"Each generation must, out of relative obscurity, discover its mission, fulfil it, or betray it.” - Frantz Fanon
In a year in which 8 black men have died at the hands of the British police; a year that has seen ferocious uprisings in England – it is bewildering that the thirteenth annual United Friends and Family (UFFC) march on Saturday 29 October 2011, did not see the streets of central London, and particularly, Trafalgar Square, heaving with Africans demonstrating against the deplorable increase in black deaths in custody – particularly as the uprisings were triggered by the death of Mark Duggan and his family’s peaceful protest outside Tottenham police station. Their demonstration was met by a wall of staggering callous silence from the police. It was also met by constant media images of shops being looted and the 150 year department store in Croydon being burnt down. It appeared that the latter image was seared into the consciousness of the British people whilst the death of an innocent black man was conveniently forgotten by the white dominated British media, which in this manner, extolled the importance of property more than the circumstances in which a human being lost his life.
Only a few hundred showed up for the UFFC peacefully conducted demonstration to Downing Street and yet – to reiterate – 8 black men have died this year alone. To add to this totally outrageous crime of 8 deaths, only recently it was announced in the British press that four in 10 of those detained in young offenders institutions are people of African descent. We need to ask: are black youth committing crimes consistent with the rate of their incarceration?
If that is not the case then we have a situation of a persistent racist criminalisation of our youth which is even worse than that in the US.
It was also recently announced in The Guardian newspaper on 7 November this year that after choking to death whilst lying on the floor of a police station in Hull on 1 April 1998, Christopher Alder’s family thought after more than a decade, they had laid their loved one to rest. The family were recently informed that they had buried the wrong person. I guess my question is, where is the outcry among the African community in the UK about this deplorable and despicable state of affairs? Why are we not joining up the dots of the innumerable contemptible racist experiences and treatments inflicted on the African community and doing something about this treatment?
Since 1998 over 300 black men have died in police custody and several have also died in immigration detention centres, as well as psychiatric/mental institutions. The recent African to die was the Angolan, by the name of Jimmy Mubenga who was restrained by private security guards on a BA flight at Heathrow airport on 12 October 2010.
Before Mubenga’s death, there was the renowned case of Joy Gardner in 1993. The specialist officers from the Extradition Unit of the Metropolitan Police force used 13 ft of tape to gag this Jamaican mother of one. Not one police officer or immigration officer has been charged with murder in any of these aforementioned cases.
My first march with the UFFC was six years ago when the brother of one of my students was killed in police custody and suffered an asthma attack. He died after he was denied access to his medication. Surely, with the increase in black deaths in police custody we should be seeing far more Africans campaigning on this issue instead of the mere hundreds? How do we explain the lack of serious and committed political radicalism, mobilisation and organisation among the African communities in the UK today? To what extent is this lack attributable to a comatose condition that the African community has been engulfed in since the mid 1990s? What has brought about this condition and what is to be done? These questions are the focus of this article.
In the 70s, 80s and up to the mid 90s, there were several black/African political organisations that existed in the UK, e.g. the Black Unity and Freedom Party (BUFP), the Pan-African Congress Movement (PACM), the All African People’s Revolutionary Party (AAPRP), the Alkebulan Revival Movement and many others. Many of the aforementioned have become moribund i.e. with a few stalwarts and currently fail to have substantial supporters in the hundreds, let alone thousands. Is it the case that these parties and movements have become divorced from the issues of the community? Or has there been a growing and dangerous mood of apathy, complacency and depoliticisation among the African population at a most dangerous time of capitalist crisis and attacks by the state on all working people in which economic survival is the only focus for African people?
The reasons are undoubtedly complex. However, the worst thing to be taken from a people is their historical memory of themselves. Yet, I fear this is what the prevailing capitalist imperialist society continues to effect with profound sophistication. The pernicious damage is that a people become disconnected from their history; many of the youth have little if any sense of the traditions of struggle of Africans in the UK, let alone across the globe in Africa and the Caribbean. Equally dangerous, is that during the twentieth century “there was an underlying theme throughout the century that the people of one part of Africa are responsible for the freedom and liberation of their brothers and sisters in other parts of Africa and indeed the task of the black people everywhere was to accept this responsibility”, so wrote Horace Campbell in his book Pan-Africanism, Pan-Africanists and African Liberation in the Twenty-First Century (p.12). Have Africans in Britain lost this spirit of being concerned and connected to the plight of African people wherever they are in the world and seeking to do something about it in whatever way they can? How do we reignite this spirit of “what happens to Africans in my community and on the other side of the world is of concern to me and I must act?”
During the 1980s and 1990s the issue of apartheid in racist South Africa and the incarceration of Nelson Mandela united Africans around the world to march and boycott against the racist South African regime. African governments in the Caribbean and on the continent voted unanamimously in forums such as the United Nations in condemning South Africa.
There continues to be many issues that ought to be of wider concern to African people in our times. For example, since 1998 and to date, over 5 million Congolese have died in the deadly conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). This is the same number of Jews who died in the Nazi holocaust. Yet, it is has not stirred Africans in the Diaspora to campaign for an end to this heinous war in which many of the victims are women who have experienced rape as a weapon of war, let alone the international community to act to bring about an urgent peace. Meanwhile, the mobile phones that we all use are unworkable without the coltan obtained from the DRC that makes these gadgets work. The millions who have died in the DRC is the consequence of the logic of profit maximisation or sheer corporate greed. It is an issue that the Occupy Wall Street movement and those who are occupying St. Pauls in central London need to address, for it is the case that the DRC has approximately 85% of the world’s reserves of coltan but currently produces only 10%. Whilst the developing countries can access this mineral elsewhere in the world, it is cheaper to source it from the Congo regardless of how many Congolese die for this precious mineral. In short, our lifestyles in the West are inextrixably linked to the brutal exploitation and impoverishment of other Africans in the world, yet, there is no directed political rage amongst Africans to change this state of affairs. The responsibility is with Africans to make this an issue for all Africans and genuine peace-loving people.
