Westminster Abbey Should Return Ethiopia's Sacred Religious

 Westminster Abbey.

Former Deputy Mayor of London writes its time to return all historical and religious  artefacts bathed in blood and stolen by Britain during colonialism.

Somewhere, in the cavernous and murky depths of London's ancient Westminster Abbey, lies a deeply religious artefact, stolen by  the greatest Imperial thieves of the 19th century, the Brits. The object, a religious and sacred tablet called a tabot, was looted from  Abyssinia in 1868, now known as modern day Ethiopia. This particular item is a holy relic to around 35 million members of the Ethiopian Christian Church, representing one the oldest branches of Christianity in recorded human history.

First I ask, dear reader that yiu take five minutes too simply sign, share  and support our demand that Westminster Abbey Should Return Ethiopia's Sacred Religious Relic.

So revered is this particular object, that only priests from the country's Ethiopian Orthodox church are able to lay their eyes upon it. The tabot is said to symbolise the Ark of the Covenant.

This incredibly important artefact is nothing more than a small tablet, one that was among fifteen so called tabots and other precious artefacts stolen by the British Empire' powerful Army and Navy, who were,  at the time were  the largest cultural looters and vandals in the world. Hundreds of priceless objects were looted by the British in 1868 from Maqdalan in northern Ethiopia, from the mountain fortress of the then Abyssinian Emperor Tewodros II.

The Abyssinian expedition was an exercise in projecting Britain's imperial power right across the globe. Formerly an ally of Britain, Emperor Tewodros II foolishly fell out with his colonial oppressors and in an on-going dispute, and made the mistake of jailing British citizens and representatives of the Government as hostage. 

Its wasn't a one off either, age Emperor detained any and all of the various representatives dispatched by the British Queen Victoria to negotiate the freedom of the held British captives. In response Britain dispatched its powerful Royal Navy, sending 280 steam and sail ships, 7000 camels, 13,000 donkeys and 13,000 British and Indian soldiers, to East africa in an Imperial effort to save the lives of eight Britons and the reputation of the British Empire.

The ensuing battle was quick and decisive with total surrender and collapse of the Abyssinian forces, and as the battle become a slaughter the Abyssinian Emperor shot himself, ironically it is said, with a pistol given to him, as a personal gift by Queen Victoria herself. 

British Barbarians at the gate, 

And as we all know, to the victor goes the spoils, and with the British that usually involved the economic, cultural, physical rape and destruction of a country and its people. The Army was let loose to reap the profits of war, As a result, hundreds, if not thousands, of Abyssinian precious religious and historical artefacts were being shipped home to the motherland, as prize booty, imperial theft, the bloody benefit of brutal conquest of the seething "barbarian lands".

The modus operandi that routinely followed British imperial victory was barbarism, theft and brutal oppression, alongside wholesale cultural destruction and religious vandalism. This was not theft purely for financial gain although greed was clearly a factor, no this was an abject lesson in imperial domination and the consequent cultural annihilation and wholesale oppression that can be expected, in the face of defiance or rebellion to the letter and law of British imperial order.

Lieutenant General Sir Robert Napier

These events all took place under the leadership Victorian Lieutenant-General Sir Robert Napier, a British hero, who proudly wore the butcher apron, having fought in India and China and whose famous battle cry was "Never give way to barbarians".

Unsurprisingly this is a man who today features as one of top Tory, Jacob Rees Mogg's most admired of  Britain's Victorian war heroes.

Today these tabots are owned by many British institutions including the British Museum. Just one was donated to Westminster Abbey and is the cause of the current controversy. 

The tabot itself, was one of 15 donated by a returning army officer. Then in 1870, the architect George Gilbert Scott incorporated the tabot into his designs for a new Abbey altar in the Henry VII Lady Chapel. 

Now, over 140 years later and invisible to almost everyone who visit the great Abbey, hidden at the back of that dusty 1870s altar in the Henry VII Lady Chapel rests the stolen stone. 

Even today this relic continues to carry powerful resonance for Ethiopian Christians, over the years whilst in  British possession, from time to time senior Ethiopian Christian clergy have been allowed to pray in front of the tabot as part of their religious observance and devotions.

