Foreigners?: God & Immigration

Originally published June 2008

In our dining room we have a false fireplace and chimneybreast. Blocking the top of the fireplace (to prevent curious rabbits getting behind the false wall and necessitating knocking it down) is a readers digest atlas of the British Isles from the early 1960s. I spent many hours skimming through the pages of the book when I acquired it as a teenager, and it wasn't just putting off doing my homework. I found the book interesting for two main reasons, firstly because all the maps in it pre-date the building of the motorway network, and secondly because the atlas gives the meanings and origins of the names of all the towns and villages in the country. For example Manchester is Brittonic for 'Place on the breast shaped hills' and Harrogate (where I'm originally from) is Anglo-Saxon or Norse for 'grey hill pasture'.
What the atlas reveals is the many linguistic origins for place names in this country, and what that means is that this country has been subject to many influxes of alien communities coming here to settle and bringing their cultures and customs. We have - amongst others - Romans, Angles & Saxons, Vikings, Celts and Normans colouring our history as well as the Britons who were here originally. Although these cultures immigrated by way of invasion over time they became fully integrated with the Britons and the combined resources of all these cultures has made Britain what it is today.

And Britain isn't the only country to be founded on a base of immigration. The US and Australia among other countries have – at their modern historical root – European settlers moving to these 'new worlds' because they were unhappy or unwelcome in their homelands. These countries, more than ours, were founded on a basis of economic, political and religious migration. Exactly the reasons many people want to come into the UK today.

Maybe the underlying memory of what happened in these countries contributes to our suspicion of immigrants today. We suspect that immigrant communities want to take over our island and annex it to whichever country they originate from. Maybe we fear the loss of our national identity and our cultures will disappear out of memory and we will be assimilated into an inter-national, amalgamated bland conglomerate of ideas that lacks any definition or spark of individuality. But that's nothing we need to fear from immigrants, they don't come here in sufficient numbers to have that kind of effect. Rather if we wish to defend our Britishness we should defend our culture from the growing inevitability of Americanisation. It is American culture that is dissolving our own; more and more this country models itself – politically and sociologically – on what crosses the Atlantic. It's more likely that we'd start celebrating Independence Day on 4th July rather than 26th January – which is when India celebrates it. Western culture has done far more damage to other heritages than they are currently threatening to do to ours. Across the globe the traditional skills of indigenous tribes are facing a creeping death by Western lifestyles. They have a lot more to lose than we can even imagine, and we moan about this vague idea we have that immigration will somehow make us 'un-British,'

On the whole the people who have immigrated to the UK are from countries that were formally part of the British Empire. It makes sense that if you were going to emigrate you'd go to a country you know something about, and across Europe you find that immigrant communities are largely made up of former colonies of those respective countries. The way we used our Empire was to our gain; we used it for cheap labour, cheap resources and forced a British way of live onto the native populations. Given that we have used these countries, does allowing them to live and work here go some small way to making reparations for the way we treated them? Could it be a sort of informal apology for our past wrongs?

But is it our culture we're trying to defend? Britain – and England in particular - has never really valued its heritage. History is a peripheral subject at school and most people don't see it as important. Shakespeare, Morris dancing and swan upping are English culture. Everyone knows the Scots wear kilts, but can anyone tell me what the English national dress is? Not only have we allowed our own customs to perish, but we tried our best to suppress Scottish, Irish and Welsh culture as we dominated them. We are fairly unique in this country in having no traditional mythology. The legends we have of King Arthur, Robin Hood and King Alfred the Great are based on real people and real events – albeit twisted by the art of the storyteller – and what stories we do have about faeries and trolls mostly come from the Celtic tradition. JRR Tolkein once said that one of the reasons he wrote Lord of the Rings was to try to give Britain it's own mythology. Well, if it's not our culture we're trying to defend what is it? I've been looking at a few different online forums whilst preparing this blog, and the most tangible thing people are defending is this block of land and all its wealth. Here there are some valid arguments about limiting the amount of immigration we allow to take place. The UK is a small island and it is already densely populated, in practical terms we can only allow a certain amount of people here before we start running out of space. There already is a housing crisis, the health and education systems are struggling, the roads are overcrowded and there are many other difficult issues facing this country. But we need to be careful, immigration is only one small part of the cause of these problems. Reading some of the forum posts – and some of the more sensationalist newspapers – you could get the impression that we've previously lived in some kind of utopia. Some of the posts are borderline xenophobic, and some are out and out, straight down the line, no beating about the bush wide open for all to see racist. Whatever reason we may have for supporting or opposing immigration we must make sure it doesn't get bogged down in racist arguments. This is a point I can't stress enough. The kind of un-informed erroneous finger-pointing comments that professes to be fact plays right into the hands of those on the right wing of politics. It allows them a foothold in the minds of normally reasonable people and gives them a credibility they do not deserve.

