Africa – A Geographical Expression
Catharsis – Crimson,
Purple, Black, Blood
Coastal Oil and
Troubled Waters
John Locke’s Essential
Rebellion in Africa
Labour Since
1945: Jerusalem at Home, Holocausts Abroad
Self-Censorship:
Verso, X, Y, Zed
Treason is Sneaky,
Via the Rear Entrance
Whatever Happened to
Harold Smith?
First they came for the Yoruba, I did not
Speak out because I was not Yoruba
When they came for the Ibo, I did not
Speak out because I was not Ibo.
When they came for the Ogoni, I did not
Speak out because I was not Ogoni.
When they came for the Christians, I did not
Speak out because I was not Christian.
When they came for me... There was
No one left to speak out for me.
* Paraphrase of Testament by Pastor Niemoeller, who died in a Nazi death camp.
Have discovered us!
We didn't know we were lost
Till white men brought us baubles.
We didn't know we were savages
Till they made us slaves
We didn't know black skin
Was ugly, or white skin nice.
Or our bodies should be covered, or
That white men lusted for our women,
Or that they envied our unspoiled ways,
Or that
their greed for our
Would be insatiable.
We didn't know, and our learning curve
Is caked with the blood of our people.
Joel, our African driver pleaded for
A uniform and drove around
In a General's gear and
Policemen saluted.
Joel, our driver, slept with
His absent brother's wife, but
Feared the family juju
Might tell all.
Joel, our driver, improved English
As he learned its ways, and
Coined 'deparked' as an
Alternative to 'departed'.
Joel, our driver, reminded us that
If he had juju, we had
Superstitions. 'Touch wood, master'
He laughed.
Joel, our driver, said African
Juju was inferior to the white man's.
African juju might hopefully
Keep children well, but white
Man's juju provided doctors, drugs,
Hospitals, pretty wives, girl friends
Big meals, big houses, big cars.
Joel, our driver laughed when we
Denied a white man's juju.
Joel, our driver, was clever, wise
And a joy to know.
'Master,' he said. 'Money is
White man's juju.’
'You're Smith, aren't you?' he queried.
'Yes, that's right,' I replied.
How did he know?
I had parked on the
So I could walk. Better that than the
He'd pulled over in a khaki Land Rover.
'They're coming for you.
Get our now before they kill you.'
'Who...?' I began.
'I'm attached to the Secretariat.'
MI5 or 6? A spark of thought -
The Governor General had said
He'd have me killed.
'It could be you?' I asked.
'Get away immediately!' he ordered
And turned away.
'They've cancelled my
Widows and Orphans' entitlement,' I said.
'They're coming for you.' He repeated,
'Get out now!' and drove away.
I felt suddenly cool although
There was no breeze.
'Your story is dynamite,'
Said the Shadow Lord Chancellor.
'And you will never be allowed
Into a British Court of Law.
Government will settle - out of court.
A huge sum of money
In exchange for your word.'
Later a knighthood too
Was added by Sir James Robertson.
His actual words were,
'Honours of your choice; the highest.'
For four years
I had said, 'No, sir.'
And very resigned and sickened,
And ill and totally shattered,
I accepted the injustice, the criminality
The murder of a nation
And shame of
I walked into the margin
Of history, and became a non-person.
'No, sir,' I said, and was ruined
Because Sir James said
That a squalid end to Empire
Was necessary.
And I said that
It was necessary too for me
To protest and say no,
And exit into the shadows.
In
A showpiece of democracy was
Being fashioned -
But not really.
The model colony -
Three nations in one -
Was to be set free -
But not really.
Oil had been discovered
By Shell BP,
Which would ensure prosperity
For the new country -
But not really.
The British would leave
For the old countree
In October sixtee
When the Smiths
Had drafted preparatree
Laws befitting a new nation.
Hallelujah! Not really.
For
And
After ten years of treason, would
Plunge into a holocaust, a blood bath
Where the demon British
Brought to fruition
A decade of treason.
The dispersal, the refugees, the haunted,
The emigrants, the transported, the migrants,
The stateless.
A Nigerian with a PhD
Drives a taxi recklessly.
The tall towers lining
The bush tracks of
Are Lagosian.
In
And the wine. On African literature he is
Matchless and introduces Amos Tutuola [1]
To cast him aside as a
Faux illiterate.
He is proud, even brazen, and can hardly
Be pitied or even secretly sympathesised, if
There were such a word. And he would know
For his knowledge of English and its grammar
Is faultless.
It pleases us to know that his superior intellect
And put-downs of his hosts
Mask the visits of the ghosts whom Amos
Wrote about when he spent the day,
Laughing to himself as he scribbled on his veranda desk
Outside my office in the Labour Department
On the
I teased him for the primitive reputation
Which kept the Faber royalties pouring in.
A primitive, whose hobby was
Building radio sets.
Has three million ghosts of innocent folk
That Amos could not have nightmared in 1955,
As we joyously contemplated
Freedom,
A Nigerian with a PhD
Drives a taxi recklessly,
But sometimes screams into the
And
And mighty wrongs;
And weeps for what our
Might have been.
Wiltshire, December 1999
(For Noam Chomsky)
All things bright and beautiful
Dear
Grammar Schools and Chapels
And also Kingsway Stores.
In
And a 'whites only' Victoria Beach,
And Government House with a sentry,
Which was the Governor's seat.
All things wise and wonderful
The English walked so tall.
The villas in Ikoyi
With geckos on the wall.
The English Club so cool
The links so fine and green
The children in the pool
Yet nothing what it seemed?
The Courthouse was in Tinubu.
Somewhere, a private Zoo.
A Museum and a Library
CMS Bookshop too.
A racecourse for race meetings,
Glover Hall for concerts too,
A Labour Exchange at Alakoro,
And Carter Bridge for views.
Deep storm drains were a feature
And Leventis and PZ too.
Also UTC and cinemas,
Plus all denominational pews.
All this in our capital
Made
Despite the shanty dwellings,
Too often beyond repair.
Add markets and processions
Drums and hullabaloo,
An airport at Ikeja,
Ships moored in the lagoon.
The Brits in shorts of khaki
Their wives in Kingsway frocks
Amid crowds of lappered ladies
Greeting kin at Apapa docks.
Lagosians in the fifties
Might have suffered colonial blues
But before
a fake
To
The
Brits rigged the
And treacherously put the North in charge
The Brits got control of the oil
Its stooges ruled by force of arms.
If this was liberty and freedom
Then bring back British rule,
With English laws and benevolence
Even if we were fooled.
We believed the English honest
As in cricket and fair play
In words of honour and decency
And game playing by the rules.
When we had Queen and Empire
And waved the Union flag,
British holocaust was unthinkable -
Now we mourn three million dead.
Why did our English rulers
Bring us to this state?
Did our peaceful peoples really
Deserve this evil fate?
Did millions really have to die
For
Shame on
those in
Brought suffering on us all.
Wiltshire, December, 1999
To create the laws of a great new nation -
That was my task, my duty, my privilege.
My handiwork, the Nigerian Factories Act,
Was hailed as the finest of all laws,
The best presented, the most beneficial, the most noble.
'Write it in secret', I was ordered
By George Foggon, the new broom Nazi
Commissioner of Labour.
Six weeks later,
The mighty African Empire -
Had a draft Factories Act, and no one knew.
My role was unacknowledged.
Later Foggon said I was unfit
Ever to be employed by anyone.
I had all the faults of my race
And was disloyal, arrogant, and
Horrible with a variety of Thesaurus synonyms.
This because I protested for four years
Through official channels at
The destruction of democracy in
The carrot - a knighthood.
The stick - death.
A decent spy said, 'Flee!'
The CIA said 'Flee!'
And offered protection, a refuge,
A safe haven in
A refugee lawmaker on the run
Is not finely presented.
He is not noble and certainly not beneficial.
The Lawmaker is outside the law tho'
He protected the safety and health
Of many millions.
However, lawmaking did not prevent a
British-caused war which killed
Three million innocents. His own safety
And health are at serious risk.
I was a lawmaker, now
I am a fugitive outlaw
An unacknowledged legislator of mankind.
Wiltshire, June 2000
In 1968, so we are told
No British forces were involved in war.
A record since 1939
Which must be reason to celebrate.
Hurrah, hurrah, hurrah.
Three spontaneous cheers
And raising of headgear for 1968
The year of peace.
But what, you ask, about
And a war against nationalists
Which took three million lives?
My friend, civil wars don't count
And it was a tribal conflict anyway.
Wait a minute, hold your horses.
I was there in 1960 when
We rigged the
Against the Yoruba and Ibo
And gave the nation to
Feudal Hausa henchmen,
Allies of the Brits!
We destroyed democracy and
In 1966 the nationalists
Took back by force of arms
What was rightfully theirs.
