br /><br />In the solitude of her living room, Patricia pours some palm wine into her fifty-year-old mug and raises a toast to Nigeria’s future. She hopes the survival of the mug is a good omen. It reminds her of something the “Yoruba aunties” would say to console a woman who had suffered a miscarriage. They said the rough translation was, “Take heart. The water may have spilt, but the calabash remains unbroken.” In other words, as long as you remain fertile, more (healthy) children will come. Nigeria’s fertility is without question. Among her children at home and spread all over the world, there is an abundance of talent, industriousness, resourcefulness and imagination. To that list we must add hope and optimism that, in the words of the National Anthem, “The labour of our heroes past shall never be in vain”.Tayo Alukohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04629933520426570891noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1318476533814195.post-17427197203570301652010-04-09T03:21:00.000-07:002011-06-27T16:46:50.926-07:00HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MR. ROBESON<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Robeson">Paul Robeson</a> was born 112 years ago today, 9th April, and it seems fitting for me to publish this, my fourth blog in almost a year, on this day, even though I never set out to always or only write about Mr. Robeson. It is clear however that even though <a href="http://tayoaluko.blogspot.com/2009_05_01_archive.html">my first blog</a> was inspired by what I saw as a grave injustice on me personally, that and subsequent blogs have mentioned him, so I’ll just have to admit that I am an addict. A fanatic. But better to be a Robeson fanatic than any other kind, in my view. And better to blog only occasionally and sparingly, than to contribute too much to cyber-pollution by writing thousands of meaningless words every week.<br /><br />Often, a lot of beauty and meaning can be contained in the briefest of texts. Take this tribute to Robeson on the occasion of his 44th birthday by the playwright, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc_Connelly">Marc Connelly</a> for example, <span style="font-style:italic;">“I suppose by that dreary instrument, the calendar, it can be contended that you are the contemporary of your friends. But by more important standards of time measurement, you really represent a highly desirable tomorrow which, by some lucky accident, we are privileged to appreciate today.”</span><br /><br />When I grow up, I want to be able to write like that! But I’m already four years older than Robeson was when those words were written about him, so maybe I never will. Still, I can take some satisfaction in generating beautiful words from others, such as the gentleman from Charlottesville, Virginia, who wrote after seeing my performance there, <span style="font-style:italic;">“I have wished my whole life (64 years) that I could see and hear Paul Robeson. Now I feel almost as if I have. Thank you”</span><br /><br />That was last month, at the very end of my longest tour to date performing my play, <a href="http://cmr.tayoalukoandfriends.com/">Call Mr. Robeson</a>: Lagos, Seattle, Vancouver BC, Los Angeles, Palo Alto, Charlotte NC, Charlottesville VA. Six and a half weeks during which I introduced, or reintroduced hundreds of people aged from about 9 to about 90, to Robeson. From boys in <a href="http://allafrica.com/stories/201002030689.html"></a><a href="http://collegelagos.org/">my old secondary school</a> in Lagos, Nigeria (at an event sponsored by the US Consulate - representing the same State Department that cancelled Robeson’s passport in 1950) to students at University of Charlotte, North Carolina (where for a week I assumed the esteemed title of “<a href="http://publicrelations.uncc.edu/news-events/news-releases/internationally-known-nigerian-performer-serve-artist-residence">The Distinguished Artist in Residence</a>” at the Africana Studies Department!) to a 90-odd-year-old woman who made a day trip and traveled some sixty miles on her own by ferry, bus and train from The Sunshine Coast to see the play in Vancouver. She wrote saying how much she enjoyed it, and by the way, that her mother had once accompanied Robeson on piano!<br /><br />I am pleased to say that thanks to some great friends, I did manage to get quite a bit of publicity for Paul Robeson too – a TV interview and much national newspaper coverage in Lagos, a few radio interviews in Vancouver and Charlotte (on NPR too!), but the most amazing and unexpected was a TV appearance in Charlotte. I remember putting the phone down at the end of a conversation with the publicist at the <a href="http://www.aacc-charlotte.org/">Harvey B. Gantt African American Center</a>, wondering if I had really agreed to what I thought I had just agreed to? To go and talk about Paul Robeson on FOX TV??? Was this a trap? A live on-air lynching fist thing in the morning? Would Big Paul not turn in his grave? Well, I went ahead with it, and FOX Charlotte turned out to be nothing like the FOX TV that makes progressives, liberals or socialists squirm, and as a result of that broadcast, quite a few people came to the performance at the <a href="http://www.blumenthalcenter.org/default.asp?blumenthal=54">Blumenthal Performing Arts Centre</a> to contribute to my largest audience in America to date – just under 300.