Just to finish this rather long blog, I'll leave you with the words of St. Paul – "In that new creation there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, slave nor free man, but Christ is everything and is in all of us." (Colossians 3:11)

Wasted: God & Rubbish

Originally published May 2008

I have a pet hate. It's chewing gum. I never eat chewing gum, I don't see the point of it. If you want a nice minty taste in your mouth eat a mint or clean your teeth. If I want to see someone mindlessly opening and closing their mouths in a vacant, sloppy fashion I'll watch EastEnders with the sound off. But as much as I don't chew gum that's not why I hate it. Take a look around the streets in town. Look at the pavements around bus stops, road ends near traffic lights and other places where people stop and see what's on the pavements. I'll bet you there's a concentration of discarded chewing gum squashed flat and un-movable. When people get rid of their gum and just spit it out onto the pavement or road they are being very inconsiderate. If that gum got stuck on someone's shoe it could very easily get trampled into a carpet. We have a big blob of gum in the front passenger side footwell of our car thanks to someone not disposing of their gum properly. But even if the gum doesn't travel the world on the bottom of a shoe, if it just stays put where it's discarded it joins the other globules and over time is squashed into the pavement or road. It looks unsightly. It's not easy to clean off, it's estimated that the cost of cleaning each piece of gum is 3 times the cost of the gum itself and every town council spends tens of thousands of pound annually cleaning gum off pavements. Several have launched special campaigns and crackdowns to try and alleviate the problem and some are fining people up to £75 if they're caught dropping gum.

The reason I hate chewing gum is because the way it's discarded shows a distinct lack of thought about the care of our local environment. Yes it looks messy and yes it's difficult and expensive to remove, but to me it demonstrates people's lack of concern for their surroundings. To leave your gum on the floor (or under your school desk!) is to ignore the possibility of it ruining someone's shoes or carpet, ignore the possibility of injuring a pet or wild animal that happens upon it, ignore the unsightly nature of the myriad blobs of grey discarded gum and ignore the time and cost of removing the constellations of gummy pearls from the streets.

If discarding chewing gum demonstrates a thoughtlessness about the consequences, there is another hate of mine that demonstrates a deliberate selfishness along with it's thoughtlessness – fly tipping. I enjoy a walk in the countryside. I love getting away from the urban sprawl and finding some space to see the world at it's best. I love observing the lifecycle of nature as season passes to season, as predator finds prey, as habitats change. So when I'm in the middle of an ancient woodland 20 miles away from the nearest town and I discover the remains of a sofa it leaves me baffled and cross. Why would you drive out to the middle of nowhere and carry a sofa about a mile from the nearest road in order to dump it? I know you need to pay to leave some items at the tip, but after paying for petrol and the inconvenience caused by taking items miles away to dump them, surely fly tipping becomes more expensive? Councils will even take large household items away for you for free. Even fly tipping in an urban location shows an incredible disrespect for the local environment, other people's property and the people who end up having to dispose of your waste properly.

So here's a question I've been pondering while we've been preparing this café sundae. Waste is a big issue at the moment. We're constantly being told that we can't continue to clutter up our small island with a growing mountain of rubbish. We're being discouraged from using carrier bags and the supermarkets are beginning to take ecological issues on board. The push to be green has elevated waste disposal from just being an important ecological issue to being a hot political issue - Central Government has set local councils targets for recycling and councils are doing all they can to meet targets and to be seen to be green. We're constantly being told about the importance of recycling and the consequences of not doing. We've been provided with black boxes for glass and tins, a blue bag for paper and a green bin for garden waste. It's been made as easy as possible for us to recycle as much of our waste as we can.
So what about those people who continue to throw away waste as they did previously, who refuse to recycle? What about those people who fill their bins to capacity every week and deny the need to change their habits? What is there to separate them from the fly-tippers? If they persist in damaging the environment simply for their own convenience how do they differ from those who dump waste illegally? If they're willing to thumb their noses at the next generations rather than make the very small effort to sort their waste, how does their lack of concern for other people differ from that shown by those willing to inconvenience other people by dumping rubbish on others' property?


