Top UK Diplomat Says Britain Could Recognize A Palestinian State Before A Peace Deal With Israel

Britain's Foreign Secretary David Cameron, left, meets with Lebanesze caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati in Beirut, Lebanon, Thursday, February 1, 2024. Britain’s top diplomat said Thursday that his country could officially recognize a Palestinian state after a cease-fire in Gaza without waiting for the outcome of what could be years-long talks between Israel and the Palestinians on a two-state solution. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)

BY FAY ABUELGASIM

RIYAK, LEBANON (AP) — Britain’s top diplomat said Thursday that his country could officially recognize a Palestinian state after a cease-fire in Gaza without waiting for the outcome of what could be yearslong talks between Israel and the Palestinians on a two-state solution.

Foreign Secretary David Cameron, speaking to The Associated Press during a visit Thursday to Lebanon intended to tamp down regional tensions, said no recognition could come while Hamas remained in Gaza, but that it could take place while Israeli negotiations with Palestinian leaders were continuing.

U.K. recognition of an independent state of Palestine, including in the United Nations, “can’t come at the start of the process, but it doesn’t have to be the very end of the process,” said Cameron, a former British prime minister.

“It could be something that we consider as this process, as this advance to a solution, becomes more real,” Cameron said. “What we need to do is give the Palestinian people a horizon towards a better future, the future of having a state of their own.”

That prospect is “absolutely vital for the long-term peace and security of the region,” he said.





Britain, the U.S. and other Western countries have supported the idea of an independent Palestine existing alongside Israel as a solution to the region’s most intractable conflict, but have said Palestinian independence should come as part of a negotiated settlement. There have been no substantive negotiations since 2009.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, for his part, has publicly rejected the creation of an independent Palestinian state after the war, and has even boasted in recent weeks that he was instrumental in preventing Palestinian statehood.

A move by some of Israel’s key allies to recognize a Palestinian state without Israel’s buy-in could isolate Israel and put pressure on it to come to the table.

Cameron said the first step must be a “pause in the fighting” in Gaza that would eventually turn into “a permanent, sustainable cease-fire.”

He added that in order for his country to recognize a Palestinian state, the leaders of the Hamas militant group would need to leave Gaza “because you can’t have a two state solution with Gaza still controlled by the people responsible for Oct. 7,” referring to the deadly Hamas attack on Israel that triggered the war in Gaza.

Hamas has so far taken the position that its leaders would not leave the enclave as part of a cease-fire deal.

Cameron said his country is also proposing a plan to deescalate tensions on the Lebanon-Israel border, where the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah and Israeli forces have been trading fire near-daily for the past four months, sparking fears of a wider war.

The plan would include Britain training Lebanese army forces to carry out more security work in the border region, he said.

The Right To Protest Is Under Threat In Britain, Undermining A Pillar Of Democracy

A demonstrator holds a banner outside the Old Bailey, the Central Criminal Court of England and Wales Monday, Dec. 4, 2023. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth)

BY JILL LAWLESS

LONDON (AP) — For holding a sign outside a courthouse reminding jurors of their right to acquit defendants, a retiree faces up to two years in prison. For hanging a banner reading “Just Stop Oil” off a bridge, an engineer got a three-year prison sentence. Just for walking slowly down the street, scores of people have been arrested.

They are among hundreds of environmental activists arrested for peaceful demonstrations in the U.K., where tough new laws restrict the right to protest.

The Conservative government says the laws prevent extremist activists from hurting the economy and disrupting daily life. Critics say civil rights are being eroded without enough scrutiny from lawmakers or protection by the courts. They say the sweeping arrests of peaceful demonstrators, along with government officials labeling environmental activists extremists, mark a worrying departure for a liberal democracy.

“Legitimate protest is part of what makes any country a safe and civilized place to live,” said Jonathon Porritt, an ecologist and former director of Friends of the Earth, who joined a vigil outside London’s Central Criminal Court to protest the treatment of demonstrators.

“The government has made its intent very clear, which is basically to suppress what is legitimate, lawful protest and to use every conceivable mechanism at their disposal to do that.”

A PATCHWORK DEMOCRACY

Britain is one of the world’s oldest democracies, home of the Magna Carta, a centuries-old Parliament and an independent judiciary. That democratic system is underpinned by an “unwritten constitution” — a set of laws, rules, conventions and judicial decisions accumulated over hundreds of years.

The effect of that patchwork is “we rely on self-restraint by governments,” said Andrew Blick, author of “Democratic Turbulence in the United Kingdom” and a political scientist at King’s College London. “You hope the people in power are going to behave themselves.”

"The 21st Century is Certainly African": An Interview with Professor Sarah Harper, Director of Oxford Institute of Population Ageing

Professor Sarah Harper, Un iversity of Oxford

BY DARA ADAMALEKUN

Professor Sarah Harper is the first Professor of Gerontology at Oxford University and the Director of the Oxford Institute of Population Ageing, the UK's first population center on the demography and economics of ageing populations. Her current research on demographic change addresses the global and regional impact of falling fertility and increasing longevity, with a particular interest in Asia and Africa. She has focused on women’s education and empowerment in sub-Saharan Africa, and the impact of this on falling fertility rates.

To begin, I’d like to ask you to briefly answer the question your recent book “How Population Change will Transform our World” poses within the context of sub-Saharan Africa. What are the overarching trends in demographic changes you’ve noted in sub-Saharan Africa, and what do you believe the implications of those trends will be?

Sub-Saharan Africa is really interesting because of what is happening to what we call the fertility transition. Our research has suggested that in all other regions of the world, as we allow women to be empowered through education and to have improved health and well-being and more control over decisions, they tend to choose to have fewer children.

The really interesting thing, however, is that desired family size still [remains] high in most Sub-Saharan African countries. We first picked this up while doing some anthropological work in Uganda, where we found that highly educated middle-class women still wanted to have three, four, or five children, even though they were beginning to restrict their childbearing. We then looked at the Demographic and Health Surveys, which is a very large, very robust data set with about over 150 countries in it. And it was very clear that in most sub-Saharan African countries, women who are educated are beginning to control their fertility, but their desired family size is still staying high.

That's really interesting because it means that sub-Saharan Africa will probably go through the full demographic transition maybe later in the 21st century than we thought, given that mortality is coming down and morbidity is beginning to come down as well. And we're seeing a growing number of older adults. This is probably going to coincide with a large number of children still being born [and] a growing number of older adults in the population, so there is going to be a massive youth bulge which is hopefully going to lead to a demographic dividend. It is likely that the population in that part of the world is going to continue to grow and the number of dependents is also going to stay very high, probably far longer into the end of the 21st century than we originally thought.

How have you found women’s education and empowerment to affect the desired family size across the region?

There's a group of people who argue that it's all to do with the availability of modern forms of contraception. And yet, we have data [that] shows very clearly that women in many countries, regardless of their education, are aware of modern forms of contraception. So we know that it isn't that women don't just have an unmet need for contraception. [They don’t] feel that they can take advantage of contraception.

There are two other broad drivers [of fertility]: one is health. We know that as women's health and well-being increase, infant and child mortality tends to go down. Then, women will choose to reduce the number of children they have; they will prefer to have a few [healthy] children rather than many, many children because they know that their children will have a much better chance of surviving through childhood and into adulthood. But overridingly, education seems to be important [to fertility] and that operates in a variety of different ways.

Firstly, it keeps girls out of the marriage market. If we take Nigeria for example, where on average women are still having eight to nine children, we know that particularly in rural areas, two-thirds of the girls leave primary school, and don't really go on to secondary school. They're married by twelve and are having their first child at thirteen or fourteen. Obviously, at that age, it's very, very difficult for those young girls to be able to stand out against [their] society, which at the moment is saying have as many children as you can. And if we can keep girls in school, we can empower them. We can change attitudes to communities, but also we can give them the skills [to] understand that although being a mother is important, there are other things that they can do [to] make an economic contribution and take control of their lives. So improving health [and] giving [women] access to family planning is really important, but education is absolutely vital.

Could you outline the differing attitudes towards aging in sub-Saharan Africa? Have these attitudes influenced demographic changes in the region?

What is interesting is when we say aging, if we think of an old person in North America, for example, we typically nowadays are thinking of someone who's probably over seventy-five [or] eighty. And they haven't been very productive in their lives. [They’re] probably now retired or [they’ve] cut back on their economic production. If we think of an older person in many sub-Saharan African countries, we may be talking about [a person in] in their 50s and that is because the risk of illness, frailty, and morbidity happens so much earlier. And particularly, women may be the mainstays for the family. So it could be that you have a woman in their 50s and they are economically looking after the grandchildren and even the great-grandchildren because that middle generation maybe has died or migrated out.

And therefore, they are a mainstay of the family. So although they're much younger, they're still recognized [as old] in their 50s and 60s. And if something happens to them, then that family in the household can be very significantly affected. So when we think about age, it isn't really chronological. It's more to do with life course and generation and illness and disease.

Do aging populations in sub-Saharan Africa tend to face any specific disparities in trying to access healthcare? If so, how can they be mitigated?

If you grow old in a country that is aging, that's very different from growing old in a young country. Without any doubt, most countries throughout Africa, particularly sub-Saharan Africa, [are] countries of youth. They are countries where there is still huge pressure on conquering child, infant, and maternal mortality, where there are still infectious diseases, or acute medicine is still really important. And that's not to say that the chronic diseases of later life were ignored, but obviously, when you are still a very small percentage of the population, it's more difficult for you to get those resources. Of course, what we're seeing if we look in terms of sheer numbers of older adults [is that] the growth in sub-Saharan Africa in terms of numbers is quite dramatic. But if we look [at it] as a percentage of [the] population, it's still relatively small. And I think, therefore, raising awareness [about] older adults is really important. They are important economically, they're important socially. They're important within a family, and there is just an innate importance of being a person and you don't lose that when you become old. I think that's really, really vital, but it's very difficult.

