Reviewing 2007 is a strange experience for me. Mainstream media focus on our community throughout his year has tended to fall into one of three categories. We were either being framed by asinine discussions on enslavement, politically demonised as scrounging immigrants or overwhelmingly reported upon as both educationally sub normal victims and criminal perpetrators of a violent gun and knife culture permeating the alleged puritan lives of non African children in Britain. The fact that gun crime hasn’t actually significantly increased because the number of young people we have lost to this madness has remained constant for several years seems to have avoided most people. The truth of the matter is that this has been a long term issue which too many have ignored and/or avoided until it was forced upon them by the national media. Ironically Metropolitan Police Chief Ian Blair was vilified by the press when he stated that the British media had a racist bias against African victims of gun and violent crime highlighting the long held belief by many in the community. In 2007, we saw how the tragic deaths of our children were politically abused in order to divert the growing grassroots groundswell of anger over the sick Wilberfest agenda of the bicentenary abolition and slavery celebrations. There is no justifiable excuse for why Gun crime was not given government and media priority over a decade ago.

Interesting enough, 2007 also saw British moral hypocrisy exposed on an unprecedented level. There were several events that had an indirect effect on our community. Early in the year the Prime Minister halted an anti-corruption case into the billion pounds of bribes paid by Britain to Saudi Arabia. In seeking to secure an arms deal for BAE to sell British weapons to the anti-human rights regime, Blair stated that the ‘rule of law’ must not obstruct issues in the public interest.

The anti-African Tory party announced in its political broadcast to the nation that if it comes into power it will abolish Britain’s commitments to existing human rights legislation.

Throughout 2007 the BBC and other British broadcasters were caught having consistently lied and deliberately defrauding viewers out of millions of pounds with fake edits and rigged premium rate phone calls.

From a cultural perspective this was the year the celebrity role muddle machine went into overdrive. If we weren’t being told that cocaine Kate Moss was an ambassador for African poverty and fellow drug addict Amy Whitehouse the new MOBO queen of British soul, 2007 also marked the year in which we were given numerous TV legends like the intellectual powerhouse Brian Belo from Big Brother, cabaret singer Leona Lewis from X Factor, dancing queen Alesha Dixon on Strictly Come Dancing and from the world of sport the bland formula one advertising industry pin up Lewis Hamilton.

Even if we accept that some of them may be nice people - none of these very British icons have stated any intent to work towards the political, social or spiritual empowerment of the African community. In fact all seem to be proud to publicly reject their heritage in order to obtain that universal nirvana so coveted by Africans like Michael Jackson. It would seem that a cultural lobotomy remains a mandatory requirement for those aspiring to be promoted as state sanctioned urban ambassadors. Britain continues to spread the message to our young people that to be a perceived as a valued person in society the most important credential is that of being famous or aspiring to become an entertainer or sportsperson. Useful talent and community focus not required.

Politically we didn’t do much better; our many selected ‘black’ leaders went into overdrive remaining silent on the matters which really mattered whilst selling us and themselves out to the media organisation with the biggest audience share.

As the media focused on corruption charges against the Mayor of London’s ‘race’ advisor, Lee Jasper and his connection with the ‘Brixton Base’ building in south London, there appears to be a collective amnesia about the loss of a real community centre - the Rastafarian Temple in St Agnes Place, London. As events unfolded in June, the usual ‘race’ leaders were uncannily silent when it came to defending our own as the temple was maliciously raided by brutish police officers. The Guardian newspaper declared “Police smash huge drugs centre in raid on Rasta temple” and Lambeth council authorised false media stories criminalising the Rastafarian community as drug dealers. The costly police operation based on poor intelligence involved over 100 armed officers saw 23 people, including elders in their seventies and people with disabilities arrested. A subsequent court ruling stated that there was not enough evidence to suggest the Temple was a “drug den”. Despite this the building, which has been in the possession of African people for over thirty years was seized, the Ethiopian World Federation evicted, and over a hundred Africans made homeless. In stark contrast, a month before a european squatter named Harry Hallowes was made the legal owner of land worth £2million on Hampstead Heath. Hallowes, 70 who had lived in the north London spot for more than 20 years was handed the title deeds to the land after developers threatened to evict him.

There was no institutional challenge to this clear bias against Africans by the authorities. Trevor Philips, ex head of the now defunct Commission for Racial Equality continued to side with a racist ethnic majority and kill support for multiculturalism and non european immigrants. Few were surprised when he decide to oversee the dismantling of the requisite framework needed to challenge racism within the newly launched Commission for Equality and Human Rights which he now heads.