PIONEERING AFRICAN ORGANISATIONS
There is no doubt that there has been a dynamic radical African tradition of activist politics in the African community here in the UK going back to the 1930s and 1940s through to the 1980s. It spans the period of the colonial agitation of African-Caribbeans and continental Africans who came to these shores and established organisations such as the International African Friends of Abyssinia (IAFA) set up by the great Trinidadian scholar-activists, C L R James, George Padmore and the Jamaican Amy Ashwood Garvey, in 1935 in a restaurant owned by Ashwood Garvey at 62 New Oxford Street. The cause celebre of the day was the invasion of Ethiopia by the fascist state of Italy which rallied Africans not only in Africa but in the Caribbean and in the USA.
Preceding IAFA was the League of Coloured People (LCP) set up by Dr Harold Moody in South East London which was concerned with the high levels of unemployment among African seamen; the discrimination confronting African commissioned officers during the Second World War and invasion of Ethiopia by Italy. Existing from 1931 to 1947, the LCP had both continental Africans and African-Caribbeans amongst its members and published a journal by the title of The Keys.
The Pan-African Federation set up in 1945 by James, Padmore and the Guyanese Ras Makonnen, organised the famous 5th Pan-African Congress (PAC) that discussed the plight of colonial peoples around the world and issued many demands of the colonial aggressors, among them being independence for African peoples around the world. Out of that historic gathering was born the West African National Secretariat, based in London, whose mission was to carry forward the objectives of the 5th PAC.
In the aftermath of the 1958 “riots” in London, Amy Ashwood Garvey set up the Association of the Advancement of Coloured People (AACP) at No. 1 Bassett Rd in Ladbroke Grove, West London. It was mirrored on its US cousin, the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP) set up by W. E. B. Du Bois and others in 1909. The secretary of the AACP was Claudia Jones. Ashwood Garvey also set up the United Defense Committee Against Discrimination soon after the 1958 “riots” (which were essentially racist attacks on Africans by white mobs). The organisation brought together several London based organisations and solicited funds from the community to pay the fines for the young black men who had been arrested and charged for their participation in the 1958 “riots.”
Other organisations set up by African-Caribbeans in Britain were the West Indian Standing Conference (WISC) from 1958 to 1965 when it was replaced by the Standing Conference of West Indian Organisations in the UK. Comprised of various social, religious, cultural and social organisations, it was initiated by the High Commissions of the newly federated governments of the West Indies and in the wake of Chief Minister Norman Manley’s visit to the Ladbroke Grove area, soon after the “riots.” A shortlived organisation was the Coloured People’s Progressive Association (CPA) from 1958 to 1961 set up by an African woman by the name of Frances Ezzrecco from the East End of London. Dealing with bread and butter issues such as rent disputes between landlords and tenants it responded to the issues confronting the African community at the time.
Another organisation that took the lead in organising and later inspired the Anti-Apartheid Movement in Britain was the Committee of African Organisations (CAO), which existed from 1958-1966. It was made up of 13 organisations, many of which were student organisations led by continental Africans with avowedly Pan-African aims i.e. they wanted to see the political and economic independence of Africa from European colonial rule. It helped organise, along with Amy Ashwood Garvey for the funeral and memorial meeting of the murdered Antiguan carpenter, Kelso Cochrane, who was killed by racist skinheads in West London in May 1959.
It was the CAO that responded to a call by the ANC for an international boycott economic boycott of South African goods. It organised pickets of shops and South Africa House and gained support of the trade unions for these activities. With funds from the Pan-Africanist government of Kwame Nkrumah in Ghana, the CAO opened its own centre, Africa Unity House in London in 1960 at 3 Collingham Gdns in South London.
Similarly in the 1960s African-Caribbeans continued to organise against discriminatory practices and issues facing them in Britain as well as connecting these issues to the oppression of Africans both in the Caribbean and in Africa. For example in 1961 the Conference of Afro-Asian Caribbean Organisations (CAACO) was set up and its dynamic leader was no other than Claudia Jones, a dynamic political theoretician and organiser in her own right, who is often only remembered as “mother of the carnival.” Her revolutionary politics that combined a race, class and gender analysis tends to be overlooked or downplayed. In early 1961 the organisation protested against the murder of Patrice Lumumba the radical leader of the Congo who was murdered by US, Belgian and Congolese neo-colonial forces. The organisation also campaigned against the racist immigration laws of the Labour and Conservative governments of the time. On 31 August 1963 CAACO organised a solidarity march from Notting Hill to the US Embassy in support of “Negro rights” in the US and against racial discrimination in Britain. This demonstration took place 3 days after Martin Luther Kings’ Peoples’ March in Washington. What is significant is that people of African descent in this country could see that their struggles, experiences and conditions were linked to similar forms of oppression that their sisters and brothers across the globe were experiencing.
In the year that the racist Enoch Powell made his famous “Rivers of Blood” speech, it is almost forgotten in the annals of our history that 50 black organisations came together in Leamington in the West Midlands to form the Black People’s Alliance to co-ordinate the fight against state racism. This organisational framework spawned a more militant tranche of black organisations in black advice centres, black bookshops, newspapers, the creation of the “Black Worker’s Movement”, black Saturday schools and the creation of the Black Panthers in the UK. Of the latter, its history remains to be fully documented for in Britain we so often look to the USA, but whilst there are trans-Atlantic influences that have come to these shores from the USA, we need to take cognizance of the specificities of our own struggle. The historical documentation of the activities of the Black Panther movement here in the UK is hitherto very sparse and perhaps one day it will be fully recorded. Its members were the dynamic Jamaican Olive Morris who was a political activist who campaigned for the homeless in Brixton, set up the Brixton Black Women’s Group and the Organisation of Women of Women of Asian and African Descent before death robbed her of life at the age of 26. Other members were the Nigerian playwright Obi Egbuna, Farrukh Dhondy, Eddie Lecointe, Patricia and Danny DaCosta among others.
During the decade of the 1970s African youth in Britain confronted not only a racist educational system that streamed them as “educationally subnormal” but outside the school system and on the streets they were to confront racist police practices in the form of the “sus laws.” Some sections of the youth took cultural and political sanctuary in the emerging Rastafari movement that began to emerge in Britain. Rastafari connected them to Africa, gave political analysis to the causes of African oppression and forged a sense of identity in a racist and hostile Britain. The rise of Bob Marley’s highly political music that urged Africans to “stand up for their rights” and “Africa unite”made him a powerful icon for Rastafari. He also personified the cultural dimensions of Pan-Africanism or black unity during the 1970s.
