Nat Turner (2/10/1800 -11/11/31) His Legacy of Rebellion Remembered.

Nat Turner was born October 2, 1800 in slavery on a plantation  of Benjamin Turner in Southampton County.Virginia, about twenty miles from the North Carolina border. His mother was named Nancy, but nothing is known about his father. 

Over the years, Turner worked on a number of different plantations. Turner's experience was typical of slaves on southern plantations. He had little freedom; he could not legally marry, travel without his master's permission, own property, or earn money. He was forced to work long, hard hours in the fields for meager rations of food and clothing, and if he refused he faced the whip or other punishment. And, like many slaves, Turner was sold several times to different masters. Each time, he was forced to leave family and friends and move to a different plantation. It was this brutal, demeaning, system of slavery that Nat Turner sought to overthrow. He sought not only his own freedom, but to dismantle the entire system of slavery and liberate African Americans from white tyranny.  

In his twenties, Turner was a spiritual leader among his fellow slaves, and many people, including his mother and grandmother, believed that he had been chosen by God to do great things. Then, in the 1820s, he had a series of visions through which he believed God was commanding him to prepare himself for a great battle against evil. During the religious revivals of the Second Great Awakening, many Americans from all walks of life experienced visions or believed that God spoke directly to them, and Nat Turner’s belief that God had destined him for a special purpose reflected the religious fervor of his time. 

In 1821, Turner ran away from his overseer, returning after thirty days because of a vision in which the Spirit had told him to "return to the service of my earthly master." The next year, following the death of his master, Samuel Turner, Nat was sold to Thomas Moore. Three years later, Nat Turner had another vision. He saw lights in the sky and prayed to find out what they meant. Then "... while laboring in the field, I discovered drops of blood on the corn, as though it were dew from heaven, and I communicated it to many, both white and black, in the neighborhood; and then I found on the leaves in the woods hieroglyphic characters and numbers, with the forms of men in different attitudes, portrayed in blood, and representing the figures I had seen before in the heavens."  

On May 12, 1828, Turner had his third vision: "I heard a loud noise in the heavens, and the Spirit instantly appeared to me and said the Serpent was loosened, and Christ had laid down the yoke he had borne for the sins of men, and that I should take it on and fight against the Serpent, for the time was fast approaching when the first should be last and the last should be first... And by signs in the heavens that it would make known to me when I should commence the great work, and until the first sign appeared I should conceal it from the knowledge of men; and on the appearance of the sign... I should arise and prepare myself and slay my enemies with their own weapons." 

At the beginning of the year 1830, Turner was moved to the home of Joseph Travis, the new husband of Thomas Moore's widow. His official owner was Putnum Moore, still a young child. Turner described Travis as a kind master, against whom he had no complaints. 

Then, on February, 1831, there was a solar eclipse of the sun. Turner took this to be the sign he had been promised and confided his plan to the four men he trusted the most, Henry, Hark, Nelson, and Sam. They decided to hold the insurrection on the 4th of July and began planning a strategy. However, they had to postpone action because Turner became ill.

 On August 13, the sun appeared blue-green in the sky, and Turner and his friends took this as the final sign.and a week later, on August 21 in what  has become known as the Southampton  insurrection , Turner and six of his men met in the woods to eat a dinner and make their plans. At 2:00 that morning, they set out to the Travis household, where they killed the entire family as they lay sleeping  and joined about 60 other slaves from other plantations in Southampton County,Virginia and started  a general revolt, because they could  no longer face race oppression and slavery in a hypocritical nation founded on  revolutionary ideas of freedom and equality. 

As an act of necessity and as a as a means of survival  they were forced to use violence as means to an end, in an effort to escape their daily lives of burden and suppression. They killed mercilessly  and attacked whites without regard  to age or sex believing tht killing all the whites they encountered  was the only way they might have a chance of fulfilling the cherished  goal of freedom for which thy were willing to sacrifice their lives. 

His rebellion became one of the bloodiest and most effective in American history. Igniting a culture of fear, as the insurrection spread from plantation to plantation. Somewhere between 55 to 65 people were  killed by the rebels before the revolt was brutally put down. Nat managed to escape, and eluded  capture for a couple of months, but on October 30, 1831was arrested He was represented by attorney Thomas R. Gray, who documented Turner’s statement. During his prosecution, Turner pled not guilty, stating that his rebellion was the act of God. On November 11, 1831, he was convicted and sentenced to death by hanging in Jerusalem, Virginia of the crimes of conspiracy to rebel and making insurrection. 

He had given all slaves a chance to see freedom and herald it on it's way. He died as he had lived, with courage and conviction,  apparently he walked to the hanging tree, without showing a sign of fear, famously refusing to speak any last words. we will always remember him, a man whose breath was forever free.

After he was hanged his body was then mutilated.He never received an official burial and Turner’s headless bones were presumably buried in an unmarked grave.Many believed his death was made a symbol of warning to other would-be insurgents.

And unfortunately in the aftermath, in total, the state executed 55 people, banished many more, and acquitted a few. The state reimbursed the slaveholders for their slaves. But in the hysterical climate that followed the rebellion, close to 200 black people, many of whom had nothing to do with the rebellion, were  beaten, tortured and murdered by white mobs. In addition, slaves as far away as North Carolina were accused of having a connection with the insurrection, and were subsequently tried and executed. . New legislation was passed that further restricted people rights. laws were passed to make it illegal to teach slaves to read and write, and their travel was severely restricted. 

It would be a long road, but from this point on, there would be no turning back. Nat Turner actions  acted as a catalyst for the many struggles that lay ahead, leaving a mythic footprint for those who came later, and  he became a powerful symbol of black autonomy and it's fight and struggle for freedom and emancipation.

Over the years, Turner has emerged as a hero, a religious fanatic and a villain. Turner became an important icon to the 1960s Black power movement as an example of an African American standing up against white oppression.

Others have objected to Turner's indiscriminate slaughtering of men, women and children to try to achieve this end. As historian Scot French told The New York Times, "To accept Nat Turner and place him within the pantheon of American revolutionary heroes is to sanction violence as a means of social change. He has a kind of radical consciousness that to this day troubles advocates of a racially reconciled society. The story lives because it's relevant today to questions of how to organize for change."

His rebellion made it clear that slaves were not content with their enslavement and as a result and August 21, 1831, remains an important date in American History

Turner was the subject of William Styron's 1967 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Confessions of Nat Turner.