Is the current media focus on the issues of waste going to make any difference to these people or is it just chasing pavements - pavements covered in discarded chewing gum?

‘Til divorce us do part: God & marriage

Originally published February 2008

A few months ago I was watching telly and the results of a psychology experiment were being reported. In the experiment they'd set up a ring-toss game with 3 pegs one behind the other quite a distance apart and allotted different scores for each of the areas, the area around the closest one scoring 10 points and the small area around the one furthest away worth 100. The psychologists discovered that the people who aimed for the furthest ring were largely by profession entrepreneurs. They were the people who were willing to go for a big score despite the bigger risk of missing whilst other people played it safe by aiming for the closer targets.


Helen and I have been married for 71/2 years. We got married at the end of the summer that Helen finished university, which was 8 months after I finished my college course. We lived together for the 3 months between Helen finishing uni in Nottingham and our wedding and also the summer before that; so we didn't really co-habit as such, but we probably would have done if it hadn't been for that pesky university Helen insisted on attending. Planning a wedding is often quoted as being one of the most stressful things you can go through, and there was certainly a lot of different elements to juggle in trying to make the day something you want whilst satisfying various different family groups, trying to make sure you don't offend someone by leaving something or someone out can take major acts of diplomacy. We had our difficulties, but managed to negotiate them successfully enough to still want to get married. And so the day came. I won't bore you with the details of what we did & who came, I'll just say that all the hard work paid off. I won't say that it was the happiest day of my life because that's a horrible cliché, but we both still rank it high in the top 2.

I was thinking things over whilst preparing for writing this blog, and I was thinking, "Why get married? Why not just live together?" and then I remembered the big pile of presents that was waiting for us when we got back from honeymoon! Neither of us was well off when we got married and – as every couple has to – we struggled to afford to set up a home as we wanted it to be. We were renting a cold damp house in a very rough area of Salford as it was all we could afford and gifts we were given went a long way towards kitting us out as we wanted rather than simply with what we could afford. But it was more than that. The gifts we were given were given to us along with people's love and support. On the day itself I was overwhelmed by people's good wishes. At the end of the day my hand and my face were aching with smiling and shaking hands with people wishing us all the best for the future, and here was the material proof that they meant it. Knowing that all these people were looking out for Helen & me and that they care what happens to us was fantastic, worth much more than the value of all that they'd bought us, and something that those people who choose to co-habit surely miss out on.


But that's not enough reason, so why get married? Well why not? If you're in a relationship that you both consider to be permanent rather than just long term, why shouldn't you declare publicly that that's what you intend? If you're going to stick together until one of you dies, why not make it official? It's difficult to think that far ahead – I remember when I was considering marrying Helen and I tried to imagine us in our 80s sitting round the fire in rocking chairs, Helen knitting and me whittling sticks but I couldn't do it. It's too far off in the future. When we made our vows we were saying that this is what we aim for (I still have 45 years to learn to whittle). It's a promise to each other, our families & friends and – if we get married in Church – to God that we will do everything we can to make the relationship work. It is a risky thing to do; things do happen and people do change. Marriages do fail, sometimes for trivial reasons, but very often for very valid and difficult reasons, but if you don't risk you don't win. There is a trend in the world of celebrity to sign pre-nuptial agreements. This can be seen as a sensible arrangement when big money is involved, but I can't help thinking it taints the wedding with the idea that it may not work out. If that get-out clause were removed maybe their marriages would be more successful.

Anyway, back to the ring toss experiment I began with and then abandoned. I was trying to think of a way of illustrating the answer to the question 'why get married?' and I think that experiment does it well. The two ways to play the game are to play it safe by aiming at the closest peg and scoring quite low, or aiming at the furthest ring and trying to score higher: it's a riskier strategy but if it works out it pays a bigger reward. And I think that's marriage. It is a bigger risk and it is hard work but if you succeed you win big time.

And here's the million dollar question: if I had my time again, would I get married?
Answer: Yes absolutely I would, just not to Helen.