<br /><br />So, now back in the UK where I dream of generating that kind of publicity, especially in the run up to the Brighton and Edinburgh Fringe Festivals, I will end this essay by giving the last word to Mr. Robeson himself. Words he uttered on behalf of Spanish Republicans in London in 1937, dreaming that yesterday of a better tomorrow which we still await today. Words that have adorned <a href="http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=878">his grave</a> since he was laid to rest in New York State in 1976, in the peace denied him most of his life – in peace which hopefully was not disturbed by my Fox TV appearance:<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">“The artist must take sides. He must elect to fight for freedom or slavery. I have made my choice. I had no alternative.” </span>Tayo Alukohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04629933520426570891noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1318476533814195.post-30281588354494953352009-10-22T04:53:00.000-07:002009-10-22T10:08:11.376-07:00IT'S BLACK CHRISTMAS IN OCTOBER, AND I'M ON MY KNEES TO NICK GRIFFIN<span style="font-weight:bold;">“South Africa is a different country, an awful long way away”.</span> <br />I’m sure that’s what I heard Nick Griffin, the <a href="http://www.hopenothate.org.uk/the-real-bnp/">BNP</a> leader say, when asked if he had supported South Africa’s apartheid regime, on Radio 4’s Today Programme on the morning of his election to the European Parliament in June. As if to say, “Nothing to do with me, guv.”<br /><br />My vote for the Greens in Liverpool was wasted, and Griffin is now my MEP. I remember thinking at the time that there was some potential for me as a Black writer to write an interesting script about his new position, and sure enough, an idea for a screenplay has formed in my little head. I can’t start developing it until after Christmas though, i.e. sometime in November at the earliest. No; that wasn’t a mistake, because for me as a Black performer in the UK, Christmas is the month of October, when councils and venues seek out Black artists to help fill their Black History Month calendars. So I, like thousands like me, am going to work like hell earning as much as half my annual income in October alone, and then trying to live as frugally as possible until next October.<br /><br />Of course, I’m not complaining about the relatively full diary in October. I also understand why many theatres, in these hard times, look to schedule “Black acts” in the particular month when they are surest of increased awareness and interest about Black History. But what about the rest of the year? Why does “Black History” not offer enough entertainment or educational value, enough spiritual uplift to keep us Black artists in gainful employment all year round?<br /><br />For example, picture a finely woven story set in say, 6th Century Mali, at a time of plentiful harvest, when regular feasting is accompanied by dancing and storytelling. One evening’s stories would be folk tales describing why and how food, work and power was always shared equally among the people. The next evening’s would be stories told to people by birds who made annual pilgrimages from far off lands where people’s skins were fair, where they have seasons when the ground was covered in something thick and white, which looked like cotton, but when you touched it, it felt cold and then turned magically into water. And when the people slept, they slept under blankets made of gooses’ feathers? Imagine this being devised and performed by a racially mixed group of so-called disaffected youngsters in Liverpool, under the direction of a talented black artist, say sometime in May, as part of a vibrant year-round programme of events designed to keep youngsters engaged in creative activity and engaged with people of different races? Imagine it being funded by the local authority and the police? What idealistic rubbish! Political correctness gone mad!, the BNP would say.<br /><br />I suggested May because I won’t be available in February: I’ll be performing a play in America – taking advantage of their own Black History Month. And since my play is about one of the finest Americans who ever lived – <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Robeson">Paul Robeson</a>, who happened to be black - I’d be crazy not to. Robeson imagined a world where resources would be shared equally among all people, of all races, but was branded a communist and a traitor, and has been practically written out of history. In his country today, as we see a new form of racism emerging in response to the inexplicable mistake of the election of a Black President, Robeson’s story needs to be told all year round, but I’ll settle for February.<br /><br />Now, in order to evenly distribute my annual earnings, I need to find somewhere to perform the play in June (that Nick Griffin script had better be finished by then). Where in the white world is Black History not celebrated? Belgium? Now, here’s an idea: I can approach my MEP to help promote my Robeson play around Belgium in June next year. Surely, he would be happy to carry out his duty of representing my interests in Europe? Unless of course he decides that it’s about an American, and as we know, America is another country, an awful long way away (nothing to do with Belgium). Maybe I should write something about <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Leopold%27s_Ghost">King Leopold</a>. Now, that’s one hell of a story! <br /><br />Mr. Griffin, I love you, and I’m really, really glad you’re my MEP. You just have a way of getting my creative juices flowing...Tayo Alukohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04629933520426570891noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1318476533814195.post-2342968523693167522009-08-21T08:27:00.001-07:002009-08-29T08:00:43.138-07:00SONGS OF HARMONY FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE: ROBESON AND PATCHThe last surviving World War 1 veteran was buried in England on August 6th 2009, having died aged 111. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Patch">Harry Patch</a>, born July 1898, never spoke publicly or privately about the horrors he had witnessed until he was 100, when he realised that there were so few veterans left to tell their stories. He devoted his final years to speaking about the futility of war, describing it as "organised murder". He also told then Prime Minister Tony Blair that Remembrance Day celebrations were nothing but "showbusiness". Blair wasn't at the funeral, nor was he one of the many politicians and pundits who paid warm tribute to him, and I fear that some of them hope to bury Mr. Patch's wisdom with his body. <span xmlns=""><br /><p style="text-align: justify;">Patch was born three months after Paul Robeson, the African American actor and singer, who despite having been one of the most famous people on the planet in the early 20<sup>th</sup> century, is probably unknown by most Americans - of any colour – under the age of 50. Robeson achieved worldwide fame selling millions of records, and for his stage and movie roles: from Showboat (in which he sang <em>Ol' Man River</em>) to Othello, for which he still holds the record for the greatest ever number of Shakespeare appearances on Broadway.<br /></p><p style="text-align: justify;">Another thing Robeson and Patch had in common was peace activism, which for Robeson ran in parallel with practically all his performing career. At a rally in Madison Square Garden in 1946 for example, he sang a peace song at the end of a speech in which he said:<br /></p><p style="text-align: justify; margin-left: 14pt;">'A year or two ago, the British Foreign Minister said, and I quote, "If we do not want to have total war, we must have total peace." For once, I agree with him. But Mr. Bevin must be totally blind if he cannot see that the absence of peace in the world today is due precisely to the efforts of the British, American and other imperialist powers to retain their control over the peoples of Asia, the Middle East, Europe and Africa.'<br /></p><p style="text-align: justify;">Outbursts like this cost Robeson dearly. Within a few short years, he found that most concert halls and theatres in the country had closed their doors on him, and his passport was revoked, preventing him from leaving America to perform (and more importantly, speak) abroad. The State Department even denied him permission to travel to Canada! In a spectacular show of defiance, he nonetheless held a series of annual concerts at the U.S. / Canadian border, at the aptly named Peace Arch. The first time, in May 1952, a crowd of about 30,000 turned up on both sides of the border.<br /></p><p style="text-align: justify;">This episode is recreated in my play, Call Mr. Robeson, which I'm due to perform at the Philly Fringe in September. I've already performed it in America several times over the last two years, having come in on the visa waiver program which British passport holders enjoy. (I refer to my other, Nigerian one, as my passport of inconvenience).<br /></p><p style="text-align: justify;">I fear however that the honeymoon may be over, for I find I now need a visa, because I am working. My application went in a while ago, but I have this nagging, uneasy feeling. Is it unreasonable to think that there might be a file on little insignificant me somewhere in the State Department? If only I had declined invitations from "subversives" to speak and sing at an anti-war gathering in Detroit in April 2008. Or to share a platform with <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angela_Davis">Angela Davis</a> in San Francisco last February campaigning for freedom for <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mumia_Abu-Jamal">Mumia Abu-Jamal</a>, <a href="http://www.troyanthonydavis.org/">Troy Davis</a> and other black death row inmates. I was pleased to see photos of me on the web after both events. And last January, two days before travelling to the Inauguration in DC, I quietly went to New York's Union Square to stand alongside about fifteen anti-war protesters. It was there that I got my first experience of being spat at. I haven't seen photos of that demonstration on the web, but isn't it conceivable that my face was photographed from across the street and emailed to State Department?<br /></p><p style="text-align: justify;">Friends tell me that being spat at and having a State Department file are badges of honour in liberal circles (I understand that the word "socialist" doesn't translate too well across the pond these days). Robeson, who died in Philadelphia in 1976, earned several honours in his lifetime for his campaign work for civil rights, for independence movements, and for peace and friendship among nations. Patch too, amassed an impressive array of medals over several decades, even after becoming an activist in his twilight years. At his request, the theme of his funeral was peace and reconciliation, and this was reflected by ceremonial weapons being banned, and by his coffin being accompanied by private soldiers from France, Belgium and Germany.<br /></p><p style="text-align: justify;">A Nigerian girl also sang the anti-war song <em>Where Have all the Flowers Gone?