THE “D’OLIVEIRA AFFAIR” FORTY YEARS ON One man’s experience proclaimed the death-knell of Apartheid After that century the selectors could not omit him – but they did The South African cricketers have been in England again this summer.  Their fourth tour since the restoration of “normal relations” on the ending of apartheid comes exactly 40 years  after the exclusion of Basil d’Oliveira from an England team to tour the republic that winter caused one of the greatest controversies that any sport, let alone just cricket, has endured. Now that Makhaya Ntini, Monde Zondeki and Ashwell Prince are playing alongside Graeme Smith, Jacques Kallis and Andre Nel, it makes you wonder - What was it all about? A generation – or two, or three – has passed from the time that the “D’Oliveira Affair” was on everyone’s lips. The experience of one high-profile individual “brought home” the evils of apartheid to millions of cricket-lovers throughout the world who would not have given it another thought otherwise. Basil came to official international cricket quite late in his career – when he was 34 years old  – and he lasted only a comparatively few years at the top. Yet, alone, he brought Test Match cricket with South Africa to a well-justified halt. For, make no mistake if he had not scored a match-winning 158 for England against Australia at The Oval in August 1968, the cricket establishment would have bent to the will of “Pretoria” and put the issue “on hold” for another  few more years. Who, then, was this shy, somewhat self-effacing hero of the hour? Basil Lewis d’Oliveira, born in Cape Town on 4th October 1931, was classified as being “coloured” by the rules of the regime. He established himself early on as a cricket star of the matting pitches, and led the South African “non-white” team which toured Kenya and East Africa twice in the 1950s. It was a golden age for “Cape Coloureds” at the wicket. Cecil Abrahams went on to play League cricket in the United Kingdom – later his son, John, became captain of Lancashire – and only a couple of years ago I saw Dick Abed while he was still coaching at den Haag in the Netherlands. That, however, was the limit to their ambitions. They were not eligible to play for the “national” (white) team and there was no international frame-work for “non-European” competition. As far back as 1894 fast bowler Krom Hendriks, a “Cape Malay” fast bowler, was excluded from the first South African tour of England.  Although all-rounder C.B. Llewellyn represented “official” South Africa in the first decade of the twentieth century – and was acknowledged as being “white” – his somewhat swarthy complexion gave rise to much racist sneering from his colleagues. He also suffered difficulty and indignity in finding accommodation. Basil wrote to the celebrated commentator John Arlott explaining his desire to play professional cricket in England. He was well-advised in his choice: Arlott, a former Liberal Party Parliamentary candidate, was known for his liberal sympathies, and from his sole working visit to South Africa in 1948/49 he harboured a lasting detestation for the “direction” in which that country was taking in its segregationist politics. He arranged for D’Oliveira to succeed Wesley Hall, the famous West Indies fast bowler, as the professional player with Middleton club in the Central Lancashire League.  Arlott considered that the encouragement he gave to Basil was the “most worthy deed” of his life. After taking a time from his arrival in 1960 to acclimatise to his new country the South African became a British citizen. In 1964 he forced his way into the first-class game as a player for Worcestershire. Basil D’Oliveira made his Test Match debut as an “Englishman” in June 1966 – at an age when most sportsmen are thinking of hanging up their boots. The opponents that summer were West Indies, then at the height of their conquering powers. He followed scores of 76 and 54 in the defeat at Nottingham, his second appearance for his adopted country, with a hard-fought 88 in the  (otherwise) debacle at Leeds. His batting from the middle-of-the-order was marked by hard-thumped drives off the back-foot  - his bowling was tantalising at medium-fast pace. Wisden – the cricketers’ “Bible” – named him as one of their “Five Cricketers of the Year”. The South African continued his success against India – scoring 109 – and Pakistan on their double-tour of England the following summer. When Basil failed to make an impact on the series in the Caribbean in 1967/68 it seemed that the years had caught up with him – a pity that he had come to England aged 29 and not 19. There would not have been too much said if he had been left to slip out of the limelight then. The Australians arrived with the very wet summer of 1968.  D’Oliveira made England’s top score of 87 not out in defeat in the First Test Match at Manchester. To general surprise, the selectors dropped him from the team, due, it was explained, to his “poor county form”.  Few people realised at the time the extent to which the South African government was already involved. Nevertheless eye-brows were raised – very much more would be raised before the summer was out. The all-rounder was omitted also from the team picked to play in the Fifth (and final) Test Match at The Oval in South London, which England needed to win to level the series. When batsman Roger Prideaux withdrew through suffering from pleurisy – and a couple of other possible replacements were injured - Basil was called up to strengthen the middle-order batting, thereby setting in train the events which have become known as “The D’Oliveira Affair”. By the time that he came in to bat John Edrich, the obdurate left-handed opening batsman, had taken the edge off the Australian bowling. D’Oliveira was free to play his strokes, which he did with spectacular style in probably the best, as well as the most significant, innings of his career. When Basil was out for a majestic 158 runs, with England well on their way to a victory by 226 runs, it was as near as certain that he would be named in the team to tour South Africa, his homeland, that winter that was due to be announced at