Turner’s life and uprising was also the subject of the 2016 film, The Birth of a Nation, which was directed, written by and starring Nate Parker. The film won the Audience Award and Grand Jury Prize at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival.

"Disobedience, in the eyes of anyone who has read man's history, is man's original virtue, it is through disobedience that progress has been made - through disobedience and through rebellion." - Oscar Wilde

looking at Nat Turner's Legacy

Stuart Christie (1946-2020) - Anarchist activist, writer and publisher

From Kate Sharpley Library

 John Patten

Stuart Christie, founder of the Anarchist Black Cross and Cienfuegos Press and co-author of The floodgates of anarchy has died peacefully after a battle with lung cancer.

Born in Glasgow and brought up in Blantyre, Christie credited his grandmother for shaping his political outlook, giving him a clear moral map and ethical code. His determination to follow his conscience led him to anarchism: “Without freedom there would be no equality and without equality no freedom, and without struggle there would be neither.” It also led him from the campaign against nuclear weapons to joining the struggle against the Spanish fascist dictator Francisco Franco (1892-1975).

He moved to London and got in touch with the clandestine Spanish anarchist organisation Defensa Interior (Interior Defence). He was arrested in Madrid in 1964 carrying explosives to be used in an assassination attempt on Franco. To cover the fact that there was an informer inside the group, the police proclaimed they had agents operating in Britain – and (falsely) that Christie had drawn attention to himself by wearing a kilt.

The threat of the garotte and his twenty year sentence drew international attention to the resistance to the Franco regime. In prison Christie formed lasting friendships with anarchist militants of his and earlier generations. He returned from Spain in 1967, older and wiser, but equally determined to continue the struggle and use his notoriety to aid the comrades he left behind.

In London he met Brenda Earl who would become his political and emotional life partner. He also met Albert Meltzer, and the two would refound the Anarchist Black Cross to promote solidarity with anarchist prisoners in Spain, and the resistance more broadly. Their book, The floodgates of anarchy promoted a revolutionary anarchism at odds with the attitudes of some who had come into anarchism from the sixties peace movement. At the Carrara anarchist conference of 1968 Christie got in touch with a new generation of anarchist militants who shared his ideas and approach to action.
Christie’s political commitment and international connections made him a target for the British Special Branch. He was acquitted of conspiracy to cause explosions in the “Stoke Newington Eight” trial of 1972, claiming the jury could understand why someone would want to blow up Franco, and why that would make him a target for “conservative-minded policemen”.

Free but apparently unemployable, Christie launched Cienfuegos Press which would produce a large number of anarchist books and the encyclopedic Cienfuegos Press Anarchist Review. Briefly Orkney became a centre of anarchist publishing before lack of cashflow ended the project. Christie would continue publishing, and investigating new ways of doing so including ebooks and the internet. His https://christiebooks.co.uk contains numerous films on anarchism and biographies of anarchists. He used facebook to create an archive of anarchist history not available anywhere else as he recounted memories and events from his own and other people’s lives.

Christie wrote The investigative researcher’s handbook (1983), sharing skills that he put to use in an exposé of fascist Italian terrorist Stefano delle Chiaie (1984). In 1996 he published the first version of his historical study We the anarchists : a study of the Iberian Anarchist Federation (FAI), 1927-1937.
Short-run printing enabled him to produced three illustrated volumes of his life story (My granny made me an anarchist, General Franco made me a ‘terrorist’ and Edward Heath made me angry 2002-2004) which were condensed into a single volume as Granny made me an anarchist : General Franco, the angry brigade and me (2004). His final books were the three volumes of ¡Pistoleros! The Chronicles of Farquhar McHarg, his tales of a Glaswegian anarchist who joins the Spanish anarchist defence groups in the years 1918-1924.

Committed to anarchism and publishing, Christie appeared at many bookfairs and film festivals, but scorned any suggestion he had come to ‘lead’ anyone anywhere.

Christie’s partner Brenda died in June 2019. He slipped away peacefully, listening to “Pennies From Heaven” (Brenda’s favourite song) in the company of his daughter Branwen.

Stuart Christie, 10 July 1946-15 August 2020

I was a friend on facebook where he posted frequently lots of inspiring stuff , so my deepest condolences  go the family and friends of Stuart Christie. Sad news, May this lifelong committed anti-fascist and anarchist rest in power and his  extraordinary life long be remembered.
A perfect society  may not come tomorrow, the struggle could last forever, but at least we can thank people like Christie who had the courage and vision that provides the spur to struggle against things as they are, and for things that might be. Our progress towards a more meaningful world must begin with the will to  resist every form of injustice.

Witness History - The Plot to kill Franco

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p024bsjc 

Stuart Christie id Glasgow - Ryan Harvey

  

Those Who Pass Between Fleeting Words - Mahmoud Darwish (13/4/41- 9/8/08)