</em> Seeing the vile criticism this particular item generated on a white nationalist website I stumbled upon, my resolve to tell Robeson's story of peace is strengthened, even if I have to sing from across the border in Canada.</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><br /></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-style: italic;">Postscript: The date of re-publication (Aug 28th) is almost three weeks after this article was first written. The "premium processed" approval notification was apparently lost in the mail in the U.S. We paid for a duplicate to be sent by FedEx, and I ended up flying to Belfast with my passport for the visa, delaying my departure from Liverpool to Philadlephia. The passport (and visa) are now with me, so Philadelphia, here I come!</span><br /></p></span>Tayo Alukohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04629933520426570891noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1318476533814195.post-75502112585442994682009-05-07T07:33:00.001-07:002022-10-24T21:56:22.467-07:00NO BLACKS, NO GREENS, NO HAWKS<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: arial; font-weight: bold;">Multiple Barriers to Honest Working in 21st Century Cosmopolitan Liverpool</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: arial;">As a building designer, I have always found it fascinating to see how traditional peoples worldwide manage to create beautiful and functional buildings using whatever Mother Nature surrounds them with. I myself will now </span><span style="font-family: arial;">try and construct a narrative of some recent life experiences</span><span style="font-family: arial;"> out of three short phrases:</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: arial; font-weight: bold;">NO BLACKS</span><br />
<span style="font-family: arial;">I am probably about £100,000 worse off than I would have been, had certain individuals in Cosmopolitan Housing Association Liverpool been as honest and well-meaning as I - in my naivety - mistook them to be. I contend that I have been double-crossed on not one, but two occasions, where the concepts of mutual benefit and good faith would have resulted in two beautiful buildings being added to my portfolio of work. The needlessness and illogicality of those individuals' actions have led some to speculate that their motives were racially motivated. I am, after all, an African man in Liverpool.</span><br />
<br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: arial; font-weight: bold;">NO GREENS</span><br />
<span style="font-family: arial;">We all now acknowledge the seriousness of the issue of Climate Change. It is likely that even Cosmopolitan will have reserved some seats on the environmental bandwagon. When I invited them to climb aboard my modest little car in 2005, I looked away briefly, only to find myself reeling in the gutter, with bruises all over my bank account, and no car to be seen: they had gazumped me! The car is probably being fitted with new number plates and its solar-powered engine being replaced with the most noxious type of gas-guzzler as I write.</span><br />
<br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: arial; font-weight: bold;">NO HAWKS</span><br />
<span style="font-family: arial;">An employee will be on his best behaviour if he knows that he has the kind of boss who watches him like a hawk. In this case however, numerous attempts at formal complaint and appeals for investigation were met with deafening silence and blinding darkness. I am happy to credit my African ancestors with this newly-made-up proverb: "When looking into the sky for the hawk, be mindful of the ostriches on the ground".</span> <span style="font-family: arial;">With scrutiny of this level of intensity, would it be unreasonable to fear that if one searches behind <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">Marybone</span> House's clean facades, one might find festering there much more malignant malpractice? </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: arial;">As I continue to rebuild my life from the debris of broken dreams, I think of a Spike Lee documentary I have recently watched, about <a href="http://www.allmovie.com/work/156949">4 Little Girls</a> murdered by white racists in Birmingham, Alabama, the year after my birth, and also of thousands in other parts of the world whose lives are still being shattered by mindless cruelty of infinitely greater proportions than I have suffered. I am thankful for the timely reminder that harder trials have been, and are being endured by braver people than I. I am also inspired by the fact that by galvanising the civil rights movement, Alabama led to Obama.</span><br />
<br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: arial;">I am thankful to Cosmopolitan too, for teaching me the kind of lesson I missed in University when preparing for what used to be the gentlemanly profession of architecture. They have also helped me discover an apparent gift for words, in the process of penning numerous plaintive paragraphs, seemingly in vain, to the powers-that-be. On the rare occasions that they were responded to, the replies were constructed with lines not notable for their elegance or sincerity, but which, if there is any justice, will surely help mark the positions of one or two professional graves.</span><br />