the end of that match. To general astonishment – and much public indignation, he was left out. As Basil had been England’s top-scorer in the two Test Matches in which he had played at that summer, his right for selection should not have been disputed. Michael Parkinson wrote in the Sunday Times: “Last Wednesday a group of Englishmen picked a cricket team and ended up doing this country a disservice of such magnitude that one could only feel a burning anger at their madness and a cold shame for their folly. The dropping of Basil D’Oliveira from the team to tour South Africa had stirred such undercurrents throughout the world that no one but the impossibly naive can any longer think that politics and sport do not mix, never mind believe it”. The ensuing uproar had not abated before Tom Cartwright, the Warwickshire medium-fast bowler, withdrew from the touring team after failing a medical examination. (Cartwright, an opponent of apartheid, may have had reasons other than medical for his decision not to tour South Africa). The selectors, apparently bowing to public pressure, replaced him with D’Oliveira, stating that he had always been “first reserve”. The decision defied belief: if Basil was not considered worthy of selection as a batsman, his stronger skill, how could he be deemed to be a suitable replacement for a specialist bowler. The apparent inconsistency of judgement – two wrongs seemingly making a right (or not) – played into the hands of the South African government, particularly, their ferocious Prime Minister John Vorster.  He described it as being “the team of the anti-apartheid movement”.  South Africa took back the invitation for England to tour if D’Oliveira were included in the team, and the visit was cancelled. Vorster had reason to be angry. Over the subsequent forty years it has become quite clear that considerable pressure had been put upon English cricket and on Basil himself. Some politicians and administrators had given the South African government cause to believe that in some way or the other – by pressure, by bribing the player (who was offered a substantial sum of money to make himself “unavailable” for the tour) or by some “sleight of hand” – D’Oliveira would not be in the touring team.  Perhaps they thought they could assent to anything because they believed that Basil would not come into the reckoning due to his being “over the hill” in terms of age. His 158 innings put paid to that. The role in the affair of Colin Cowdrey, the England captain, is uncertain. He was noted for his Christian principles and fair-mindedness – as I can testify as he contributed the foreword to my book “Caribbean Cricketers from the Pioneers to Packer” – and Basil thought he had Cowdrey’s word of honour that he would stand by his selection. Nevertheless the England captain took part in the decision to leave him out of the selected team. Some commentators surmise that Cowdrey, who did not like to offend anyone, had concurred in D’Oliveira’s omission so as to appease “Pretoria”, but had also “connived” at the inclusion of Cartwright, whom he knew to be unfit and likely to fail the medical test, so that Basil would get into the team as a substitute, thereby pleasing his supporters, too. If that was so Colin was “too clever by half” – and Vorster would have none of it. Don Kenyon, who had been D’Oliveria’s captain at Worcestershire, is thought generally to have been the only selector to support him. The famous batsman Tom Graveney, another colleague for county and country, was also very angry at the omission. Thence matters gained their own momentum. English cricket – and later all sport – broke off relations with South Africa, and soon the isolation was complete.   Sport had an important role in the erosion of apartheid – especially as too many politicians and businessmen had been prepared to collude with the system.  The international boycott of their Rugby Union team is said to have hurt South Africans of Boer heritage and that of their cricket team those of British heritage. Political ideas are understood best when they can be seen through the experience of one (admired) individual.  Basil d’Oliveira had a very significant political effect mainly because he presented himself as being an non-political figure. He showed a dignity that was lacking in – for one – Prime Minister Vorster and in the faceless politicians and administrators who in letting him down let down both their country and themselves. The cricketer ended his Test Match career in 1972 with a record of scoring 2,484 runs (with 5 centuries and 15 half-centuries) and 47 wickets from 41 matches. Since retirement Basil Lewis D’Oliveira CBE has received honours a-plenty, including having a stand at Worcestershire’s New Road ground named after him.  England and South Africa have played for the “Basil D’Oliveira Trophy”. He returned to his home land in triumph, and appeared to great public acclaim at his “home” Newlands grounds, on which he had not been allowed to play as a cricketer. Alas, fortune has been even harsher to him than were the England selectors.  D’Oliveira suffers now from a medical condition which prevents him from recognising the high esteem in which he is held. At least, he received the recognition while he was well aware of the significance of the honours. I can recall today as though it were only yesterday watching Basil D’Oliveira standing up to the leather thunderbolts  of West Indies fast bowlers Wesley Hall and Charlie Griffith, and his punching them through the covers – just as he stood up with equal courage to the verbal thunderbolt of John Vorster. Was it really 40 years ago? Yes – the South African cricketers were in England again this summer and with Zondeki, Amla and Ntini alongside de Villiers and Steyn they are no longer monochrome in complexion. It has been a very long time – it was another world then.