A counter coup conspired by the Brits
Put our thugs back in power - so there! -
And encouraged them to wage war on the
Ungrateful nationalists who were
Incipient Bolsheviks, and wanted to
Rob us of our oil. What rotters!
We saw them off and killed three million
Before our blood lust was satisfied,
With more bullets and guns and shells
Than the British Army used in World War Two.
We made massive profits - and that in 1968
A year of peace, when no British forces were
Involved in War.
And that is a prime example of
The finest British bullshit, we say.
Wiltshire, July 2000
(For
Edward Said)
Orientalism (The
Nigerian Transfer)
Of power to British stooges;
Of our oilfields in perpetuity;
Of our customs to anthropologists;
Of our rhythms to musicologists;
Of our beliefs to Christianity;
Of our shrines to archaeologists;
Of our markets to superstores;
Of our peace to bloody war;
Of our caring to selfish greed;
Of our bodies to early graves.
Wiltshire, 2000
In the 1950's
When we were there
No horns could be sounded
In
The traders and clerks
In indigo blue
Chatted and laughed
As Lagosians do’
In Kingsway Cold Stores
The Colonial mums
Shop to fill up
Imperial tums.
In Ikoyi the fridges are
Purringly full
Of burgers now distant
From abattoir culls.
And somewhere in
Animals go hunting
Because they must.
Wiltshire, December 2000
Treason is Sneaky,
Via the Rear Entrance
'No one will believe I would do it,'
Said Sir James.
He had just confessed to rigging
The Governor General's secretary
Had phoned. What was his name?
At seventy-three names come
And go. Later perhaps.
'You will say nothing unsavoury.'
'Like rigging the elections?'
'No, that's why he wants to see you.
The other stuff -
Buggering small boys.'
'Sure, fine. No buggery.'
'Good chap. See you later.
Come in at the back.
There's parking...'
'I want you to know, Smith,'
Said Sir James,
'How much trouble you are in.
We did all the things you say.
You know far too much.
You know the penalty
For disobeying orders
On active service.'
'I am a civil servant, sir.'
'The Colonial Service is the Army
And I am your Commander-in-Chief
As well as Governor General, you know.
'If you do return to
You will never be employed again.
Think of your wife and children.
A top position in the Foreign Service,
Honours, permanent exile. All
In exchange for your word.'
This was not unsavoury?
And future elections
Would all be fixed - necessarily.
And then coups by the cheated
And war, bloody war
I could see before it
Inevitably happened.
'Why, sir?' I pleaded.
'It is necessary,' said Sir James.
'No, sir,' I protested.
'You know far too much
To be allowed
To walk away,' he said.
But I did,
And exchanged pleasantries
With the very personable
John Bongard,
His personal secretary,
Before exiting by the
Back door to the Empire.
Wiltshire, 2000
The anguished scream
Of an English officer
And gentleman,
One Auberon Waugh.
'This extraordinarily disgusting
Episode' in
British Imperial history
Must mean the end of the road
For
Fit for world power..’
Well said, dear, compassionate Auberon,
Though deeply scarred from childhood,
Unworthiness never checked
British blood lust.
Goodbye, dear Auberon,
However flawed,
You represented
A decent
And stood for civilised values
Against Cold War Whitehall warriors,
The heirs of Hitler.
Wiltshire, January 2001
Well, kind of (sixty years later)
For on January One
One nine zero zero
An African chunk on the Westside
Became
And a British Protectorate.
Black became pink
And
Of Yoruba girls in Technicolor garb
Before even Sanders of the River
Was shown in
Shanty Kinemas.
The Empire,
A journo opines globe-wide,
Has one heart, one head,
One language, one policy,
(And an arsehole in
Roll on 1960.
Hi-life Zik, Awolowo,
Squalid betrayal by the British
And a shitty stooge,
Name of Balewa.
Goodbye, Colonial boys,
Polo players and pension takers.
Lips sealed lest British treason
Is revealed.
A splendidly squalid goodbye
To Paludrine, Tilley Lamps,
The
Apapa, Kingsway Stores,
Welcome Lumpers,
Purley,
Cotswolds and life
Without
Wiltshire, January 2001
I am trapped inside
The bubble of my century.
In 1900, one in four
Of the world's population
Was ruled by the British,
And the Wright Brothers would soon fly.
In 1927 another Smith was born,
In 1941 built mobile
Power stations for the
And was told about the atom bomb
At Metropolitan Vickers.
In 1946 I joined the dam busters,
And with the remains of the Afrika Corps
Swam in the
And watched Jew-hater Bevin
Do his dirty work impartially
Against Arabs and Jews,
All Christ's descendants and in-laws.
I saw
And murdered and loved for its oil,
Circa 1960 in
In 2001 it got worse,
And our God is OPEC.
At 73 I am beyond despair,
And marvel at
And the dumbing-down of
Mediocrities walk
Where great men triumphed.
Welcome to Blair and Hague land.
And dream of
And innocence and life, and the
And the
The Twentieth Century fucks.
Wiltshire, January 2001
The Colonial Chums I liked
Like Orwell, Virginia Woolf's hub Len,
Joyce Carey and another two or three,
Like Phil Haywood of Education,
Made history modestly
And must be honoured by me.
Others like Commissioner Foggon,
Deputy Commissioner Cook,
Chief Secretary Foot and HE
Were small beer Nazis
And Gauleiters like George,
Who said
For obeying orders was a rule
Which excused stuffing gas ovens,
And killing Babies and Homos
And Jews and Gypsies,
And Trade Unionists and Priests,
Communists, Russians and
Sundry Slavs, etc. etc.
Cook could have fucked
For
If buggering boys from the Alakoro
Exchange
Was an Olympic event.
George said he did it unofficially
And out of office hours,
So that was all right.
Destroying democracy was a duty,
For blacks were children.
And in loco parentis
We did only the necessary.
And the faux Foots agreed
For getting on
And covering up
Dirty colonial deeds
Is their creed.
Where are they now?
The Army and Navy,
Home and Colonial,
Imperial Wine Gums, Mints
And Empire Day
And the Empire News?
The
And the C M S
And Bishops of
And dedicated Missionaries
And Methodists and Salvationists,
What happened to them?
Does the
Through the
Mythologise and mystify,
Seep through the Delta
As ever?
Are the Palm Wine ruffians,
White slavers and Adventurers,
And Explorers and British Colonials,
And Gun runners, and mercenaries,
And SAS, SIS and MI5
All history? Not quite.
While BP, Shell, Amoco,
Esso and Total,
UAC and RTZ -
The new initials -
Take their place
In raising throughput and raping
Poor bloody
Again and yet again.
Wiltshire, January 2001
Arrived in
Artist intellectuals like you
And mee.
Michael Crowder and
Robin Horton and Peter
Marris and Cyprian Ekwensi
And me.
Cyprian wrote novels
Robin did anthropologee
Michael a cultural magpie
Peter sociologee.
The poet was me.
The future was bloodshed
Chaos and anarchee.
I cried bitterlee.
The elections were rigged.
I saw plots, treason
And conspiracee.
'You are prejudiced, jaundiced
And bitter,' said Rich,
Who saw none of this
At the BBC.
Michael was my double
Though brown-eyed not blue.
We shared so much -
Laughter and generosity
And kindness and curiosity - but not
His homosexualitee.
Michael was blackmailed -
To shut me up -
By the Governor General
Sir James Robertson.
And he was outraged,
But later hymned praise
Of the jolly bear-like thug
With orders of honour and
Nobility, who engineered the
Murder of millions
Sans humanitee.
Three became professors
And Cyprian a rebel. I was
Expelled and hunted down
And
Some would say later
That Smith had the gift
Of prophecee.
But you knew better
And are not surprised
That I did not prosper,
For truthfullee
The gloom, the horror
The dark I forseed
Imprisoned me.
Is that what poets are for -
To observe in stillness
Colossal evils with humilitee?
Wiltshire, January 2001
Despite the paludrine
And other anti-malarials,
Despite the vaccines and
Antibiotics
We are in love.
They say, but some are immune.
Those of us who are infatuated,
Besotted even, are thrilled
And excited and frightened too.
'Let's go home to
She was a child and had
No idea of black and white,
Of racism, race hatred or difference.
We returned home to
And British treachery.
But no matter.
At home in Ikeja and
Ikoyi, EB and
And rains that flood
The stinking drains?
And the insidious heat
That creates a little death
Of a necessary siesta?
Oh to be in
With the geckos on the walls,
The sandfly chewing ankles
The cicadas and the storms.
And African people
So decent and so warm.
Oh to be in
Yet never feel alarmed.
But needed and required,
And useful and desired,
And called on and appreciated.
We are the English in
Cut off from our roots
We have fallen in love with a Continent
And know we are absurd.
And that our passionate desire for acceptance
Will end in rejection and despair
And return to our insipid homeland
Of plastic and weak beer.