Working 9 to 5: God & Careers

Originally published in Jan 2008


One of the signs to look out for that you're getting older is that when you go to parties you start having really dull conversations. Many times I've realised too late that I've been having a conversation about car insurance or mortgages ("Fixed rate or tracker…Hmm it's a tricky one…) with total strangers. I kick myself when it happens, and promise myself to try harder to avoid it next time. But I have an ace up my sleeve: when the conversation turns to, "What do you do for a living?" You get the 'I'm in insurance' or 'I'm a teacher' and sometimes 'I'm a doctor,' and these can degenerate into another dull conversation about Government policies or haemorrhoids. But I get to say, "I'm a sound engineer," and that apparently is a very enviable job. I like it because people don't know how to have boring conversations about it, although most people would find 2 sound engineers talking about work as dull as listening to 2 accountants but that's because we get to use a secret language involving decibels, modulation techniques and psychoacoustic principles which most people don't even know exist. I know I was born to be a sound engineer and I thoroughly enjoy my profession, but it was a long time after leaving school that I found my job – indeed it was a long time before I even discovered what I wanted to do.

I've written in previous blogs about how I didn't get on too well at school, so I won't go over that again, but when I left school after A-levels I didn't have a clue what I wanted to do. All I knew was that I didn't want to spend 3 years at university studying something I wasn't interested in and would never use, so I didn't go to university, I got a job and because I hadn't a clue what I wanted to do I took the first job that was offered to me which was in the kitchens of an old folks home. I worked there for 5 years during which time I did my Local Preachers training, played in a few bands, made my first tentative steps in recording friends bands on a 4 track analogue machine and tried to find some direction for my life.

As a Christian, one of the places I looked to try to find direction was my Faith. I believe it's vitally important to find out who God made us and how that fits into the wider world and from there we'll find big clues as to what our career may be. And so I examined my belief and knowledge of God to look for clues.
Now I'm not one of those Christians that looks for flashes and bangs and God revealing himself in supernatural ways, but there are 2 incidents which have lead me to my chosen career that I begrudgingly have to admit are probably too 'co-incidental' to be co-incidences. The first one is the smaller of the 2, but without it the second one couldn't have happened.

It was 1995, I'd been at the nursing home for 5 years and needed to do something else, but didn't know what. I'd figured I could do something full time for the Church and by a process of elimination I had settled on applying to be on one of Rob Frost's seed teams for a year. This would involve being placed in a small team for a year in a Church anywhere in the country and working part time with a local church on a project. I half filled in the application form one night and was going to do the rest when a letter plopped onto my doormat from a friend of mine. He said he was finishing university that June and was looking to set up a band in Leeds as a serious attempt to be professional musicians – pop stars if you will. I didn't really think it was a serious option, but considered it only because I wasn't entirely sold on the seed team. Guess where I ended up moving to. The timing of that letter was very important in my making the decision to try do music for a living, and for the next 3 years I lived in a house with the other band members and we all took bottom rung jobs with no responsibility to maximise the time we could spend on our music.

So to co-incidence number 2. Forward fast to 1998 and the band hadn't been the success we'd hoped for. The band split at Easter and we all had to then find proper jobs. I looked at the possibility of getting into sound engineering, as this had been a growing interest whilst the band had been operational and we'd made friends with a few engineers. I discovered that it's an incredibly difficult profession to get into. There are basically 3 ways into sound engineering; the first is to do lots of volunteering at a local studio when you're a teenager and gradually work up – if you're any good. The second is to do a course and then apply for jobs – a big risk as the best courses are at private colleges and cost thousands of pounds and there are very few jobs around and they rarely get advertised, and the third way is to buy or build your own studio – a massive financial outlay and again a huge risk. The second route was the only one open to me, so when I found a prize draw in a lads mag to win a course at Manchester's school of sound recording I entered it. I didn't win.
A month or 2 later again I'm filling in the application form to attend the college and wondering how I can raise the three and a half thousand pounds that the course cost to do when 'plop,' a letter on the doormat. This one was from the school of sound recording telling me that due to a mix up in the runners up prizes they could offer me a place on the course I was applying for, for a considerably discounted rate. I snapped up the offer and moved to Manchester to study sound engineering. Again the co-incidental timing of the arrival of the letter was a big factor in my doing the course, as I would have struggled to afford the full rate of the course I took. It proves to me that I am where God wants me to be. And without doing that course I wouldn't have got the job I now have.