Remarkably, in an act of unbelievable cultural arrogance, Westminster Abbey recently refused point-blank, to allow Ethiopian Christian clergy and senior leaders of the church, who sought the Abbeys permission, to both observe and pray before the tabot.

The Abbeys response was bizarre, disgusting and insulting.  

Speaking to the Guardian newspaper Samuel Berhanu, a deacon in the Ethiopian church in London was furious, "I was very shocked and surprised," He added, "I just couldn't believe that in the 21st century you could have this mentality whereby they have no regard to cultural, religious issues. They were not even open to discussion."

I'd go further, Im not shocked and whilst I'm no religious expert, I'd safely hazard a guess and say that God doesn't condone theft, that he or she loves a repentant sinner, and  Justice demands that those who know better, do better.

Let me be crystal clear, it is my view that the British period of slavery and colonialism saw Britain, among many other things, commit some of the greatest and most brutal crimes ever recorded in human history.

Its an outrageous act by the Abbey and we are calling upon you to sign and share this petition seeking to right these wrongs and allow access and eventually the return of this items.

During Britain ruled the world, we amassed not only a fortune from the profits of oppression, but collected a vast array of historical, cultural, religious treasures from across the world and ferried them back to the motherland to enhance its reputation as the most powerful nation on God's green earth. 

That was then and thank God those days are long gone. Today Britain is a shadow of its former self and having lost the trappings of Empire, there can be no excuse for the continued retention of these looted artefacts from across the world.  Principles of reparation and natural justice demand the return of these precious artefacts to their country of origins. 

Neil MacGregor, former director of the British Museum said in 2006, in what was a remark that for me defined English exceptionalism, stupidity and narrow mindedness stated boldly that in his opinion "repatriation is yesterday's question". 

I think its very much todays question and it involves the cone poet of justice and reparation. The UK needs to right the wrongs of Britains imperial past.

Quite frankly all British and European museums should be emptied of their stolen colonial goods, in their entirety and without exception. From the Star of India to the Benin Bronzes all must be returned, should be returned, will be returned, and it is we, the modern-day descendants of  the colonial victims, its we who must lead the campaign for the immediate return of these stolen goods. 

And  these days, this demand is not  just the politically correct opinion of some left-wing activist on a soapbox, no... even the young French President Michelle Macron agrees. Recently he published a report on this subject and concluded that European nations, including France, were both morally and legally compelled to return these treasured artefacts to their rightful owners, and set a date for France to do so by 2025. 

And here in the UK, a British Church of Englandpriest, the Rev John McLuckie was outraged at the response of the Abbey. He told the Sunday Observer recently: 

"This is completely unacceptable. Sacrilege would not be too strong a word. It's loot, taken violently and inappropriately in the first place. 

A tabot is a very holy object; no one can see it apart from priests. Westminster Abbey is one of the most visited sites in London. To have it on public display there is an offence to Orthodox Ethiopian Christians. For one Christian church to refuse to return it to another seems profoundly wrong." 

It's an extraordinary act of arrogance. Returning the it to Ethiopia would be an act of goodwill. There's no good reason for the abbey to have it. More importantly, it doesn't belong to them."

In 2015 Zimbabwe requested England's natural history natural Museum to return the decapitated heads of Zimbabwean warriors. This was denied with the museum stating it wasn't sure of the provenance of their heads. Then again in 2017 the South African Khi and Nguni people demanded the reparation of their  ancient ancestors remains that were stolen and taken to Europe

Maybe its time those of us here in Britain who decry the dirty little secrets stored up in British museums, took a leaf out of the book of the Occupy Movement and occupied some of the offending museums until the goods are returned.

There is something deeply depressing and somewhat spiritually macabre about wanting to hold onto other people's religious and historic relics, to have the interred bones of dead Royal Africans stored up in a backroom utility store alongside shrunken heads and sacred texts. The old saying "don't trouble old bones' speak an ancient wisdom that says no good can come of troubling ancient spirits,

The deeper selfish irony is these historical artefacts have no significance and or sacred meaning, valuable objects that are not even fully understood appreciated by Europeans who horde them. They hang in their museums for reasons of inflated national prestige and desired status.