A DECADE OF DARKNESS From the Empire Windrush to the Notting Hill Riots - The Unwritten History of West Indians in England Historians refer to the time in Western civilisation between the fall of the Roman Empire (476 CE) and the revival of learning several centurieslater  – years in which there were few, if any, written records and about which little is known – as the “Dark Ages”. For the Caribbean / African communities in the United Kingdom there is a similar “Decade of Darkness” between the much-hyped arrival of the Empire Windrush in 1948 and the watershed of the disturbances at Notting Hill in London a decade later. Little of substance has been recorded in-between. In recent years the arrival of the Empire Windrush at Tilbury on 22nd June 1948 with 492 passengers from Jamaica has been granted iconic status.  It was not the beginning of large-scale Commonwealth immigration, and not necessarily the most significant, but it provided the foundation for the fable. The arrivals included the celebrated Trinidadian calypsonians Lord Kitchener and Lord Beginner, who marked the event for posterity, and many of their number were housed in a shelter on Clapham Common in South London, left vacant from the Second World War which had ended three years earlier. The site was conveniently on hand for the immigrants to register for work in the neighbouring district of Brixton, which has since become synonymous with the country’s Jamaican population. The newcomers to the United Kingdom had answered the country’s “call” for manual labour to re-build the towns and cities – particularly in construction, transport and nursing – from the wartime devastation and to provide the manpower for the nationalised industries and National Health Service set up by the new dynamic Labour administration. They did not expect to stay on much longer after the initial task had been completed. Hitherto Jamaicans had provided the bulk of the labour force for the building of the Panama Canal and opening up of the Cuban cane-fields, from which they had always returned home. Why should this time be any different? Because only a short sojourn was expected, the newcomers did not see the point of putting down social and commercial roots, or to keep a record of their daily, often drab, existence.  Few white Britons were aware of their presence – unless they happened to live in the same neighbourhood – and in spite of the insulting “no Irish, no coloureds, no dogs” signs on accommodation there was comparatively little organised opposition – why resist if “these people” were “going home” soon any way? Nevertheless there was a spotlight on West Indians, a sporting spotlight. From 29 July – barely a month after the Empire Windrush had landed – London played host to the Olympic Games. It was the first celebration of the Games since the notorious Nazi Olympics in Berlin in 1936, and it gave the country, and the world, its first real chance to throw off wartime restraint. Although entry was restricted (by modern standards) due to the international situation, Britons were astounded by the vista of the competing races and nationalities. It was their one chance of seeing “up close” African Americans, whom hitherto they had “known” only from the grotesque portrayal in popular films such as Gone With The Wind. And there were the Jamaicans .... Herb McKenley, who passed away towards the end of last year, Dr Arthur Wint, who went on to become his country’s High Commissioner to the United Kingdom, George Rhoden and Leslie Laing. They off-set the cutting edge of the American sprinters and quarter-milers, and the first two battled each other for the 400 metres gold medal – with Wint winning. The quartet might well have won the 4 x 100 metres relay if Wint had not pulled up with a torn muscle. Thas lost merely put off the inevitable: they won the gold medal in a record time in the next Olympic Games at Helsinki four years later. In 1950 the victorious West Indies cricket team built on the favourable image which their Jamaican compatriots had established on the track. The thrill, harmony and enjoyment of that series are enshrined in the celebrated calypso “Cricket, lovely cricket”. If only all of life were just a cricket field .........  It took a long time for the new arrivals from the Commonwealth to realise that it would be many a long year, if ever, before they would return to the (is)lands of their birth. Jamaicans – and I base my summary on Jamaicans because they were the largest contingent and because my own wife’s parents were in that number – found that what appeared to have been a good living wage from the viewpoint of their own country was proved to be anything but good or a living wage when they got to Britain. And the experience of the other communities would have been similar. Life “back home” had been comparatively simple. A man – and here I use the word as generic for “mankind” and not just to denote a male person - could walk from his home to the place of work, obtain fruit and vegetables on the way, and, because shirts and trousers could be washed and left out to dry in the sunshine overnight, he needed little more than one change of clothes and a suit of “Sunday best”. He and his family used the natural light to go to sleep when the sun went down and got up again when it rose. His workmates, his neighbours and his relatives were often the same people, who shared the same taste in music which was played for the enjoyment of all in their homes and in the open. The drab, dark cities of post-war Britain were nothing like that. A man had to pay, quite a lot, to travel from his home to a workplace that might be on the other side of the city, or beyond. He could not get his food “along the way”, but had to buy it in shops or restaurants with the attendant charges for “overheads” and packaging – it cost a lot more if he wanted to his own Jamaican food, flown in from the island at considerable cost. One change of clothes was not enough – they could not be left out to dry overnight – besides which, several layers of clothes were necessary to keep out the cold. Life was not dictated by the availability of sunlight, and there were stiff payments for electric light and for the heating of cold, dank rooms. Entertainment ? British people did not encourage the playing of music loudly in the house (even for their own people). There were special venues for that sort of thing, which, in theory, could be rented at a high price, but which were often already booked for years in advance by local (white) organisations. Add to that the regular money a “successful” man in Britain was expected to send “home” to his relatives.  