Big shout out to Toyin Agbetu of Ligali, whose generally rather poor performance – by his outspoken standards – at the Points West abolition debate on Sunday, The Blogger thought not worth mentioning.
Well the boy’s certainly come good today after being arrested at Westminster Abbey for interrupting a church service to commemorate the abolition of the slave trade attended by the Queen and Tony Blair .
The activist, probably to avoid vomiting at the pomposity of it all, rose to his feet in the middle of the service and shouted “this is an insult to us” and “you should be ashamed” as he headed for the altar.
He then told the queen she should apologise and said, “I want all the Christians who are Africans to walk out now,” before being manhandled out of the Abbey himself.
He then held an impromptu press conference outside the Abbey telling the assembled crowd, “The monarch and the government and the church are all in there patting themselves on the back. It’s just a memorial for William Wilberforce.”
He was then arrested and taken away in a police car pronto.
Meanwhile, whilst the Bristol press continues its news blackout of Bristol’s Coalition of Black Groups (COGB) and their dissenting views, the black national press is certainly taking an interest:
BRISTOL – Nelson Mandela has boycotted plans to commemorate the bicentennial of the act abolishing the slave trade in Bristol after hearing of bitter divisions within the community and accusations of racism and intolerance…
The Blogger knows of at least one local journalist, not averse to receiving the odd handout from the public purse themselves, who has declined to cover COBG claiming they’re “bitter” at not receiving funding from Abolition 200.
A view that concords, precisely, with the spin emanating from Barbara Janke, her Lib Dem black councillor and appointed black community spokesperson Shirley Marshall and the city council’s press office!
Hey Bristol Blogger,
Please let me know what you think of this programme. Please watch it asap as the link may not be up for long.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/bristol/
Click ‘Watch Inside Out’ on the right of page.
Generally very good. It’s good to hear some of Bristol’s black voices not being mediated through Northcliffe journalists or the Oxbridge set at the BBC.
They also presented a very different view to the embarrassing happy, clappy crap coming out of Bristol’s ‘Abolition 200’. I agree this is a divided and fractured city although not just along race lines.
This is also the first piece of mainstream journalism I’ve come across in the city that’s bothered to actually talk to COBG rather than cheaply label them troublemakers, funding tarts, politically correct, bitter etc.
I personally think they talk a lot of sense and one of the biggest outrages of the ‘Abolition 200’ farrago has been the way they’ve been marginalised and ignored for political expediency and to present a ‘nice’, multicultural image of the city to the rest of the nation.
My criticisms of the programme would be that Rees was far too soft on the council leadership. I’d like to hear their reasons for marginalising the black community in favour of working with white elitist organisations like The Venturers and less thoughtful and more compliant black groups.
I also think Rees’s solutions were a bit soft. A cabinet post and a school of leadership will do very little. What is required is a major assault on and the dismantling of many of this city’s power structures, particularly those dominated by the mercantile and landowning elite of the city.
This needs to be based on the kind of class analysis that both Rees and Dresser were hinting at but didn’t quite have the nerve to address.
Thanks for your comments, and broadly I agree. Hopefully the BBC have the balls to do a follow up with Rees another time and not just fence in this whole issue this year alone as a patronising token.