Community organisations such as the Black Parents Movement in North London was set up by individuals such as Jessica Huntley and John La Rose in 1975 to address the institutionalized racism of our youth in the school system. However, today the sus laws have been replaced with “stop and search” and the practice of blanket and indiscriminate nature of the police retaining DNA data of hundreds of thousands of people with no criminal convictions. This practice also continues to disproportionately affect black males among the 4.4 million records on the England, Wales and Northern Ireland database. Whilst the police maintain that DNA and fingerprinting is vital to the fight against crime, they cannot justify why black males are disproportionately reflected in their statistics. According to the Guardian (5 Jan 2006): “the DNA profiles of nearly four in 10 black men in the UK are on the police’s national database – compared with fewer than one in 10 white men.”
A pivotal juncture in the history of African people in the UK was the “Black People’s Day of Action” on 2 March 1981 when between 15 – 20,000 Africans marched through the streets of London to demonstrate their protest at the way Metropolitan police officers had woefully mishandled the deaths of 13 young Africans by racists who had firebombed a party at 439 New Cross Road in South East London on 17/18 January 1981. The line of enquiry by the police sought to blame the fire on a fight that had happened inside the house that led to the tragedy. The fact that Africans living in South East London had been under daily racist attacks for over a decade by the National Front, Column 88 and the British Movement, was totally sidelined by the police and the wider British society. In short, racism was totally ignored. The political rage of Africans led to the formation of New Cross Massacre Action Committee (NCMAC) chaired by John La Rose on 27 January 1981. The Committee mobilised Africans from as far afield as Leeds, Manchester, and the West Midlands to attend the Black People’s day of Action. Following on the heels of this historic mobilisation were the “riots” of 1981 in Brixton, Toxeth in Liverpool and Moss Side in Manchester.
From 1982 to 1995 the platform provided by the International Book Fair of Radical Black and Third World Books was organised by New Beacon Books, Bogle L’Ouverture and Race Today Publications. It was an important forum for cultural and political debates, networking of Pan-Africanists, musicians, artists, filmmakers, community activists and academics from the Caribbean, US and Africa who came to London in this annual exciting jamboree of radical thinking. As black book stores have bitten the dust, with only a very few such as New Beacon and Centerprise surviving in London, the links with radicalism in our community are being severed as a consequence. In addition, radical leaders such as John La Rose, Frank Critchlow, Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem have joined the ancestors as a new generation is in danger of failing to replace the beacons who led us forward.
Whilst space does not permit to give a thoroughly detailed summary of all political movements and organisations in the UK, the purpose of the above summary is to illustrate that Britain during the 1930s up to the 1980s was a vortex of radical community activism. This political activism provides a rich and complex legacy of struggle to pass on to our youth, for them to learn from as a frame of reference in order to inform present strategies and visions. Yet, it appears we are currently in a lull of mass political activity ( i.e. involving the thousands of our numbers) in regards to issues that directly affect African people today. Moreover, I believe we live in dangerous political and ideological times in which both political education i.e. understanding of the world and how it operates as well as organisations that meet the needs of our people - are needed more than ever to coordinate our efforts in a unified struggle against the forms of oppressions we continue to confront as African people in the UK.
In the present time of capitalist crisis the response of the British government is one that seeks to resolve the crisis at the expense of all working and unemployed people in the name of cutbacks and the duplicitous mantra “we are all in this together.” However, it is clear that it is African people who will be the most adversely affected. Therefore it is imperative for African people to mobilise around the specific issues affecting them directly.
CRUSHED AND DEPOLITICIZED BY BABYLON?
Undoubtedly, political and social struggles manifest themselves in peaks, troughs and lulls. Perhaps it is the case that many Africans in the UK have been bought off and are comfortable in their jobs, with their mortgage, car, annual holiday that they do not wish to jeopardise the little economic security they have in times of increasing job insecurity? Or is it the case that we have been seduced by the opium of the capitalist system in consuming the latest commodity and lifestyle in the latest Wi-Fi gagdet, mobile phone etc? Or it is that some of us have bought into the nebulous concept of “Britishness” and now define ourselves as “Black Britons?” With the growing numbers of working class Africans who now own pit bull terrier dogs and rottweilers, is this a badge of “Britishness” and an abandonment of our cultural heritage that lies in the Caribbean and in Africa? Back in the 70s and 80s – how many Africans possessed dogs let alone that particular breed of dog?
Perhaps many of us have been crushed by the capitalist system that reforming it, let along transforming it altogether, is no longer an option for some? It seems the impact of our imperialist and capitalist society has placed African people here in the UK into a comatose condition of which we urgently need to awake. The question arises as to how do we awaken a comatose people?
The Matrix film, particularly the first movie, subtly shows how most people are conditioned to not be fully awake; to think in a particular way and act in a particular way. Despite the masculinist language of the African-American historian Carter G. Woodson he defined the problem succinctly in the following manner:
"When you control a man's thinking you do not have to worry about his actions. You do not have to tell him not to stand here or go yonder. He will find his "proper place" and will stay in it. You do not need to send him to the back door. He will go without being told. In fact, if there is no back door, he will cut one for his special benefit."
The problem that Woodson defines is equally applicable to African women and girls who currently aspire to concepts of beauty in their looks and behaviours that imitate Europeans. If all forms and shades of skin colour were being celebrated and represented in our society in their own value of beauty with one not being valued more than another, it would not be problematic. However, when black Barbie dolls are promoted via celebrities (many come to mind), it becomes highly problematic and dangerous to the psyche and self-esteem of our children – both girls and boys.
Malcolm X also similarly said in the 1960s that : “The greatest mistake of the movement has been trying to organise a sleeping people around specific goals. You have to wake the people up first, and then you’ll get action.” Furthermore, “The biggest differences between the parallel oppression of the Jew and the Negro is that the Jew never lost his pride in being a Jew. He never ceased to be a man. He knew he had made a significant contribution to the world. And his sense of his own value gave him the courage to fight back. It enabled him to act and think independently, unlike our people and leaders.” Malcolm’s words continue to have relevance for us as African people - both our women and men today. To what extent are we as African people aware of the “significant contribution” we have made to the world? To what extent has this awareness enabled us to “fight back” and “think independently” in the interests of African people in the prevailing capitalist imperialist system?