Whilst writing this I've remembered another incident. The lowest point in my career was in 1998 just before I started my college course when I'd been working for minimum wage for 8 years, and it was at this point that I ran into a school friend I hadn't seen since sixth form. We talked and discussed jobs. He was working in finance and earning good money while I was struggling to get by on a tiny wage. He was really shocked about how badly I was doing and said to me that he couldn't believe it as I'd always been the most together person out of all of us at school. After I'd got over the shock that I'd been considered with such regard, I thought about what he'd said. He was earning good money, but hated his job. I was earning nothing and hated my job, but was about to go to college to train to do something I loved. He was envious of me for being able to go to college and totally change what I was because if he were to do that he's lose a lot of money. I had no money to lose, so it was easy for me to risk the change. And it was a risk that paid off, if only because it makes parties more interesting.

Flushed away: God and H2O

Originally published in November 2007

OK, pay attention to this one you might need to concentrate cos I'm going to have to explain some science and you need to keep up.

When I was in sixth form I did a Chemistry A level; which wasn't a total waste of time cos I can now read the ingredients list on the back of shampoo bottles.

Teaching my class chemistry must have been like swimming through custard as - apart from 3 oxbridge candidates - no-one was really that interested and only really took the subject to fill gaps in our timetables. Our teacher - Dr Jackson - battled on in the face of adversity and managed to hold it together until the year after we left school when he had a nervous breakdown and retired. There was the incident when one of our class had worn his trainers without socks all summer, then wore them for school. His feet smelt so dreadful that Dr Jackson had an asthma attack and we all tried to get sent out to get away from the stench. When we came to sit our mock exams we all failed (apart from the oxbridge set) and had letters sent home by Dr Jackson saying that unless we passed the re-sit he would kick us off the course. I was the only person who passed the re-sit and no-one got kicked off.

The syllabus was split into 3 sections - organic chemistry, non-organic chemistry and physical chemistry and it's this last section my story is concerned with. Unsurprisingly I can't really remember what physical chemistry is but it's something to do with the structure of molecules.

Ok, this is the sciency bit that you need to listen to. In a physical chemistry lesson and Dr Jackson's explaining the transition of states to us. In other words freezing. When a liquid freezes its molecules lose energy and gradually vibrate less and less. This means that they can sit closer together resulting in the volume of the substance shrinking which in turn means that it's density increases. The colder denser liquid sinks to the bottom of whatever's containing it and the liquid freezes from the bottom up.

Are you still with me? Good that's the simple bit.

There is one liquid, explained Dr Jackson, that doesn't behave like that and it's water. What happens with water is that it behaves perfectly normally as you cool it down to 4°C and then the molecules start to form hydrogen bonds between them. Hydrogen bonds (if my memory serves me correctly) aren't proper chemical bonds, but a loose magnetic attraction that holds molecules together. When water gets to below 4°C the hydrogen bonds start to form and they make a bit more space between the molecules resulting in the volume increasing, the colder liquid rising to the surface and water freezing from the top.

But this quirk in the properties of water is hugely significant, Dr Jackson went on to explain. Imagine if you will a lake in the middle of winter. As the air temperature drops it cools the water until the water starts to freeze. If water behaved like every other liquid the ice would form from the bottom of the lake and the layer would get thicker and thicker until the whole lake was completely frozen. Instead the ice forms at the top of the lake producing an insulating layer which prevents the water below it from freezing. This is vitally important for aquatic life as if water conformed to normal behavior and the entire lake froze everything in it, fish, insects, would freeze to death. Very little (apart from viruses and bacteria) would be able to survive and considering that science tells us that life began in the water if water behaved as every other liquid then the evolutionary chain would have been stopped before it had chance to get going. Life on this planet just wouldn't happen.

So just as we're sitting there actually listening to Dr Jackson for once and trying to take in what he'd just explained to us he carried on. "I'm an atheist," he told us. "But if any one thing was going to convince me of the existence of God it would be that; that this simple quirk, this inexplicable quirk in the properties of water is absolutely essential for the presence of life on this – or any – planet."

Then someone farted and broke the mood.

Grimly Reaping: God & Mortality

Originally published October 2007

I'm not really into architecture or anything like that, but the structure that has impressed me most is the Glasgow Necropolis. I say structure; in truth it's many structures as the necropolis is a huge Victorian graveyard covering about 37 acres right in the middle of Glasgow. In it there are many mausoleums and monuments denoting the final resting places of Glasgow's dearly departed some designed by leading architects of the day. About 50,000 people are buried there.