Oh to be in
Now we are retired -
With frangipani and flame
of the forest,
Canna lilies and moonflowers.
We love a dark continent
And share in its great pain.
Oh to be in
With all its gaping wounds
The massacres and cruel wars
The coups and corrupt regimes.
This strange love of a place
That intrigues and enchants us still
Will perplex us to the end
And we will never sort it out.
Goodbye, dear love, dear
The sun, the heat, the thrill.
You gave us warmth and happiness
And memories tender still.
Oh to be in
Where once we were young and true!
Wiltshire, January 2001
Labour Since 1945:
Victorious
Was bankrupt
And idealistic
And built a New Jerusalem.
Our great Empire
Was bogus, a sham,
Like
Ramshackle.
Morally a great power
The Empire had to go, but where?
Confusion reigned.
Dead dog
With
Opts for Cold War
And
Dirty work abroad
James Bondery the theme.
Fuck blacks and wogs for oil
To prop a socialist dream.
All get the dirty stick.
Barmy, decent
Now vicious, cruel and sick.
Disguise chicanery
A Commonwealth theme.
Cover up the squalor.
Visits by the Queen.
SAS in stealth
Slaughter Imperial dreams
Murder and assassinate
The democratic theme.
Was bankruptcy the reason
It turned its back on decency
And favoured bloody treason?
Wiltshire, January 2001
Self-Censorship.
Verso, X, Y, Zed
Publishers Guardian,
Pepper Red and Zed,
Verso and New Left,
Leave out three million British bullets
and
Lapping on TV
Has no time for me
Or truth about
British blood lust in
Called
Or even
The Smiths are unpeople,
Mark Curtis of
Rightly proclaims,
And then ambiguously deletes our name.
And
In the Index to his excellent
Zed books. Hall of Shame,
British evil abroad since 1945.
Noam says it is
And it is long overdue
So he claims.
'The Biafrans
And the Smiths
Are unpeople,' says Mark.
And so we remain.
Wiltshire, January 2001
Africa,
Oriental.
Afrique.
Whence come these names
For a Continent
Unique?
Africa,
Snowy mountains.
Delta creeks
And deserts.
Green savannahs
And forests of teak.
Africa,
For the suffering
Of its peoples,
The Holocausts
And the laughter and lament
Of a troubled Continent.
Africa,
Each baby, newly born,
Testifies your courage
And age-old beliefs.
We will survive and dream of
A black eternity.
Wiltshire, February 2001
Tell me, Zik and Awo too,
Were there geniuses around like you
When
Of divide and rule?
Why, Zik, did you fall for
Governor General of nothing,
Rather than Prime Minister
Of
Why, Awo, did you allow a war
Against Zik and join the North
In British skulduggery?
Because you had served
Time in prison and
Concluded that
Zik had it coming?
(Which he undoubtedly did.)
You settled a score
And three million died
For your pride,
Dear Awo.
Wiltshire, February 2001
Coastal Oil and Troubled Waters
The seven littoral states
Of
(A nation in deep trouble
That we love),
Namely Akwa Ibom, Boyelsa,
Cross River, Delta,
Ogun, Ondo and Rivers,
Are asking the Attorney General
To stop stealing their oil,
As
The Urhobo Historical Society
Has put it more politely, elegantly,
And at greater length, but
We all fear what the
Outcome might be.
I am perhaps prejudiced.
Carol was secretary to the
General Manager of BP, when
Shell-BP were prospecting in the Delta.
Carol's boss, Cliff Simpson,
Feared there was a tragedy
Here in the making.
My job was to protect the Health and Safety
Of the Nigerian people
And my laws,
Said the British Attorney General,
Were the finest, best presented
And drafted that he knew.
If only I could draft
Laws to help those
Wonderful people, namely,
The citizens of
Akwa Ibom, Boyelsa,
Cross River, Delta,
Ogun, Ondo and Rivers.
It was my privilege
Once to serve
These fine people, and if
The Nigerian Attorney General's mentor,
The truly great Awolowo
Were here today
(I loved him too),
And running
As he was meant to do,
He would bring his great
Wisdom to bear,
And justice would prevail.
Awo was a true founder of his nation.
Though British, I too was hounded
And criminalised. 'Treated like
An African', someone said.
The truth about Awo
Has yet to be told,
And all my efforts
Have been foiled by the British.
Chief Bola Ige, the Attorney General,
Can't appreciate how Awo's suffering
Was associated with Delta oil,
Which
A great Empire of Nations
With the blood of
Millions of innocents.
Bloody, bloody
To soil a fine record
With this foul Treason!
I pray for the souls
Of three million dead.
I pray for the
Of nations,
Crazily combined for no
Good reason.
I pray that British war criminals
Will one day be condemned
For destroying these
Fine nations.
And I commemorate,
Celebrate and rejoice
In the diversity and richness
Of all
Of whom the peoples of
Akwa Ibom, Boyelsa,
Cross River, Delta,
Ogun, Ondo and Rivers
Are great examples
Wilshire, February 2001
Continental Drift
Is the world map
Still hanging on the wall
Of our classroom,
The pink
Resplendent, cocksure?
The script at the bottom
Says, 'Phillips of
And the chart
Was acquired
At the CMS bookstore.
The Brazilian quarter
Of dirty old
Roars like a circus
Of tigers and lions.
There are elephants and crocodiles
Lurking in the undergrowth,
And mammy wagons and traders
Complete the uproar.
The shape of our
Is etched on my memory -
The oceans of blue
And far away, Brazilian shore.
We acquired our geography
From
A Coca-Cola land of rum and coffee
beans,
The Yankee dollar and the poor.
Our people in the slave days
Were the cargo of frigates,
Chained by
All shipshape down below.
While
Calculated columns of profit
And cursed the subtraction
For the dead overboard.
In a tabernacle schoolroom
We chanted our tables
While the rain beat down
On a corrugated roof.
And we squeezed together continents
Made separate by an ocean
Eons of time ago
Before mankind began.
Yet our peoples had in history
Already stitched these lands together.
How else could we live
In a
On a tabernacle wall-chart
In dirty old
We felt the heartbreak,
The suffering of our forebears
Sent as slaves to
Through Colleges, Academies
And Universities we progress,
With Libraries new plundered
And ransacked Treasuries.
From tin tabernacle teaching
We're now executives and accountants
And barristers and solicitors
With PhD degrees.
The Ibo we helped vanquish
At the behest of the British,
They tried to steal the oil
That belonged to Shell BP.
The Ibo left their dead
And their bikes and their bush tracks
For the
While we Yoruba
Drove Mercedes
Round
Now we're united in a Diaspora
That's not our making.
We're Yankee teachers and
Accountants and Digital Computees
In Brooklyn and
Harvard, MIT and
And the
We've long outgrown the tin
Tabernacles of our infancy,
The Cherubim and Seraphim,
The Holy Roman doctrine of our youth.
We're rootless black intellectuals
In world's still uncharted
On the wall map still swinging
On a wall in old
Wiltshire, February 2001
I was a blue collar guy
Apprenticed to Metropolitan Vickers
And Lancashire Dynamo, a journeyman
Building mobile power stations
For the wartime U S S R,
And an air gunner-to-be
At fifteen as an air cadet,
RAF Volunteer Reserve,
A kamikaze kid.
An anti-Stalinist
Working for
Me and Churchill both.
The Smiths are patriots
With missing limbs as proof.
A wartime intake on
Active Service,
Though peace had been declared.
A year in
Recommended for a Commission.
I loved this blue collar RAF.
In
Prime Minister Attlee.
I am a Labour leader to be
And denounced in the Press
For converting Conservatives
To the Labour ranks,
And attacked by Communists
For converting Communists,
And the Communists
Exile me from my
My craft, my fellow engineers.
They can't do this?
They did.
I am an Ex -
Ex engineer,
Ex Trade Union activist,
Ex blue collar worker,
Ex Labour candidate,
And blacklisted,
Unemployable. Exiled
(Join us, says MI5)
Scholarships to
And with Diplomas,
And Degrees,
And highly commended,
And recommended,
H M Government
Seeks a law-maker journeyman,
For its African Empire
Is bolshie and will be placated
If good guy Smith
Window dresses
For a fake
Smith protests
And protests
And protests,
And is sent packing,
And is declared a traitor,
And highly commended,
And cleared,
And vilified,
And criminalised,
And blacklisted,
And declared innocent.
(Join us, says MI6).
You are a good guy,
A hero.
And on the Boeing
Is an ex-Sudan thug,
Also
With a mission.
Charged to demonise.
Demoralise, destroy
The Smiths, for
Treason of course
Is on course,
Of course.
(Join us, says the CIA).
Sir James was brisk
And to the point.
"You deserve death,
The usual sentence for disobeying
Orders on active service
For an officer."