The daily assault on our identity as African people continues in the most pernicious and subliminal ways in the Western world. It occurs in a sophisticated manner that continues to denigrate and marginalize Africa, African people, culture, and our contributions – whilst appropriating the very resources and contributions of African people to reinvigorate Western culture and particularly Western capitalism. Our comatose condition arises from our disconnect to our history, our past, our being part of a struggle for liberation that has its origin in enslavement and resistance to enslavement. The erasure of our historical memory by the insidious capitalist imperialist system leaves us open to being programmed by the world view, standards and values of others that is inimical to our genuine interests. It leaves us alienated from our cultural and historical roots; internalising the negative concepts and self-image that we have been inculcated with. The mainstream entertainment industry – MTV in particular, has also contributed to make African youth comatose with glorification of gangsters and materialism and the objectification of black women’s bodies. Particular genres of Hip-Hop music has played a significant negative role in this state of affairs.
In the UK, the fixation on mixed race people (I prefer the term people of mixed heritage or ancestry as there is only one human race) continues unabated. Recently George Alagiah presented a 3 part documentary entitled “Mixed Britannia.” This documentary came on the heels of Channel 4’s more controversially programme a few years ago, which was entitled “Is Mixed Race Better?” The unstated message being presented was that “mixed race” was better than African/black in terms of superior intelligence, attractiveness and the alleged ability to combat particular diseases due to combined DNA of both parents . Overall, British society’s obsession with people of mixed heritage is highly divisive because it’s subliminal message inculcates a self-loathing among children of African descent who aspire to whiteness in various ways i.e. skin-bleaching and looking European in the form of an increasing number of black girls and women wearing weaves and wigs. Earlier in the year an academic from the LSE announced his racist view that black women were less attractive than European and native American women. Such notions derive from the historical enslavement and colonization of African people. Such ideas of superiority and inferiority continue to exist among us in subtle and not so subtle ways even to this day. Both in Africa and the Caribbean pigmentocracy or “light skin” versus” dark skin” people communicates that individuals of lighter skin pigment are seen as more attractive desirable, acceptable and also have greater opportunities to social mobility than darker skinned people. These attitudes and values continue to be unconsciously internalised by African people in our comatose condition.
Our comatose condition also arises from our disunity as African people; that not only Eurocentric thinking functions to enslave us psychologically, but similar to slavery, and as Malcolm X pointed out there continues to be “house Negroes” amongst us who work in their own class interests and serve the interests of others. These are latter day leaders in the Caribbean and Africa who accept IMF and World Bank programmes or are coerced to vote along the lines dictated by the UN Security Council Members making mockery of our so-called independence . But there are also some of us who have become apathetic; have assimilated totally into European/Western culture of individualism and materialism; and those of us who are confused alongside those who are ambivalent or indifferent to the problems and issues confronting African people in the UK and in the world in general.
Awakening from our comatose condition or what Na’im Akbar defines as “breaking the psychological chains of slavery” or Joy DeGruy Leary characterises as “post-traumatic slavery syndrome” will not occur overnight. It requires a profound regeneration and reconnection to our African history, an understanding of that past, its continued impact on us as African people in the world today. It is a task that can only be carried out by African people themselves . Bob Marley spoke of this necessity in his words: “Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery – none but ourselves can free our minds.” Similarly , Steve Biko cautioned that “The most potent weapon of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.”
What is necessary is a re-awakening of a Pan-African consciousness; a sense of concern, interest, linking of issues and solutions that affect African people in the UK. Moreover, these issues must be linked to the global problems of people of African descent. For as the great Walter Rodney said in his lesser known book The Making of an African Intellectual, as African people “we need to understand the specificity of different situations” in our responsibilities to each other wherever we are in the African world (p. 81). Rodney states clearly that among our three responsibilities is firstly, “to define our own situation;” secondly, it is to present and define that reality to other parts in the global African world and the third is “to help others in a different section of the black world to reflect upon their own specific experience.”
What is necessary is for African people to create a new sense of unity and family (i.e. we are a global Pan-African family) . As Nkrumah expressed: “All people of African descent, whether they live in North or South America, the Caribbean, or in any other part of the world are African and belong to the African nation.” This is true to today as it was in 1970 when Nkrumah expressed this. What is necessary is a re-awakening of the humanity of Africans – or as the Zulus call it – ubuntu (i.e. the recognition that we as Africans are human through the humanity of others or I am a human being through others).
An African sister poet noted recently in a performance that as African people we now no longer “smile and nod” at each other as we use to do back in the 60s and 70s here in the UK. The values of Western society have rubbed off on us as we sit in public places and absorb ourselves in our numerous gadgets (mobile phones, Ipods, Kindles, books, newspapers) in the endeavour of running away from making eye contact with another human being on public transport. Or we simply walk around the planet pretending other people do not exist as we again feel a need to avoid eye contact with other human beings – be they African or non-African. We seek to remain individuals, atomised and disconnected from humanity yet yearn for celebrity fame through addiction to Facebook and Big Brother TV or in the fixation of texting friends. Perhaps like the people of Tunisia and Egypt who overturned decades of political oppression we can utilise social media to mobilise and coordinate the organisation of political struggles for change.
Akbar cogently argues that not only must we have knowledge of self, celebrate ourselves, unify, engage in self-love as oppose to self-loathing, believe in ourselves - we must consciously act (emphasis mine). It is the latter or rather lack of it, the passivity, inaction of Africans in the light of the 8 deaths in police custody that motivated this article. And to act is not only exclusive to demonstrations – important as they are. We must act in a myriad of ways through individual and collective actions (both big and small) to bring change to our continued oppression in this society.
Support for supplementary schools, petitions to put pressure on the government to end the immunity of police officers killing African people, and to scrap the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC), strike action, meetings, joining political organisations etc are only a handful of possible actions we can take to bring about change for the better. For at times in history to remain silent and inactive is endorsement of the status quo. History tells us that people have acted in material circumstances similar or worse to our own and yet they have challenged the prevailing order and have triumphed. Therefore, history is a weapon of inspiration for us to act with courage, in solidarity and with vision for a better society and a better world.
The task of dismantling the pernicious chains of slavery and capitalism on our psyche that leads us to act in particular anti-African ways i.e. against our short and long term interests will be a protracted and complex task. But it is vital to our survival as African people for us to act collectively to transform our reality. There is always choice for human beings to pursue.