Rene Maran, the first black writer to win the French Prix Goncourt, summed up the view of the victims of empire when  in 1921 wrote in his one of his most famous novels he wrote,

"Civilization, civilization, the pride of the Europeans, and the charnel house of innocents... you build your kingdoms on corpses." 

Today the rotting stench and  smoke of colonial  genocide, rape and theft, emanating from artefacts that are bathed in blood, continues to permeate and denigrate the reputation of a nation. A strong nation, hypocritical and highly dangerous nation a nation whose claimed to own the alter of moral superiority and civilisation, now sees that alter for what it truly is, a now blackened moral and political edifice of "European civilisation"  a claimed morality built upon nothing more than greed, racism, violence and theft. 

The fact is European 20th-century colonialism is one of the greatest unacknowledged crimes of human history. The misplaced moral certitude of the "white mans burden is today replaced with the stench of moral decrepitude inculcated and nurtured as a result of a deep indifference to the universal principles of justice.

Such is the lingering bitter legacy of Empire that even today, the brutal stone cold reality is that no matter how priceless, sacred or important such religious and historical artefacts are to a nation, its history and its people, their arrogant claims to ownership are resolute, despite the reality of the body miasma that secured ownership by dominating European powers. It was a scandal then and remains a scandal now. 

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Brexit: Colonial pay back?

Brexit is the contemporary legacy Empire. A colonial white supremacist, racist dogma thought long extinguished by far too many.

A latent racism, much denied by many Brits, and now as a consequence of it's routine denial, and fanned by the noxious flatulence of Brexit, British imperial racism, has returned with a vengeance.

Bold ,proud and unashamed. British racism, is back. A racism now magnified, through the lens of austerity and fanned by the noxious flatulence of Brexit, now represents an existential threat to the future success of the country.

It was Dr Martin Luther King who said "The moral arch of the universes is long but it bends towards justice."

The question I ask is this: Do the UK's current difficulties, arise in part, as a result of the irrational nature of racism, the fact that Britain has failed to resolve that legacy, and that, that historic failure has now come back to haunt them and us, resulting in the resurgence of xenophobia

Why Black People in UK, US and Europe cannot be racist.

The perennial debate about what constitutes racism is a deeply contentious issue and nowhere more so, than here in Britain.

Take a cursory look at online debates about racism on any given day and you will see just what sound and fury is unleashed anytime this issue is debated.  

Of course these issues tend to generate more heat than light and you may need to take a deep breath and become impervious to the vile racism you'll will discover, but it’s definitely worth taking a sneaky peak.

A good place to start would be my twitter account @LeeJasper where I endure my fair share of such debates, usually prompted by whites accusing me of being the illegitimate son of Nation of Islam Minster Louis Farrakhan or the UK equivalent of the fascist British National Party's odious Nick Griffin.   

The reason they’re all bent out of shape is simple, they believe I’m the spawn of the devil a result as my uncompromising stance on fighting racism.

But nothing and I mean nothing gets these sad assorted trolls, Ukippers and  libertarians, so foaming at the mouth, with rabid ignorance as the statement 

‘Black people in UK and EU cannot be racist’. 

Don’t believe me? Try it and find out.

After some years on twitter enduring this petty and almost exclusively white backlash, what has becomes immediately apparent to me, is that as a nation, we are racially illiterate, confused and in deep denial. 

This stems from two principle traits among some white people, the denial, dismissal of the legacy of transatlantic slavery and colonialism and a deeply held shame and guilt they feel about Britain’s past.

This profound psychological deficit in the national character of many white Britons is driven by unacknowledged guilt and the base irrationality of racist sentiment combined with historical denial and a reductive view of racism producing a toxic psychology, blinded by prejudice and politics that drives them to bizarre and contridictory absurdities.

Take a look at some of the public statements from UKIP members on immigration Muslims, or the viciousness and hate with which migrants are now viewed by many. 

We all fundamentally, deep down, know that migrants are human beings, men women and children, families like our own, with rights of asylum and refuge. We all know that British  military intervention caused the migrant crisis and many of us deem these migrants all illegal and not worthy of common human compassion. These commonly held views are both illogical and stupid yet they persist fuelled by a xenophobic press and venal politicians.