There wasn’t much left out of that “living” wage, and certainly not enough to save for the return passage. The Caribbean and African community went “underground” – unseen and unrecorded. It remained unremarked even when community / race relations became the talking points of international current affairs from the confrontation at Little Rock, Arkansas and the move towards desegregation in the U.S.A. to the confrontation of Apartheid in South Africa. British popular opinion was generally in favour of the black citizens of those countries – they had had experience of the brash, bossy white Americans and South Africans and didn’t think very much of them. Besides, they reasoned “we don’t have that sort of problem here”. When you look back to the unrecorded, anonymous years from 1948 to 1958 – the lack of reported personalities and the lack of events – it is difficult to believe that Britain had a substantial, and increasing, “black” population, except that the statistics showed it to be so. 1958 – the year of revelation – opened, as usual, on the field of sport. At the cusp of February / March, Garry Sobers, the quiet, Barbadian left-handed batsman who had impressed in England the summer before, set a new record for the most individual runs scored in a Test Match innings by hitting 365 against Pakistan at Sabina Park in Kingston, Jamaica. Over the next 15 years (Sir) Garry Sobers went on to prove himself to be the most talented all-round cricketer who ever lived. Then from 8- 29 June the Brazilians dominated the football World Cup played in Sweden. The star of their side, hitherto unknown 18 year-old Pele, was the sensation of the competition. He did not come into the team until towards the end of the preliminary group matches, but he scored the only goal to beat Wales in the quarter-final, hammered a hat-trick against France in the semi-final, and dominated the Final against Sweden by scoring two goals. So, black people overseas could excel at sport. Was there a Sobers or Pele here in England ? – it was wondered. And did that excellence have to be confined to sport ? Events would take a very nasty turn before those questions could be faced properly. The pretence that all was “sweetness and harmony” in race relations was blown away in the latter part of August, and below the fractured facade the nation overall saw for the first time the extent of its vulnerable black population. After a fortnight of fractiousness in Nottingham in the East Midlands, the incendiary spark struck the tinderbox of Notting Hill, which was then a run-down area of West London. It was among these same streets just five years earlier that the serial killer John (Reginald) Christie obtained his victims from the homeless (often prostitute) women. It was a morass of the dispossessed and lonely. The racist Fascist party, spearheaded by the frontispiece figure of Sir Oswald Mosley, a prominent politician of an earlier generation, sought to benefit from the pent-up frustration and resentment to launch themselves back onto the national political scene – and, as usual, the press could not resist “a story”.  It is alleged that the incident which set off the riots was the re-action of a group of young white hooligans, then known as Teddy Boys because of their affectation of a clothing style popular during the reign of King Edward VII, to a domestic altercation between a black Jamaican man and his white Swedish wife on 20th August. That may well have been so – though having got to know both participations several years after the events in question, I understand that the origin of the dispute was not as it is portrayed in popular myth. Nevertheless once the riot started it spread “like wild-fire”. Gangs of white youths armed with make-shift weapons “went hunting” for black victims. And, not unnaturally, the black community armed itself with whatever they could lay their hands on to defend themselves. The tension, which shocked the nation, lasted until at least 5th September. Nor did it end there – but the country did not really face up to the situation until Kelso Cochrane, a young Antiguan, was stabbed to death by a gang in broad daylight as he walked home from hospital on 19 May 1959. It is said the framework of the future was fashioned among the mourners at his funeral. That was it – after the Notting Hill riots, and the killing of Kelso Cochrane, nothing could be the same again. Britons could not look again to the disturbances in the U.S.A. and South Africa with smug self-satisfaction. In the cliché of such situations “something had to be done”. The immigrants from the Caribbean and Commonwealth realised that they were not just itinerant immigrants – they were in Britain to stay with the rights and responsibilities of citizens. Whether they liked it or not, there were elements in the surrounding society that would not allow them to remain “invisible”. From now on they would establish a social presence, set up commercial enterprises, and come out of the shadows. They would be harassed and rejected , they  would be admired and accepted – but, above all, they would be recorded. The “Decade of Darkness” was over.                     Unforgivable Blackness                   JACK JOHNSON                   Sinned against? Or sinner?   