UNFPA [and] these big UN agencies, they are constantly pointing out that Africa is aging. It's aging slowly, but there are huge numbers of older people. I think as we see, we understand more of the vulnerabilities of older adults to climate change, drought, [and] civil strife. If there is some kind of a crisis, older people often find it very difficult to escape from [the] crisis. They tend to get trapped. I would say at the moment, the really important thing is good research data that points out the needs of older people. The tremendous work that the charity and political international section is doing highlights the importance of older people.

Considering that sub-Saharan Africa has one of the most rapidly aging populations in the world, do you consider the region to be an underrepresented research area? Why or why not?

African gerontology is very young, but I have to say that if you do a review over the last 30 years of the research that has been done, it is booming. It comes from a very, very low base, but really there's a huge amount of interest in this area. The research community has grown so much over the last few decades, and I think more resources are being poured into this area, which is good.

What about these trends and implications are similar to other regions you have studied, and what makes them unique to sub-Saharan Africa?

As I said at the beginning, I mean, the whole idea about aging, of course, isn't just about cooling mortality, which means people are living longer. It is a decrease in the number of children being born. So the average age of your population goes up. So this structural change is really, really important. And you go from a society where there are huge numbers and percentages of younger people and very few older adults to a much more balanced age structure. Africa is going through that very rapidly at the moment but is still predominantly a young part of the world.

And so I think from this perspective, we can say that we're probably looking to the second half of the 21st century before we will really see Africa become an aged region. Asia has been aging very dramatically, [and] at the moment Latin America is too; obviously, the Global North [has] aged already. So the really exciting [thing] is that Africa is aging at a time when we do have climate change, but we also have new technology, and who knows how new technology is going to affect our lives. So for the first time, we're going to see the sort of aging of a [continent] against this very rapid change in technology, and that's going to affect the way we work, the way we live, [and] our healthcare. And so it's a particularly interesting area to study at the moment.

You mentioned a relationship between climate change and aging in Sub-Saharan Africa. How have you already seen this relationship manifested or why do you anticipate it happening?

Yes, so I think one of the problems with climate change is that vulnerable peoples tend to be most affected. And obviously, older people are very susceptible to both heat and cold. They're very susceptible to drought and famine. They find it very difficult if there is a climate event, to be able to escape from that event whether that is a fire or a flood.

And as a consequence, I suppose one of the issues is that the impact on people is going to be particularly acute in Africa as the population ages because obviously, climate change is going to affect that part of the world. We believe we're going to have more and more vulnerable older people. Many older adults simply don't have the educational resources that younger people do. Older people in different parts of the world had a very good education system when they were younger. Of course, in many parts of sub-Saharan Africa, that simply wasn't possible. And so we do have an older population who may, because they're less educated, have [fewer] resources that they can call upon in order to help them, and maybe are much more dependent on sort of traditional ways of thinking which sometimes are very, very good but sometimes make it more difficult. I mean, there has been research which has suggested that there are a whole lot of myths that tend to circulate in a society, and if you're educated, you can stand back and say, “Well, I don't believe that, because my education tells me that that can't be true.” If you haven't had the advantage of education, which broadens your mind and enables you to think in different ways, I think you're more vulnerable to being taken in by certain myths. And so we might see communities of older people behaving in a certain way, refusing vaccinations, refusing medicines, because they are taken in more by the stories and narratives and myths that sometimes falsely arise, and I think that is a problem.

What impact might sub-Saharan African demographic changes have on the world, considering that a much higher proportion of the world's population will come from this region in the future?

I would say the 21st century is certainly African without any doubt at all, particularly the second half. You’re absolutely right. [Among] older populations that growth is slowing everywhere, except in sub-Saharan Africa. I think that's where [to attain] the demographic dividend, which means [benefiting] from the tremendous energy of younger people in your economy. You do need to have a very good framework, you need a good education, you need good health, and you need good governance and financial structures. And all [of] those infrastructures are [typical of] an urban environment which supports good, strong economic growth. But if Africa can do that, then not only [does it have] a huge, bright future, but it also, in theory, will be able to provide many of the skills that the rest of the world needs. Because as we age, not only Europe and North America but also South America and actually parts of Asia are going to have a massive skill shortage. And a vibrant, well-educated, healthy African young population could really help the world cope with the extreme aging that the rest of the world will be going through.

Adamolekun spoke with Harper on March 3, 2023. This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

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England’s North Has Been Crushed By Thatcherism And Austerity

BY JOHN MERRICK

The North Will Rise Again: In Search of the Future in Northern Heartlands
By Alex Niven
(Bloomsbury, 2023)

Northern England spawned the industrial revolution as well as a powerful workers’ movement and a lively culture of popular modernism. But the dysfunctions of Britain’s economic and political system have reduced it to a shadow of its former self.

n 1949, on a ship somewhere in the Indian Ocean, Donald Horne, the iconoclastic Australian writer and critic, was catching up on back issues of the Economist. As he flicked through the pages of that famous organ of Manchester liberalism, skipping past articles on the dividends of Smith’s Potato Chips and the international balance of payments, he learned that the country he was to call home for the next half-decade was one wracked by endless crisis.

Horne wrote up his reflections some twenty years later, after returning to his native land where he had made his name with a coruscating takedown of the Australian elite in The Lucky Country. Horne saw England as a nation deeply uncertain about itself and its place in the world. “Come to Britain,” he wrote, “and see the crisis.”

The Northern Metaphor

If Horne’s book, God Is an Englishman, is remembered today, it is likely to be for his vivid summation of one of England’s great divisions: that between the North and the South.

The Britain of what he called the “Northern Metaphor” was “pragmatic, empirical, calculating, Puritan, bourgeois, enterprising, adventurous, scientific, serious and believes in struggle.” In the “Southern Metaphor,” on the other hand, the same country was “romantic, illogical, muddled, divinely lucky, Anglican, aristocratic, traditional, frivolous, and believes in order and tradition.” And while the Northern Metaphor produced the sin of “a ruthless avarice,” the Southern matched it with a belief that “men are born to serve.”

Forgotten in the intervening years, Horne’s metaphors were picked up in the early 1980s by the American historian Martin Wiener in a book titled English Culture and the Decline of the Industrial Spirit. Wiener used it as part of a cultural explanation for Britain’s industrial failings. Much as Horne had seen in the late ’60s, the Southern metaphor had won out over the Northern. This, according to Wiener, had led to an elite who yearned to be country aristocrats, living off their accumulated dividends, rather than pioneering industrialists forging the nation anew.

Wiener’s book was published at a propitious moment. Only a few months earlier, Margaret Thatcher had won a hard-fought general election, and on taking office she was determined to clear away the detritus of British industry anatomized by Wiener. Her closest political ally, Sir Keith Joseph, even went so far as to distribute copies of the book to every member of her cabinet.

Fuzzy Lines

Myths and metaphors are powerful political tools. So it is that Alex Niven’s new book, The North Will Rise Again, seeks to crystallize a new metaphor for the North of England — one that can, he hopes, reverse its decline.

Niven’s North is located below the southern border of Scotland and somewhere above the fuzzy line that stretches from the very northern tip of Wales in the West across the High Peaks of northern Derbyshire to the southern-most border of Yorkshire in the East. All above it are the former industrial powerhouses of Liverpool, Manchester, Middlesbrough, Sheffield, and Bradford. He even on occasion extends the lower border to the “Trent-ish” cities of the English Midlands like Derby, Stoke-on-Trent, and Nottingham, deeming them to be part of the “cultural North,” if not the geographical one.

This land is not a happy one. Deeply blighted by decades of deindustrialization and government neglect, the North is in decline and has been for many years. Its towns are decaying, pocked with food banks and homelessness. Its former industrial heartlands are now dominated by low-paid and insecure service work.

The swingeing cuts of the austerity years lead to a “civic cut and run,” in which public services retreated in the face of unrelenting government cuts: in many areas of the North, those cuts were twice as big as their southern equivalents. In the decade after the financial crisis of 2008, government spending per capita on public transport was 2.4 times greater in the culturally, economically, and politically dominant London than in the North, leading many areas to feel even more hopelessly cut-off from southern prosperity than before.

Capitals of Modernity

This was not always so. The North, Niven reminds us, was once the great crucible of the workshop of the world, in which was forged the machinery and merchandise that would make Britain a global power. In the cotton towns of the English North were lit the first fires of the Industrial Revolution, and soon these rural backwaters grew “as if by magic touch,” in the words of Friedrich Engels, into dynamic and vigorous commercial cities.

"In the cotton towns of the English north were lit the first fires of the Industrial Revolution."

It was, Niven writes, an “earth-shattering event in northern history,” and the spread of machinofacture brought with it new and ever greater feats of engineering and advancements, and unprecedented forms of scientific discovery. In these years, “the North of England effectively became civilization.” It was “progress” that the North of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries stood for, and in doing so it offered “a forceful, even violent counter-theory about the sort of country England was — or could be.”

While the southern half of the nation was aristocratic, traditional, conservative, ancient, and rural — a land of “deeply ingrained traditionalism” and entrenched and unshifting privilege — the North was revolutionary, modern, dynamic, forceful, progressive. Against the accounts of those other great modern capitals — Paris, London, or New York — the cities of the North of England “were the real capitals of modernity,” Niven claims, exhibiting a “rebel commitment to modernism and progressive change.”

Along with the thrusting industrial and technical advances came a culture for which, according to Niven, the “idea of the future has tended to be at the forefront.” Much of the early chapters of the book are given over to anatomizing a distinctive brand of northern modernism.