Rationality, common sense, reasonable debate, objective facts all leave the room once the debate turns to racism or immigration.

Otherwise seemingly rationale people turn into gibbering, incoherent wrecks when discussing this issue, such is the continued extraordinary power on the human psyche.

As a black man of African descent and a veteran campaigner against racism for over 30 years I’ve always been crystal clear about my own views on what racism means.

Racism is prejudice plus power reflecting the specific historic, economic, cultural and geographic context to which the term is applied.

The idea that the world is made up of immutable fixed ‘races’ is one of the biggest fallacies of the 20^th century.

Race as a biological category does not exist. Its pseudo scientific claptrap but one whose power on the human imagination is such that it can transform whole nations to become riven with a ‘primordial’ racial violence that can become genocidal.

In that sense we can say that Black, Asian, Roma people in Europe cannot be racist simply because we have no power to enforce, wholesale and routine systemic, institutionalized discrimination against whites. 

In Britain and throughout the EU, it is we, not whites, who are the majority and principle victims of systemic discrimination and violence in the UK.

Does my definition apply globally? No, because in Africa and Asia where black people have power, other ethnic groups, including whites can be subjected to xenophobia and on rare occasion racism itself.

Each application of the word needs to be informed by its specific context.

Can Aboriginal peoples of Australia be racist towards white Australians? Can Native Indians or African Americans be racist towards white Americans? Can Eskimos be racist to white Canadians or Palestinians against Jewish people? 

Not in my book, all are victims, not perpetrators of racism.

We can of course be obnoxious bigots and can express racial prejudice and sentiments towards others, but does that constitute racism? Not in my book. 

For example:

• We can’t order that hundreds of thousands of white people are racially targeted by the police and a racist criminal justice system.
• We can’t order the mass expulsion of white boys from UK schools.
• We cannot order that white Christians be targeted smeared and investigated for their links to right wing extremism.
• We can’t order the mass enforcement of racist immigration controls that impose draconian visa requirements on white Europeans.
• We can’t order that white people are not employed in anything but the most basic and low paid positions.
• We can't rewrite the national curriculum to erase the contributions of whites world history.
• We can do nothing about ensuring that Eton and Oxford universities discriminate against whites.
• Nor can we enforce 500 years of slavery and colonialism, robbing white people of their language religion, culture and natural resources.

My own view is that the notion that Black people and Asians can be racist in Britain is an attempt to let white people of the hook for the reality of contemporary racism. It’s really an attempt to alleviate white guilt about racism, by suggesting that white people are also its victims right here in the UK.

Its a bastardised logic that suits a predominantly, but not exclusively, right wing agenda. An agenda that seeks to minimise and/or discount the effects of racism on Black and Asian people. Racism, it asserts, by common definition and understanding, is simply making a pejorative judgment about someone based on his or her race. 

Do white people have a monopoly of racism in Europe? It’s axiomatic they do, it literally comes with the territory. This even extends to the attempt to impose their definition of our problems and then offer their preferred solutions. Its like being punched  in the mouth and then being told how to react by the perpetrator. 

 Of course its not just the right wing who argue such definitions, such is the national confusion about this issue, sections of the left can be just as ignorant about the politics of racism.

What about the white working class, they say, they have little or no power and whilst that is true, they do enjoy the white privilege that transcends their class. They have also been the Labour aristocracy of the world for years at the expense of other nations. White privilege means they expect, and will be treated differently, to their Black and Asian neighbours.

Not only have the working class and Britain enjoyed the benefits of economic racism, they benefit from the white privilege that flows form being the majority culture. Look at any aspect of social economic analysis of the lives of poor blacks and whites and the differences are stark. Take black youth unemployment currently heading north of 54% compared to white youth unemployment at just over 20% or the gross institutionalised racism of the criminal justice system or indeed health inequalities.

We may all be on the same boat but we travel on different decks.

Looking at racial inequality of both working class blacks Asians and whites, its absolutely clear that white privilege provides them with many benefits.

Take racial attacks for example: two working class neighbors, one Asian one white. The Asian family rings the police to report a racist attack by his white neighbor and when the police arrive, he ends up getting arrested - white privilege.