And he is my
Commanding Officer in Chief.
"Be a good chap.
You've seen how beastly we can be.
Your poor wife, your children -
You are making me be cruel."
('A safe haven in
The highest ranks of the
Foreign and Diplomatic Service
Beckons.
We salute you.
We respect you.
We honour you.
Arise, Sir Harold,
And become
One of us!
However, he added quickly,
Your word of course
And permanent exile -
A necessary precaution -
You will never see
Again.
Again? Again!
Never see
Permanent, life-long
For ever...
For I am a traitor
And on probation
And cannot be trusted
To honour my word.
To be a criminal
For ever,
As Sir Harold Smith,
Ex blue collar engineer,
Ex blue collar air gunner,
Of
The
Master of Arts,
Diploma in Administration,
Law maker,
Diplomat, Ambassador-to-be,
Like my student chum
Rodric,
Ambassador to
Head of the Secret Service.
You will never be employed again.
No Sir!
You will be in deep trouble.
No Sir!
Nobody will believe you.
No Sir!
You will be barred from the Press.
I will be banned, branded,
Damned and
Destroyed.
So be it.
Sir James
Doesn't care.
He needs me
To defy him.
There was a vacancy.
He strides to the door
And might have struck
This traitor,
But thrusts me out
Of his office, the Empire,
The Commonwealth,
The
Into Exile.
And Oscar,
Late of Magdalen,
Says, "Welcome Sean
To Exile for
You're a journeyman again and
Internal or external,
It's the same
Dagger in the heart.
Wiltshire, February 2001
When honesty and
Getting on collide,
Number two loses out
To number one.
Surprised?
The boy scout code
Belongs in the Jurassic
With courtship,
Fidelity and family.
Surprised?
Words of honour
Really do count, however.
HM Government demanded mine
To cover the necessary killing
Of three million.
Surprised?
A knighthood and a fortune
And a VIP job,
If you'll just agree
To a criminal job description.
Surprised?
See my website
For the above
And the usual
By Blair and Cook, et al.
Surprised?
Wiltshire, February 2001
I don't care - if British rig my
elections?
I don't care - if military take away my
vote?
I don't care - if Zik wear Admiral's
uniform?
I don't care - if you destroy Action
Group?
I don't care - if Northern stooges run
Government?
I don't care - if Britty Balewa is made
Boss?
I don't care - if you lock up Awo?
I don't care - if you destroy
Kill democracy, murder our men,
Starve our women and children?
I don't care for any of this.
And I don't care if you marry lorry
driver either?
*
'If you marry taxi driver, I don't care.' (Hi Life popular song.
February 2001
Don Foster of
Is honest as the day is along
(Even allowing for Summer Time.)
Don
Foster of
Could blow the whistle
And bring down a Government.
Will he? Not a chance.
A Lib Lab Pact,
Whether open or closed
Ensures the
Third alternative
Is honestly a sham.
Believe me!
'Expose the Secret Service
Is not an option,' says Don.
'For my leader, Paddy Ashdown,
Was a secret Secret Agent
Hush, hush,
Believe me, I'm a Liberal.
Honest!
Wiltshire, February 2001
Like HTML,
Which is rarely seen
By the casual reader
Of computer composed copy,
Behind the law-abiding
Is one thousand million p.a.
Pounds of Secret Service
Financed jungle.
Rarely seen
Because obscene
Which manipulates
What casual citizens
Know.
There are also many volumes
Of Media Law to do with
Secrecy, Censorship, Defence,
States of War and Treason,
For the State is at war
With the Fourth Estate
Hopefully.
The only law in this
HTML jungle
Behind the scenes
Is that no law operates here.
The traitor or victim
Or whistle-blower or prick -
Take your pick -
Has no rights
Or entitlement to justice
Whatsoever.
He is casually mired,
Denied employment,
Denigrated,
Health destroyed,
Tempted to self-destruct.
'Suicidal? Oh, good,' say MI5,
'
Should he not easily break
But keep on trying
To communicate
With the enemy,
The British public,
There are extra measures
We can take,
Like breaking his marriage
By scandal created
For this purpose.
Fit him up in theft
And worse, and as he's innocent
He'll spend some years
Proving he's really clean.
Then tie him to pornography -
A speciality of the Spy filth brigade.
We ensnare, entrap,
Fit up, make form
Even with murder
If the occasion demands.
The world moves on.
Our victim's state secret
Is now common knowledge
But the victim is still
Demonised, destroyed,
For the HTML is timeless
And his sentence is for life.
I am now seventy three.
Oh, don't pity me.
A knighthood was offered
And a fortune in cash
To this poverty-stricken jerk
Once, for his silence
And his word.
How absurd!
He forced us to be cruel.
True, the elections we fixed
In our African empire
Brought on civil war
And three million dead.
We thought of making it
Three million and one,
But he fled
And, when discovered,
Was gravely ill from
Poisoning by Porton Down,
A Defence Minister said.
A Rear Admiral phoned
To say you are free
So far as this Ministry
Is concerned.
The Editors on our voluntary
Self-censorship Committee
Have set you free,
Though they will not publish
For fear of bad
Publicitee.
'I'm sorry about that',
Said the Rear Admiral.
'I hope you're
Not too fucked up
With our secrecy.
Nothing personal, old chap.
It's the English disease.
'Don't lie to me, you fuckers,'
Said Patten of
'I'm a Minister of State,
And if Harold Smith
Is kidnapped by Mossad
Acting for our African chums.
The reporters could be
Waiting, outside my gate.
'So SAS his safety
In the dark, with deadly arms
Around his home
For although I can't be seen
To participate
I may need a cover story
If he meets his fate.'
My neighbours, awaiting poachers,
Are truly fascinated
To see men in black
Surround the Smiths' home
To fight off Mossad killers,
Who also wish
To silence the Smiths.
Why don't they collaborate?
Let's fuck him with
His neighbours.
He's an enemy of the Queen.
And if patriotically
They kick his arse
The police will be busy
Checking parked cars,
And he has it coming
Anyway.
For the Smiths are the enemy
Of our secret state.
Our secret police,
Like HTML,
Are rarely seen
Especially by Editors,
Unless they are unique
Like Jack Brennen of
The Wiltshire Times,
Who believes -
(Where've you been, Jack?)
That journalism is an honest craft,
And truth is might
And shall prevail.
You gave us heart.
God bless you, Jack.
Wiltshire, February 2001
When the Brits departed
They did not legitimately
Elect a lawful Government.
The crooks we placed in power
Were our stooges
As everyone knew,
But the Brits
Didn't give a fuck
For laws, decorum
Or all that truck.
The jackpot the Brits got
Were oilfields so rich.
They have involved every
British Government since
In a colossal cover-up,
A great criminal conspiracy.
Must the Smiths stand alone
In speaking up
For what our people think
This nation represents?
Wiltshire, February 2001
Some people think
Nigerians don't laugh.
They're too busy sitting around,
Thinking of some new wheeze
To fleece the Brits
Who let their greed
Run away with common sense.
You think they have no sense of humour,
And they lived with the
British here, all those years!
In my office at Ikoyi
Not a sound
Except the fan swishing.
I'd leave, and pop back for something.
A circus, pandemonium. Gales of laughter.
A couple lying on my desk smoking.
My clerk in my chair trimming his nails.
They never let me have a good time!
Amos Tutuola laughed,
Mainly at me, when I told him this.
He only had to see me and he'd
Start shaking his head and laughing.
No good asking him why -
I really liked him.
One day, discussing politics -
I was on dangerous ground -
I said maybe it wasn't a good idea
To keep his money in Zik's Bank.
'It could be dangerous,' I said.
Amos said he'd take the risk, and added,
'You think I live dangerously, Mr Smith?'
Then he laughed and laughed
Till he had to lean on the wall
So as not to fall down.
'You're the one living dangerously, Mr Smith.
Mr Cook (the Deputy) would like to
Cut you into slices,
Put you through a mincer
And feed you to the crocodiles.
'And Mr Foggon?' (the Commissioner), I asked.
'He'd pay for a ringside seat.'
'Amos, Amos, what's new, Amos?' I asked,
But Amos had fallen off the
Veranda.
Wiltshire, February 2001
There are
Myths and
Misunderstandings
About our dear
And beneficial
MI5
Said Jack - radical - Straw.
We investigate only
Subversives, hard core
Who intend to do
As we did
And overthrow, as in
Democracy
By violent means,
Starting with
Elections, which we -
As is our rule -
Rigged in favour of a
Criminal element,
For we are fools.
Young Jack had a file
Which proves MI5
Sometimes gets it
Right.
Are you all right,
Jack?
Wiltshire, February 2001
From its author's high
Standards. Why, we ask,
When Karl Maier describes
The Murder of a Nation,
Does he not tell us
Why the British did it?
