Jain Spirit 2004 03 No 18

Author(s): Jain Spirit UK
Publisher: UK Young Jains

Page 12

10 NEWS
Dissing Honours but Honouring Principles: Benjamin Zephaniah Scorns O.B.E.
When Benjamin Zephaniah, Rastafarian poet and human rights campaigner, received a letter from the Prime Minister's Office in November 2003, he was scarcely overjoyed. As he told The Guardian newspaper: "I woke up on the morning of 13 November wondering how the government could be overthrown and what could replace it, and then I noticed [the letter]. It said: "The Prime Minister has asked me to inform you, in strict confidence, that he has in mind... to submit your name to the Queen with a recommendation that Her Majesty may be graciously pleased to approve that you be appointed an officer of the Order of the British Empire.'
Most public figures would be over the moon at this opportunity. This is especially true of writers, who generally receive less attention in Britain than footballers. But Benjamin
Zephaniah, who is a member of the International Advisory Board for Jain Spirit, thinks very differently. To him the letters 'OBE', the 'E' especially, connotes a blood-soaked history of oppression and slavery. He explains: "The honours system reminds me of how my foremothers were raped and my forefathers brutalised. It is because of this idea of empire that black people like myself don't even know our true names or our true historical culture. Benjamin Zephaniah O.B.E. - no way Mr Blair, no way Mrs Queen. I am profoundly anti-empire."
Benjamin Zephaniah is probably Britain's best-known writer of African descent. His refusal has been a setback for the government, which has been trying to make the honours system more socially and culturally inclusive. But to Zephaniah, this inclusiveness is a sham, a way to buy silence and complicity through membership of an
"oppressors' club". He points out that for some months he has been trying to meet Prime Minister Tony Blair and other senior politicians to discuss the death in police custody of his cousin, Michael Powell, but has been met by a wall of silence. This he sees as proof that the 'Establishment' is as exclusionist as ever.
Ironically, Benjamin Zephaniah predicted this controversy in his poem 'Bought and Sold' (2001), in which he warns black artists against being bought into the "oppressor's club:"
The ancestors would turn in graves
Those poor black folk that once were slaves would wonder
How our souls were sold
And check our strategies,
The empire strikes back and waves
Tamed warriors bow on parade
When they have done what they've been told They get their OBES.
In refusing an honour, Benjamin is in distinguished literary company. Doris Lessing, the novelist, told the London Daily Telegraph that she turned down the chance to become a Dame in 1993 because the title sounded 'too pantomimy'. Awardwinning writer Claire Tomalin also refused the CBE in 2001. "We don't have an empire," she said. "We are handing out honours for something which isn't there." Actress Vanessa Redgrave is also said to have refused the title Dame, because of her wellknown left wing principles. More controversially, the Oxford scientist Professor Colin Blakemore has claimed that he was excluded from the shortlist for an honour because of his vocal defence of experiments on animals. By publicly proclaiming his refusal, Benjamin Zephaniah has started a major national debate about the reform of the honours system.