Britain's new nationality act threatens me with deportation

I feel threatened by the Abu Hamza al-Masri Act, known officially as Section 4 of the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002. I possess dual nationality, and so I can now be deported if my political actions are interpreted as being "seriously prejudicial to the vital interests of the United Kingdom".

I fell from my mother's womb in a small fishing village in Trinidad in 1943. I was taught at primary school that I was British, and left Trinidad to settle in south London with that status. Independence came to Trinidad and Tobago in 1962 and I registered at the high commission as a Trinidadian citizen. This slight anomaly was corrected some time later under an amnesty that qualified me, for the second time in my life, for British citizenship. I have a boringly designed certificate to prove it. I am now the holder of two passports, the two of which legitimise my diverse history.

Now all that is threatened by the Abu Hamza Act. This mad cleric, by his incomprehensible utterances at the Finsbury Park Mosque, does the state some service. The security services need only wait around the mosque to identify those who gravitate to his Friday sermons and then clock them as likely terrorists. This law would make sense only if his cover had been blown and the security people wanted him moved to another location.

Had this act been passed under Margaret Thatcher's regime, I would certainly be back in Trinidad by now. She proclaimed that Nelson Mandela was a terrorist. All of us who campaigned for his release from prison, and who carried the burden of dual nationality, would have qualified for deportation. I stood in front of Barclays Bank in Brixton handing out leaflets to persuade passers-by to withdraw their money from the bank because of its South African connections. I was deliberately attacking British interests. Another time, I supported the nationalisation without compensation of the oil industry in Trinidad, and was thus deliberately hostile to British Petroleum.

I will do it again - more so because the revival of aggressive imperialist greed requires it. My white editor may campaign with impunity but the darkie can be deported by a judge, armed with articles from the NS as evidence of my recalcitrance.

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