Or take British schools, who is more likely to be excluded? Or family life, who can ensure that their extended families living abroad can come and attend family weddings, funerals, births or just come to the UK for a short holiday? White immigration privilege will extend to white common wealth citizens, but not for Black or Asian British people.

One job, three applicants, one white, one African, one Muslim need I go on?

There is any number of race inequality comparators that I could cite but time and space does not allow. Even under austerity economics, Black and some Asian communities disproportionately feel these effects.

And as a result of the scapegoating of immigrants have become the national obsession among the working class; we are also now being held responsible for the sins of white bankers and the financial service sector.

Racism transcends class, and the consensus it produces across all classes of society, is demonstrated by extent to which a culture of normalized discrimination manages to secrete itself into the national consciousness.

Racism remains so strong because its existence enjoys majority support. Tackling racism in white working class where the extreme right now thrives should be a national priority for the left. But I digress…

Normally, when one raises the issue of definitions of racism, the first thing that happens is people quote the dictionary definition of racism.

Let me just demolish the argument that argues that dictionary definitions of racism are a) objective and b) universal in their applications.  Racism is and has always been a deeply political project.

The Oxford definition is “The belief that all members of each race possess characteristics, abilities, or qualities specific to that race, especially so as to distinguish it as inferior or superior to another race or races:

This is fine as far as it goes, but critically fails to recognise that such beliefs can be given political meaning and translate into wholesale oppression, with the support of the state, the wealthy, the media and by the predominant ‘in group’ regardless of class, in any given society. The common English definition of racism was and remains contextualized and informed by the very racism it seeks to define.

Racism is best defined as politics plus power.

Dictionaries are as much product of their times, as are the individuals who wrote them. It is an obvious statement to make, but white men write most definitions of racism that appear in dictionaries.

One can detect racial prejudice and bias in western dictionaries when one compare just two words “ Black” and “White”. In doing so, one begins to see the politics of semantics, meaning and definition of language. Dictionaries are, by and large written from a vantage point of white privilege that reflects the historic colonial reality of global white supremacy.

General Pratt a genocidal racist.

Take for example the Oxford English Dictionary's first recorded use of the word racism. This is recorded as being first used by a US General named Richard Henry Pratt in 1902. Pratt, who is recorded as saying in 1902,

'Segregating any class or race of people apart from the rest of the people kills the progress of the segregated people or makes their growth very slow. Association of races and classes is necessary.'

Sounds like a genuine and committed anti racist until you look at his views on Native American Indians. This man, Pratt by name and Pratt by nature said’

"A great general has said that the only good Indian is a dead one," Pratt said. "In a sense, I agree with the sentiment, but only in this: that all the Indian there is in the race should be dead. Kill the Indian in him, and save the man."

In looking at the usage of the word it is clear that there is virtually definition in Western dictionaries that has not been written by a white person, usually a man. That in and of itself speaks volumes about the real nature of racism.

When using any word from a dictionary one cannot escape the specific historical and geographical context. That’s why, in different parts of the English speaking world, certain phrases can have completely different meanings.

Racism therefore requires a sociological, not an abstract definition to make any sense in the real word. Racism in Britain, Europe and US is systemically embedded in the fabric of these nations resulting in wholesale discrimination. That requires institutional racism and a nationalist racist culture to give it popular license and achieve mass effects.

Americans and the Brits are often quoted and as being “one people separated by a common language”.

Saying that, it would be churlish not to concede that part of the problem is the misuse of the word by the media and some in the anti racist moment.

It’s routine application to white’s, who are undoubtedly ignorant bigots, but not racist is part of this confusion.

For example I’ve always had great respect for ex football manager Ron Atkinson, who in the 70’s/80’s led the way in playing black footballers. He was caught, some time back, referring to a black player as a. n****r. did I think he was racist? No. Do I think he was prejudiced an idiot and a bigot? Yes.

I know there are laws that relate to racist offences and aggravated criminal behavior. Whilst I agree with the laws intent, I don’t believe that everyone convicted of such an offence is automatically can be described as a racist.

We can say that racism in a universal phenomena, That all people have the potential, given the right circumstances to be racist, but to then assert that anyone, anywhere in the world be racist to anyone, is just asinine.

Black and Asian people in US UK and Europe cannot by racist. I rest my case