This cultural strand takes its early cues from Wyndham Lewis’s Vorticist movement and reemerges in such diverse phenomena as Yevgeny Zamyatin’s machinist dystopia We, the sci-fi sublime of Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner, Newcastle’s modernist Morden Tower poets, Delia Derbyshire’s pioneering work for the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, and Tony Wilson’s Factory Records. What each has in common is a deep belief in forward movement: a thrusting, pulsing modernist spirit that echoes across the urban landscape of the industrial North.

Lewis, an Anglo-American novelist, painter, and open fascist sympathizer who was privately educated at the ur-establishment Rugby School, might seem a strange lodestar for northern futurism. But Niven finds inspiration in his early work of the 1910s for the magazine BLAST, with its iconoclastic and violent rejection of the staid and privileged world of southern modernism. With its machinic typography and design, its avant-garde poetry and prose in praise of the modern and mechanical, BLAST celebrated the “surfaces of industrial capitalism while attacking its central political institutions,” in giddy reveries for the antihuman power of urban modernity.

This modernist impulse reached its apogee in the 1950s and ’60s with the birth of what Niven, following Mark Fisher, calls “popular modernism,” when the avant-garde experiments of early-twentieth-century high culture crossed over into everyday forms of life. A cluster of mass forms developed in those modern, confident decades, from Pop Art, with its playful riffs on advertising and commercial design, to the sonic experiments of ’60s music, or the modernist sensibilities and aspirations to shape new forms of human activity that characterized postwar architecture.

Brasilia on the Tyne

The postwar years were for Niven ones of “bold egalitarian strides” when, driven by a “rare sense of optimism and renewal,” experiments in modern civic culture sprung up across the North. He presents T. Dan Smith, the modernizing leader of Newcastle City Council with his ultimately doomed attempt to turn his home city into the “Brasilia of the North,” as typifying these progressive social democratic dreams. Driven by an almost religious zeal, Smith fundamentally reshaped the city’s physical environment, demolishing vast rows of Newcastle’s slums and engaging in a series of ambitious modernist construction projects in their stead.

These heady years were not to last, however. Smith’s reputation fell sharply from its ’60s zenith as the tide turned against those buildings perceived as “concrete monstrosities” that had been created by an out-of-touch technocratic elite. His ultimate downfall would come in 1974, in a kind of allegory for social democratic Britain, when he was arrested on corruption charges relating to the dodgy developer John Poulson. Smith spent the next six years in prison, before dying in relative poverty and obscurity in 1993.

The contrast between Britain’s brief social democratic, popular-modernist interlude and the neoliberal era that followed was stark. As the rot of deindustrialization set in, little was left of the progressive dreams of the 1960s bar some half-remembered remnants in the cultural fabric of the North. It is the sad story of Andrea Dunbar who seems to represent this decline best for Niven.

Dunbar was born in 1961 and raised in a working-class family on the Buttershaw estate, a social housing complex built on open moorland on the outskirts of Bradford, West Yorkshire, which would later become a byword for deprivation. She wrote her first play, The Arbor, at fifteen as part of a school assignment. Encouraged by her teacher, Dunbar developed the play, which tells the story of a Bradford schoolgirl who falls pregnant to her Pakistani boyfriend, and it was later performed at the famed Royal Court Theatre in London in 1980.

Her second play, the wonderful, moving, and bitingly funny Rita, Sue and Bob Too, opened at the same theater two years later, when Dunbar was just nineteen. Alan Clarke later made it into a film, which premiered in 1987. Barely three years after the film’s release, aged just twenty-nine, Dunbar died of a brain hemorrhage after collapsing on the floor of a local pub.

Her short life, as documented in Clio Barnard’s almost painfully moving film The Arbor, was marred by alcoholism and abuse, as so many others are in the postindustrial North. As Niven perceptively writes, her life and work are “a grim archetype of a collective trauma which disproportionately ravages northern homes.”

Following the decimation of the Thatcher years, Niven charts the wasted potential of New Labour, when various schemes for northern redevelopment were mooted, not least the failed attempts at regional devolution following its implementation in both Scotland and Wales. Yet little changed under Tony Blair, except for the odd gimcrack bauble that sprouted on former industrial land, like the ostentatious and commercially driven urban regeneration projects seen at Salford’s gaudy Quays development and on Gateshead’s Tyneside.

A Modernist Myth

If Niven’s book aspires to be a cultural history of the North, then it is a selective one. Rarely does he venture beyond its northern-most outpost of his native Newcastle. Merseyside gets little mention beyond the Beatles, and Cumbria is no more than a side note to its eastern cousin Northumbria. Cheshire, my own northern citadel, is treated no less unkindly as a posh southern redoubt — hardly true of Crewe or Winsford, even if it is apt for Frodsham and Wilmslow.

But the book’s selectivity is part of its project. It is an attempt to create a new myth for the North, one that can forge a popular cultural socialist politics from deindustrialization’s battered ruinscapes. To do this, Niven writes, we must attend to the “northern traditions of imaginative escape and civic idealism.” Such a movement, he says, must be “a radical, revolutionary project,” based on pan-northern cooperation that can wipe away the antiquated, neo-feudal structure of Britain’s political system.

The watchwords for this new movement must be progress, hope, forward movement, anything that can break through the encrusted structures of traditional England. Niven’s new northern metaphor is one of progressive and modernizing change against the Tory southern elites. It must be forward looking, anti-nostalgic, modern.

Little is said, though, about that other great northern tradition: solidarity. As the historian Raphael Samuel wrote of the 1984–85 Miners’ Strike — the longest national dispute in British industrial history and a pivotal moment in northern history that gets little airing in Niven’s work — it was solidarity and community, often as not created amidst the struggle, that were key to the strike.

If it had an animating spirit, Samuel wrote, it was not a progressive modernity but a “radical conservatism.” This was a movement “of the known against the unknown, the local and the familiar against the remote and the gigantesque.” As one woman in the Welsh mining town of Maerdy told researchers: “We just want to keep what we’ve got!” Here was a movement for survival against the anonymous and modernizing forces of capital, yet one that was no less progressive for its conservatism.

Going against the grain of Niven’s modernist claim that “as in so many other walks of contemporary life, it seems clear that only cities can save us,” Samuel wrote that “the pit villages threatened with extinction by the Coal Board” were “not an atavistic survival from the past.” In fact, by “merging a country setting with an urban sociability, uniting work and home,” they offered “a model of how we might live in the future.”

Angel of the North

Throughout The North Will Rise Again, Niven is fond of quoting the German-Jewish philosopher Walter Benjamin as a progressive ally. Yet Benjamin was no mere modernist, as Niven seems to insist. There was a deep and abiding romanticism to his work as well.

Benjamin’s last work, “On the Concept of History,” written soon after his release from a makeshift French internment camp for German nationals and less than a year before his untimely death, is a powerful indictment of the concept of progress. There, he writes of an image by the artist Paul Klee that he had bought in 1922 and which he had hung on the walls of his studies in his increasingly peripatetic life in the years since.

The picture depicted an abstract angel, the Angelus Novus or new angel. “Where we perceive a chain of events,” he wrote, this angel “sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet.” The angel was pushed onward by a terrible storm: “This storm is what we call progress.”

Amidst the ruins of the deindustrial North, such a catastrophe is easy to see. As Niven knows well, any way out must be attached to a vision of the future. The current lack of such a vision, one that can motivate people to struggle for a better life, is one of the reasons for the Left’s historical low in the twenty-first century. Yet this vision does not have to be the impersonal, thrusting, machinic one of modernism.

There are more ways out of the wreckage than forward. As Benjamin wrote from his Parisian room, while the storm clouds gathered over Europe: “Social Democracy thought fit to assign to the working class the role of the redeemer of future generations, in this way cutting the sinews of its greatest strength.”

For it is not the image of liberated grandchildren that nourishes us, nor the onward march of progress. As the miners knew all too well, it is the image of the redemption of enslaved ancestors that steals us for the fight.

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Britain’s Boris Johnson Battles To Stay As PM Amid Revolt

In this grab taken from video from the House of Commons, Britain's Prime Minister Boris Johnson speaks during Prime Minister's Questions in the House of Commons, London, Wednesday July 6, 2022. Johnson is fighting for his political future Wednesday, as two of his top Cabinet ministers walked out of their jobs and a string of more junior ministers resigned after months of political chaos. (House of Commons/PA via AP)

BY DANICA KIRKA AND JILL LAWLESS

LONDON (AP) — British Prime Minister Boris Johnson battled to remain in office Wednesday, brushing off calls for his resignation after two top ministers and a slew of junior officials said they could no longer serve under his scandal-plagued leadership.

Johnson rejected demands that he step down during a stormy session of the House of Commons amid a furor over his handling of sexual misconduct allegations against a senior official. Later in the day, a delegation of some of his most trusted allies in the Cabinet paid a visit to the prime minister at 10 Downing Street to urge him to go, but he remained unmoved, Britain’s Press Association reported.

The prime minister turned down suggestions he seek a “dignified exit” and opted instead to fight for his political career, citing “hugely important issues facing the country,” according to the news agency. It quoted a source close to Johnson as saying he told colleagues there would be “chaos” if he quit.

The 58-year-old leader who pulled Britain out of the European Union and steered it through the COVID-19 outbreak is known for his ability to wiggle out of tight spots, managing to remain in power despite allegations that he was too close to party donors, that he protected supporters from bullying and corruption allegations, and that he misled Parliament about government office parties that broke pandemic lockdown rules.

He hung on even when 41% of Conservative lawmakers voted to oust him in a no-confidence vote last month.

But recent disclosures that Johnson knew about sexual misconduct allegations against a lawmaker before he promoted the man to a senior position pushed him to the brink.

In holding on to his office, Johnson is attempting to defy the mathematics of parliamentary government and the traditions of British politics. It is rare for a prime minister to cling to power in the face of this much pressure from his Cabinet colleagues.