Mahmoud Darwish who I've witten about previously https://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.com/2010/01/mahmoud-darwish-poet-of-resistance.html was a widely known and popular Palestinian poet whose work I greatly admire.. He was born in Berweh, a village east of Acre, Palestine, in 1942.
When the Israelis occupied his home in 1948, Darwish began to experience many forms of oppression. He grew up as a refugee, his village was destroyed, and between 1961 and 1967 he was arrested by the Israelis five times, once for writing "Identity Card," a poem which became a rallying cry for the Palestinian movement. Early in life, Darwish became politically active through his poetry and involvement in the Israeli Communist Party, Rakah. He spent a period as the editor of Rakah's newspaper, Al-Ittihad (Unity).
Darwish's political advocacy brought him a great deal of negative Israeli attention, which included harassment and house arrest. Finally, in 1971, after years of hardship, Darwish left Israel and fled into exile in Beirut, Lebanon. By this time, he had established and upheld an outstanding reputation as one of the leading poets of the resistance.
Many of his poems have been converted to music in order to fuel the Palestinian defiance.Considered Palestine's most eminent poet, Darwish published his first collection of poems, Leaves of Olives, in 1964, when he was 22. Since then, Darwish has published approximately thirty poetry and prose collections which have been translated into more than twenty-two languages. Sadly there is no comprehensive collection of his poetry in English, though there is a good selection of poems from the 1980s and 1990s under the title Unfortunately, It Was Paradise (2013), as well as The Butterfly’s Burden, which brings together three short volumes of poems from 1998-2003. (Copper Canyon Press, 2006),  Stage of Siege (2002), The Adam of Two Edens (2001), Mural (2000), Bed of the Stranger (1999), Psalms (1995), Why Did You Leave the Horse Alone? (1994), and The Music of Human Flesh (1980). Appropriately, then, to gain a broad view of Darwish’s output people have to piece together scattered publications from several countries, in books, journals, and newspapers. As Darwish says in “You’ll Be Forgotten, As If You Never Were,” a late poem in The Butterfly’s Burden, “I am the king of echo. My only throne is the margin.”
 Darwish was an editor for a Palestine Liberation Organization monthly journal and the director of the group's research center. In 1987 he was appointed to the PLO executive committee, and resigned in 1993 in opposition to the Oslo Agreement. He served as the editor-in-chief and founder of the literary review Al-Karmel, published out of the Sakakini Centre since 1997
About Darwish's work, the poet Naomi Shihab Nye has said, "Mahmoud Darwish is the Essential Breath of the Palestinian people, the eloquent witness of exile and belonging, exquisitely tuned singer of images that invoke, link, and shine a brilliant light into the world's whole heart. What he speaks has been embraced by readers around the world—his in an utterly necessary voice, unforgettable once discovered."
His awards and honors include the Ibn Sina Prize, the Lenin Peace Prize, the 1969 Lotus prize from the Union of Afro-Asian Writers, France's Knight of Arts and Belles Lettres medal in 1997, the 2001 Prize for Cultural Freedom from the Lannan Foundation, the Moroccan Wissam of intellectual merit handed to him by King Mohammad VI of Morocco, and the USSR's Stalin Peace Prize.
He died  twelve years ago in 2008, in Houston, Texas  due to complications from heart surgery. but  Darwish’s words continue  today to play an important role in shaping the identity of diaspora Palestinians. His celebrated poms have always connected Palestinians to their homeland. But for those living in the West they have become psalms of the tragic, human dimensions of the Palestinian cause.
 Darwish wrote the following  poem in 1988 during the first intifada and the direct and uncompromising words caused a great stir in Israel. Israel’s then Prime Minister, Yitzhak Shamir, quoted the poem in the Israeli Knesset to “prove” that the PLO posed a threat to existence of the Zionist state. In response, Darwish said that he found it “difficult to believe that the most militarily powerful country in the Middle East is threatened by a poem”.

 Those Who Pass Between Fleeting Words  - Mahmoud Darwish
  
O those who pass between fleeting words
Carry your names, and be gone
Rid our time of your hours, and be gone
Steal what you will from the blueness of the sea and the sand of memory
Take what pictures you will, so that you understand
That which you never will:
How a stone from our land builds the ceiling of our sky.

O those who pass between fleeting words
From you the sword — from us the blood
From you steel and fire — from us our flesh
From you yet another tank — from us stones
From you tear gas — from us rain
Above us, as above you, are sky and air
So take your share of our blood — and be gone
Go to a dancing party — and be gone
As for us, we have to water the martyrs’ flowers
As for us, we have to live as we see fit.

O those who pass between fleeting words
As bitter dust, go where you wish, but
Do not pass between us like flying insects
For we have work to do in our land:
We have wheat to grow which we water with our bodies’ dew
We have that which does not please you here:
Stones or partridges
So take the past, if you wish, to the antiquities market
And return the skeleton to the hoopoe, if you wish,
On a clay platter
We have that which does not please you: we have the future
And we have things to do in our land.
O those who pass between fleeting words
Pile your illusions in a deserted pit, and be gone
Return the hand of time to the law of the golden calf
Or to the time of the revolver’s music!
For we have that which does not please you here, so be gone
And we have what you lack: a bleeding homeland of a bleeding people
A homeland fit for oblivion or memory
O those who pass between fleeting words
It is time for you to be gone
Live wherever you like, but do not live among us
It is time for you to be gone
Die wherever you like, but do not die among us
For we have work to do in our land

We have the past here
We have the first cry of life
We have the present, the present and the future
We have this world here, and the hereafter
So leave our country
Our land, our sea
Our wheat, our salt, our wounds
Everything, and leave
The memories of memory
O those who pass between fleeting words!

—Translation from the Jerusalem Post, April 2, 1988

Links to two more poems by Mahmoud Darwish

https://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.com/2015/03/to-our-land-mahmoud-darwish-13309.html

https://teifidancer-teifidancer.blogspot.com/2012/11/mahmoud-darwish-13341-9808-think-of.html

Remembering Hiroshima and Nagasaki

  

