Saturday 23 August was Unesco International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade, marking emancipation and the first leap of Caribbean peoples into modern social relations. It was a huge achievement brought about by the armed struggle of slaves in Santo Domingo (Haiti). In the late 18th century, the slaves held off the armies of England, Spain and France. The moment also delivered West Africa from slave-raiding and its destruction of all that Africans had then achieved.

I remember how, in the 1970s, church halls in black communities throughout the UK would ring out with rhetoric celebrating this achievement. The late C L R James, author of The Black Jacobins, would certainly have been holding forth on a platform somewhere in London.

But on the anniversary weekend this year, there was silence except for some frail deposits at a convention, attended by a handful, at the University of Greenwich. There was little to celebrate. We seem to be sinking into despair and stupidity. Perhaps the current reality is too huge a challenge for us. Empowerment has replaced "power to the people"; ethnic this and diverse that, authored by the race relations industry, have denuded us of a progressive identity and separated us into so many tiny particles. Haiti itself has sunk into poverty and political destitution. Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell, in their complicity with George W Bush, suggest that black Americans have all but disowned a radical tradition. The descendants of liberated slaves in Liberia have destroyed a generation of children. The Congo stinks with the dead bodies of millions.

I thought the Notting Hill Carnival, marking a tradition that originated among Caribbean slaves, might revive my spirits. An official report says that the carnival carries a spending power of £93m. How it arrived at that figure is anyone's guess. I once asked a young woman who co-wrote the report to name the instruments that make up a steel band. She could not answer. Within two days of this silly report, the £93m figure had to be reduced by more than half, because the numbers who attended this year's festival were down by more than half.

I don't doubt the numbers will fall further. I sat at the judging point for the costume bands and saw a ragtag of drifters in costumes debased by a thong culture. At the carnival this year, there was nothing to lift my spirits and nothing to fill the eye.