<br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: arial;">Gifts are meant to be shared, so I have sent notification of this tale far and wide - to friends, construction and housing professionals, council officials and members, journalists and broadcasters, etc. Please feel free to share it with others too. I will take full responsibility for any embarrassment or offence caused, and will happily stand up and be counted. It's time somebody did. </span><br />
<br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: arial;">I would also like to share another gift with you: the story of the giant whose example inspires me to "keep <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">laughin</span>' instead o' <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">cryin</span>'". Paul Robeson's story is much more worthy of your attention than mine is, and his detractors were far more numerous and powerful, if no less unsophisticated, than mine are. My play, <a href="http://cmr.tayoalukoandfriends.com/"><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">Call Mr. Robeson</span></a> attempts to tell his epic story in a nutshell. I have also decided to publish this blog on the sixtieth anniversary of a notable visit he made to Liverpool, about which I once wrote in <a href="http://www.catalystmedia.org.uk/issues/nerve11/paul_robeson.php">Nerve Magazine</a>.</span> <span style="font-family: arial;">He and other gifted people inspire me to keep dreaming of a world of justice and fairness, to keep believing in humanity, to realise that it is infinitely more fulfilling (even if often frustrating) to be creative and cooperative, rather than destructive and selfish, and finally to remember that though the road may be long, the climb steep, a change is gonna come.</span><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /><br /><br />Correspondence between Cosmopolitan and me<br />(zoom in by following instructions on the "view" tab):</span><br />
<span style="font-family: arial;">1. Overview - TA to CHA: Unanswered appeal to board - </span><br />
<a href="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3629/3507711951_067fc2242e_o.jpg" style="font-family: arial;">page1</a><span style="font-family: arial;">;</span><a href="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3341/3508523698_ec2c604920_o.jpg" style="font-family: arial;"> page2</a><span style="font-family: arial;">;</span><a href="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3349/3507713879_c45d1dd70f_o.jpg" style="font-family: arial;"> page3</a><br />
<span style="font-family: arial;">2. </span><a href="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3555/3508521438_d809fbe8ca_b.jpg" style="font-family: arial;">TA to CHA. Oriel Rd. Next Steps?</a><br />
<span style="font-family: arial;">3. </span><a href="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3305/3508525030_4b4d49b02f_b.jpg" style="font-family: arial;">CHA to TA: Waiting.</a><br />
<span style="font-family: arial;">4. </span><a href="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3602/3508526102_7f049d1f98_b.jpg" style="font-family: arial;">TA to CHA: Oriel Rd. first complaint</a><br />
<span style="font-family: arial;">5. </span><a href="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3327/3507716349_74bd8f0773_b.jpg" style="font-family: arial;">CHA to TA: Not interested in Langdale Rd.</a><br />
<span style="font-family: arial;">6. </span><a href="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3620/3508528206_1ecae7f09c_b.jpg" style="font-family: arial;">TA to CHA: Langdale Rd - What's goin' on?</a><br />
<span style="font-family: arial;">7. </span><a href="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3619/3508529070_35b24f0711_b.jpg" style="font-family: arial;">CHA to TA: Good faith re. Langdale Rd</a><span style="font-family: arial;">.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: arial;">8. </span><a href="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3632/3508529716_0c563bbece_b.jpg" style="font-family: arial;">CHA to TA: Sorry, no complaints procedure.</a><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: arial;">Posted 25 June 2011: Notes on </span><a href="http://cmr.tayoalukoandfriends.com/recent_performances/Mazars%20Cosmo%20Report%20Notes.pdf" style="font-family: arial;">Report commissioned by Cosmopolitan</a><br />
<span style="font-family: arial;">Posted 27 June 2011: </span><br />
<span style="font-family: arial;">Special </span><a href="http://cmr.tayoalukoandfriends.com/recent_performances/Programme%20Notes%20etc/Cosmopolitan_A%20special%20thanks.pdf" style="font-family: arial;">Thank you note </a><span style="font-family: arial;">at Everyman Theatre Closing Performance, 24 June 2011</span><br /><span style="font-family: arial;">Posted 25 Oct 2022:<br />A comment written in response to Architects Journal article, 15 June 2009 is no longer on their website. It was something along the lines of:<br /><i>More time with architects? Well, this is one former architect from her home city of Liverpool to whom Ms. Fraenkel would not give the time of day. In her role of chair of Cosmopolitan Housing Association, had a minion write to me saying "Beatrice would not be willing to meet with you to discuss this matter further." The matter was her housing association gazumping me on a piece of land that they had confirmed they were not interested in. As a result of this, I lost the opportunity to become a developer, and indeed it contributed to my eventually leaving the profession. A breath of fresh air? It depends which way she's facing. From where I'm standing, it's a rather nasty smell. </i></span></div>
Tayo Alukohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04629933520426570891noreply@blogger.com2