Karl's superficial description
Of the most corrupt nation on earth
Would otherwise pass muster.
He excuses himself from
Indicting the British
Because it would take many
Volumes of history.
Not necessarily, Karl -
Try half a page?
Karl left out the White Tribe
Which fixed
the Elections at
Installed a gang of criminals,
Who waged war on democracy,
Produced a civil war, coups,
Murders assassinations and
Total bloody chaos for forty years.
How's that for starters, Karl?
You're not really CIA?
Not a good package, Karl!
* Karl Maier. 'This House Has Fallen'.
Wiltshire, February 2001
Whatever
Happened to Harold Smith?*
The
Was publicised
As a Crown Colony
And a showcase
For democracy,
Having been a model Colony.
At
This vast empire
Of scores of nations
Voted against nationalists
Who wanted
If you believe that,
You'll believe anything,
But the British counted
The vote.
'I rigged the elections,'
Sir James Robertson said.
'See how much trouble you're in?
But they won't believe you
For they'll not believe
I could possibly
Do such a thing.'
He had a double knighthood,
Represented the Queen,
Was Governor General
And Commander in Chief,
And I was only,
Harold Smith.
* A film on release in 2000
Wiltshire, February 2001
For the Chomsky Family
In awe I salute
The Delta Congress
Through its splendid website
For a matchless intellectual
African voice.
A phoenix has risen
Apparently effortless
To leave the BBC and CNN gasping.
Will African intellectuals
Develop a superiority complex?
The
And
Yet is eternally fresh,
Virginal and innocent
And will conquer Euro-disease
Euro-corruption, Euro-bullshit.
From holocaust ashes
The Delta peoples,
Defiant and smiling
With well-springs of steel
And good manners,
Forgive our trespasses.
God damn!
What is it with these Delta people?
Wiltshire, February 2001
When
She was fit company,
If slow to spend, and comprehend
There were sensible whites,
Whose taint was slight,
Who ruled tri-minimally.
When British
rule in
Was withdrawn in the sixties,
The African rulers were undermined
And also despised
Unless arse-licking stooges
Of a British kind.
We favoured Hausa and the Fulani,
And gave them the kingdom's keys.
When fuck-up
time to
Was it our responsibility?
We kept control of the oil supplies
And turned a blind eye to war
And the waste of three million lives,
And denied the British holocaust.
Wiltshire, February 2001
The
The
The Zambesi,
Carol.
Absence from
Because driven away
By British threats of death.
However, although it is a cliché
To say that absence
Makes the heart grow fonder,
How can that
be of
When our love was and is
Overwhelming?
For Carol, as
for
When she is away I grieve.
But my heart is full
Before she goes.
Still is a great joy
When she returns.
Carol and
And my heart responds
To both, a continent
And Carol, the same,
For both are loved dearly,
And Carol was
And together we were at home
With African people.
And home was Carol, and
Helen and Louise
Feeling good
in
Ruined by the British
And then labelled
Totally corrupt.
Well, they would, wouldn't they?
And they did.
Perhaps proving,
In so doing,
That not all the Brits
Fell in love
with
Isn't that sad?
Carol, Helen and Louise.
Our love, our family.
Wiltshire, March 2001
(And School Certificate Subject*)
British Africans, like Nwokedi,
Agents of the Queen and OBE,
Are left to rule
After a pretend departure
And face a dilemma.
They despise
the
From whence they came,
And dream of
an
Of cricket, cream teas
And School Certificate Shakespeare,
Where their good manners, old chap,
Will permit of course - well perhaps -
Total acceptance
Despite a black skin,
For they are Persil white underneath.
They are twixt and between
And are further confused
When Brits at ease
With African aspirations,
Like Michael Crowder,
Whom I introduced to Francis,
Love
How can that be?
Don't they see the dirt,
The shitty ways, the ignorance
The palms and bush tracks,
Old chap?
Why come to
dreadful
When
'Don't you see, Sean,'
Said Francis to me,
'
And
At all, but simply, as
Awo says, only
A geographical expression.'
Which comforted Francis
As the most powerful civil servant
When he played a major role
In destroying
Leading nation, and centrally
Plunged a dagger in its heart.
Isn't this the real tragedy
Of British colonial rule?
To produce men of ability
Who despise their own country?
For our own ends
We plant treason in the hearts
Of decent people.
* The 16+ examination before GCE and GCSE.
Wiltshire, March 2001
The foreboding
I felt in
By El Hamra, the red mountain,
Peering toward the red sea.
The bitter lakes
Matched my bitterness,
For I saw peaceful peoples
Doomed to conflict
And red bloodshed.
The year was 1947
And in 1948
And red flames And red blood
Were everywhere.
The foreboding
I felt in
Around
The red laterite soil,
The red sunsets.
The British were plotting
Mock celebrations
of
A national anthem,
New hotels, embassies,
Mercedes cars,
Symbols of corruption.
The year was 1960
And I had taken a stand
Four years earlier.
Now my friends were blackmailed into silence.
Bloody red war was near.
The year was 1966
And by a Lockean dispensation
Revolt against tyranny was legitimised,
And young Majors did their duty.
And the British waged total war
Against the African people
And killed three million
To celebrate the end of Empire.
Poor bloody
Spilling its red blood
To feed
Imperial British greed.
Wiltshire, March 2001
After
We reach
Carol teaches with success
And we work charitably
And wait twelve years
For a proper diagnosis
Of a tropical disease,
Though our minds are sick too
Of British
treason in
Find no textbook,
Medical or political,
Cures that.
Yet charitable work for decades,
An act of faith
Repays us well.
We're not sure why.
Perhaps to be reminded
Of true perspectives,
And what real troubles are.
And we're renewed
And come full circle
And welded together
And stronger than before,
Seek to help
And
More crippled with disease,
Is not short of well-wishers
Though
We must be patient
And bide our time,
For treason one day will be exposed
And history put to rights,
And a true diagnosis
And a cure found
For
By African people,
Who will find fulfilment
As we have done
In loving
What better reward
Can there be?
Wiltshire, March 2001
The Writer:
The lady on the keyboard
Is averse
To computing
Rough, unsteady rude verse.
Especially when her husband's
Had a drink
And he tells those
Labour fuckers what he thinks.
When he sets the common people
In their stride
In a march for human rights
And people's pride.
When Africans are starved
Into submission,
When Asians are bombed
Into oblivion,
When media TV creates
Bent opinion,
His tone is classic Chomsky -
Pure derision.
The Keyboard Operator
Your rage, dear heart, I understand.
You grieve for the people
Of this land.
I share your love,
Your hopes, ideals,
Your compassion, for
You are, dear heart,
Cut to my own fashion.
Yet when relieved
Your verse to my machine
Is delivered,
It is delivered.
It is delivered
To my heart.
I feel the pain.
I feel the pain
Of all the suffering,
And pray my typing
Could diminish
By a grain
The sum total suffering
Of all world pain.
Wiltshire, March 2001
Catharsis -
Crimson, Purple, Black, Blood
To purge, purify and cleanse
By tears, as in drama,
To relieve tension and anxiety
By bringing repressions
To the surface and
To consciousness.
Africa!,
For release from pain,
The bloodshed, the holocaust,
The slaughter, the wars,
The chaos, the killing -
All
The Aids, the TB, the sex plague.
The dying, the dying, the dying!
Pray for
Ask
forgiveness for
Scream for
And in white western cities,
The architects of so much African evil
Tut tut, and say, 'Dreadful business,
After all we've done for them.
It's true we destabilised -
For a good end - the Cold War.
It's true we fixed elections,
As at
It's true we
flooded
It's true we were cruel to get
Cold War oil, minerals, gold.
We give them aid.
We give them charity.
We'll give them drugs
If they pay for them.
It's a bloody
shame about
Dreadful about the children.
We feel it so strongly
That we switch off the news
All the time.
One can only take so much.
It's their own fault you know.
One gets compassion fatigue,
And we've doubled our Oxfam donation.
It really is a
bloody shame about
Christ, people like us need
Catharsis from all that!'
Wiltshire, March 2001
When a Lord Chancellor
Of
If only the next one up
I.e. a Shadow,
Who was at Magdalen
Years before me
And got a third -
I don't know why
I say that,
But everyone does -
And the hell of it is,
I can't remember his name,
But anyway he told
Tom Sargant of Justice
To tell me
That he'd reviewed my case
And the interrogation of me
By the most eminent
Cross-examiner in the kingdom -
Let's call him XYZ,
A QC, a Tory MP -
Sir John Foster, of course
Where was I? Oh yes.
So Tom Sargant tells me
That I will never ever
Be allowed into
An English Court of Law
(Yes, Tom said 'English')
And so I could have
Out of court, says the Shadow Chancellor
A huge sum of money
Now.
Gardiner was his name.