Ama Biney (Dr) is a Pan-Africanist, scholar-activist and journalist
In a year in which 8 black men have died at the hands of the British police; a year that has seen ferocious uprisings in England – it is bewildering that the thirteenth annual United Friends and Family (UFFC) march on Saturday 29 October 2011, did not see the streets of central London, and particularly, Trafalgar Square, heaving with Africans demonstrating against the deplorable increase in black deaths in custody – particularly as the uprisings were triggered by the death of Mark Duggan and his family’s peaceful protest outside Tottenham police station. Their demonstration was met by a wall of staggering callous silence from the police. It was also met by constant media images of shops being looted and the 150 year department store in Croydon being burnt down. It appeared that the latter image was seared into the consciousness of the British people whilst the death of an innocent black man was conveniently forgotten by the white dominated British media, which in this manner, extolled the importance of property more than the circumstances in which a human being lost his life.
Only a few hundred showed up for the UFFC peacefully conducted demonstration to Downing Street and yet – to reiterate – 8 black men have died this year alone. To add to this totally outrageous crime of 8 deaths, only recently it was announced in the British press that four in 10 of those detained in young offenders institutions are people of African descent. We need to ask: are black youth committing crimes consistent with the rate of their incarceration?
If that is not the case then we have a situation of a persistent racist criminalisation of our youth which is even worse than that in the US.
It was also recently announced in The Guardian newspaper on 7 November this year that after choking to death whilst lying on the floor of a police station in Hull on 1 April 1998, Christopher Alder’s family thought after more than a decade, they had laid their loved one to rest. The family were recently informed that they had buried the wrong person. I guess my question is, where is the outcry among the African community in the UK about this deplorable and despicable state of affairs? Why are we not joining up the dots of the innumerable contemptible racist experiences and treatments inflicted on the African community and doing something about this treatment?
Since 1998 over 300 black men have died in police custody and several have also died in immigration detention centres, as well as psychiatric/mental institutions. The recent African to die was the Angolan, by the name of Jimmy Mubenga who was restrained by private security guards on a BA flight at Heathrow airport on 12 October 2010.
Before Mubenga’s death, there was the renowned case of Joy Gardner in 1993. The specialist officers from the Extradition Unit of the Metropolitan Police force used 13 ft of tape to gag this Jamaican mother of one. Not one police officer or immigration officer has been charged with murder in any of these aforementioned cases.
My first march with the UFFC was six years ago when the brother of one of my students was killed in police custody and suffered an asthma attack. He died after he was denied access to his medication. Surely, with the increase in black deaths in police custody we should be seeing far more Africans campaigning on this issue instead of the mere hundreds? How do we explain the lack of serious and committed political radicalism, mobilisation and organisation among the African communities in the UK today? To what extent is this lack attributable to a comatose condition that the African community has been engulfed in since the mid 1990s? What has brought about this condition and what is to be done? These questions are the focus of this article.
A Legacy of Political Organising
In the 70s, 80s and up to the mid 90s, there were several black/African political organisations that existed in the UK, e.g. the Black Unity and Freedom Party (BUFP), the Pan-African Congress Movement (PACM), the All African People’s Revolutionary Party (AAPRP), the Alkebulan Revival Movement and many others. Many of the aforementioned have become moribund i.e. with a few stalwarts and currently fail to have substantial supporters in the hundreds, let alone thousands. Is it the case that these parties and movements have become divorced from the issues of the community? Or has there been a growing and dangerous mood of apathy, complacency and depoliticisation among the African population at a most dangerous time of capitalist crisis and attacks by the state on all working people in which economic survival is the only focus for African people? The reasons are undoubtedly complex. However, the worst thing to be taken from a people is their historical memory of themselves. Yet, I fear this is what the prevailing capitalist imperialist society continues to effect with profound sophistication. The pernicious damage is that a people become disconnected from their history; many of the youth have little if any sense of the traditions of struggle of Africans in the UK, let alone across the globe in Africa and the Caribbean. Equally dangerous, is that during the twentieth century “there was an underlying theme throughout the century that the people of one part of Africa are responsible for the freedom and liberation of their brothers and sisters in other parts of Africa and indeed the task of the black people everywhere was to accept this responsibility”, so wrote Horace Campbell in his book Pan-Africanism, Pan-Africanists and African Liberation in the Twenty-First Century (p.12). Have Africans in Britain lost this spirit of being concerned and connected to the plight of African people wherever they are in the world and seeking to do something about it in whatever way they can? How do we reignite this spirit of “what happens to Africans in my community and on the other side of the world is of concern to me and I must act?”
During the 1980s and 1990s the issue of apartheid in racist South Africa and the incarceration of Nelson Mandela united Africans around the world to march and boycott against the racist South African regime. African governments in the Caribbean and on the continent voted unanamimously in forums such as the United Nations in condemning South Africa.
There continues to be many issues that ought to be of wider concern to African people in our times. For example, since 1998 and to date, over 5 million Congolese have died in the deadly conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). This is the same number of Jews who died in the Nazi holocaust. Yet, it is has not stirred Africans in the Diaspora to campaign for an end to this heinous war in which many of the victims are women who have experienced rape as a weapon of war, let alone the international community to act to bring about an urgent peace. Meanwhile, the mobile phones that we all use are unworkable without the coltan obtained from the DRC that makes these gadgets work. The millions who have died in the DRC is the consequence of the logic of profit maximisation or sheer corporate greed. It is an issue that the Occupy Wall Street movement and those who are occupying St. Pauls in central London need to address, for it is the case that the DRC has approximately 85% of the world’s reserves of coltan but currently produces only 10%. Whilst the developing countries can access this mineral elsewhere in the world, it is cheaper to source it from the Congo regardless of how many Congolese die for this precious mineral. In short, our lifestyles in the West are inextrixably linked to the brutal exploitation and impoverishment of other Africans in the world, yet, there is no directed political rage amongst Africans to change this state of affairs. The responsibility is with Africans to make this an issue for all Africans and genuine peace-loving people.
PIONEERING AFRICAN ORGANISATIONS
There is no doubt that there has been a dynamic radical African tradition of activist politics in the African community here in the UK going back to the 1930s and 1940s through to the 1980s. It spans the period of the colonial agitation of African-Caribbeans and continental Africans who came to these shores and established organisations such as the International African Friends of Abyssinia (IAFA) set up by the great Trinidadian scholar-activists, C L R James, George Padmore and the Jamaican Amy Ashwood Garvey, in 1935 in a restaurant owned by Ashwood Garvey at 62 New Oxford Street. The cause celebre of the day was the invasion of Ethiopia by the fascist state of Italy which rallied Africans not only in Africa but in the Caribbean and in the USA.