Ninety years ago Jack Johnson, who was the first world heavyweight boxing champion of African ancestry and, by common consent, was possibly the best of all title-holders, lost his crown by knockout to Jess Willard, a giant Kansas cowboy and one of the least gifted champions, in Havana, Cuba on 15th April 1915. Commentators trying to make sense of this upset result take comfort in the photograph which shows Johnson lying on the canvas looking up at the towering Willard …. and shielding his eyes from the glare of the sun. It just had to be a “fix” ! Johnson has always been controversial – both inside the ring and out. Now he has returned to public focus with the popularity of the book and film “Unforgivable Blackness” and attempts by his admirers in the U.S.A. to seek a pardon for the former champion from President George W. Bush.. Let us examine his boxing record first. Nat Fleischer, the doyen of boxing reporters who saw all of the champions down to Muhammad Ali and beyond, rates Johnson as being the best of them all. At first sight his ring record does not support that contention. Jack defended his title too often against inferior, and ridiculous, challengers, and achieved few quick, decisive victories over quality opposition. Yet it would be fool-hardy to go against Fleischer’s opinion. Furthermore Nat gives the reason for that failure to impress – namely, that Johnson, a master of feinting and defence, did not intend to knock out an adversary until he had him entirely at his mercy. Suffice to say that on his way to the title Johnson, who was born at Galveston in Texas in 1878, “mopped up” all available contenders so thoroughly that the then champions drew the “colour line” to save themselves from having to fight him. Tommy Burns, a Canadian, even put the “seven seas” between them, but Jack tracked him down to Rushcutter’s Bay by Sydney in Australia and hammered him to defeat in 14 rounds on 26th December (appropriately it was Boxing Day) 1908. Johnson’s notoriety derived from his refusal to take (white) society on anything but his own terms. His perpetual “taunting” smile annoyed his detractors – especially after undefeated former champion Jim Jeffries, who had been persuaded to return to the ring to “save the honour of the white race”, was humiliated over 15 rounds at Reno in 1910. To them his “flash” behaviour was like a red rag to a bull. He drank to excess, dressed in the latest style, showed off his wealth, held lavish parties, mixed easily with “dubious” characters and with his perceived social “betters”, and drove his cars at fast speed – at very fast speed. It was the latter which caused his death in a road-crash in North Carolina in 1946. Nevertheless it was Jack’s penchant for white women which so offended society – and, incidentally, many black Americans disapproved just as strongly. It wasn’t just that all three of Johnson’s official wives were white: after all, even in that time of extreme prejudice against racially mixed marriages, his contemporaries Joe Jeanette, Joe Gans and Joe Walcott did not appear to have suffered unduly from similar uxorious unions. Jack’s tastes ran particularly to prostitutes – one of whom he married – and to girls barely above the legal age of consent. He did not care what people thought of his behaviour and that is what brought about his downfall. Lucille Cameron, his second and youngest wife whom he married within days of his first wife’s suicide, was a teenage prostitute, and her mother objected strongly to her relationship with an African. Reports of her court action against the champion came to the attention of Belle Schreiber, a former consort who had returned to working in a brothel. Hell has no fury like …… as they say. Belle let the “cat out of the bag” about their previous relationship, about Jack’s alleged engagement in sexual practices that were not quite legal, and about his part in providing financial assistance in setting her up in “business”. It was just what his critics wanted to hear. Jack Johnson was found guilty of contravening the Mann Act by taking women across the state-line for immoral purposes: he and Lucille escaped into Canada just before the prison doors closed behind him. Some African American commentators claim Johnson to be an innocent victim of a “set up” by a racist society. Alas, the evidence against him is too strong. Besides, it misses the point. Jack was treated unfairly not because he was innocent, but because other boxers equally guilty of the same weaknesses were not censured and were even admired.  John Sullivan’s renowned drunkenness boosted his popularity. Most of his contemporaries dressed in a flashy manner and contravened social convention in their sexual behaviour. Stanley Ketchel, one of Johnson’s championship opponents, even crossed the racial line in his sexual preference for Oriental (Japanese/Chinese) girls … and was shot dead when farm-hand Walter Dipley caught him messing around with his woman. Critics were upset, too, that Jack tended to play “cat and mouse” with his (predominantly) white opponents by punishing them over several rounds instead of getting the matter over quickly. Truth to tell, he was too good a businessman. The champion was paid a “percentage” on the sales of drink at the bar, and on the film-distribution rights, and both increased the longer the bout lasted. A swift win would have hit him in the pocket. At the same time – just like the white title-holders who preceded him - Jack refused to defend his crown against challengers of his own race – not because he had a prejudice against black boxers but because their supporters came from the poorer section of society who could not afford to attend the promotion and, therefore, such a match would not have been sufficiently lucrative. Jack Johnson’s luck had now run out. He arrived to tumultuous applause in Europe, where the population even then were inclined to do those things that annoyed the Americans. Even so he had hardly settled to a life in exile when the First World War ripped the continent apart. The champion was forced to flee to South America and then Mexico. There he was bored, away from his friends/family and the high life which he craved. He was also out of money. What use was the title if he could not benefit from using it? Those conditions have convinced me that Johnson’s defeat by Willard was “above board”. There was no “fix”. Well, it depends upon what you mean by the term “fix” – because there was no way in which Johnson could have won that contest. The key to the conundrum is in the bout being held over 45 rounds. No heavyweight championship bout has gone anywhere near that distance – it was virtually a “fight to the finish” in which there could be only one winner. Jack Johnson, the once sleek, physically superb champion, had become dissipated by his fondness for the bottle and for women, by