Spiritually, the ‘born again’ focus of the Wilberfest celebrations brought about a resurgence of a movement encapsulated by what many have called the children of the ‘negro spiritual’. Sadly instead of being a part of the solution, many churches in our community sought to exploit the denigratory propaganda being pushed by those institutional bodies engaged in the bicentenary celebrations of Britain’s abolition of the so called ‘slave trade’. Too many people of the cloth used subterfuge, deception and faux moral posturing to capitalise on the plight of our Ancestors in order to secure extra funding and grow their congregation.

Socially, we took a lot of damage. There was an extended and regressive media focus on our family structures asserting that Africans people were the only group in the UK suffering from an environment promoting dysfunctional relationships. As young people were attacked, vilified and criminalised for nonsensical issues like wearing hoodies, a minority criminal element had a field day exploiting the new found notoriety resulting from the excessive fear generating news stories. The tragic end to this was a continuation of the violent crime claiming the lives of many young people from our community, the over sexualisation of young children and an increase in the physical and psychological abuse heaped upon African women by both African and non African men.

Yet despite this barrage of negativity I also saw the makings of what I can only describe as a resurgence of community spirit. Wherever I went, I came across African people taking more interest in their own history. There was an increase in the number of people organising their own events, establishing their own community organisations not only to tackle media driven topics such as gun crime, but also entrenched community issues such as poor education, mental health and family relationships.

There is still a need to set up more organisations that offer permanent support on issues such as sexual abuse, parenting and the disaffection of our young people but in 2007 many people chose to become a part of the solution by recognising their role in maintaining the problems. The development of various social networks enabling African women, men and businesses to interact outside a virtual online only environment helped many people move forwards and away from the label ‘victim of British racism’. Many community empowerment programmes made the difficult move from being government funded back to the natural and more progressive route of being grass roots supported.

A key event that impacted on me this year was the walk I went on with members of our community in support of my objection to the Westminster Abbey celebration of the parliamentarian William Wilberforce and British Imperialism. It was always going to be possible that our community would be bamboozled by the sympathetic propaganda driven films like Amazing Grace and The Queen which sought to humanise and deify the British monarchy, government and church. The press tried to misrepresent me as a ‘lone madman’ begging Elizabeth Saxa-Gotha (Windsor) for an apology. Fortunately there were millions from our global community who were able to see through the facade and offered me their spiritual support. On 25 April and 30 May 2007 when I had to answer bail many of them ensured I was not alone despite being trailed by police helicopters, MI6 agents and uniformed officers from Charing Cross police station. Our walk through Downing Street, Africa House, the National Gallery and the British Museum awoke a spirit in our community which reminded me of the possibilities of what we can achieve when united through Pan Africanism. Ironically other than the Observer newspaper, Britain’s national media has decided to bury what was clearly a historic event. I give humble thanks to those in the numerous Kwanzaa events across the country that recognised our actions.

So as I look into 2008 I am reminded of the African wisdom “as long as your head is not cut off, there is still life”. It is a proverb about hope. You see, despite the unquestionable malignant storm of political disempowerment coming our way within the next decade, I try not to be one of those people who focus on negatives with tales of doom and gloom. I truly believe that taking that approach sets us up for a fall, encourages us to have low aspirations, and defeats us in spirit before we have even begun.

When 2007, begun the British government arrogantly believed it would face no challenge in its international plans to miseducated billions of people about the reprehensible leading role it has in the Maafa. The nefarious plan to further demote African history in order to promote its own capitalist humanitarianism agenda at the cost of the Truth was backed with a multi million pound campaign that left no part of the political, economic, social, cultural or spiritual domain untouched. Despite this and with comparatively scarce resources, the African community in Britain organised an opposition and through initiatives such as Operation Truth (Bristol) and Truth 2007 (London) produced an educational and political campaign that preserved the dignity of our Ancestors and successfully rendered the new revisionist version of British slavery and abolition redundant.

I see this as further incontrovertible evidence of our people’s ability to self determine and establish a permanent structure of Africentric community education fully capable of reversing the socio-cultural maldevelopment of Africans indoctrinated in eurocentric schools of thought and behaviour. A modern, progressive Africentric programme of education has always been one of the key solutions to our collective ailments.

2008 offers the possibility for those working towards liberation to continue healing our community of the damage caused by apathy, miseducation and assimilation into the decadent culture of the UK’s ethnic majority. It starts with self, extends to family and encompasses the entire village. We may be Africans in Britain, but we don’t need any more Britishness in Africans.

Peace

Toyin Agbetu