The Victorians were fascinated by death. It was the hot topic of the time. It the years between then and now sex & death have swapped places. Death used to be discussed openly and in polite society, whilst sex was a very taboo subject. Whilst we now find it difficult turning on the TV or reading a magazine without encountering sexual content, death has become ignored and anyone who chances to mention it runs the risk of being accused of being morbid or depressing everyone.
But I'm not sure we should refuse so obstinately to talk about death. It is the only thing in life that is definitely going to happen to each and every one of us. Regardless of what we achieve in life, wherever we succeed or fail we will all die. So why do we stick our fingers in our ears and go, "La la la la la." When the subject's raised.

I actually quite like graveyards. I find them very quiet and relaxing. In the summer I sometimes go to a graveyard near where I work during my lunchbreaks to read. But I do sometimes explore old graveyards reading what's written on the gravestones and it makes me wonder about the lives of the people buried there; who were they? What became of the beloved wife they left behind? I try to find the graves of people killed in the world wars and wonder about what that person could have achieved had they not been called to fight, what the daughter left behind by lance-corporal-gunner Smith was told about the father she never met.
Does this speculation make me morbid? No, I don't think it does. In the spring & summer days when the sun is out, the birds are singing and the trees & flowers are in full bloom there is a juxtaposition between the graves and the abundance of life there is to be found in a graveyard which demonstrates the fragility and beauty of life and underlines the fact that I am alive and that I share the earth with those who went before me. "As for Man, his days are like grass, he flourishes like a flower in the field; the wind blows over it and it is gone, and its place remembers it no more."

It may seem like a strange thing to say, but I think death can bring out the best in people. To be more precise, losing someone close can. I think that sometimes our grief and loss can strip away any pretensions we may hold about ourselves and in our pain there is reflected our true selves; delicate, maybe somewhat diminished, but an honest image of who we are. Families will often pull together to help each other through a difficult time where maybe they don't often communicate with each other, differences can be put aside as each person reflects and takes stock of their own life, held in relief against the passing of the one they've lost.


I've been to some great funerals. I've been to some awful ones too where peoples grief has erupted been very angry, but I've been party to some real celebrations. Because people are already emotional that emotion can be turned into something approaching a really happy time. People can reminisce and tell anecdotes and laugh and sing at funerals. Sometimes the grief can be forgotten for a few hours. It doesn't necessarily dishonour the memory of the deceased, I think most people would say they want people at their funeral to celebrate their life rather than mourn their death. I'd say that 2 out of the 10 best nights out I've had have been after funerals.


When I left school I took the first job that was offered to me, which was catering in a nursing home. I ended up working there for 5 years during which there was a steady turnover of residents as one by one they shuffled off this mortal coil and others moved into the home. In my first year of working there an old couple made a big impression on me. Horace & Esther were probably well into their 80's and were newly weds. They'd met a few years earlier, fallen in love & got married. They lived in the nursing home in the room opposite one of my kitchens in the only room with a double bed rather than a hospital bed as they both had mobility problems and Esther had a bad heart. They were very funny together and a favourite of the nursing staff. One morning when I'd worked there for about 6 months an ambulance had to be called as Horace was in terrible pain. He was taken into hospital where he died the same day. Esther was devastated. Over the week that followed the nursing staff had to spend a lot of time with her consoling her and just keeping her company. On the day of his funeral the home was filled with their families and Esther put on her best suit and was taken to say goodbye to her husband. The next day when the nursing staff went to get her out of bed they discovered that she'd died in her sleep. It was as if she'd just been waiting until she knew he was safely tucked in, then she checked out herself.
A strange notion - for an 18 year old - that you could have some say in when you die, but one I saw a few times whilst I was there.

So how do I feel about my own death? How does my own mortality sit on my shoulders? Well, I'd like to deserve a well-attended funeral and positive obituary. I'm not sure that I'd get them now so would rather not die just yet. I think I'm ok with the fact that I will die, but I'm not really looking forward to the possibility of one of any number of nasty ailments that could finish me off in old age – if I live that long. And after my funeral I want those who attended it to go to the pub and have more than one drink. I want them to raise a toast; not to me – I'll be dead – but to themselves to celebrate the years they've out-lived me by.