his loneliness and by the fact that for three years he had lacked adequate training facilities and the stimulating “big fight” atmosphere. Jess Willard may have been clumsy with little skill if any, but he was a giant in superb condition and well-trained who could endure for round after round in even the most adverse climate. All Willard had to do to win was to stay out of trouble in the early stages and come on strongly as the title-holder tired. Johnson started as well as he had in any contest. Faster than expected with both hands and feet he boxed rings around his lumbering challenger. After 20 rounds Jack was far, far ahead on points – under present-day rules, and those generally pertaining at that time, he would have been declared the winner long since. Yet this bout was over 45 rounds – and while the effect of the sun and high-living began to tell on him Willard was still standing tall. By now it would have dawned on Johnson that from henceforth he would only get weaker. Somewhere along the line Jess’s punches would get home to him, and they did. Willard’s wobbled him with a stiff right at the end of the 25th round and put him down in the next. Those of us who battle into consciousness at the beginning of the day – shielding our eyes from the sun blazing through the windows – know just how Jack must have felt as he struggled to come to terms with the prospect of another twenty rounds of humiliation. Why bother? There is no need to look for anything more underhand in the ending. The “set-up” occurred when the proud, ageing, lonely, somewhat sad Johnson was induced to sign that “45 rounds” clause. By going beyond 25 rounds this bout is still the longest ever staged for the world heavyweight championship. When Jack, now a loser, returned to the U.S.A. he was required to serve the prison term to which he had been sentenced. How should Jack Johnson be judged today? As a great champion ? Certainly. As “sinner” himself or “sinned against”? The answer is ….. almost certainly … both.                    THE NEW CROSS FIRE -                25th ANNIVERSARY   18th January 1981 is “a day that will live in infamy” as far as the Caribbean / African heritage population of the United Kingdom is concerned. The “New Cross Fire”, which took the lives of 14 black teenagers, is seen today as being one of the landmark dates in the development of that country’s community relations – along with the Notting Hill riots (1958), politician Enoch Powell’s “rivers of blood” speech (1968) and the murder of student Stephen Lawrence (1993). No premonition of disaster could have been on the minds of these young people as they gathered to celebrate a 16th-birthday party at house No 498 New Cross Road, situated where the districts of New Cross and Deptford adjoin in south-east London. The overall borough of Lewisham had a good record of ethnic harmony. West Indian families arriving in the high-volume immigration of the 1950s settled in quickly and made progress more swiftly in establishing the roots of a viable community than did their contemporaries in other parts of the country.  The local Brockley International Friendship Association provided the principal officers when the Standing Conference of West Indians (UK) was set up. Yet the situation had started to sour by the 1970s. Millwall, the local professional football team, had a long reputation for the violence of its supporters – which by now had turned into primarily racial violence. In August 1977 the extremist National Front, growing in strength in inner-city London throughout the decade, staged a provocative march through the area, which erupted into an exceptional degree of fighting between their followers, their opponents and local inhabitants outraged by their presence, and the police. The remarks that Britain seemed to be becoming “swamped” by “an alien culture” (taken to be a reference to non-white immigration) made by Margaret Thatcher, the in-coming Prime Minister, in the general election campaign two years later did little to assuage the situation. When fire broke out at the party in the early hours of the morning, trapping the young people inside and causing several to jump from upstairs windows, it kindled more than the immediate conflagration. It was all too easy for the survivors and for the families of those who died to believe that the house had been fire-bombed by racists – after all, some of the more extreme agitators had threatened to do just that. The attitude of those in official positions and of the police served only to turn that “belief” into “certainty” – and, when the culprits were neither apprehended nor even identified, there was general acceptance that because the victims were “poor black people” society did not care what happened to them. There was no message of sympathy from either the Queen or the Government – which was said to have been the custom after such incidents. The point was made that much sharper when sentiments of condolence were sent when a similar fatal fire broke out in Ireland shortly afterwards. I am convinced that the New Cross Fire parents and families had no desire to make “political capital” out of their loss – quite the opposite in fact. They wanted to know only what had happened to their loved ones, and were frustrated when the answers were not forthcoming. Dissatisfied with the “open” verdict recorded initially by the coroner in 1981 the families of the deceased campaigned for a second inquiry – fresh investigations were commenced in 1997 leading to a new inquest ordered for 2002.  