JOURNEY TO THE HEART OF DARCUS

Independent

January 14, 2000

Page 23

Trinidad-born Darcus Howe, who left these shores for Britain back in the 1960s, is well recognised as a journalist and a Black activist in the 'Mother Country'. Darcus does some work for the BBC, and hosted a weekly feature titled 'Devil's Advocate', which ran on the station's Channel 4 for years. He is no stranger to controversy, especially here in the land of his birth.

Shortly before the 1990 attempted coup, he had done a feature on the political situation here for the BBC titled 'The Gathering Storm.' When it was shown, it drew harsh comments form nationals of this country who reside in Britain, and even from the then NAR government. The attempted coup would later prove his analysis correct.

Last year, he was contracted by the BBC to do another project: a look at the lives of ordinary Englishmen for a series titled 'White Tribes', which began its run last Thursday. The Guardian's Euan Ferguson spoke with Howe about his adventures as he went about gathering material for the series, and on racism, his pet hate

"So Bernard Manning asked me, straight up - I was the only black man in the place - where I was from, and I told him, Brixton. He smiled, and said he'd been there once, so he could be my daddy."

"And I kind of liked that. It's the same joke black people crack to each other round here. Me and Bernard, we sat and talked afterwards. Warmly. You se, it's dying out, that stuff, it's on its last legs, and I suddenly realised he had just been, all along, a working-class Mancunian telling the jokes they told. And it's over now, all over. We parted friends. I felt a little sorry for him."

Trinidad-born Darcus Howe, one-time Black Panther, has finally made his peace with Bernard Manning, one-time racist. He has also made his peace with England, the land he has grown to love since coming here from Trinidad in 1961.

He hasn't made his peace with authority, and I suspect he never will. One of the fine ironies about the fast-changing nature of England and the English is that this passionate black activist, this stern, sharp, fearless and unforgiving Devil's Advocate, has more time now for Bernard Manning than he does for Tony Blair.

England and the English are what fascinate him these days, and he's been spending the past months traveling round the country trying to find what and who they are, as the tattered flag of 'Britain' drops ever further.

Channel 4's 'White Tribes' series, which opened last Thursday, is an honourable attempt to define the 'ordinary' English person at the turn of the century, and find out what Englishness means to them.

So he travelled. Not to Henley, or Lords, or any of the totemic parts of the mythical green and pleasant land he spent his childhood in Trinidad wondering about, but to a host of ordinary, working-class places, caught in a huge upheaval of transition. "They are all at an interregnum," he says. "The old Britain is dead but nothing is yet taking its place."

He found, he believes, traces, but sad traces, of a faint rear-guard action. "The older generation are still keeping hold of an idea of England, they still believe."

"They tell me England is still the greatest country in the world. They say it spitefully, with slightly racist overtones. But that's dying. They're dying. That's not really the spirit of most of England."

What confuses me, I explain, as we sit, smoking, in the comfy hot shambles of his Brixton front room, is whether he felt they were hanging on to a myth or a reality.

"Oh, definitely a reality. There was a pride in the old England, their England, and some very good bits to it."

"Apart from the racism, of course. But there was some order, some working-class organisation, some compromise from the bourgeoisie, and a belief in the welfare state. All gave Britain a post-war prosperity, and the schooling, too, seemed to make for receptive minds. But that's over. Economics, and politics, have changed it forever."

He seems saddened, truly saddened, by some of his experiences, particularly the remnants of racism, tied implicitly to economics. "Racism was much, much worse back them, when I first came across. You couldn't walk the street at night if you were black. We have come a very long way. You should understand that when something is coming to an end, such as racism, it can be much more violent than it was in the beginning - thus Stephen Lawrence."

"I only really saw it (racism) badly in two places. I saw it in Oldham, which is now really, really poor. The white people are what they'd call in America 'white trash'."

There are also lots of young Pakistanis, and most of them are making money, wheeling and dealing, wearing the suits - and the hatred from the whites, the real, bitter, twisted hatred. I'd never come across that before. It was a violent hatred. They wanted the Pakistanis physically eliminated.

"And I saw it in Dover, where the refugee row was going on. People told me there were Albanians, Kosovars, wandering the streets smothered in gold, and stocking up at the butcher's every day with their tax money. Ha. I could hardly find any. I found three Kosovar kids, on a bench. They'd lost their father, lost everything, didn't have a hope. And the locals were throwing stones at them. I cried. I thought, "This place has the mark of the Beast."

"So racism still exists in places where the world of work has disappeared, and where there are foreigners somewhere near. In places, this is still a dangerous England. That's partly why this all fascinates me, the way it could go. I'm terrified of a racial backlash in this country. It has always been at the back of my head.

And Europe can be a very murderous place.

"But I found so many good things. This is a nice country. There are negatives about the English - the xenophobia, not racism but xenophobia; and that danger of inertia, a lack of sense of adventure, a fear of breaking barriers, being safe; and a certain anti-intellectualism. But there are so many positives. A tremendous literary tradition. Craftsmanship. The notion of work as a dignified activity. Tolerance. Eloquence.

Humour. And a great ability to enjoy themselves - if only they were allowed to.

"And it could turn out well, very well, in the future."

With the best bits of Englishness, I can see the country as some kind of huge Greek city-state - without the slavery, but with all we can do so well. Leisure, music, art, wit, creativity, dance, writing - all the things that commerce has appropriated and vulgarized. That could be the future. This is what the English people could do.

"But those in power, just now will never trust them."

Look at the Dome stuff last week! There was some stuff in the Mail congratulating the police on keeping the crowds quiet. It's a problem with modern governments.

When I first came here the country was being run by landed gentry, Macmillan and the High Tories, who had virtually reached a consensus with Labour. Then there rose a whole new caste; the office-class. Blair, Brown, Thatcher; I don't really separate them. And this new breed, as whenever you're seeking to replace a governmental caste, is not really at ease with the idea of government. And that's why we've had so much either authoritarianism or control-freakery; none of them actually trust the people they're meant to represent."

His distrust of authority will, it seems, never die; never has done since he fled Trinidad where his father was a vicar, to escape "constant constraints" and find an England that gave him freedom.

"The England that is going to come is going to give ordinary people, once more, a sense of their own power."

"The new England should be completely free of the old constraints. But if Blair thinks he can mould it with words - well the new doesn't come by declaration, never has done."

He pauses, and laughs. "You know, it's just struck me. I'm 56. I'm older than them. You know, I think I know this country more than they do."

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