75 years ago  on 6th August 1945 am.the United States dropped  an atomic bomb called ' Little Boy" on Hiroshima, Japan which is estimated to have killed 100,000 to 180,000 people out of a population of 350,000. Then three days later, a second  atomic bomb  called "Fat Man" was dropped on the city of Nagasaki, killing between 50,000 and 100,000 people.
.Hiroshima and Nagasaki were largely civilian towns, meaning there wasn't a strong military reason to drop the atomic bombs over those particular cities. No one was excluded from the horrors of the atomic bomb, a "destroyer of worlds" burnt hotter than the sun. Some people were vaporised upon impact, while others suffered burns and radiation poisoning that would kill them days, weeks or even months later. Others were crushed by debris, burned by unimaginable heat or suffocated by the lack of oxygen. Many survivors suffered from leukemia and other cancers like thyroid and lung cancer at higher rates than those not exposed to the bombs. Mothers were more likely to  lose their children during pregnancy or shortly after birth. Children exposed to radiation were more likely to have learning disabilities and impaired growth.
Those that did manage to survive  would be traumatised for the rest of their lives. Hibakusha is a term widely used in Japan, that refers to the victims of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it translates as 'explosion effected  Survivor of Light. These survivors speak of the deep, unabating grief they felt in the days, months and decades since the attack  They have described the shame of being a survivor , many were unable to marry, find jobs, or live any sort of normal life. They have said that many Hibakusha never speak of the day, instead choosing to suffer in silence. They told what it was like to be suddenly alone in middle age, to lose their parents, spouses, children, and livelihoods in a single instant. In memory of them, we should make sure that the  misery and devastation caused by nuclear weapons is never forgotten.
Even if Japan was not fully innocent, the people of Japan did not deserve to pay the price for their nations wrongdoing, and there was absolutely no moral justification in obliterating these two cities and killing its inhabitants in what was clearly a crime against humanity and murder on an epic scale. Hiroshima and Nagasaki held no strategic importance. Japan were an enemy on the brink of failure an members of the country's top leadership were involved in peace negotiations. Many believe that these two atrocities were a result of  geopolitical posturing at its most barbaric, announcing  in a catastrophic  display of military capability, of inhumane intention showing America's willingness to use doomsday weapons on civilian populations.The bombings serving as warnings and the fist act of the Cold War against its imperialist rival Russia. A message to the Russians of the power of destruction and technological military capability that the US had managed to develop.Three days later U.S president Harry Truman exulted ; "This is the greatest thing in history! " and gloated that " we are now prepared to obliterate more rapidly and completely."
Then the photos began to emerge, haunting images of burned children with their skin hanging off, of bodies charred and there was Sadaki Sasaki and the 1,000 origami peace cranes she folded before her death at the age of 12 from leukemia ten years after the bomb was dropped on her hometown of Hiroshima. The bombs dropped were  of a indiscriminate and cruel character beyond comparison  with weapons and projectiles of the past. Despite all  this Truman never regretted his decision. .
Today as the world commemorates the lives that were lost and the unacceptable devastation caused to people and planet, we still have so much to learn from this picture of indescribable human suffering. Lets not forget that in our our current dangerous  times, many world leaders remain recklessly committed to their nuclear  arsenals. There are an estimated 16,000 nuclear weapons in the world at the present time with over 90% held by USA and Russia, but also by the UK, France, India, Pakistan, Israel and lately North Korea. This is more than enough to wipe out most of the human race and most other life.
For Hiroshima Day and on August 9 Nagasaki Day we must echo the call of the Hibakusha, and  press our leaders to take the actions necessary to ensure  these immoral, illegal weapons are never used again.  The calls come amid progress on the criminalisation of nuclear weapons by the United Nations, where three more countries have voted to ratify the 2017 Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.
The treaty needs 50 countries to ratify it, at which point it would become international law — though the pact is binding only on those countries which are party to it. By last month, 40 countries had signed, with Sudan, Fiji and Botswana being the most recent signatories.
Britain, the United States and other nuclear powers have refused to sign and did not attend the 2017 session of the UN general assembly which voted for the treaty.
The abolition calls also come against the background of intensifying belligerence and military threats from United States President Donald Trump.
Campaigners against nuclear weapons said the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, remain relevant today in a world where nuclear bomb stockpiles cast the shadow of potential global obliteration.
Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament secretary Kate Hudson said: “We are facing an increasingly dangerous military situation driven most alarmingly by Trump’s policies.
“His withdrawal from key treaties, the possibility of the resumption of nuclear testing, all increase the risk of nuclear war.
“Of course, we understand the context for this: the US is a declining power economically and seeks to assert itself militarily.
“This has been the case for some time — noticeable under the Bush administration, which sought to compel non-compliant states to bend to the US will.
“Trump’s drive to war is far more dangerous. The US National Security Strategy focuses on what it describes as strategic rivals or competitors, notably China and Russia. Its goal is to be able to defeat them militarily, to prepare for war on a massive scale.” She said that “so-called usable nuclear weapons” have been deployed. “Taking these two strategies together, it is clear that there is a significant danger of a US war on China and that opposing this is a fundamental task for the movement today,” she said.“This is a conflict where nuclear weapons will be used and we need to work with all our strength to prevent such a war.” She said the world today is “closer to tragedy” than it has ever been. “On this anniversary, we must recommit to working together, in unity, to ensure that those hands never reach midnight.”
Former Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn said of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings: “We must never forget these atrocities, and we must never give up on the mission to rid our world of nuclear weapons.”
Stop the War Campaign convenor Lindsey German said: “For my generation, Hiroshima meant that there could never be another major war without the destruction of all humanity.
“We still see this terrible barbarism everywhere today. The major states are nuclear armed and there is the ever-present threat of conflict, now growing between the US and China in particular.
“Today, August 6, we should redouble our efforts to oppose war and all nuclear weapons.”
CND Cymru chairwoman Jill Evans said: “People in Wales and internationally are marking this anniversary by joining the many events online.
“We cannot hold our planned event at the National Eisteddfod, but we can still raise our voices to call on governments to act. I urge everyone to take some time this week to listen to the powerful testimony of nuclear survivors.”
Also in memory of the victims of the Hiroshima bombing Shabaka Hutchings will share a new composition on the 75th anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing, via Stop the War Coalition this August. Alongside the live stream concert, Stop the War will also be profiling anti-war jazz records, starting with John Coltrane’s performance of ‘Peace on Earth’ from his Concert in Japan album.
Stop the War Coalition will stream Hutchings’ new composition live across their social media platforms on Thursday 6th August from at 7.00pm GMT.
Head here for more info.

Hiroshima; An Acrostic Poem

Horror was dropped on August 6, 1945
Incinerating thousands of innocents
Reason evaporated after deadly poison shed
One bomb released left devastaion
Senseless slaughter, the scorched sin of humanity
Haunting vapors of pitiful sorrow
Insanity blossoming with black rain
Murderous atoms shattered spirits
American weapon of evil, B-29 Enola Gay