Yet the result was hardly more satisfying. Gerald Butler, QC, recorded further open verdicts at Southwark Crown Court. "I have concluded on the totality of the evidence that while I think it probable, that is to say more likely than not, that this fire was begun by deliberate application of a flame to the armchair near to the television...I cannot be sure of this. It must follow I am unable to return a verdict of unlawful killing." However he conceded: "In 1981, many in the black community, particularly the young, were distrustful of the police and did not show that degree of co-operation that has been shown since the fresh inquiry into the fire began.” George Francis, whose 17-year-old son Gerry was killed in the fire and who founded the New Cross Fire Families Committee, said his fight for justice was not over. "I think we have a long way to go. We have not lost anything, in other words we have gained. For the simple reason we now know what really happened on that fatal night which we did not know at the 1981 inquest”. Imran Khan, the solicitor for Armza Ruddock, whose daughter Yvonne and son Paul both died in the fire (and in whose house the catastrophe occurred), read out a statement. "Whilst legally the coroner appeared to have no choice but to return an open verdict, he has come as close as possible to say what I always believed, that the fire was started deliberately, albeit not by a petrol bomb”. Patrick Allen, the solicitor representing the families of the victims, said: "The families have waited many long years for justice to be done. The original inquest was a travesty of justice. Justice delayed is justice denied. The fact that this inquest took 23 years has quite definitely caused prejudice to the search for the truth." Commander Steve Allen, head of the Metropolitan Police's Racial and Violent Crime taskforce which carried out the investigation, said the inquiry would never be regarded as "closed". Mr Allen said he shared the view of the coroner that, on the balance of probabilities, the blaze had been started deliberately. "If any new significant evidence or lines of inquiry came into our possession we would of course pursue them with vigour”. It is perhaps fair to say that few people today believe that the conflagration was the result of racist arson – it is more likely to have been started (whether deliberately or accidentally) from within the party. That is not the point. By its attitude in the ambience of the time society had ensured that what was essentially a domestic disaster had developed into a community catastrophe. The black population organised and marched as it had never marched before – from the impoverished districts of south-east London, through Fleet Street (then the heart of the newspaper industry which many of the marchers held to be responsible for the lack of sympathy to their plight), to Hyde Park (itself synonymous with the concept of “free speech”).. That was the temper of the time. The inquest into the New Cross Fire ran at the same time as the trial, and conviction, at the Central Criminal Court, Old Bailey of Peter Sutcliffe, the “Yorkshire Ripper”, for a series of murders of women across the cities of Northern England. The number of his victims would have been almost certainly fewer if the police had believed the evidence of the survivors of his attacks, which they dismissed because it did not correspond with the view of the assailant which they had formed already. Marcella Claxton, a prostitute of West Indian heritage, and one of his early victims, gave a clear, and, what turned out to be an accurate, description of her attacker, but she was  ignored because – it was widely perceived in her community – the police preferred to use the incident in their campaign against black pimps. Basically, she was not believed because she was black. They continued to deny that the “Yorkshire Ripper” was responsible for Marcella’s horrific injuries until Sutcliffe, himself, admitted his culpability in court. Violence broke out in inner-city areas throughout the United Kingdom in the Spring of 1981. Cars and properties were burned on the “front-line” in Brixton, the area of South London associated most closely with immigration from Jamaica, and, in particularly, in the Toxteth area of Liverpool, a northern port city with a racially mixed population of long standing. The Thatcher government tottered under the impact but it did not fall …. due in no small part to General Galtieri of Argentina ordering the invasion of the Falkland Islands, thereby giving Margaret Thatcher a patriotic “get out” The “New Cross Fire” was different to the other landmark events in one particular way. The first generation of immigrants from the Caribbean and Africa bore the burden of the Notting Hill riots and the immediate after-effects of Powell’s polemic. It was their children born in Britain, among whom were those that died at the party and the survivors, who had to learn the lesson anew. If the term is admissible in this context – it was their “baptism of fire”. Those of their number who have committed themselves to community causes and to a political life inevitably cite the “New Cross Fire”, with its prevailing social attitudes and perceived official apathy, and the social disturbances four months later, as being the impetus for that decision. George Francis, Chairman of the New Cross Fire Families Committee, has provided me with a memory which I treasure every day of my life – he was the photographer of our wedding and took the picture of my wife and myself which adorns my desk as I write – and with his wife, Tina, and his children, including Gerry, forms an integral part of our recollection of those happy times. So, too, were all those young people, and their families, members of an outwardly harmonious community. That dream of innocence – or was it naivety ? - died with them.                     