Chain Reaction - The Prequel: God & Slavery

Originally published September 2007

On March 10th 1983 MTV premiered Michael Jackson's song 'Billie Jean'. From the perspective of 2007 that may seem only note-worthy because it remains one of Jackson's biggest hits, but it actually is an event of huge cultural significance and another nail in the coffin of the legacy that slavery left behind it. Slavery was abolished in 1833 in the UK and 1865 in the US, so how does Michael Jackson singing about a nutter stalker whilst dancing around like he needs a wee affect anything?

Unsurprisingly the slave trade had a devastating effect on Africa. We can only estimate how many Africans were taken into slavery; the highest estimate I've seen is 20 million people. These people would have been fit & healthy, at the prime of their lives. They should have been working for their own families and communities. Instead of which they were taken to work for the benefit of another country, and all their descendants were lost to Africa also. The removal of such numbers would have meant that agricultural land couldn't be cultivated properly, and this would have affected the basis for economic development that the African countries had. Many slaves were given by the tribe leaders to the traders in exchange for guns. The presence of guns changed and escalated the wars between tribes and lead to further loss of life and further crippled Africa's development and potential trade. At this time when Africa could have formed a basis for trade with Europe and America, its workforce was stolen. Many of the economic problems faced by modern day Africa can be traced back to the slave trade and how we treated African citizens.

The legacy of slavery is also felt in the countries where the slaves were taken. Slavery was abolished around the world over the course of many years. Often very reluctantly slaves were freed and Governments compensated the former owners for their losses. But the slaves themselves were often no better off. They were given nothing. They were free, but in name only. Most had no option but to continue in the employment of their former masters. They were paid for their labour, but often the pay they were given was pitifully small and barely covered the rent on the accommodation their former masters provided them with. The law still treated former slaves as second-class citizens, and with the vast majority of them unable to read and write and no education on offer to them they lacked the basic skills needed to escape from the poverty they faced. The emancipation of the slaves created a massive underclass that was slave in all but name.

Over and above this dreadful poverty, the ex-slaves had to contend with people's prejudices. The slave trade had relied on people believing that the Africans were sub-human, not worth the same as them and therefore it was perfectly alright to treat them as badly as they did. Even the British abolitionists weren't immune from this attitude; the black abolitionists were never invited to speak at the meetings of the Society for the Abolition of Slavery. When they were asked to attend functions they were seated apart from the white supporters. While laws across the world changed and made slavery illegal it was much harder to change people's hearts and minds. What had been the problem of slavery fast became the problem of racism, and the economic & social disadvantages that the ex-slaves faced seemed to add weight to the belief that the Africans were less intelligent and less human than the white population. In the Southern states of the US the black population became subject to laws of segregation that lasted until the 1960's. These laws governed all walks of life – job entitlement, eating in restaurants, riding on a bus, mortgage eligibility – an ensured that the ex-slave population was prevented from escaping poverty. It provided institutional support for injustice and against this the Ku-Klux-Klan was able to pursue its course of violence and murder in its struggle to prevent black economic advancement, education and voting rights. Right across the world and right up to the present day ex-slave populations have had to fight for the right to be treated as equal in the countries they live in.

So what of Michael Jackson? How does he fit in? Well, in 1983 Michael Jackson was black. The Jacksons had become international phenomena and were rich beyond their wildest dreams. Their musical prowess had elevated them far above their impoverished origins and their story had become an inspiration to black communities across America struggling against poverty and discrimination. When Michael went solo his music was guaranteed a huge audience.

But it wasn't guaranteed much exposure. Despite Billie Jean being at number one in the singles charts for seven weeks there was one major avenue that remained closed. The spectacle of Jackson trying to ease his bladder problem was kept off what was fast becoming an increasingly influential marketing tool. MTV refused to air, not only Jackson's videos, but all videos by black performers. Jackson was signed to Epic, which is a subsidiary of CBS – a huge record label – and it took CBS president Walter Yetnikoff threatening to refuse MTV permission to play any of it's white artists (which included Ozzy Osbourne & Billy Joel) and denounce the channel as racist to make MTV yield. And so on March 10th 1983 Jackson became the first black artist to be played on MTV. 1983, that's only 24 years ago. I find it hard to believe that the aftermath of slavery could have been demonstrated so blatantly so recently, but the evidence is there. The evidence and the legacy of the slave trade is all around us. As much as we try to ignore it, it remains. There have been many programmes created to make reparations to the African countries and deal with the bad taste in the mouth that slavery's left, but these need to continue and we need to be a part of that process.