Sir Roger Casement - Human Rights Defender and Irish Martyr

On the 3rd of August1916 Sir Roger Casement was hanged for high treason for his part in trying to smuggle German weapons to Ireland for the Easter Rising of 1916. He was the last knight of the realm to befall such a fate in the United Kingdom.
Roger Casement was born on the 1at of September 1864 in Sandycove, Co. Dublin, the son of Captain Roger Casement of the British Army and Anne Jephson from Mallow Co. Cork1.  Roger’s father and his family were  natives of Co. Antrim and were of Ulster Protestant stock. Roger was raised as a Protestant by his father. When he was five years old however his mother secretly baptised him and his siblings (Charlie, Tom and Agnes) into the Catholic faith while on holidays in Aberystoyth, Wales. Like his country, Casement was a study in contradictions,  he has variously  been called “a microcosm of Ireland:” Dubliner, Ulsterman, Catholic, Protestant, poet, and patriot.
Orphaned at a young age, he he was raised by his uncle, John Casement, in Co. Antrim.He was a child of promising intellect who wrote poetry and immersed himself in Celtic myths. Unwilling to accept the charity of relatives, Casement left school at 15 to work for a shipping company in Liverpool. He had always dreamed of far-off places and now the handsome, hardworking clerk was soon promoted to be the British Consul, serving in West Africa.
Word of the brilliant Casement had reached the British Foreign Office. So, too, had word of the atrocities in King Leopold II’s private fiefdom, the Belgian Congo. Leopold, a staunch imperialist was perpetuating genocide there, eventually killing 10 million natives. He became, thanks to Congo resources, the richest man in Europe. The Foreign Office sent Casement into the Congo to investigate, photograph, and bear witness.He took the testimony of Africans who told stories  that were simply shocking , tales of , murder, whippings, maiming and rapes. The collection of ivory and rubber was not done by farming but by a forced terror system. The local people were given quotas to bring in rubber from the forest. If they failed to meet them they were tortured or their families held at ransom and abused. They were not bought, like slaves, but simply seized in a systematic and barbaric way.
Casement published his report in 1904 and then campaigned with others for change via the Congo Reform Association. By 1908 the Congo Free State was replaced by the Belgian Congo and the personal rule of King Leopold II ended. The hellish conditions in the Congo provide the background to Joseph Conrad’s 1899 novel Heart of Darkness. Conrad and Casement met in the Congo, sharing a flat for a few weeks, with  Conrad  declaring that Casement was one of the few decent white men he met in the Congo.
Casement’s courage, compassion and determination were put to further use when he was asked by the British government to travel to Putanamayo in Peru to report on the human price of the rubber trade in the Amazon, where once again human rights and so many lives were being sacrificed heedlessly for private profit and greed. The Peruvian Amazon Company was a London-registered enterprise with three British directors, John Russell Gubbins, a friend of Peruvian President Augusto Leguía; Herbert Reed, a banker; and Sir John Lister-Kaye, an aristocrat. This forced the British government to order an investigation into the ruthless search for rubber, enslavement of indigenous people and terrible atrocities that came close to wiping them out in a sustained act of ethnocide. Over 100,000 innocent people are thought to have been killed.
All that he witnessed would forever change his life too. Exploitation and greed, he realized, were business as usual for empires, including the world’s largest, the British Empire. His dormant Irish nationalism awoke; he shed his Anglo skin and found the Irishman underneath. Having sparked the world’s first human rights campaigns, Casement was awarded one of Great Britain’s highest citations, the Order of St. Michael and St. George.
But  after identifying with the oppressed  rather than the oppressor.  that same year Roger Casement  joined the Gaelic League and signed, for the first time, his name as Ruairí Mac Easmainn. The British Empire had forever lost her international hero.. Casement's  increasingly radical views ,and  an interest in Irish history, and a deepening critique of European Imperialism, that drew him ever more firmly into the nationalist fold.  In 1913 he resigned from the Foreign Office and  he became deeply involved with the Irish Volunteers, and  by the time war broke out in 1914, Casement was in America plotting with prominent Irish-Americans to secure German support for the Irish cause.
During World War I, operating on the principle, “The enemy of my enemy is my friend,” Casement and Devoy met with a German diplomat. They promised Ireland would remain neutral if Germany helped the coming Easter Rising by supplying guns and expertise. In Germany, Casement tried to secure arms and persuade Irish P.O.W.s to form an Irish Brigade. After two years, both initiatives were disappointments. There was no brigade – Irish soldiers wouldn’t dishonor their oath to the King – and Germany could only deliver some 20,000 guns, a fraction of the weaponry needed. Worse, British Intelligence was intercepting his messages.
The Easter Rising was imminent. Believing that there were not sufficient arms for the rebellion, Casement slipped out of Germany by submarine to warn the leaders. He placed the armaments on a separate boat, the Aud, flying under a Norwegian flag, which he planned to meet on the Irish shoreline.
First to arrive was the Aud, but it was ambushed by the waiting British navy and taken to Cork.
Unaware of the plight of the gun-runner, Casement had moved from the submarine to a dinghy. But this capsized, leaving him to swim onto Banna Strand in County Kerry.
It was 3:00 a.m., Good Friday, 1916. Once on land, Casement, ill, drenched, and exhausted, found there was no one to meet him. Still, he rejoiced:
“I was for one brief spell happy and smiling once more… all round were primroses and wild violets and the singing of the skylarks in the air and I was back in Ireland again.”
His happiness was short-lived. Ge was arrested and when the Easter rising began and the Proclamation of the Irish Republic was read, Casement was in the Tower of London charged with  high treason.. .
His trial at the Old Bailey lasted four days and on 29 June  was found guilty, stripped of his knighthood and sentenced to death by hanging . 

After his sentencing  he would deliver one of the greatest political statements of all time that would resonate long after his death.. He stated, logically – and ironically, since he had a cultured British accent – that he couldn’t commit treason against England since he wasn’t an Englishman to begin with. Then he railed against the colonial system, “
 His admirers and friends launched a campaign for clemency, arguing that he had acted out of conscience and in the interests of his country – Ireland. Those admirers included George Bernard Shaw, Conan Doyle, Bishops and politicians. The campaign looked as if it might succeed until the British government discovered and published  salacious extracts ftom  his diary, that outlined his sexual exploits, in order to discredit him with the British and Irish public. The Republican movement was a deeply socially conservative body instilled with Catholic morality, if anything even more homophobic than the British. It was horrified by the accusations, denying them as true but reacting by downplaying Casement’s role as a great Irish martyr. Members of Casement’s family, Irish Republicans and others have claimed in the past that the Casement diaries are forgeries, but most historians to day believe them to be genuine. Whether they are genuine or forgeries, there is no doubting the effect the extracts had on public opinion in 1916:  But for Casement  judging by his diary, the acceptance of homosexuality was an aspect of African society and unlike other empire-builders in the field, he saw the African not as a body to exploit but as an equal to love..
After receiving the last rites of the Catholic Church, Roger Casement was executed on August 3, 1916, at Pentonville Prison at 9 a.m  the sixteenth and final leader of the Rising to be executed. Standing in the gallows Casement was asked by the governor if he had any final words. He did,' Bury me in Ireland'.' John Ellis, his executioner, called him "the bravest man it ever fell to my unhappy lot to execute".He was the last knight of the realm to befall such a fate in the United Kingdom.
 Even after his execution his corpse was violated, his anus “examined” to provide further proof of his “perversity.” His body was buried on the prison grounds, and the Irish government and his family spent decades demanding the right to return his body to Ireland. British Prime Minister Harold Wilson’s government denied that wish and released the remains only on condition that they could not be brought into Northern Ireland, as “the government feared that a reburial there could provoke Catholic celebrations and Protestant reactions.”
His death  would inspire  W.B. Yeats to write, “The Ghost of Roger Casement” – in which the poet sees Casement’s spirit coming across the sea, knocking on the door, still wanting to come home:

 The Ghost of Roger Casement - W.B. Yeats

 O WHAT has made that sudden noise?
What on the threshold stands?
It never crossed the sea because
John Bull and the sea are friends;
But this is not the old sea
Nor this the old seashore.
What gave that roar of mockery,
That roar in the sea's roar?
The ghost of Roger Casement
Is beating on the door.