THE YANKEE DOLLAR   Jean and Dinah Sparrow - the Enterainer   Two young ladies of easy virtue – the reporting of whose exploits shook up the whole public perception of calypso and introduced a new element into political protest – are now making a come-back half-a-century after the conditions to which they owed their economic sustenance had supposedly passed for ever. For from going away those conditions are still only too obvious around the world, and “Jean and Dinah”, the prostitutes of Port of Spain, are back in business now as the subjects of a successful book and stage production. Their life-style has come to be seen as an allegory for much of the developing and “under-developed” world. Jean and Dinah – and Rosita, Clementina, Mavis, Dorothy and many another girl – made a “shilling or two” from the American servicemen based in Trinidad in the two decades during and after the Second World War. Much to the chagrin of the local young men. By 1956 the GIs were on their way out, and the “girls in town were feeling bad”. That was the opinion of the emerging calypsonian the 20 year-old Mighty Sparrow and he was more than ready to take advantage of the changed social circumstances. His song “Jean and Dinah” – as the masses dubbed the number titled originally “Yankee Gone” - summed up exactly the feeling of his generation. It became an instant hit, and launched the career of a artiste who stands as highly in Calypso as Bob Marley does in Reggae. The Mighty Sparrow didn’t just sing. As the Americans withdrew from their base at Chagueramas he associated himself with Dr Eric Williams, the academic politician who would lead the country to independence and become the first Prime Minister of Trinidad & Tobago. His People’s National Movement, which was based essentially in the African heritage population, drew support, too, from the equally numerous Asian community which could sympathise with the social issues such as the psychological and physical prostitution of the young to which “Jean and Dinah” pointed. Henceforward calypso would be an integral part of part of the political process. Trinidadians were foremost in their enthusiasm for the Federation of the West Indies which was scuppered by the defection of Jamaica, the most populous island. Another calypsonian sang: “With Norman Manley leading Jamaica, and Marryshow from Grenada, Barbados has Grantley Adams, Trinidad should be proud of Dr Williams”. Trinidad had the last – or, as it proved to be, the mid-term – laugh as oil was discovered in their island. For an all-too-brief time Trinidadians were rich enough to satisfy even the acquisitive Jean and Dinah. Yet the fear of what the Americans did to their innocence, and, given the chance, what they might do again, did not go away. I was in Port of Spain during the build-up to the “Grenada crisis” of October 1983, and remember well the apprehension that the U.S.A. would use the military emergency as an excuse to get back into Chagueramas with all that that would entail. It did not happen. I hate to say it, but with the Caribbean safely in the American sphere of influence, Trinidad was no longer that important. The current treatment of the “Jean and Dinah” theme in which they are described as “jammettes” portrays the young ladies as established characters in the context of carnival and calypso. Real or symbolic, they grew up in a social environment which calypsonian Lord Invader recognised as long ago as 1943, when Sparrow was only seven years old, by singing “Rum and Coca-Cola” with the verse and refrain: “And when the Yankee first went to Trinidad Some of the young girls were more than glad They say the Yankee treat them nice And they give them a better price. They buy rum and coca-cola Went down Point Cumana Both mothers and daughters Working for their Yankee dollars” The GIs may no longer be in the region in such numbers as hitherto – but their place has been taken here and throughout much of Africa and Asia by the American, European and Japanese tourist. The “almighty dollar” still sets the social pace. The Mighty Sparrow was more than a little premature in his assertion “No more Yankee to spoil the fete Dorothy have to take what she get All of them who used to make style While they taking two shilling with a smile No more hotel to rest your head By the sweat of thy brow thou shall eat bread”. The same newspapers which now carry reviews of the latest “Jean and Dinah” production, commenting nostalgically of the quaintness of a by-gone age, bear testimony also in bigger headlines to the prevalence of sexually-transmitted diseases and AIDS around the tourist resorts. Television programmes show that in the hedonist holiday “villages” the tourists meet no local inhabitants except for the prostitutes (of both sexes – Jean and Dinah are joined today by John and David), hustlers and dancers who entertain them. Jamaica, a country dominated more than most by the tenets of the Old Testament, is the home, too, of the raunchiest, most explicit “dance-hall” routines.  (Didn’t prostitutes, too, hustle the very delegates to a conference in South Africa to discuss, and deplore, the prevalence of casual sexual intercourse in the spreading of AIDS? Well, they would argue, it’s a living. And a dying?) Not all that many months ago the Jamaican press reported a “brothel auction” in which even schoolgirls were said to have been sold to the entertainment “managers” for the tourist locations. At least the young ladies about whom the Mighty Sparrow sang were free-lance operators – “ain’t nobody’s business but my own” (according to a traditional Caribbean folk-song). Yet, knowingly or otherwise, the official government tourist agencies of these countries – or the private agencies which they license – make the availability of sex a major selling-point of the holiday. It is justified by the excuse that the country needs the “dollar” to deliver its programme of social welfare. That is often the same reason for the selling-out of industry, commerce and natural resources. What are the young men doing to re-assert their injured pride? Singing good-natured calypso like the Mighty Sparrow?  It isn’t a time for singing. Calypsonians of the 1950s thought that they saw all this coming to an end: their successors know better. Supply and demand is the order of the day. If you cannot exploit your physical charms, then sell what you can. The song-smith of our era might well render a tribute to “Guns and Ganja”. That way may lead to death and violence, but the dollars continue to roll in making Dorothy’s “two shillings” appear to be very poor fare indeed. “Jean and Dinah, Rosita and Clementina, Round the corner posing Bet your life is something they selling”. Guess who’s laughing now? These girls were on to a good thing or two. Everybody’s into it today. That is why “Jean and Dinah” are characters who are as relevant in this generation, as they will be in another fifty years time, because where there is power and money there is attraction, and the entities and individuals who are willing to make an accommodation.