“He is now besmirching our democracy, and if he doesn’t do the right thing and go of his own accord, then he’ll be dragged out,” Scottish National Party leader Ian Blackford told the BBC.

Many of Johnson’s fellow Conservatives were concerned that he no longer had the moral authority to govern at a time when difficult decisions are needed to address soaring food and energy prices, rising COVID-19 infections and the war in Ukraine. Others worry that he may now be a liability at the ballot box.

On Wednesday, members of the opposition Labour Party showered Johnson with shouts of “Go! Go!” during the weekly ritual of Prime Minister’s Questions in the House of Commons.

Labour Party leader Keir Starmer mockingly said of the resignations surrounding Johnson, “Isn’t it the first recorded case of the sinking ship fleeing the rat?”

More damningly, members of Johnson’s own Conservative Party — wearied by the many scandals he has faced — also challenged their leader.

“Frankly … the job of the prime minister in difficult circumstances, when he’s been handed a colossal mandate, is to keep going,” Johnson replied with the bluster he has used to fend off critics throughout nearly three years in office. “And that’s what I’m going to do.”

Former Health Secretary Sajid Javid, who helped trigger the current crisis when he resigned Tuesday night, captured the mood of many lawmakers when he said Johnson’s actions threaten to undermine the integrity of the Conservative Party and the British government.

“At some point we have to conclude that enough is enough,” he told fellow lawmakers. “I believe that point is now.”

Under party rules, another no-confidence vote cannot be held for another 11 months, but party members can change the rules. The 1922 Committee, a small but influential group of Conservative lawmakers, could decide as early as Monday whether to do that.

Javid and Treasury chief Rishi Sunak resigned within minutes of each other over the latest furor. The two Cabinet heavyweights were responsible for tackling two of the biggest issues facing Britain — the cost-of-living crisis and COVID-19.

In a scathing letter, Sunak said: “The public rightly expect government to be conducted properly, competently and seriously. … I believe these standards are worth fighting for and that is why I am resigning.”

The resignations of some 40 junior ministers and ministerial aides followed on Tuesday and Wednesday.

As Johnson dug in, critics accused him of refusing to accept the inevitable and of behaving more like a president than a prime minister by referring to his “mandate.” In Britain, voters elect a party to govern, not the prime minister directly.

Former International Development Secretary Andrew Mitchell said late Tuesday that Johnson’s time is finally up.

“It’s a bit like the death of Rasputin: He’s been poisoned, stabbed, he’s been shot, his body’s been dumped in a freezing river, and still he lives,” Mitchell told the BBC. “But this is an abnormal prime minister, a brilliantly charismatic, very funny, very amusing, big, big character. But I’m afraid he has neither the character nor the temperament to be our prime minister.”

The final straw for Sunak and Javid was the prime minister’s handling of sexual misconduct allegations against Conservative lawmaker Chris Pincher.

Last week, Pincher resigned as deputy chief whip after complaints he groped two men at a private club. That triggered a series of reports about past allegations leveled against Pincher — and shifting explanations from the government about what Johnson knew when he tapped the man for a senior job enforcing party discipline.

This story has ben updated to correct the spelling of the last name of the chair of the International Chamber of Commerce in Britain. It is Drechsler, not Drexler.

Follow all of AP’s coverage of Prime Minister Boris Johnson at:

https://apnews.com/hub/boris-johnson

The Future Of Anglicanism Is African

British Christianity is being revived by migration

BY TOMIWA OWOLADE

The future of the Christian religion in England is not to be found in the southern shires or the former mill towns of the North. Out there, the voice and tenor of the Bible is a thinning force, a hoarse whisper. In London, the most multicultural part of Europe, it is closer to a deafening roar.

Consider British GQ’s next cover star, the Ealing-born Bukayo Saka. The 20-year-old English footballer has had a redemptive story since he missed the losing penalty in the Euros 2020 final last summer; he has been the brightest star in a rejuvenated Arsenal team that has a good chance of getting into the top four in the Premier League.

Along with a snazzy photo shoot, Saka recorded a video for GQ in which he lists his ten most essential items. There is an iPad, a portable music speaker, some Twix chocolate bars, a football, a PlayStation, trainers, and moisturiser: all the things you’d expect any sporty young man to be proud of possessing.

But Saka also included something else — a Bible, gifted to him by his father. “Religion is a big part of my life,” Saka says in the video. “Obviously I’m a strong believer in God.” Of course, by religion Saka means Christianity. And the use of obviously is striking: why is it obvious he would be a strong believer in God as a young person born and bred in the capital city of a western European nation? Well, it is obvious to him because of his family. Saka comes from a Nigerian family. And for many black African communities in Britain, Christianity is everything.

So Saka, one of the standard-bearers of the England national football team — which substitutes for religion in the country at large — also embodies another fascinating nexus: the relationship between a black British identity and Christianity, a religion that was introduced to anglophone west Africa by the British.

There’s a concept called the pizza effect. The original pizza was once a basic dish found in different pockets of Italy: a flat bread spread with tomato sauce; no toppings. When immigrants from Sicily and southern Italy moved to America between the late 19th and early 20th century, they introduced pizza to Americans. And these Italian-Americans, on the streets of New York and Philadelphia and Chicago, gave this basic dish a renewed colour: it became a food of multiple toppings and textures. After the First World War, pizza was reintroduced to Italy. And it became pizza: not just a flat baked bread with some tomato sauce — but a national dish of magnificent variation.

The same is true of Christianity in Britain today.

Christianity is collapsing throughout Britain. A British Social Attitudes Survey from 2018 concluded that this decline is “one of the most important trends in postwar history”. More than half of the British public now say they do not belong to any religion, compared to 31% in 1983. But there are parts of the country where the flame of the religion is still bright.

You have to go to London, especially the inner-city, to find England’s most vigorous forms of Christianity. It is largely West African immigrants who fill the pews of decaying churches from Peckham to Woolwich, who renovate new churches in Brixton and Lewisham, and who volunteer for Christian centres and charities up and down the capital. If you want a solid sense of the sacred, a connection to Britain’s ancient Christian past, you are more likely to find it while eating jollof rice in a big tent in Kennington than eating a Yorkshire pudding in a small room in Harrogate.

This is not a utopian vision of liberal multiculturalism. London is the most cosmopolitan city in Britain. We all know that. But it’s also the most religious and socially conservative city in the country. 62% of Londoners, for instance, identify as religious, compared with 53% of the rest of the country. 25% of Londoners attend a religious service at least once a month; only 10% of people outside London do. 24% of Londoners think sex before marriage is wrong, compared to 13% of the population. London is the most homophobic city in the country: 29% of people in London think homosexuality is wrong, while 23% outside London think this.

The city is not only diverse in markers of visual difference, such as skin colour and types of dress, but also in values. There is social libertinism and social conservatism and everything squeezed in-between. Many tend to focus on diversity in terms of surfaces, rather than diversity of values. The awkward tensions of the latter are tacitly accepted, like a squeaky-clean parent knowing his kids spent the night doing drugs in their bedroom but not mentioning it at breakfast the next morning. It’s a very British sort of relationship — traversing that thin border between tolerance and hypocrisy.

In the city 56% of Christians pray regularly. Only 32% outside of it do. London is more Christian today than it was during Margaret Thatcher’s time as Prime Minister. According to David Goodhew, the director of ministerial practice at Cranmer Hall in Durham University, between 1979 and 2012 there was a 50% rise in the number of churches in the capital city. Many of them are built in boroughs of London with a large black population such as Southwark.

The political scientist Eric Kaufmann points out that secularisation is “almost entirely a white British phenomenon”. When the share of white British people decreases in an area, secularisation also slows down. The number of white British people who ticked no religion in the census rose from 15.4% in 2001 to 28% in 2011. By contrast, the number of black Africans who ticked no religion in that same time span rose only by a tiny amount: from 2.3% to 2.9%.

Given it’s black Africans who are driving the rise of Christianity in London, conservatives who want to renew Christianity in Britain would do best to stop relying on public pronouncements by Justin Welby and Pope Francis. Instead, they should lobby for an open-borders immigration policy for all the African countries Britain once colonised.

Many of these communities are Christians because of the British Empire. Christian missionaries may have been a part of colonialism, but their influence extended beyond the colonial government, establishing schools and discouraging practices hitherto common in pre-colonial Nigeria — human sacrifice, slavery, twin infanticide, and polygamy.

Christian missionary schools also provided the foundation for many forms of African nationalism. Pro-independence leaders, like Obafemi Awolowo and Nnamdi Azikiwe, were educated at schools established by missionaries. Ghana’s Kwame Nkrumah, an icon of revolutionary black African nationalism and the first leader of a black African country to gain independence from a European colonial power, was educated at a Catholic missionary school.

Meanwhile, Yoruba Christians have incorporated the God of the Old and New Testament into their own language. Whenever Yoruba people pray, for instance, they use the word Olódùmarè to refer to the God of the Bible, and this is the same name for the God of the native Yoruba religion.

It’s unsurprising, then, that many black Africans in Britain today emphasise the importance of Christianity to their identity. In general, black British people are more than twice as likely to say religion is very important to them. Most black British believers are Christian. Yet the centrality of Christianity to black British identity is hardly spoken about. Saka treasures his music record and his football. But on Instagram, his name is not Bukayo Saka but “God’s Child”.

Christianity can accommodate tension. It is both radical and conservative: it proclaims the downtrodden will inherit the earth and it praises life-long monogamy. It incorporates the puritanical fervour of Leviticus and the ravishing sensuality of the Song of Solomon. Its central figure is both a man who was abused and spat on and crucified, like a slave, but also a figure of transcendent divinity. What can be more beautifully Christian than the fact its future in the bosom of what was once the largest empire in the world is now being sustained by communities it once colonised?

