Society
Blair and the guns that kill our sons
Published 21 May 2007
We West Indians tried, struggled, pleaded with our young people to keep the temperature down
Only a few weeks before Tony Blair's farewell speech, a small but representative group of young, black boys in London murdered each other with guns and knives in an explosion of madness. They were toddlers, in or just out of pushchairs, when Blair and his cohorts came to power. Add to these the scores of young men who are confined for most of their natural lives to dungeons dark and grim, and it becomes clear that Blair and his black and Asian outriders have left our communities in a mess.
It wasn't always thus. Violent intensity from among our youth was always there, sometimes directed against the police, sometimes against right-wing fascists, at other times internecine, but rarely so.
A couple of years ago I broadcast a film on Channel 4 - Who You Callin' a Nigger? - which told of the growing violence between Asian and Caribbean youths. Up popped Shahid Malik, Labour MP for Dewsbury, at the beginning of the week when the documentary was scheduled to be shown. He hollered about how the film was not representative. Darcus Howe, he said, thrived on controversy.
Within a few months, violence exploded in Birmingham between Asian and West Indian youths. They fought with weapons over a weekend on the streets. It was a miracle that only a single life was lost. Much more threatened, but the voices of Blair's outriders remained curiously silent.
Following the London murders, the Prime Minister responded to all this by pinpointing the Caribbean community as being responsible for not keeping our children in check. His speech was all gratuitous nonsense, informed by his race relations outrider, Trevor Phillips, who in previous months had been laying the carpet on which Blair then trod.
And how we West Indians tried, struggled, pleaded with our young people to keep the temperature down. Anti-gun groups demanded that gun crime be brought to an end. Mothers, fathers and brothers waved placards calling on our children and grandchildren to abjure the violence.
I was directly involved. A tall, dark and handsome boy, Amiri Kamau Michael Joshua Howe, had plunged headlong into this cauldron of ill- directed dissent. I authored another documentary, Son of Mine, to illustrate the issues and the difficulties of keeping him in check without the authority of the state.
Despite Herculean efforts on our part, Blair and Phillips remained purely and simply abusive, careerists riding the backs of the downtrodden in order to please certain sections of white society. Gordon Brown promises the new: he would listen to what the people have to say. But he must not only listen. He must also shed the load heaped upon his political organisation by those who were in the dance for the main chance.
In Ross Kemp's documentary series on gangs, shown last year on Sky 1, young women and male activists in south London accused the government of being responsible for the flow of guns into the black communities. They spoke as though there was a conspiracy afoot to destroy what has long been an instinctive solidarity among our youths.
At first hearing, their statements perhaps sounded ridiculous; ridiculous, that is, if we did not understand that they were accusing the government, the police, the Special Branch, MI5 and MI6 - all of which, with their huge budgets, must be able to keep the guns out. Because there are no factories manufacturing guns in Peckham, Brixton or Clapham. There are no demobbed Irish republican groups in west London dispensing guns to young blacks. We may lack the sophistication to present these things in a political format, but, in short, our young people accuse the government of failing to stop the flow of guns into the black and Asian communities.
Once the general public is at risk, all forces and energies are dedicated to seeking out the terrorists. Why not against those who peddle guns to our sons? Brown has this point of entry into the hearts and minds of our communities. Maybe we are not weighty in votes. But we bury our sons; mothers travel across the English landscape to visit our boys in prison.
Young black prisoners are brought to the funerals of their parents and grandparents from prison and in chains. These young men pay the price by being incarcerated for ever. How many more, Mr Brown? How many more?
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