'Great,' I said,
'But I was
Protesting the rigging of the
Yes, I have suffered financially,
But...' 'Yes,' said Tom,
'And you would have to give
Your word
Never to speak of that again.' I said,
'They offered all that and
More before, and a knighthood.'
'I can't...' said Tom.
'Advise me. I know,' I said.
'Thanks Tom, but no.'
And walked out of due process
And Magna Carta
Into outlawry,
For the law only applies
To subjects within the law.
Outlaws as criminals
Are within the law, naturally.
However, innocent subjects
Who, in defiance of Government,
Involving criminality and
Defence of the Realm
Are most definitely
In an awful lot of trouble,
Which double knighthood, etc. etc.
James Robertson told me
In his study in Government House
Where he was Governor General.
He was a criminal,
But I was branded
An outlaw.
He had just told me
My suspicions were totally correct
And he had, acting on orders from
Rigged the
So the victors were told they'd lost,
And the losers also were told
They had lost.
But by special dispensation
Of the British government
And the Opposition leaders too, they
Were now the victors
Subject to certain conditions
Like, to get rid of the
Guys who really won, pretty smartly,
By hook or by crook
(An apt phrase)
Before they came
After you bastards
With a gun! So
If anyone out there
Can tell me how to get
Due process or whatever,
My address is Turnpike House
Widbrook, Bradford-on-Avon,
BA15 1UD,
And my name is Harold Smith.
For the Record
The Shadow Chancellor,
I now recall,
He was my lawyer!
I had a Lord Chancellor!
I was his client!
'Expenses paid by Justice,
The British branch of the
International Commission of Jurists', said Tom.
Did they tell all the other
International Jurists? About my case?
And the deal they put together
With top politicians,
Which I rejected?
God, I've forgotten his name
Again.
I've now also forgotten again
The interrogator, a QC and Tory MP,
And famous.
He was pretty horrible
To me, and suddenly he
Took my hand
And smiled and said, 'I believe you.
Sorry, but I had to test you.'
And later Tom said he,
The QC,
Liked me,
Believed me,
Knew I was honest, truthful,
But didn't like my mentioning
Homosexuality -
A popular pastime amongst Colonials -
Because his secretary
Might not have liked it.
His secretary?
'Yes, she was behind a screen
In the corner,
Taking everything down
In shorthand,' said Tom.
'I didn't know that!'
'You weren't meant to.
You came over well
In the transcript,' said Tom.
We only saw you,' said Tom,
'Because this was of great
National importance
And involved Government
And State secrets,
And you spoke to Amery,
Macmillan's son-in-law.
And top civil servants are involved,
And the Cabinet,
And probably the Privy Council,
And Labour leaders too.'
We sat in this Joe Lyons -
Or was it posher -
Near all the Courts,
.'Why?' asked Tom desperately.
'The Governor General wouldn't say.
He said it was necessary,
Tom,' I said.
'I don't know why
The British have
Fucked up democracy
In
Gerald Gardiner - that's the name -
Became Lord Chancellor in the
Sir John Foster was the QC
And Tory MP.
'This isn't really
About me, or Carol,'
I told good, decent Tom.
'We witnessed
Murder most foul
In poor bloody
'I know, I know,'
Tom said sadly.
'You will do
What you have to do.
God be with you.'
And the Brits murdered
Three million
in
After they'd cheated them of victory
In the
And I was taken for a ride
By Justice.
It was a squalid end to Empire.
Wiltshire, March 2001
Day one in
The Commissioner explains,
After his Deputy has departed,
That Mr Cook is an evil pervert
And he's going to sack him.
My prospects are excellent.
Day two in
The Deputy explains,
In the absence of the Commissioner,
That this useless arse-licker,
A one-time Exchange clerk
And German Control Commission
Gauleiter, will not last long.
'We will work together to get him out.'
My prospects are excellent.
Day three - the Commissioner
Orders the drafting of a Factories Act.
The Deputy says, 'Ignore it!'
'May I have that in writing?'
Produces anger, rage and threats.
The Deputy is merciful
And the offer renewed
And declined.
War is declared.
Sabotage, disruption, disorder
Prevail.
The Commissioner retreats to a bunker.
Someone has to take the flak.
Someone has to work
At home,
And a Factories Act is born
On a kitchen table
To hosannas of praise
By the Attorney General.
And the Deputy warns
Of danger to life.
And the Commissioner says
'We won't give you credit for this,
But you will be rewarded one day.'
Entrapment is pernicious.
Be careless and get dropped in it.
Be too suspicious, life is misery.
However, beautiful girls appear -
The Minister's nieces. Dozens?
All happy, care-free ladies.
Orders to chauffeur them home,
To the hospital.
She has a headache.
Take her home.
Stop at the store for aspirin.
Please buy it, my headache -
I have forgotten my purse.
Oh dear, some small purchase -
Please pay for me.
Lingerie? Panties, bra!
You are so sweet to buy
These presents for me!
An African friend, Nwokedi
Mounts a rescue
And announces to everyone
How much I enjoyed
This delightful tease -
A joke, a prank.
'And here,' he says,
'Are the pounds you spent.
A less decent chap
Would have expected
Favours in return.'
A very large African businessman
Produces a wad of banknotes
When no clerks are present.
Sprint from the office,
Have him shown out,
Thrown out.
A riot at the Labour Exchange,
With staff calm a crowd,
Very excitable. Clear the grounds
And bar gates.
And screams as the gates are
Mysteriously open. And alone you
Face a charging mob
And stand your ground
For a second, before being
Lifted up and carried
And eventually pinned against
A building wall.
And you raise the arm
Of a giant thug
And declare him the victor.
To run would have been
A fatal error.
The mob's mood changes
And laughter and cheers
Greet the humiliation of
The big white chief
Who is really only me.
The Commissioner says,
'It's nothing to do with me!'
And his Deputy, enraged, says,
'You were lucky that time!
Next time...'
But the next time
Is the Deputy's triumph
Over his boss,
Who he knows has taken bribes.
'And now I've got him!
And you!...'
And worse, much worse -
The
Are rigged by our people,
And I say, 'No!'
And the Commissioner,
Now his Deputy's slave
Because of guilt,
To appease his Deputy
Sacks me.
The Deputy Governor General
Sir Ralph Grey
Says, 'No way
Can you sack an honest man
Of great service to the State.
He is to be commended
And you, Commissioner
Are ordered to shake his hand,
And to cease this bad behaviour.'
The Commissioner's revenge
Is to get a lawmaker
Sacked in civilian life,
And again he is reprimanded
By
And a lawmaker reinstated
Returns to
Where elections are rigged
And crooks put in charge,
And the British
Issue death threats.
Pursued from job to job
Around the kingdom.
The Prince comes along
And lends support.
A Minister complains
To the Prime Minister -
His father-in-law.
A Lord Chancellor-to-be
Offers vast Government
Compensation in return for
A lawmaker's honour.
Out in the wilderness,
Free, broke and clean,
One speculates about
Treason, entrapment
And
What can one say but,
“That filth
Is not for me.”
Wiltshire, March 2001
For Emeka
It wasn't our fault!
We're not to blame!
Our children are innocent!
As are their fathers and mothers!
Transparency says we're corrupt,
That
But
And honest
And clean
And decent,
And they didn't rig
Our elections (honest!)
Put crooks in charge (honest!)
Steal our wealth (honest!)
Steal our oil (honest!)
As years ago they didn't
Steal our children,
And didn't
Sell them into slavery.
The British had reformed anyway
And been good to us for a time
Until 1960,
When the bad old habits
Took over again.
Brothers and sisters,
It is you, not the Brits,
Who are not to blame.
It wasn't your
fault,
You are honest.
You are clean.
You are decent.
So, walk tall,
Swagger a
little,
And look down on
Those bloody, corrupt Brits.
And if you can find it
In your hearts
To forgive the brutal slaughter of
Three million innocents,
Do it! For you are the good guys,
For you are the tops,
The best people,
The good people.
The truth will
out one day,
For Emeka Onono
Has told me so.
Good morning,
Wiltshire, March 2001
The Guarantee
If left switched on
The bulb in this torch
Will last for twenty years
Guaranteed, well almost.
The battery - an hour?
My life, a split second of cosmic time.
This clock is radio controlled
And won't lose a second
In a million years,
Guaranteed, well almost.
And the clock?
Binned one Monday morning,
Only a million years too soon!
I am seventy-three
And only yesterday
I was a blue-collar guy,
An engineer building
For the mighty Zambesi
The
Are the turbines still spinning,
The switch-gear still distributing
And lighting
up
This third millennium?
I am in the danger zone,
My guarantee almost expired.
My turbine is faltering,
My switch-gear failing,
One nightfall soon
My power plant will fall silent.
In
Inside a tomb
I touched a bandaged lady.
Who was she?
What was her name?
A Carol too, my destiny?