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Mauritius Presses Claim Versus UK For Indian Ocean islands

FILE - Mauritius Prime Minister Pravind Kumar Jugnauth addresses the United Nations General Assembly Thursday, Sept. 21, 2017, at the United Nations headquarters. A delegation from Mauritius was sailing Tuesday, Feb. 8, 2022, to the Chagos Islands to press the country's claim for the strategically important Indian Ocean archipelago, which is also claimed by Britain and is home to an American military base. (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II)

BY DAVID RISING

BANGKOK (AP) — A delegation from Mauritius is set to sail Tuesday to the Chagos Islands to press the country’s claim for the strategically important Indian Ocean archipelago, which is also claimed by Britain and is home to an American military base.

It is the first time Mauritius has embarked upon an expedition to the islands without seeking the permission of the United Kingdom, Prime Minister Pravind Jugnauth said in a statement, adding it is a “concrete step” in “exercising its sovereignty and sovereign rights in relation to the Chagos Archipelago.”

Those rights were strengthened in 2019 by a non-binding opinion from the International Criminal Court, which said that Britain had unlawfully carved up Mauritius, an archipelago nation whose main island is some 2,000 kilometers (1,200 miles) off the southeast coast of Africa. The Chagos islands were a part of Mauritius until Britain separated them a few years before Mauritius became independent from British colonial rule in 1968.

The United Nations General Assembly followed that opinion with a resolution two months later demanding that Britain end its “colonial administration” of the Chagos Islands, which include the U.S. military base on Diego Garcia, and return them to Mauritius. Even Pope Francis weighed in, saying that Britain should obey the U.N. resolution.

Britain, which calls the archipelago a “British Indian Ocean Territory,” has refused to abide by the non-binding decisions. It has argued that the Chagos archipelago has been under its sovereignty since 1814 and that its continued presence there is strategically important.

Britain’s Foreign Office did not comment on the sovereignty question, but said Mauritius had “notified the U.K. about its plans to conduct a scientific survey close to the Chagos Islands.”

“The U.K. shares this interest in environmental protection and gave assurances to Mauritius that it would not interrupt the survey,” the Foreign Office said.

In his statement, Jugnauth recalled the ICJ ruling and said that “continued administration of the Chagos archipelago by the United Kingdom constituted a wrongful act.” His office did not immediately respond to an email seeking further comment.

Jugnauth has repeatedly said that ending the British administration, however, would have no implications for the U.S. military base at Diego Garcia, which he has said Mauritius is committed to maintaining.

Britain sealed a deal in 1966 allowing the U.S. to use Diego Garcia for defense purposes. The United States maintains a base there for aircraft and ships and has backed Britain in the legal dispute with Mauritius.

Britain evicted about 2,000 people from the Chagos archipelago in the 1960s and 1970s so the U.S. military could build its base. Many resettled in Britain and have fought for years in courts there to return to the islands.

Jugnauth in 2019 told the U.N. General Assembly their forcible eviction “remains a very dark episode of human history akin to a crime against humanity.”

Jugnauth said the vessel commissioned by Mauritius, Bleu de Nîmes, is to sail Tuesday from Seychelles to the Chagos archipelago, about 500 kilometers (310 miles) south of Maldives in the Indian Ocean.

Onboard for the 15-day journey is Mauritius’ permanent representative to the U.N., as well as legal advisers and others who planned to undertake a scientific survey at the Blenheim Reef, a partially submerged atoll in the northeastern part of the archipelago.

Jugnauth said the survey results would be part of Mauritius’ submissions for a case being heard by the Hamburg-based International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, which was brought by Maldives, which supports Britain’s sovereignty claim.

Jugnauth said in his statement that he would not accompany others on the current voyage, but would personally visit the islands in a separate voyage.

AP journalist Jill Lawless contributed to this report from London.

Giving Back To English: How Nigerian Words Made It Into The Oxford English Dictionary

Kingsley Ugwuanyi

BY KINGSLEY UGWUANYI

Nigeria was recently in the spotlight when the Oxford English Dictionary announced that its January 2020 update included 29 Nigerian English words.

The reception, in both the traditional and new media, was nothing short of sensational. Most Nigerians expressed a great sense of pride in the fact that the unique ways in which they use English were being acknowledged internationally.

The Oxford English Dictionary said in the release note:

By taking ownership of English and using it as their own medium of expression, Nigerians have made, and are continuing to make, a unique and distinctive contribution to English as a global language.

Interestingly, the idea of Nigerians owning English is the fulcrum of my doctoral research. In it, I found that increasingly Nigerians are demonstrating a strong sense of ownership of the English language, and in particular their use of it.

The inclusion of Nigerian English words in the Oxford English Dictionary is, in a sense, a recognition of the tremendous efforts by scholars of Nigerian English many of whom have produced discipline-shaping research. This has included four published dictionaries of Nigerian English.

These developments indicate that Nigerian English has indeed come of age. They also validate the concentric circle model developed by Professor Braj Kachru, the father of world Englishes research. This avers that the ‘outer-circle’ varieties of English (where Nigerian English belongs) is ‘norm-developing’. In other words, that Nigerian English is adding to the norms of English.

I think the English, indeed the English-speaking world, should be thankful to Nigeria for this historic gift.

So how were the words chosen?

As the Nigerian consultant to the project which saw the inclusion of the words, I have insights into the process the team underwent in adding them. These include the rationale for adding them, and the enormous significance the inclusion holds for the English language.
How, and why, new words are added

The Oxford English Dictionary has a wide variety of resources to track the emergence of new words and new senses of already existing words.

The Oxford English Corpus is one. This is an electronic database of different types of written and spoken texts specifically designed for linguistic research. In the case of Nigerian English and other World English varieties, for instance, suggestions of new words and senses come from the corpus, reading books and magazines written in the English varieties in question as well as looking at previous studies, and the review of existing dictionaries, if any.

Once there is a list of candidates, a team of expert editors at the Oxford English Dictionary looks closely at the databases to ensure that there are several independent instances of the words being used. And how they are being used.

Other factors that are considered include the time period over which words have been used, as well as their frequency and distribution. But there’s no exact time-span and frequency threshold. Some words – such as Brexit – are relatively young but were included quickly because of the huge social impact they had in a short space of time. Others are not used frequently but are included because they are of specific cultural, historical, or linguistic significance to the community of their users. An example is ‘Kannywood’, the word describing the Nigerian Hausa-language film industry, based in the city of Kano.

It’s clear therefore that the editors don’t simply select the words or senses that appeal to them. Instead, they are guided by use, which links in with the prevailing thought in lexicography and linguistics more generally: that the remit of dictionaries and linguistic research is not to prescribe how languages should be used but to describe how languages are being used.

Words are added because the Oxford English Dictionary recognises that English is a universal language. It believes that including words from varieties of English all over the world enables it to tell a more complete story of the language.

These varieties also reflect the unique culture, history, and identity of the various communities that use English across the world. Nigerian English is a good example. Like other English varieties, it is a living ‘being’ with its own unique vocabulary, encompassing all sorts of lexical innovations. These include borrowings from local languages, new abbreviations, blends and compounds.

Failure to capture such words would deny English an opportunity to grow. It would also deny the flavour of what the speakers of these varieties contribute to the development of English.
What does it mean for English?

One of the reasons previous world languages such as Egyptian and Ancient Greek ceased to exert dominance internationally was their inability to keep pace with developments around the world.

Perhaps this is one factor that clearly distinguishes English. It has demonstrated a capacity for growth by keeping its borders open, helping it to develop from a West Germanic dialect spoken in a small island into a world language. English is now spoken by about 1.75 billion people – a quarter of the world’s population. This includes first and second language speakers.

One way English grows is by admitting new words and senses not just from other English varieties but from virtually all languages of the world. For instance, English has had the word ‘postpone’ since the late 15th century, but it was through India that its opposite ‘prepone’ entered English in current use during the 20th century.

Similarly, Nigerian English is reintroducing the verb meaning of ‘barb’, which existed in 16th century British English.

This is how English maintains its dominance. In addition, the Internet has given today’s Oxford English Dictionary editors wider access to non-traditional sources of linguistic evidence. This has enabled them to widen and improve the dictionary’s coverage of world varieties of English, affirming Oxford English Dictionary’s claim as “the definitive record of the English language”.

SOURCE: THE CONVERSATION

Sick Sales Inside ‘Paedo Paradise’ In The Gambia

BY GRAEME CULLIFORD

THE GAMBIA (THE SUN)--TRAGIC Gambian children are being sold to British paedophiles for as little as £2-a-time by their desperate parents, Sun Online can reveal.

Huge numbers of predators are taking advantage of lax laws in the poverty stricken African country to embark on sick child abuse holidays where they openly target little boys and girls.

Sun Online saw first hand how poor Gambian children can be vulnerable to British paedos when we visited the beach resorts that dot Kololi on the country’s picturesque Atlantic coastline.

Our reporter was constantly shocked by the number of unaccompanied African minors he saw being cared for by middle-aged, Western men who did not appear to be their biological fathers.

The encounters witnessed included a girl aged between six and eight having lunch with a balding, white haired man in a restaurant filled with similarly aged tourists.

The same day we saw a stoutly built man in his 50s or 60s wading into the ocean gripping the hand of a tiny African child in white swimming shorts.

Equally unsettling was the sight of a Gambian toddler watching wide-eyed with fear as a middle-aged white woman got into a fist fight with a young black prostitute at a popular beach bar.

It was 11.30pm at night and the air was thick with cigarette smoke. The child, no older than two, was being held closely by a white man with a British accent.

Children sold for £2

Our investigation comes as experts warn that the economic crisis unleashed by the collapse of travel firm Thomas Cook is helping turn the former British colony into a “paedophile paradise” where perverts can operate unchecked.

Thomas Cook flew 45 per cent of The Gambia’s 100,000 annual visitors from the UK to the capital Banjul until it went into liquidation under the weight of its debts in September.