 John Bull has stood for Parliament,
A dog must have his day,
The country thinks no end of him,
For he knows how to say,
At a beanfeast or a banquet,
That all must hang their trust
Upon the British Empire,
Upon the Church of Christ.
The ghost of Roger Casement
Is beating on the door.

John Bull has gone to India
And all must pay him heed,
For histories are there to prove
That none of another breed
Has had a like inheritance,
Or sucked such milk as he,
And there's no luck about a house
If it lack honesty.
The ghost of Roger Casement
Is beating on the door.

I poked about a village church
And found his family tomb
And copied out what I could read
In that religious gloom;
Found many a famous man there;
But fame and virtue rot.
Draw round, beloved and bitter men,
Draw round and raise a shout;
The ghost of Roger Casement
Is beating on the door.

Casement was late to enter the pantheon of 1916 martyrs, marginalized, no doubt, by his sexuality. Finally, in 1965, an Irish military escort removed his remains from the prison graveyard in London and accompanied them to Ireland for a state funeral. Hundreds of thousands came to pay him tribute including the very conservative President de Valera, a veteran of the Easter Rising, who delivered his eulogy. He lies today in the Heroes section of Dublin’s Glasnevin Cemetery where his name, Ruairí Mac Easmainn is carved on a gravestone reading, in Gaelic, “He died for Ireland.”
As we remember the other  brave men and women who fought for Irish independence against colonial oppression, we must remember and honor this remarkable man who risked his own life, health and wellbeing to tell the world the true story of their enslavement, who died in the defense of the Irish people, isolated, alone and reviled by so many because of his sexuality. Now at least recognised as an Irish patriot and father of the human rights movement. The lesson of his life remains a vital one: when the status quo is injustice, the right thing to be is a rebel. We should continue .to honor the memory of a great man whose life was cut short by a cruel, dishonest and vindictive state, and whose own life was dedicated to others and the fine virtues of true, indivisible, human rights.

Dark Descent

Walking the daily shuffle
Thinking of those gone before,
To the river with heavy shoes
Carried by sadness, with chorus of blues,
Life's jagged  jigsaw's diverting reflection
The kindness of friendship's grip ceasing,
Beautiful dreams, the days kept erasing
Leaving behind scars, the weight of addiction,
Impenetrable minds, injecting poison
Desperate breaths dying to be free,
Not caring about actions, in need of sleep
Releasing pain from heart, taking a final drop,
As world imploded, and wings soar no more
From  alters of cruelty sank into the abyss,
Nothing left to waste, oblivion scattering
Escaping babylon, mental exhaustion,
Out of site now, releasing a trail of tears
The borders of intensity,.no longer possessing,
Carried to the vaults of eternity
As shoals of fish flash through the sea.

Ail Symudiad - Twristiaid yn y dre

This is a video of my local Welsh  language pop legends  Ail Symudiad (Second Movement) performing their track Twristiaid yn y dre (Tourists in the town). I think their fantastic, they have such a unique fresh sound, and have released so many great records over the years. The first record I actually  got by them  was a single called Geiriau (words) which  came out in 1981, and I've been fortunate to catch them play a number of times over the years, where they always manage to draw a loyal faithful crowd.
They were formed in Cardigan, West Wales in 1978. They were initially inspired by the punk movement that was sweeping the UK at the time. The band cites the Jam, The Undertones, the Buzzcocks, Y Trwynhau Coch and the Clash as primary influences.
The founding members of Ail Symudiad were brothers  Richard Jones, guitar, vocals; Wyn Jones bass, backing vocals and Gareth Lewis, drums. Though the personnel of the band has changed many times since its inception Richard and Wyn have remained the constant steady members since 1978, and the band is still going strong. Over forty years that's quite an achievement for any band.
They are also a good reason to learn the Welsh language  and  have helped  support  an array of other Welsh language bands over the years through their own record label Fflach records, such is their valuable contribution to Welsh culture.
 Here are links to their facebook page. and record label check them out.

https://www.facebook.com/Ail-Symudiad-662290424131524/

https://www.fflach.co.uk/about/

Rest Easy Peter Green (29 October 1946 – 25 July 2020)