Preceding IAFA was the League of Coloured People (LCP) set up by Dr Harold Moody in South East London which was concerned with the high levels of unemployment among African seamen; the discrimination confronting African commissioned officers during the Second World War and invasion of Ethiopia by Italy. Existing from 1931 to 1947, the LCP had both continental Africans and African-Caribbeans amongst its members and published a journal by the title of The Keys.
The Pan-African Federation set up in 1945 by James, Padmore and the Guyanese Ras Makonnen, organised the famous 5th Pan-African Congress (PAC) that discussed the plight of colonial peoples around the world and issued many demands of the colonial aggressors, among them being independence for African peoples around the world. Out of that historic gathering was born the West African National Secretariat, based in London, whose mission was to carry forward the objectives of the 5th PAC.
In the aftermath of the 1958 “riots” in London, Amy Ashwood Garvey set up the Association of the Advancement of Coloured People (AACP) at No. 1 Bassett Rd in Ladbroke Grove, West London. It was mirrored on its US cousin, the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP) set up by W. E. B. Du Bois and others in 1909. The secretary of the AACP was Claudia Jones. Ashwood Garvey also set up the United Defense Committee Against Discrimination soon after the 1958 “riots” (which were essentially racist attacks on Africans by white mobs). The organisation brought together several London based organisations and solicited funds from the community to pay the fines for the young black men who had been arrested and charged for their participation in the 1958 “riots.”
Other organisations set up by African-Caribbeans in Britain were the West Indian Standing Conference (WISC) from 1958 to 1965 when it was replaced by the Standing Conference of West Indian Organisations in the UK. Comprised of various social, religious, cultural and social organisations, it was initiated by the High Commissions of the newly federated governments of the West Indies and in the wake of Chief Minister Norman Manley’s visit to the Ladbroke Grove area, soon after the “riots.” A shortlived organisation was the Coloured People’s Progressive Association (CPA) from 1958 to 1961 set up by an African woman by the name of Frances Ezzrecco from the East End of London. Dealing with bread and butter issues such as rent disputes between landlords and tenants it responded to the issues confronting the African community at the time.
Another organisation that took the lead in organising and later inspired the Anti-Apartheid Movement in Britain was the Committee of African Organisations (CAO), which existed from 1958-1966. It was made up of 13 organisations, many of which were student organisations led by continental Africans with avowedly Pan-African aims i.e. they wanted to see the political and economic independence of Africa from European colonial rule. It helped organise, along with Amy Ashwood Garvey for the funeral and memorial meeting of the murdered Antiguan carpenter, Kelso Cochrane, who was killed by racist skinheads in West London in May 1959.
It was the CAO that responded to a call by the ANC for an international boycott economic boycott of South African goods. It organised pickets of shops and South Africa House and gained support of the trade unions for these activities. With funds from the Pan-Africanist government of Kwame Nkrumah in Ghana, the CAO opened its own centre, Africa Unity House in London in 1960 at 3 Collingham Gdns in South London.
Similarly in the 1960s African-Caribbeans continued to organise against discriminatory practices and issues facing them in Britain as well as connecting these issues to the oppression of Africans both in the Caribbean and in Africa. For example in 1961 the Conference of Afro-Asian Caribbean Organisations (CAACO) was set up and its dynamic leader was no other than Claudia Jones, a dynamic political theoretician and organiser in her own right, who is often only remembered as “mother of the carnival.” Her revolutionary politics that combined a race, class and gender analysis tends to be overlooked or downplayed. In early 1961 the organisation protested against the murder of Patrice Lumumba the radical leader of the Congo who was murdered by US, Belgian and Congolese neo-colonial forces. The organisation also campaigned against the racist immigration laws of the Labour and Conservative governments of the time. On 31 August 1963 CAACO organised a solidarity march from Notting Hill to the US Embassy in support of “Negro rights” in the US and against racial discrimination in Britain. This demonstration took place 3 days after Martin Luther Kings’ Peoples’ March in Washington. What is significant is that people of African descent in this country could see that their struggles, experiences and conditions were linked to similar forms of oppression that their sisters and brothers across the globe were experiencing.
In the year that the racist Enoch Powell made his famous “Rivers of Blood” speech, it is almost forgotten in the annals of our history that 50 black organisations came together in Leamington in the West Midlands to form the Black People’s Alliance to co-ordinate the fight against state racism. This organisational framework spawned a more militant tranche of black organisations in black advice centres, black bookshops, newspapers, the creation of the “Black Worker’s Movement”, black Saturday schools and the creation of the Black Panthers in the UK. Of the latter, its history remains to be fully documented for in Britain we so often look to the USA, but whilst there are trans-Atlantic influences that have come to these shores from the USA, we need to take cognizance of the specificities of our own struggle. The historical documentation of the activities of the Black Panther movement here in the UK is hitherto very sparse and perhaps one day it will be fully recorded. Its members were the dynamic Jamaican Olive Morris who was a political activist who campaigned for the homeless in Brixton, set up the Brixton Black Women’s Group and the Organisation of Women of Women of Asian and African Descent before death robbed her of life at the age of 26. Other members were the Nigerian playwright Obi Egbuna, Farrukh Dhondy, Eddie Lecointe, Patricia and Danny DaCosta among others.
During the decade of the 1970s African youth in Britain confronted not only a racist educational system that streamed them as “educationally subnormal” but outside the school system and on the streets they were to confront racist police practices in the form of the “sus laws.” Some sections of the youth took cultural and political sanctuary in the emerging Rastafari movement that began to emerge in Britain. Rastafari connected them to Africa, gave political analysis to the causes of African oppression and forged a sense of identity in a racist and hostile Britain. The rise of Bob Marley’s highly political music that urged Africans to “stand up for their rights” and “Africa unite”made him a powerful icon for Rastafari. He also personified the cultural dimensions of Pan-Africanism or black unity during the 1970s.