In an exclusive interview, Lamin Fatty, the National Coordinator of the Child Protection Alliance in The Gambia, reveals that both male and female tourists are targeting African minors.

He warns: “Sex is cheap in my country and children are being sold for as little as 150 dalasis, or just over £2 in your currency.

“Some of the parents know their children are being abused and they accept it because they are so desperate for food in their bellies.

“Others are too naïve to realise. They think the Westerner is paying their bills and helping their boy or girl out of the kindness of their heart, while in reality they have bad intentions.

“Child abuse is going on all the time in The Gambia and the government is not doing enough to put a stop to it.

“Our children are being approached directly on the beaches or the street and child abusers from all over Europe including the UK are coming here for this.

“I want to make clear that this does not just involve men but also adult women who are paying for sex with teenage boys in The Gambia.

"We have laws that are supposed to stop this from happening but they are not being enforced so we have become a paradise for paedophiles."

Locals 'desperate' after Thomas Cook collapse

Two school-age girls play at the feet of two men, their mums nowhere in sight. Image: My Story Media via The Sun

As tourism makes up one-third of the country’s GDP, there are fears that businesses will go bust and locals will go hungry following an estimated 50 per cent drop in economic activity that has already hit beach resorts.

Lawyer and children’s rights advocate Malick Jallow told Sun Online: “While some tourists will always want to help poor Gambians, others will see this situation as an opportunity to exploit young children.

“The problem is that the abuse is sometimes carried out with the blessing of the parents because they are so in need.

“The perception is that white people, or ‘toubabs’ as they call them, have stacks of cash and these parents are often excited that their child has attracted the attention of a white man.

“It actually makes them feel proud so they give their permission for the boy or girl to go with the person and when the police try to question them they will not co-operate.”

'She didn't look comfortable at all'

Former Thomas Cook rep Anne Heap, 53, from Wigan, said: “These people are as poor as poor can be — it’s rare to see a child wearing shoes — and there isn’t any other trade for them outside tourism.

“Thomas Cook used to always give us an extra 10kg luggage allowance so the workers and passengers could bring aid boxes to The Gambia — basic things like clothes, medicine and school equipment.

“The first thing I thought of when we went under was, 'What is going to happen to people in The Gambia?' We were the only airline flying directly there.

“I’ve heard that crime has already shot up as there is not enough money coming in — the hand that feeds them is gone.

“Sex tourism is already huge in The Gambia — some bars are like brothels — and I do worry that more children will get lured into prostitution to feed their families.

“When I was working there I would see old men walking with girls as young as 10, 11 or 12. There is a dark side to The Gambia.

“One time when we were flying back to Manchester there was a British man in his 70s with a girl who was only about eight or nine. This was about eight years ago.

“I was so concerned about what was going on that I got chatting to him outside the toilet during the flight. I wanted to speak to the girl too but she never left her seat, she didn’t look comfortable at all.

“I reported it and border security later told me the man had been ‘apprehended’ but I was not able to find out what happened to him or the girl after that."

Tots hand-in-hand with 'paedos'

There is no proof to suggest that any of the men we pictured were paedophiles.

However the experts we showed our dossier of photos to said the police should have questioned them according to Gambian child protection laws.

Lamin Fatty said: “This does worry me because, if the children are unaccompanied, they should not be alone in tourist areas without their parents.

“It is also forbidden for a child to be in a bar so late at night and we do not encourage physical affection with minors.

“I work with young girls and boys and I would not hug them or pick them up, it is not appropriate.”

Malick Jallow added: “I would have questioned these men had I seen them myself. As a lawyer and an activist, I would want to know if they have the authority to be caring for that child.

“We have a lot of good Samaritans coming to The Gambia but we also have people who use charity as a front to hide their bad intentions.

“The security guards should have questioned these men but there is a culture of inferiority here and they would have been scared to challenge a wealthy Westerner.”

British tourists can still fly to The Gambia via Lisbon with the TAP airline or via Casablanca with Royal Air Maroc. There is also a limited direct service run by ‘The Gambia Experience’ company and package deals can be snapped up for just over £500 a person.

Pensioners taking teens to hotels

Health care assistant Lucy Mendy, 33, from Gloucester, was trying to enjoy a winter holiday in the country she has come to see as a second home — but says she was shocked by some of the things she had witnessed during her trip.

She said: “I’ve seen old men taking girls looking as young as 15 or 16-years-old to their hotel room.

“It made me feel sick and I wish I could have intervened, but this is not the UK and I was scared what might have happened if I tried to confront them.

“People here are so poor, some of them will do anything for money, even if it means giving their bodies to a tourist.”

Lucy’s mum, pensioner Marjorie Botton, 68, also from Gloucester, added: “The collapse of Thomas Cook has hit people so hard.

“They are getting half as many British tourists and that means they might not make enough money to get through the quiet season, which starts in April.”

Dutch tourist Corina Bouwman also witnessed suspected child abuse during her two week, winter vacation in December.

The social worker, 54, said: “I’ve seen a number of tiny African children walking around with big white men.

“On each occasion I thought, ‘What is going on here? Where is the child’s mother?’

“But I didn’t want to accuse anyone in case I had misread the situation.”
'White men approach little boys and girls'

Father-of-four Abdullah Labamba, 48, runs a fruit stand next to one of the many hotels that line Kololi’s palm-tree fringed beach and says he has witnessed paedophiles targeting vulnerable child workers selling peanuts for less than £1 a bag.

He said: “I’ve seen white men approach the little boys and girls right here on the beach. I do my best to stop them.

"I tell the children, ‘Get out of here, this is not a safe place for you.’

“The children will run away but they normally come back. It's shocking.

"Their parents are desperate for money and they know they won’t be allowed home until they have sold at least five bags.

“Some men try to take advantage of that by offering them £50 for the whole basket. Then they will ask them to come back to go somewhere private.”

Child abuse scourge

Tragically, child abuse is now endemic in The Gambia, where 60 per cent of the 1.9m population live below the poverty line.

Previous research has shown that paedophiles often pose as charity workers and Good Samaritans so they can befriend poor families — and UNICEF has warned that The Gambia is one of Africa’s top destinations for child sex tourism.

The Gambian government meanwhile has tried to crack down and in 2013 introduced new laws allowing them to seize hotel properties if children are knowingly abused on the premises.

They also pledged to give out “hefty fines” and “stiff sentences” to paedophiles that are caught.

But incredibly there has been only one successful prosecution since laws were tightened and that man ended up being pardoned by the president.

Norwegian teacher Svein Agesandakar, 57, was found guilty of abusing six children, the youngest aged three, in 2006.

The court heard how he had tricked his way into a hard-up Gambian family by posing as a do-gooder, giving the parents sacks of rice and new shoes in exchange for time alone with their large brood of six kids in a hotel room.

The paedophile had separate convictions for child abuse in Norway but was sentenced to just three years in jail.

Then, in 2018 President Adama Barrow decided to pardon him for reasons that have never been explained.

The pardon was later revoked amidst a public outcry but experts fear his case has given a green light to other paedophiles.

Predator free

In October last year an official UN investigation found that Gambia’s tourist areas continue to be a dangerous place for children and that predators now stay in motels and private apartments so they can avoid prying eyes.

UN Special Rapporteur Maud de Boer-Buquicchio reported: “The rare instances when complaints are lodged with the police are not duly acted upon, the gathering of compelling evidence is delayed, and investigation and prosecution is stalled, resulting in victims or witnesses withdrawing their complaints.

“Some cases have also reportedly been dismissed on the grounds that statements by child victims were allegedly inconsistent.”

Our report comes after the UK government was slammed for failing to protect children overseas from British predators.

A report by the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) found more needs to be done to make sure offenders operating in poor countries like The Gambia are caught and prosecuted.

Calling for a new national plan to tackle the problem, Debbie Beadle, Director of Programmes at the child protection organisation ECPAT UK, said: “We hope that by bringing these institutional failings to light, the UK can become a world leader in tackling the abuse of vulnerable children globally, and that child victims abroad are no longer ‘under the radar’ of authorities.

British Father [Gabriel Diya] And Two Children Who Drowned In Costa Del Sol Resort Are Named

A civil guard van is parked at the entrance of the Club La Costa World holiday resort near Malaga, Spain. Credit: AP

ITV NEWS

A British father and his two children who drowned in a swimming pool at a holiday resort in the Costa del Sol have been named.

Gabriel Diya, 52, his daughter Comfort Diya, 9, and his son Praise-Emmanuel Diya, 16, are understood to have died in the triple tragedy on Christmas Eve.

Mr Diya's Facebook account lists him as a manager of Open Heavens London, a Christian religious group with origins in Nigeria, based in Charlton, south-east London.

It is understood Mr Diya and his daughter are both British, while his son is American.

The three family members were found unresponsive in a swimming pool at Club La Costa World on Christmas Eve, a statement from holiday operator CLC World Resorts and Hotels said.

The incident occurred after the nine-year-old girl got into difficulties in the water and her brother, 16, and father, 52, attempted to rescue her, it has been reported.

According to Spanish journalist Fernando Torres, police divers on Tuesday found nothing wrong in the pool but investigations continue.

It is believed the divers have been inspecting the pool and its pump, but so far it is not known what caused the tragedy.

Mr Torres added a janitor, who he says was the first to jump into the pool to rescue them, found it difficult to get back out.

Operator CLC World Resorts and Hotels said in a statement: "The Guardia Civil have carried out a full investigation which found no concerns relating to the pool in question or procedures in place, which leaves us to believe this was a tragic accident which has left everyone surrounding the incident in shock.

"Naturally, our primary concern remains the care and support of the remaining family members; we would therefore request that their privacy be respected at this traumatic time."