Peter Green the influential and legendary lead guitarist, singer and original founder of Fleetwood Mac  has  passed away today (25 July). He was 73.
His family’s solicitors Swan Turton announced the news in a statement: “It is with great sadness that the family of Peter Green announce his death this weekend, peacefully in his sleep. A further statement will be provided in the coming days.”
The news on Saturday comes just two days day after Fleetwood Mac announced a forthcoming massive box set reissue of their first seven studio albums, some of which featured Green on guitar prior to the arrival of Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks in 1975.
Born Peter Greenbaum, in Bethnal Green, East London in 1946, to  a Jewish working class family, , he was a sensitive child in whom music had always inspired powerful emotions. He would burst into tears when he heard the theme from Disney's Bambi because he couldn't bear to remember the suffering of the baby deer. He was sensitive in other ways too. As a Jewish kid in London's tough East End, he was constantly teased and taunted, and the scars remained into adulthood.
From an early age, he became enthusiastic about US blues musicians like BB King and Muddy Waters. At the age of eleven he  first learned the  guitar after  acquiring a cheap Spanish guitar from his brother. At the age of 15, the teenager started playing guitar professionally and five years later got the chance to be the lead guitarist for the instrumental band Peter B's Looners,where he met drummer Mick Fleetwood. By the time he was 20, Green had already made a name for himself in the British blues scene. His big break came when he was given the chance to stand in for Eric Clapton in John Mayall & The Bluesbreakers. .Green went on to record The Hard Road with The Bluesbreakers, adding two of his own compositions to the album. He left soon after to form what would become Fleetwood Mac. Already regarded as one of the best Blues guitarists on the scene, Green’s skills as a songwriter were also fast developing,having penned hits such as Albatross, The Green Manalishi and Black Magic Woman now quite rightly regarded as classics.
Sadly, being a sensitive soul it was partly this, combined with a rapid rise to fame and the lifestyle that came with it that led to Green’s deterioration.  Much has been written about this, and in particular about Green’s decline in mental health and his erratic behaviour.
To ignore the details of this would be wrong. Green’s struggle with mental health has come to define his life as well as much of the music he and Fleetwood Mac created.
With newfound stardom came excess. Green began experimenting a lot with psychedelic drugs. On a tour in California, Green became acquainted  with Augustus Owsley III. notorious supplier of LSD to the Grateful Dead and Ken Kesey and it was not long after  that  his mental health also began to deteriorate. In some of his last appearances with the band, he wore a monk’s robe and a crucifix. He became increasingly uncomfortable with his material wealth and vowed to give all of his money away, urging his bandmates to do the same. He was starting to exhibit some of the erratic behaviour that would manifest itself in a much more extreme way in the following years.
If Green was already mentally unstable, then it was the events of Fleetwood Mac’s European tour in 1970 that  really tipped him over the edge. On touching down in Munich, Green was targeted by members of what road manager Dennis Keane described as a ‘cult’. An extremely glamorous couple appeared at the airport and greeted Green like an old friend. They followed him around for the rest of the day, and went to watch Fleetwood Mac play that night.
After the gig, the mysterious couple took Green and fellow guitarist Danny Kirwan to a huge mansion in the woods, which they had turned into a hippy commune. Green and Kirwan took LSD and began jamming with members of the commune in the basement of the house.
When Mick Fleetwood, John McVie and Jeremy Spencer later arrived, they were met by a worried looking Keane, who warned them that Green was tripping out badly and the place had a ‘horrible vibe’. The band called their hotel and swiftly left.
Although Green had already started to show signs of mental illness, this particular incident was one from which he never fully recovered. Green left Fleetwood Mac after a final performance in 1970. Shortly after leaving the band, Peter Green released his first solo album, The End of the Game, it  marked a significant departure from anything he produced before or since."That was my LSD album," admitted Green  "I was trying to reach things that I couldn't before but I had experienced through LSD and mescaline." It was also to be his last creation for some years, as his mental health continued to decline from his LSD use.
Just a couple of years later,  following an outburst in which Green smashed an entire cabinet of crockery at his brother’s house,  he was interned at a psychiatric hospital, and was eventually diagnosed as schizophrenic .and spent time in hospitals undergoing electro-convulsive therapy during the mid-70s at St Thomas's Hospital in South London. This drastic treatment frightened him, but it stabilised his behaviour by reducing him to a level of docility in which he appeared to be almost in a trance
Sadly, he would go on to suffer through years of psychotic outbursts. At one point he grew his nails and hair long and wild and roamed around Richmond Park in London, howling and barking like a dog.  The most serious incident saw him smuggle a shotgun into the UK from Canada, threatening to shoot his accountant. Acording to legend, Green wanted him to stop sending him his royalty cheques for Fleetwood Mac's early work, worth around £30,000 a year.
Thankfully, as treatment for schizophrenia  advanced and Green’s own lifestyle settled down, so did his erratic behaviour. In the 1990s he went on to form the Peter Green Splinter Group. They recorded 10 albums during their time together, including Hot Food Powder and The Robert Johnson Songbook. The albums feature cover versions of every song Robert Johnson is known to have recorded.
It is quite amazing that after more than a decade of serious mental health problems, Green was able to produce two albums, both of which are eminently listenable.Green married Jane Samuels in January 1978; the couple divorced in 1979. They have a daughter, Rosebud Samuels-Greenbaum (born 1978).
While his career may have been cut short, his impact and legacy has been lasting.‘Without Peter Green there would be no Fleetwood Mac. Beyond that and in his own right, Peter Green produced music that continues to inspire and delight listeners. It is for this that we should remember him. He is without question one of the best and most underrated blues guitarists of all time.He released seven solo albums altogether, the final of which was A Case for the Blues (with Katmandu) in 1984.
Green  was among eight members of Fleetwood Mac,- along with Fleetwood, Stevie Nicks, Lindsey Buckingham, John McVie, Christine McVie, Danny Kirwan and Jeremy Spencer - who were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1998.
Rolling Stone ranked Green at number 58 in its list of the "100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time", and in 1996, Green was voted the third-best guitarist of all time in Mojo magazine.
In February before the coronavirus shut down large scale gatherings ,Mick Fleetwood  organised  a gig in celebration of Green, with artists including Fleetwood, Pink Floyd's David Gilmour, ZZ Top's Billy Gibbons and guitarists Jonny Lang and Andy Fairweather Low performing  at the London Palladium. Mick Fleetwood said of the gig at the time: “Peter was my greatest mentor and it gives me such joy to pay tribute to his incredible talent. I am honoured to be sharing the stage with some of the many artists Peter has inspired over the years and who share my great respect for this remarkable musician.”
Because of his unigue talents he was loved by  friends and admirers in equal measure and musicians have been quick to pay tribute upon news of his death.
Whitesnake frontman David Coverdale called him "a breathtaking singer, guitarist & composer". Guitarist Bernie Marsden wrote that he was probably "one of millions" he [Green] touched.
Peter Frampton, a contemporary of Green's, tweeted: "Most sadly have lost one of the most tasteful guitar players ever."
Black Sabbath's Geezer Butler described Green as "one of the greats", while Mumford and Sons guitarist Winston Marshall thanked Green "for the music", describing him as a "#GOAT" (greatest of all time).
Film director Edgar Wright tweeted: "RIP Fleetwood Mac co founder and original lead singer Peter Green", linking to a performance of one of their hits, Oh Well.
Actor David Morrissey praised Peter Green's "fantastic soulful voice", saying he "loved his playing and his singing so much".
Goodbye Peter Green, tragic genius and one of the greatest  guitarists the world has known. Rest easy. Long may his legacy endure. I extend  my thoughts to the loved ones of Peter Green at this sad time. Below I present some of the best fom the inimitable Peter Green.

Man of the World - Fleetworld Mac

Green Manalishi -   Fleetwood Mac

Black Magic Woman - Fleetwood Mac

Oh Well - Fleetwood Mac

Peter Green - Fool No More

Peter Green  and the Splinter Group  - The Supernatural

John Newton (24/7/1725 -22/12/1807 ) - From Slave Trader to Abolitionist.