Taken from the
sunlight and the
Into this darkness, and disturbed
By Harold Smith ( in some Euclidean symmetry?)
By Harold Smith, an Air Force sparks,
Who flew machines (like a toy bird or kite)
Over her ancient homeland.
And again in
We needed all the power
And light we could command
To confront evil and the dark
In the hearts of the powerful,
Whose moral fuses had blown.
The
The
The Zambesi,
The
In the Barlow meadows.
These four rivers
Flowed through my brief span
Before I too returned to dust.
I hope I gave some satisfaction
And lived up to some degree of
My electricity guarantee.
I fought to illuminate
Wiltshire, March 2001
Incarceration
The
In
Hearing of my plight,
Asks if Harold Smith
Is incarcerated and where,
Which is sweet
Of the wonderful
Carter family
To care.
Correction to
No incarceration except
As a figure of speech,
As in life sentence as traitor
And sentenced to total ruin
Of wealth, health, et cetera.
Friends were threatened, however,
With imprisonment
For homosexual practices.
Real in one case,
Imagined in another.
In the latter case worse,
For how to deny what
Never happened?
And Michael was promiscuous,
But not with me.
Shut up, Smith, or
Michael Crowder of
And Philip Williams,
Nuffield Fellow and
Future Gaitskell biographer,
Will be locked up
And ruined too.
It was said of the
Great Gatsby only
That he murdered a man.
By the way,
Following failed entrapment -
Bribes, theft, grand larceny,
Graft, whores, queers -
We have made you
Lieutenant Colonel,
The better to cashier you
For running off with
Regimental Mess Funds
And the Regimental Goat.
Dear Carter clan.
Three million died
Of blockade and British bullets.
And a nation so new
And its democracy too
Were destroyed.
Please pursue.
The Smiths are fine.
Think not of us
In Widbrook,
Wilts,
But of three million innocents
And the
We hold accountable
For their deaths.
Amen!
Wiltshire, March 2001
That's Why
You Starve!
We can control:
Steam turbines,
Electricity,
Atomic fusion.
The speed of cars,
The rate of combustion,
The beat of the heart.
Yet we cannot control:
Supply of arms,
Supply of mercenaries,
Supply of troops,
Supply of coffins and/or
Body bags.
We can increase:
The length of life
With sound nutrition
I.e. lots of good nourishing food,
Particularly protein.
We choose not to control:
War and starvation,
For there are problems
Of supply and distribution.
I.e. when we supply it, they eat it,
And we're back to square one.
When there's a plague and starvation,
Declare a blockade because there's a war,
Or was or will be.
Next question please.
Our hearts bleed -
It goes without saying.
We'd rather give you food
Than the bullets.
But bullets fuel our economy.
The answer to any erudite,
Scholarly, academic, complex
Questions in this verse -
It's the economy, stupid!
Wiltshire, March 2001
Rebellion in
In 1966
British-trained African Majors
Overthrew a tyranny
There was rejoicing
And British chagrin.
The Brits responded
With countercoup and murder
On the streets,
And reimposed the tyranny
And waged war
On the nationalists.
When in 1960
The British destroyed
Democracy in
By declaring the losers
To be the
victors at
The seeds of legitimate Rebellion were sown.
The justice, the necessity of
Rebellion against tyranny
Were set out by John Locke,
Who declared
the right to
And was the father
Of the Enlightenment
And inspiration for
The
And the British?
Immoral, evil, villainous,
Traitors, criminals
And murderers,
And much more -
The countrymen of John Locke!
And Transparency tell us that
Nigerians are the most corrupt
And the British, honest and decent.
And Transparency is therefore
An umbrella for falsehood,
Treachery and mischief.
Wiltshire, March 2001
My love walks tall
Through this poetry.
Though I'm a nobody,
A poet's perks are these.
Though I'm broke as a peasant,
Drive an old banger,
Despite my seniority,
Though my friends have millions,
That means nothing to me.
Yes, they have wives
And happy families -
I state the plural
For some have had two or three.
For we live in a cottage
And it's pretty road noisy,
Not exactly luxury,
Yet we have something special,
My life's all poetry.
For I live inside a poem,
A verse written for me
And Carol's the poet,
For she created me.
She lets me do my thing,
Really any old thing.
There's not much bread in what I do,
Yet she treats me
As her very special guy.
My lyrics I know
Will never do an Elton John.
No Cole Porter I,
I'm a peanuts sort of guy.
Yet when I study a tree,
And rush home to tell Carol
That spring's erupting again,
And she expresses wonder,
I feel rewarded
For observing life renewed.
And I put it in words
Rather ordinarily
Like these, like me,
For Carol my poet,
Who created me.
Wiltshire, March 2001
Change your name?
Gold Coast to
We can understand, but
Change it back!
Who gives a damn?
And
To what was there before.
And the North is the North,
And the West is the West,
And
Is that really the best?
For a nation so large,
A nation defamed by a corrupt world,
So guilty of criminal intent
To a continent screaming for help,
Names for a colour
Disparaged like dirt -
You deserve better.
Transparently
Was evil for centuries
Before they destroyed democracy.
In
And yet
And decent and good,
Because British hypocrisy is legendary
And its bloody record is lost to history,
For the British wrote the book.
Where are this African giant's historians?
To rescue its good name,
To reclaim from the dark
A Commonwealth of peoples,
Innocent of blame,
Who deserve fair play,
Justice and a break.
To win a British PhD,
Nigerians twist their history.
Time to turn away
From this Britishry
And tell the truth objectively.
My friend Michael Crowder,
A historian of repute,
Wrote
histories of
Which are a lie for what he left out,
Though he gave me his word
That he wouldn't.
He was blackmailed to lie
When his homosexuality
Was a criminal offence.
And Michael, like Peter Cook -
The Deputy Commissioner of Labour -
Was very promiscuous,
But for reasons of State
Cook's reign of terror won favour,
For it involved the British élite,
While Michael was just a
Beginner without influence.
I sympathise, Michael.
It's human to be frightened.
But you claimed to be in love
With
You betrayed them.
So we take away your historian's chair.
It is vacant and awaits an African scholar
Who will tell the truth
About the peoples of this slab of
The African continent,
And expose the
evils about
Concealed by its own false
History fabricators.
Wiltshire, March 2001
Our green years,
Seen through
The pain of old age,
Are still fresh
And clean and a joy.
In
Excitement, laughter, drums
As a continent
Awaits liberation
Its fate?
Not necessarily.
The lagoon,
The creeks,
The beach,
The retreat
From morality,
Sanity,
Reality,
By what had seemed
A benevolent regime.
Primitive schools,
Some medical care,
Decent policing,
Sewage beware,
Clean water,
And an introduction
To civilisation.
And laughter, gaiety,
Bicycles and palm wine,
Textiles, markets,
Hi-life and sunshine.
And unnecessary funerals of babies,
And storms,
And rain, rain, rain.
A vast empire of nations
Suddenly has fame
And is being framed.
Forced to co-operate
With our treacherous Brits,
Zik and his chums
Sign away power
To the bad guys,
And
To forty years of blood and chaos.
And the joyful
We knew
Carries the burden of
Three million dead,
And the title of
Most corrupt nation
On earth,
Which rightly
belongs to
For replacing
our green love of
With decades of grief.
Those green years of ours
And
Were interlocked and woven through.
We screamed a warning
That wasn't heard,
And were forced to flee
From the peoples
We loved.
Green years,
Green palms,
Blue costumes,
Blue lagoon,
Red laterite,
Red blood,
And a proud nation of promise
Made a pariah
By the British.
Our green
years in
Viewed through decades
Of treason and pain.
Will
Be green again?
Will young Brits
Like the Smiths
Be welcomed as friends
And treated as family,
Brother and sister,
When they knew us,
By the beautiful peoples
Of our once
green
Wiltshire, March 2001
At Magdalen,
Everyone remembered me,
Especially those
Not in my years - 1952 to '54.
While those in my years,
While remembering me,
Had lost the details of their lives
Which then enchanted me.
David had a smoking jacket.
'No, I did not.'
'You played the piano...'
'I don't play.'
'...And laughed at my lyrics.'
'You write songs?'
'I wrote a line
About jealousy making
Acid drops of dames,
Which had you in fits of laughter.'
'Really? I don't recall.'
His wife said later,
'He did play the piano,
And I recall the jacket well,
But those
years in
Were hell for him.’
And now he runs
An old people's home,
And he's forgetful too.
I hoped this College get-together
Would remind him of his youth.'
The Labour Club boys
Were now rich bankers,
And my, their wives
Were young and pretty,
But they were replacements,
Not the original works.
And the New Buildings,
We remarked,
Were fifty years older and,
Being cleaned, looked worse.