Community organisations such as the Black Parents Movement in North London was set up by individuals such as Jessica Huntley and John La Rose in 1975 to address the institutionalized racism of our youth in the school system. However, today the sus laws have been replaced with “stop and search” and the practice of blanket and indiscriminate nature of the police retaining DNA data of hundreds of thousands of people with no criminal convictions. This practice also continues to disproportionately affect black males among the 4.4 million records on the England, Wales and Northern Ireland database. Whilst the police maintain that DNA and fingerprinting is vital to the fight against crime, they cannot justify why black males are disproportionately reflected in their statistics. According to the Guardian (5 Jan 2006): “the DNA profiles of nearly four in 10 black men in the UK are on the police’s national database – compared with fewer than one in 10 white men.”
A pivotal juncture in the history of African people in the UK was the “Black People’s Day of Action” on 2 March 1981 when between 15 – 20,000 Africans marched through the streets of London to demonstrate their protest at the way Metropolitan police officers had woefully mishandled the deaths of 13 young Africans by racists who had firebombed a party at 439 New Cross Road in South East London on 17/18 January 1981. The line of enquiry by the police sought to blame the fire on a fight that had happened inside the house that led to the tragedy. The fact that Africans living in South East London had been under daily racist attacks for over a decade by the National Front, Column 88 and the British Movement, was totally sidelined by the police and the wider British society. In short, racism was totally ignored. The political rage of Africans led to the formation of New Cross Massacre Action Committee (NCMAC) chaired by John La Rose on 27 January 1981. The Committee mobilised Africans from as far afield as Leeds, Manchester, and the West Midlands to attend the Black People’s day of Action. Following on the heels of this historic mobilisation were the “riots” of 1981 in Brixton, Toxeth in Liverpool and Moss Side in Manchester.
From 1982 to 1995 the platform provided by the International Book Fair of Radical Black and Third World Books was organised by New Beacon Books, Bogle L’Ouverture and Race Today Publications. It was an important forum for cultural and political debates, networking of Pan-Africanists, musicians, artists, filmmakers, community activists and academics from the Caribbean, US and Africa who came to London in this annual exciting jamboree of radical thinking. As black book stores have bitten the dust, with only a very few such as New Beacon and Centerprise surviving in London, the links with radicalism in our community are being severed as a consequence. In addition, radical leaders such as John La Rose, Frank Critchlow, Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem have joined the ancestors as a new generation is in danger of failing to replace the beacons who led us forward.
Whilst space does not permit to give a thoroughly detailed summary of all political movements and organisations in the UK, the purpose of the above summary is to illustrate that Britain during the 1930s up to the 1980s was a vortex of radical community activism. This political activism provides a rich and complex legacy of struggle to pass on to our youth, for them to learn from as a frame of reference in order to inform present strategies and visions. Yet, it appears we are currently in a lull of mass political activity ( i.e. involving the thousands of our numbers) in regards to issues that directly affect African people today. Moreover, I believe we live in dangerous political and ideological times in which both political education i.e. understanding of the world and how it operates as well as organisations that meet the needs of our people - are needed more than ever to coordinate our efforts in a unified struggle against the forms of oppressions we continue to confront as African people in the UK.
In the present time of capitalist crisis the response of the British government is one that seeks to resolve the crisis at the expense of all working and unemployed people in the name of cutbacks and the duplicitous mantra “we are all in this together.” However, it is clear that it is African people who will be the most adversely affected. Therefore it is imperative for African people to mobilise around the specific issues affecting them directly.
CRUSHED AND DEPOLITICIZED BY BABYLON?
Undoubtedly, political and social struggles manifest themselves in peaks, troughs and lulls. Perhaps it is the case that many Africans in the UK have been bought off and are comfortable in their jobs, with their mortgage, car, annual holiday that they do not wish to jeopardise the little economic security they have in times of increasing job insecurity? Or is it the case that we have been seduced by the opium of the capitalist system in consuming the latest commodity and lifestyle in the latest Wi-Fi gagdet, mobile phone etc? Or it is that some of us have bought into the nebulous concept of “Britishness” and now define ourselves as “Black Britons?” With the growing numbers of working class Africans who now own pit bull terrier dogs and rottweilers, is this a badge of “Britishness” and an abandonment of our cultural heritage that lies in the Caribbean and in Africa? Back in the 70s and 80s – how many Africans possessed dogs let alone that particular breed of dog?
Perhaps many of us have been crushed by the capitalist system that reforming it, let along transforming it altogether, is no longer an option for some? It seems the impact of our imperialist and capitalist society has placed African people here in the UK into a comatose condition of which we urgently need to awake. The question arises as to how do we awaken a comatose people?
The Matrix film, particularly the first movie, subtly shows how most people are conditioned to not be fully awake; to think in a particular way and act in a particular way. Despite the masculinist language of the African-American historian Carter G. Woodson he defined the problem succinctly in the following manner:
"When you control a man's thinking you do not have to worry about his actions. You do not have to tell him not to stand here or go yonder. He will find his "proper place" and will stay in it. You do not need to send him to the back door. He will go without being told. In fact, if there is no back door, he will cut one for his special benefit."
The problem that Woodson defines is equally applicable to African women and girls who currently aspire to concepts of beauty in their looks and behaviours that imitate Europeans. If all forms and shades of skin colour were being celebrated and represented in our society in their own value of beauty with one not being valued more than another, it would not be problematic. However, when black Barbie dolls are promoted via celebrities (many come to mind), it becomes highly problematic and dangerous to the psyche and self-esteem of our children – both girls and boys.
Malcolm X also similarly said in the 1960s that : “The greatest mistake of the movement has been trying to organise a sleeping people around specific goals. You have to wake the people up first, and then you’ll get action.” Furthermore, “The biggest differences between the parallel oppression of the Jew and the Negro is that the Jew never lost his pride in being a Jew. He never ceased to be a man. He knew he had made a significant contribution to the world. And his sense of his own value gave him the courage to fight back. It enabled him to act and think independently, unlike our people and leaders.” Malcolm’s words continue to have relevance for us as African people - both our women and men today. To what extent are we as African people aware of the “significant contribution” we have made to the world? To what extent has this awareness enabled us to “fight back” and “think independently” in the interests of African people in the prevailing capitalist imperialist system?