A holidaymaker staying at the resort, which is near the town of Fuengirola, said she saw "bodies covered in white sheets" by the side of the pool, and could hear "a woman crying aloud".

Tanya Aamer, 23, from Birmingham, said: "The atmosphere as I was walking past is indescribable.

"Obviously we've never been in that situation before so we kind just began walking slowly in a slight state of confusion as to what we're witnessing and eventually when we got to the bottom it was just silent, no talking or anything."

CLC World Resorts and Hotels said management were assisting the authorities "fully" with an investigation into the deaths at the resort.

The statement said: "Management at Club La Costa World resort would like to offer its heartfelt condolences to the family affected by the loss of three family members on December 24 2019.

"The guests were found unresponsive in one of the resort's pools.

"First response teams and emergency services attended and administered first aid.

"The management are assisting the authorities fully with their investigation into the deaths.

"We would like to thank our first response team and the emergency services for their quick and appropriate responses, and our staff for the continuing support of the family at this difficult time."

A spokesman for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office said: "We are offering assistance to a British woman following an incident in Spain."

Slavery Museum In Liverpool AIms To Confront Painful Legacy

International Slavery Museum, Liverpool, England, Image: Visit Liverpool



BY RUSSELL CONTRERAS

LIVERPOOL, ENGLAND (AP) — Scarlet shackles sit peacefully on display in front of a sad, gray backdrop. The now rusted leg irons once locked human ankles during 18th century voyages from Africa to some European port, then to the Americas.

Who the shackles held remain a mystery. But as a citizen of the United States, I've likely broken bread with a descendant of the woman forced to wear this instrument. Maybe my uncle fought alongside her kin in a war. Or it's possible one of her distant relatives is now be my relative.

These are the thoughts I entertain recently while walking through the reflective International Slavery Museum in Liverpool, England. Founded in 2007 on the bicentenary of the abolition of the British slave trade, the museum sits just a short walk from the dry docks where slave trading ships were repaired and fitted out in the 1700s. (And it's close by the The Beatles Story, the world's largest permanent exhibition purely devoted to the hometown band.) Once a major slaving port, Liverpool grew thanks to merchants' financial ties to the enslavement of people to the Americas.

Today, the building tells the story of the enslavement of people from Africa and how this British city benefited from human bondage. The Liverpool location reclaims a space once connected to worldwide human suffering and is similar to O Mercado de Escravos — the slavery museum in Lagos, Portugal, where the European slave trade began. But Liverpool's museum is much larger, more interactive, and more ambitious without being exploitative.

Inside, visitors immediately are taken on a meditative experience focusing on Africa before European contact. You are greeted by quotes of American abolitionists and civil rights leaders etched into stone walls before you see traditional masks from present-day Sierra Leone and Mali. There are vibrant textiles from Ghana, intricate headdresses from Cameroon and samples of Igbo wall painting from Nigeria. You can listen to samples of drum signals from the Republic of Congo or a Mbuti hunting song. The messages are clear: before enslavement, Africa was a diverse and complex continent with long artistic and religious traditions.

Next, visitors are whisked toward a room tackling enslavement and the brutal Middle Passage. Racial ideologies and Europe's unfamiliarity with the cultures of Africa sparked the slave trade which grew once European powers expanded to the Americas, the museum tells us. In this room, details of the voyage of the ship Essex are reconstructed. That's a slave ship that left Liverpool on June 13, 1783, just nine years after the American Declaration of Independence.

During the Middle Passage portion, visitors encounter shackles and chains used in forts and castles along the African coast to hold humans before their horrific journey. A small replica of a slave boat illustrates how captives were tossed into small compartments. Next to the ship are 18th-century whips and branding irons. Yes, these were used.

Then, there was resistance, liberation, and the long fight for civil rights. Surprising, I walked into an area dedicated to the African American heroes from Harriet Tubman to the Rev. Martin Luther King. Jr. and Malcolm X. U.S. news footage from the 1950s and 1960s illustrates how the descendants of those who crossed the Middle Passage had to fight for human rights and against violence amid white supremacy — the ideology that launched racialized slavery in the first place. There's also photos of the civil rights struggles in the United Kingdom from London's "Keep Britain White Rally" in 1960 to the Toxteth Riot of 1981 in Liverpool over allegations of police harassment.

The museum ends with a space for changing exhibits related to the themes around modern-day slavery. During my visit in November, I encountered an exhibition called "Am I not a woman and a sister" — a moving image installation by England-based artist Elizabeth Kwant. She co-created the project with female survivors of modern-day slavery in partnership with Liverpool charity City Hearts. The project links current human trafficking to the story out of the Middle Passage.

In the U.S., journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones has sparked conversations about the legacy of slavery in that nation's history with her interactive 1619 Project in The New York Times. It examines the 400th anniversary of the arrival of the first enslaved people from West Africa on the present-day America's eastern shore. The project challenges readers to consider how their own lives have been shaped by the legacy of slavery and it is helping inspire activists in places like Albuquerque, New Mexico, to push for their own museum of black history.

Walking by an installation of former slave and abolitionist Olaudah Equiano, I heard two young black women discussing the 1619 Project and how they didn't understand the criticism it faced for trying to reshape a narrative in the U.S. As we left the Equiano sculpture, we stopped at a display of a 1920-era Ku Klux Klan robe and hood from Port Jervis, New York. The outfit that was once used to terrorize blacks and Catholics stared back down at us. We were silent. But I could feel we were relieved the glass case surrounding it protected us. We were safe for now.

But were we?

If You Go...

— Located in the Merseyside Maritime Museum. Liverpool L3 4AQ, United Kingdom

Hours: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Cost: Free

More info: https://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/

Russell Contreras is a member of The Associated Press' race and ethnicity team. Follow him on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/russcontreras

Kwame Opoku On African Artifacts: Time In Restitution Matters

Okpa Mkpuru (Igbo Mask) Image: British Museum

BY KWAME OPOKU

“The British Museum takes its commitment to being a world museum seriously.’’ Statement by a British Museum spokeswoman in response to demand by Pokomo(Kenya) for the return of their looted ancestral drum.

Asante, Edo, Yoruba, Igbo, and many other African peoples have been waiting for more than 100 years to see the restitution of their cultural objects that European imperialists and colonialists looted with great violence and destruction during the heydays of Western imperialism. For decades, the demands for the restitution of Dahomean artefacts stolen by the French under General Alfred Amédée Dodds in 1892 at Abomey, the Benin bronzes that were stolen in the notorious invasion of Benin City by a British Army of 1,200 men under Admiral Sir Harry Rawson on 9 February, 1897 and the Ethiopian artefacts looted by the British Army under General Sir. Robert Napier on 13 May 1868 have been met with dead silence or other forms of negation.

When the present writer started two decades ago to argue for the restitution of looted African artefacts, many of the African peoples from whom these objects were violently wrenched were so discouraged, dejected and so tired that they wondered whether we were not embarking on another fruitless and wasteful endeavour. Some said they did not want to start again in their old age, attempts made in their youth which had been totally without any success and on which the Western museums only appeared to pour scorn. This was more or less the general atmosphere until the famous speech by the French President Emmanuel Macron in 2017 at Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, before a full amphitheatre of students. After this we had the ground-breaking report of Felwine Sarr and Bénédicte Savoy in 2018.

The Sarr-Savoy report ,The Restitution of African Cultural Heritage. Toward a New Relational Ethics, set in motion many waves and activities that have not yet ended. The Germans quickly produced a set of guidelines for handling collections out of colonial contexts that was presented as Germany’s answer to Macron’s initiative. Within a year, the document was revised in view of general criticisms. German Culture Ministers met to agree on measures and principles to quicken restitution procedures that was followed by new decision to set up an agency to facilitate search of African artefacts reacting to the demand by a plea signed by German and international scholars and intellectuals to open up inventories and archives of German ethnological museums. Hectic German activities appear geared to avoid further objections to the 600milion euro museum, Humboldt Forum, that is to open finally in November 2020 with display of looted African and Asian artefacts previously held by the Ethnology Museum, Berlin.

Some Dutch museums revised their rules regarding requests for restitution of artefacts looted in the colonial period and have been praised by many who obviously have not read the relevant texts.

The British Minister for Culture as well as the Director of the British Museum re-affirmed their well-know position not to entertain any demands for restitution despite vain hopes of others that the British may follow recent trends and accept restitution as a solution to the increasing demands for restitution of looted artefacts. The Sarr-Savoy report has been the subject of many debates and panel discussions in France as well as in United Kingdom, Germany and the Netherlands but has been generally accepted as the most important document on the issue of restitution. Many Africans, including the present writer, consider the report as the best thing that has happened in the area of restitution during the last 100 years. African museum directors and intellectuals have welcomed the report and its recommendations on restitution. Western museum directors and others who have been against restitution of looted African artefacts have been, as expected, less enthusiastic if not outright hostile. Art dealers have been shocked by the new proposals and see their trade and profits in danger. Before the report had been officially submitted to President Macron and published, some were already calling it a controversial report and thus pre-empted the right of the public to read the report and make up its mind. Some of the criticism that followed the publication of the report revealed that many critics had not actually read the report or misunderstood the task entrusted to Felwine Sarr and Bénédicte Savoy. Many did not pay attention to the fact that the two academics had assembled a great number of scholars, experts and museum officials in their commission who are expressly named in the report. The Director of the Musée du quai Branly-Jacques Chirac as well as officials from his museum participated in some of the consultations even though he later distanced himself from the recommendations of the report. Attempts therefore to present the report as the work of only two ‘radical’ scholars, expressing only their personal views without any consultations are totally wrong.