And the new President Smith,
A wonderful fund-raiser,
Had turned everything upside down,
And expanded and extended
And extracted and expended
Millions of old boys' cash
To change what was
Topsy-turvy and loved.
Why did we go,
We dry old sticks
To revisit our youth?
And reminisce of a College
Barely understood in that first tour
In the years '52 to '54.
Wiltshire, March 2001
Mossad were giving
Package tours a new meaning
By kidnapping critics
Of
African secret police
Were
terrorising critics of
With maximum tolerance because
Illegally at
We told Minister Patten
Of our fears. He was Tory Chairman
And he agreed,
And despatched a squad
To protect us at Widbrook
For we had warned we
Might flee to his nearby,
Police-protected home,
As he was a neighbour.
That in 1991
And Carol entered into years
Of clinical depression
Because she had thought
Patten's special secret police squad
Were Mossad.
And what's the difference
For both were united
In agreeing we were the enemy,
For we loved democracy
And despised treason.
A great comedown for
Imperial
A fine record of Empire
Ruined at its winding-up
By treason.
And fine
Emulating the Nazis!
This gives us enormous pain
For we were Zionists
And pro-Israel to the limit.
Yet now we see the justice
Of the Palestinian cause
Reluctantly, and believe
We were slow to appreciate
The justice of the Arab cause.
We, who fought
for
For
For we are confused
Because the Jews have
Not learned the proper, the
Appropriate lesson from
Nineteen forty-eight,
From the Holocaust,
From the message of
Civilisation.
Holocausts are not uncommon
And the Nazi version
Was the most evil and mechanised.
And the Germans were a
Highly civilised nation.
We believed in you.
We stood by you.
But Arabs were tolerant,
Kind, and in 1947 there was
A rich Jewish community
In
Because I was there.
Corrupted, spoiled by the
Holocaust.
Make peace with your Arab cousins.
Mossad threatened
Enemies, like the Smiths,
Of
Dictatorships.
Patten's boys made clear
That we were threatened,
And now backtracks, and
The Wiltshire Police tell my neighbour,
Who was guarding his chicken farm
In 1991 from green terrorists,
That his son-in-law was dangerous.
And it was not the Smiths
Who were targeted by an SAS hit squad,
Albeit to defend us from Mossad.
They were there to keep watch
On his lousy son-in-law.
So why did closer neighbours
Observe the squad surrounding,
Not the chicken farm,
But our cottage?
So be it.
Who cares?
In our great democracy
We are outlaws, terrorists,
For defending democracy
Against fascist British
Governments who are false.
So be it.
The odds against the
Smiths are considerable,
Thus proving the
Strength of our cause.
We cannot win.
The struggle is our victory,
And the true value of democracy.
Fight on, the common people!
Wiltshire, March 2001
We're going to take
This bloody Colony
And turn it into a democracy
Said the Brits.
Do you hear?
Are you sincere?
We're going to take
A model Colony
And pretend it's
A showcase democracy,
Yes. Then we'll steal its oil
And the pirates we leave behind
Will rob the country blind
As a consolation prize.
And we don't care.
We robbed this country blind
Once before, said the Brits.
We put its people in chains
And took them on a package tour
To the
In a rather special way.
Do you hear?
Are you sincere?
You cotton-picking nobodies,
You're going on a one-way cruise
From
In a rather special way
To the
southern
Do you hear?
Are you sincere?
In nineteen-sixty
An
We said, you're all free
So long as you work for me.
You've got total liberty
So long as you vote for me.
And we don't care.
Do you hear?
Are you sincere?
We fucked
For a few more years,
Then some Ibo heroes
Who had had enough
Shot the bastards the Brits put in charge
And for one or two hours
We felt really free
Until the Northern Army
Killed our liberty,
And we did care.
Do you hear?
Oh yes, we cared.
Now
Biggest basket case,
And it's all our fault,
Though we never had a say.
And the British Crown,
Which fucked us up and down,
Is honest as the day is long,
Though they stole our people,
Our oil
And our democracy.
They taught us all about democracy.
No one ever got it for free.
And independence can't be given.
It has to be won by sacrifice
Like Freedom
and
Wiltshire, March 2001
In Memoriam
Christopher Okigbo,
African poet,
Killed by the British
In so-called
A magnificent life,
A truly heroic end,
At one with Shelley,
Byron, Keats.
Romantic, a
Splendidly fine
Ending.
A British education,
Western values,
Poetry, literature,
Fine feelings
In an African clearing,
In a bush school.
Dear Christopher,
You were one
Of three million – UN figures -
Killed by British treason.
Truly a man of the people.
Your death will yet be
Celebrated in a Universal
Poets’
With Geoffrey Hill.
Wiltshire, August 2002
I am Muslim,
I am Yoruba,
I am a Westerner,
I am a Lagosian,
I am educated in English,
I am seventeen,
I am a woman,
I am a clerk,
I am pretty.
I think that's all - oh yes,
I am an African, of course.
Of course?
Will last but not least do?
Of course.
I am proud to be a Nigerian.
That will do very well.
Wiltshire, November 2003
I am your witness!
I have seen mighty wrongs
Inflicted on peaceful,
Law-abiding citizens.
Before my time,
These same people
Were sold into bondage,
Cast into the sea when sick,
Separated from their fathers,
Their mothers, their kin,
Sold by good, Christian, white folk
Doing the devil's work.
I am your witness
That, when slavery stopped,
Business was falling off.
Now it was your property
That was coveted,
And not just your ass.
This time it was your
Nation that would be stolen.
And so it came to pass
That the British passed this way
And came to stay.
I am your witness
That, when the world said,
This cannot be,
You must be free,
The British talked democracy.
Heads I win,
Tails you lose.
I'm going to let you vote,
And I'm going to tell you
That the people, who
Want me to stay,
Will rule you from now on.
I call that democracy.
It may look like slavery.
The difference is,
You voted for it,
And if you disagree
I'll put you in jail
With Awolowo
And Enaharo,
And all the other
Patriots, who give me trouble.
Do you hear me, boy?
I am your witness,
For I protested
When I saw criminality
Faked up to look like law;
When I saw democracy destroyed,
Freedom denied,
The people tricked.
For we have been here before,
Placed in bondage
By those who envy us.
Our goodness, our kindness,
Our loving children,
Our respected parents,
Our elders, our beliefs,
Ourselves.
I am your witness,
And now I have given
You the testimony
That will set you free.
For when
And finds its destiny,
No despotic nation on earth
Will have chains strong enough
Ever again
To bind our limbs.
Hear those drums beating!
Hear those hymns singing!
Hear our women laughing!
Hear our children playing!
Hear our elders dreaming!
Hear our people praying!
We have got the message now -
We see the promised land.
Long live
Long live the promised land!
Long live the People's Republic!
Wiltshire, November 2003
I followed in the footsteps
Of another lawmaker -
Samuel Moore -
A Chief Justice,
When I served
in
He was also a
Of Fred Engels,
Who lived on my patch
In Moss Side.
And he boasted about
His African girlfriend
To Karl Marx.
Princess Road now
Runs through Engel's home
Where he kept his lady.
From the Niger Company
Through British rule
Until a fake,
Flag retreat,
When
Waived the rules
In 1960
Was only seventy years.
And now I'm seventy-six.
When I returned
From
The Brits
Threatened to shoot me
For blowing the whistle.
When Samuel Moore returned
To
He translated
The works of Marx,
Including
The Communist Manifesto.
Curiously Moss Side
Has now gone African too.
A return match
Around the
City ground
At
Where Engels
Had a posh house
With stables
And servants' quarters.
Wiltshire, January 2004
Our politicians are human -
They suffer too.
However they encounter so much grief
That they need to cool it,
Scale down
The human sacrifice,
To keep it manageable,
To ration their concern,
Lest compassion
Run to waste.
In fact,
We care too much -
If that were possible -
And in the meantime
Remember,
If we appear unconcerned,
It's but an act
To cover up the fact
We don't really
Give a fuck at all.
For you
And yours
And them
As was,
Are dead.
However,
Nothing is ever
Going to bring them back.
Thank God.
The legacy
Of British treason,
Spelled out by
Anthony Enaharo.
The social revolution
Schools sprouted
Throughout the bush
With dispensaries
And the ideals
Of liberty, freedom,
Equality.
And today
All that remains
Are mud bricks
And broken walls
Of our dreams.
The North
As poor,
Illiterate as ever,
And now ruled
By fundamentalists.
We struggled.
We fought.
We lost so much,
But foundations were laid
Others will one day follow.
Where this brave
Band of brothers,
Awolowo and Enaharo
And the Action Group
Idealists once forged
A path,
They will follow -
The future generations -
In your footsteps.
I spoke of this
With Anthony
By phone
One Sunday evening,
Eighth of February,
Two thousand and four.
I witnessed an
African tragedy.
The British did it
Alone, in their evil.
Wiltshire, July 2004