The daily assault on our identity as African people continues in the most pernicious and subliminal ways in the Western world. It occurs in a sophisticated manner that continues to denigrate and marginalize Africa, African people, culture, and our contributions – whilst appropriating the very resources and contributions of African people to reinvigorate Western culture and particularly Western capitalism. Our comatose condition arises from our disconnect to our history, our past, our being part of a struggle for liberation that has its origin in enslavement and resistance to enslavement. The erasure of our historical memory by the insidious capitalist imperialist system leaves us open to being programmed by the world view, standards and values of others that is inimical to our genuine interests. It leaves us alienated from our cultural and historical roots; internalising the negative concepts and self-image that we have been inculcated with. The mainstream entertainment industry – MTV in particular, has also contributed to make African youth comatose with glorification of gangsters and materialism and the objectification of black women’s bodies. Particular genres of Hip-Hop music has played a significant negative role in this state of affairs.
In the UK, the fixation on mixed race people (I prefer the term people of mixed heritage or ancestry as there is only one human race) continues unabated. Recently George Alagiah presented a 3 part documentary entitled “Mixed Britannia.” This documentary came on the heels of Channel 4’s more controversially programme a few years ago, which was entitled “Is Mixed Race Better?” The unstated message being presented was that “mixed race” was better than African/black in terms of superior intelligence, attractiveness and the alleged ability to combat particular diseases due to combined DNA of both parents . Overall, British society’s obsession with people of mixed heritage is highly divisive because it’s subliminal message inculcates a self-loathing among children of African descent who aspire to whiteness in various ways i.e. skin-bleaching and looking European in the form of an increasing number of black girls and women wearing weaves and wigs. Earlier in the year an academic from the LSE announced his racist view that black women were less attractive than European and native American women. Such notions derive from the historical enslavement and colonization of African people. Such ideas of superiority and inferiority continue to exist among us in subtle and not so subtle ways even to this day. Both in Africa and the Caribbean pigmentocracy or “light skin” versus” dark skin” people communicates that individuals of lighter skin pigment are seen as more attractive desirable, acceptable and also have greater opportunities to social mobility than darker skinned people. These attitudes and values continue to be unconsciously internalised by African people in our comatose condition.
Our comatose condition also arises from our disunity as African people; that not only Eurocentric thinking functions to enslave us psychologically, but similar to slavery, and as Malcolm X pointed out there continues to be “house Negroes” amongst us who work in their own class interests and serve the interests of others. These are latter day leaders in the Caribbean and Africa who accept IMF and World Bank programmes or are coerced to vote along the lines dictated by the UN Security Council Members making mockery of our so-called independence . But there are also some of us who have become apathetic; have assimilated totally into European/Western culture of individualism and materialism; and those of us who are confused alongside those who are ambivalent or indifferent to the problems and issues confronting African people in the UK and in the world in general.
Awakening from our comatose condition or what Na’im Akbar defines as “breaking the psychological chains of slavery” or Joy DeGruy Leary characterises as “post-traumatic slavery syndrome” will not occur overnight. It requires a profound regeneration and reconnection to our African history, an understanding of that past, its continued impact on us as African people in the world today. It is a task that can only be carried out by African people themselves . Bob Marley spoke of this necessity in his words: “Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery – none but ourselves can free our minds.” Similarly , Steve Biko cautioned that “The most potent weapon of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.”
What is necessary is a re-awakening of a Pan-African consciousness; a sense of concern, interest, linking of issues and solutions that affect African people in the UK. Moreover, these issues must be linked to the global problems of people of African descent. For as the great Walter Rodney said in his lesser known book The Making of an African Intellectual, as African people “we need to understand the specificity of different situations” in our responsibilities to each other wherever we are in the African world (p. 81). Rodney states clearly that among our three responsibilities is firstly, “to define our own situation;” secondly, it is to present and define that reality to other parts in the global African world and the third is “to help others in a different section of the black world to reflect upon their own specific experience.”
What is necessary is for African people to create a new sense of unity and family (i.e. we are a global Pan-African family) . As Nkrumah expressed: “All people of African descent, whether they live in North or South America, the Caribbean, or in any other part of the world are African and belong to the African nation.” This is true to today as it was in 1970 when Nkrumah expressed this. What is necessary is a re-awakening of the humanity of Africans – or as the Zulus call it – ubuntu (i.e. the recognition that we as Africans are human through the humanity of others or I am a human being through others).
An African sister poet noted recently in a performance that as African people we now no longer “smile and nod” at each other as we use to do back in the 60s and 70s here in the UK. The values of Western society have rubbed off on us as we sit in public places and absorb ourselves in our numerous gadgets (mobile phones, Ipods, Kindles, books, newspapers) in the endeavour of running away from making eye contact with another human being on public transport. Or we simply walk around the planet pretending other people do not exist as we again feel a need to avoid eye contact with other human beings – be they African or non-African. We seek to remain individuals, atomised and disconnected from humanity yet yearn for celebrity fame through addiction to Facebook and Big Brother TV or in the fixation of texting friends. Perhaps like the people of Tunisia and Egypt who overturned decades of political oppression we can utilise social media to mobilise and coordinate the organisation of political struggles for change.
Akbar cogently argues that not only must we have knowledge of self, celebrate ourselves, unify, engage in self-love as oppose to self-loathing, believe in ourselves - we must consciously act (emphasis mine). It is the latter or rather lack of it, the passivity, inaction of Africans in the light of the 8 deaths in police custody that motivated this article. And to act is not only exclusive to demonstrations – important as they are. We must act in a myriad of ways through individual and collective actions (both big and small) to bring change to our continued oppression in this society.
Support for supplementary schools, petitions to put pressure on the government to end the immunity of police officers killing African people, and to scrap the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC), strike action, meetings, joining political organisations etc are only a handful of possible actions we can take to bring about change for the better. For at times in history to remain silent and inactive is endorsement of the status quo. History tells us that people have acted in material circumstances similar or worse to our own and yet they have challenged the prevailing order and have triumphed. Therefore, history is a weapon of inspiration for us to act with courage, in solidarity and with vision for a better society and a better world.
The task of dismantling the pernicious chains of slavery and capitalism on our psyche that leads us to act in particular anti-African ways i.e. against our short and long term interests will be a protracted and complex task. But it is vital to our survival as African people for us to act collectively to transform our reality. There is always choice for human beings to pursue.
Ama Biney (Dr) is a Pan-Africanist, scholar-activist and journalist
Ama Biney (Dr)
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Click here to speak out or read (10) comments about this articleThe greatest mistake of the movement has been trying to organise a sleeping people around specific goals. You have to wake the people up first, and then you’ll get action.
Malcolm X
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