The impact of the Sarr-Savoy report eventually cannot be denied even by its worst critics who appear confounded by simple statements and proposals that should be familiar to all who have followed discussions on restitutions in the last few decades. Bénédicte Savoy and Felwine Sarr have been recently named as the sixth most influential persons in the art world in a list containing names of 100 prominent persons. We might see more honours coming their way when many African governments wake up, joining their efforts with Asian States and the full dimensions of their contributions are appreciated. People would realize the close connection between colonialism and restitution. The Nobel Prize for Peace might not seem too far. Many institutions, including wealthy foundations, appear ready to support African efforts in this area. We must be careful with those with money and question closely their recent interest in our efforts at restitution. Those who believe that discussions on restitution started only with the Ouagadougou Declaration by Emmanuel Macron or with the publication of the Sarr-Savoy report are of course entitled to their own views of history.

The earth-shaking effects of this report, unique in many ways, have not ceased to trouble illegal holders of African artefacts, many Western museum directors and dealers in looted artefacts and their supporters.

A very remarkable criticism by those supporting the so-called universal museums who are, per definition, against restitution, is to turn around and point out that the French government has not been fast enough. They point out that not much has been done by France since the report was published in 2018. Some started complaining a few months after the publication of the report, saying that it was 8 months already since the report was issued and nothing had happened; others now say it is almost a year and the French seem to have lost steam. The irony is that those who say nothing has happened since the issuance of the report, cannot deny that there have been intensive debates in most countries; they cannot deny that most Western museums and governments are busy with talking about restitution and are discussing how restitution matters arising out of colonial robbery can be solved. Do the critics attach no importance at all to intellectual, academic, and popular discussions on matters of general public interest? We must, of course, ensure that these debates do not become substitutes for action i.e. the physical return of the looted objects. After all this is not the first time that museums and other institutions have been faced with demands for restitution. We have been writing on restitution for two decades and know that there were others before us pondering on the same issues. Time for action is now and a museum director should not be able to suggest that his new institution would serve as a place for discussing looted artefacts whilst the same museum proudly displays looted Benin items. Similarly, inviting young African scholars and museum officials to participate in debates in Europe and America is fine but it would be more interesting to return the looted artefacts to Africa and observe what young curators have done with the returned artefacts.

Nor does commissioning of African artists in the African diaspora or in Africa to produce a piece of artwork for the museum, serve as substitute for restitution. Some museums pretend they are in a position to play go-between for the African States and Western States or are neutral in the issues of restitution when in fact they are an important part of the problem and the main beneficiaries of colonial loot. They cannot disassociate themselves from colonial subjugation, violence and loot.

Felwine Sarr and Bénédicte Savoy have been extremely busy and cannot deal with all the invitations they receive. They are solicited by all sorts of groups and have become something of intellectual stars. They have appeared often in television broadcasts. Macron appears to have been very lucky in his choice of commissioners who did not know each other before receiving this task and yet blend so well. He should support their efforts with more concrete actions.

Those who claim that not much has happened since the publication of the Sarr-Savoy report often furnish, perhaps unwittingly, explanations why such restitution as proposed cannot take place so quickly. They explain the current status of the law, in this case of French Law, which with its centuries old principle of ‘ inalienabilité ’ prohibits the selling or transfer of objects registered in the domain of the State. Critics point out quite correctly that under the present dispensation of French law, most of the looted African artefacts are in the State domain and cannot simply be restituted to the African States. French Parliament would have to change radically current French Law. What the critics do not add, and here one begins to doubt whether they have read the report or simply did not understand it, is that the report itself states that changes in the law would be necessary in order to effect the restitutions recommended: ‘The procedure of restitution supposes a positive evolution of law, within the framework of a modification of the cultural heritage code, articulated in the principle of inalienability of public collections.’ Felwine Sarr and Bénédicte Savoy, assisted by Vincent Negri and Isabelle Maréchal, have proposed modifications that would be necessary in French Law for the implementation of their recommendations. Negri and Maréchal, experts on their own, with Sarr and Savoy, consulted legal experts and members of the French Parliament before finishing their report.

Yet many critics report that there would be need for changes in French Law and insinuate that Sarr and Savoy, the two academics, ignored the realities of French Law or were not aware of the legal obstacles. Some critics clearly present Sarr and Savoy as wholly ignorant of French Law of which the critics, some of them non-French and non-lawyers, are fully aware. What kind of intellectual honesty and mode are they trying to project? Attempts to present Sarr and Savoy as some naïve academics, totally uninformed about museum problems and practices, are really unacceptable. Nowhere have the authors of the report suggested that their recommendations could be effected overnight. The authors of the report stated that´

‘The translocation of cultural heritage that has affected Africa for the benefit and profit of France has taken place over a long period of time. In order for the restitutions to be considered as permanent and enduring so as not to cause any unnecessary risks to the objects in question—and to grant the proper time to all actors, on both continents, so as to establish a common “know-how” for the restitutions—the process of restitution itself must adhere and adapt to the rhythms and to the preparations of each nation-state concerned. Concerning these very sensitive cultural questions, the French State must not impose its rhythm and political agenda onto the African States.’

Critics know very well that the implementation of recommendations by the report are left to the discretion of the French Government which is not supervised by Sarr and Savoy.

We have to ask the critics what their estimation of the time required for implementation was. Surely our critics are aware that when France was required in 1815 to restitute the Napoleonic spoliations in Europe, it took decades to effect some transfers and many objects are still in Louvre and other regional French museums. Everyone knows now that it has taken Western States a long time to make restitutions to victims of Nazi spoliations. If African States do not put sufficient pressure on Western governments and museums, they are not likely to be fast in returning artefacts they have kept for more than hundred years. Have the critics forgotten that they were the same people who pointed out that many African States would have to build the necessary infrastructures for the reception of the looted African artefacts in Europe? Readers no doubt know that the so-called Benin Dialogue Group, composed of Western museums from the United Kingdom, Netherlands, Germany and Austria has been discussing for many years the fate of looted Benin artefacts and have proposed to lend to Nigeria some looted Benin artefacts when a new museum being built in Benin City is ready in 2021. We should note that they will only lend looted objects to their original owners. They have turned logic, law, morality and history upside-down and are angry at those who point out the enormity of their proposals.

But did our critics ever hear that the Republic of Benin has informed the French that they are not yet ready to receive the 26 looted artefacts Macron wanted to restitute? They would only be ready to receive their returned artefacts in 2021 when the new museum built with French support will be ready. The French have even said they are willing to find means of returning the looted objects before the legislature has been able to modify French Law. The French seem ready whilst some African States are not yet ready to receive the objects. How can any honest person say that the French have lost steam? This is the kind of interpretation of facts that opponents of restitution are presenting in respectable publications. Another example, the French Culture Minister praises Felwine Sarr and Bénédicte Savoy for their inestimable work and contribution to the current discussions on restitution and adds that the cultural relations of France and the African States go beyond restitution. We immediately read that the French have abandoned restitution and turned to other means of cooperation such as circulation of artefacts, exchanges and common exhibition.

What has surprised me though is that many critics do not seem to appreciate that restitution is not simply the return of looted artefacts. They cite examples of objects returned by Germany to Namibia, such as the Portuguese Stone Cross or the looted bible of the legendary Nama resistance leader Hendrik Witbooi after 126 years. It is then suggested that Germany is advanced in matters of restitution. Yet so far there has not been any general admission by Germany that the looting of African artefacts under the colonial regime was wrong and therefore the objects ought to be returned.

To admit the wrongful nature of German loots would , in the opinion of some, lead to admitting the unjust nature of the colonial system and put them at risk of facing many reparation demands. Restitution is more than the return of the looted object. It is first and foremost, the admission of the wrongful nature of the seizure of the object, the desire to correct the past and seek better relations between the parties. They would have to see the colonial regime for what it was: an unjust system of domination of one people by another wielding superior brutal force and controlling an oppressed people and their destiny. Many have not understood that restitution is a question of the relationship of the parties involved. It is a matter of the relationship between Western States and African States. Many mercantile minds have not understood that the Sarr-Savoy report seeks to lay down new bases for the Afro-European relations, based on mutual consent and respect and not on brutal force and violence that have hitherto characterized the relations between our Continent and Europe. That largely accounts for the hostile reception of that report in some Western quarters. The later part of the title of the report, Toward a New Relational Ethics has been totally lost on many. Some of us would go so far as to say that the relationship of African States and Western States, as reflected by the looting and keeping of the artefacts, is a main objective of the report. This may of course appear complicated for some.

What our observant critics may not have known is that the French Prime Minister Edouard Phillippe handed over symbolically on Sunday 17 November 2019 in an impressive historic ceremony, the sword and scabbard of Omar Saidou Tall who led resistance to French military invasions, as head of the Tukulor Empire, englobing Guinea, Mali and Senegal. The sword had been kept in the Military Museum in Paris. The sword already in the Dakar Museum of Black Civilizations, is to be kept there for another period of five years, the length of time required for modifying French law as proposed by the Sarr-Savoy report.

Whatever the critics of the Sarr-Savoy report may say or do, they should stop the constant insults they hurl at Africans by declaring that we are incapable of looking after our artefacts their armies stole with tremendous violence and mayhem. Looters or holders of looted objects are not in law or in morality entitled to tell the dispossessed owners how to look after their cultural artefacts. Monstrous and voracious institutions, such as the British Museum, holding 13 million objects, mostly looted, cannot deceive us by pretending they hold them on behalf of humanity. They are only ‘universal’ in the sense that they hold looted artefacts from the whole world. Such institutions have failed hitherto to show any humanity to deprived owners of artefacts. These so-called ‘universal museums’ and their supporters cannot declare that restitution takes time and at the same time declare that the French have not been fast enough in the last twelve months with restitutions. Recalcitrant States and their supporters could improve relations if they would, following Emmanuel Macron, also declare that looted African artefacts should be returned to Africa within the next five years. Multiplying activities and initiatives or offering loans of the objects to the original owners will not suffice. These looted African objects must be restituted to Africa.

SOURCE: MODERN GHANA