John Newton, slave trader turned abolitionist and author of the hymn Amazing Graze was born on 24th July 1725 in  Wapping, England. His father was a master mariner. His mother. a pious Dissenter, taught him to read Scripture and memorize Reformed catechisms and hymns. Together they attended an Independent (Congregational) church in London, at a time when barely 1 percent of that city's population went to churches associated with that Puritan-derived group. At age 7, however, Newton's mother died of tuberculosis, and he fell under the less religious and more distant care of his sea-captain father.
His father remarried after his mother's death, but John did not enjoy a good relationship with his stepmother. In 1733 Newton was sent to a boarding-school at Stratford, and at the age of eleven he went to sea with his father, after losing  his first job, in a merchant's office, because of "unsettled behavior and impatience of restraint"—a pattern that would persist for years. He spent his later teen years at sea before he was press-ganged aboard the H.M.S. Harwich in 1744. Newton rebelled against the discipline of the Royal Navy and deserted. He was caught, put in irons, and flogged. He eventually convinced his superiors to discharge him to a slaver ship bound for West Africa. Espousing freethinking principles, he remained arrogant and insubordinate, and he lived with moral abandon: "I sinned with a high hand," he later wrote, "and I made it my study to tempt and seduce others."
Eventually he reached the coast of Sierra Leone where he became the servant of an abusiveslave trader. In 1748, he was rescued by a sea captain and returned to England.
He became a slave ship master himself, working with slave traders to transport people, treating them as cargo. Newton later explained: "The slaves, in general, are bought, and paid for. Sometimes, when goods are lent, or trusted on shore, the trader voluntarily leaves a free person, perhaps his own son, as a hostage, or pawn, for the payment; and, in case or default, the hostage is carried off, and sold; which, however hard upon him, being in consequence of a free stipulation, cannot be deemed unfair. There have been instances of unprincipled captains, who, at the close of what they supposed their last voyage, and when they had no intention of revisiting the coast, have detained, and carried away, free people with them; and left the next ship, that should come from the same port, to risk the consequences. But these actions, I hope, and believe, are not common."
Newton argued that it was important to have as many slaves as possible on board the slave-ship: "With our ships, the great object is, to be full. When the ship is there, it is thought desirable, she should take as many as possible. The cargo of a vessel of a hundred tons, or little more, is calculated to purchase from two hundred and twenty to two hundred and fifty slaves. Their lodging-rooms below the deck, which are three (for the men, the boys, and the women) besides a place for the sick, are sometimes more than five feet high, and sometimes less; and this height is divided towards the middle, for the slaves lie in two rows, one above the other, on each side of the ship, close to each other, like books upon a shelf. I have known them so close, that the shelf would not, easily, contain one more. Let it be observed, that the poor creatures, thus cramped for want of room, are likewise in irons, for the most part both hands and feet, and two together, which makes it difficult for them to turn or move, to attempt either to rise or to lie down, without hurting themselves, or each other."
Newton admitted that conditions on board ship were appalling: "The heat and the smell of these rooms, when the weather will not admit of the slaves being brought upon deck, and of having their rooms cleaned every day, would be, almost, insupportable, to a person not accustomed to them. If the slaves and their rooms can be constantly aired, and they are not detained too long on board, perhaps there are not many die; but the contrary is often their lot. They are kept down, by the weather, to breathe a hot and corrupted air, sometimes for a week: this, added to the galling of their irons, and the despondency which seizes their spirits, when thus confined, soon becomes fatal."
On one occasion Newton kept a record of how many slaves died on a journey from Africa to South Carolin: "The ship, in which I was mate, left the coast with two hundred and eighteen slaves on board; and though we were not much affected by epidemical disorders, I find, by my journal of that voyage (now before me) that we buried sixty-two on our passage to South Carolina, exclusive of those which died before we left the coast, of which I have no account. I believe, upon an average between the more healthy, and the more sickly voyages, and including all contingencies, One fourth of the whole purchase may be allotted to the article of mortality. That is, if the English ships purchase sixty thousand slaves annually, upon the whole extent of the coast, the annual loss of lives cannot be much less than fifteen thousand."
Newton also took slaves to Antigua.  He later recalled a conversation with a man who purchased slaves from Newton: "He said, that calculations had been made, with all possible exactness, to determine which was the preferable, that is, the most saving method of managing slaves". He went onto say that they needed to decided: "Whether, to appoint them moderate work, plenty of provision, and such treatment, as might enable them to protract their lives to old age? Or, by rigorously straining their strength to the utmost, with little relaxation, hard fare, and hard usage, to wear them out before they became useless, and unable to do service; and then, to buy new ones, to fill up their places?" Newton added: "He farther said, that these skillful calculators had determined in favor of the latter mode, as much the cheaper; and that he could mention several estates, in the island of Antigua, on which, it was seldom known, that a slave had lived above nine years."
It was during a storm on 21st March 1748, when Newton thought his ship full of slaves may sink, that he prayed to God for deliverance. While this was the beginning of his desire to embrace Christianity, it was later, on another slave ship that he became deeply ill and prayed again for God’s intervention. This experience is what he touted as the moment when he began to realize the horror of his trade. But despite this he continued to work on ships taking slaves from the Guinea coast and the West Indies (1748–9)  and he became master of slave-trading ships, The Duke of Argyle (1750–51) and The African (1752–54). His biographer Bruce Hidsmarth argued "Newton has sometimes been accused of hypocrisy for holding strong religious convictions at the same time as being active in the slave trade, praying above deck while his human cargo was in abject misery below deck."
Newton married Mary Catlett on 12th February 1750 and in 1754 suffered a convulsive fit and was forced to leave the maritime trade. Later that year he attended religious meetings addressed by George Whitefield and John Wesley. In August 1755 Newton took up a civil service post as tide surveyor at Liverpool. He also became a leading evangelical laymen in the region. This included hosting large religious meetings in his own home.
Newton was considered a Methodist and was unsuccessful in several applications for orders in the Church of England. He sent the first draft of his autobiography to William Legge, 2nd Earl of Dartmouth. With his support Newton received deacon's orders, on 29th April 1764, from the Bishop of Lincoln. Newton became curate-in-charge of Olney in Buckinghamshire.
Newton had become friends with the poet, William Cowper and in 1771 they began to collaborate formally on a project to publish a volume of their collected hymns. Olney Hymns was published in 1779. Newton's most famous contribution Amazing Grace  is included."
The irony of Newton’s lyrics is that part of history is that the song was adopted as a spiritual sung by black African slaves to engender strength, hope and encouragement. It was performed by Liwana Porter during George Floyd's memorial service in Minneapolis and  is probably  one of the best known hymns across a variety of Protestant denominations. The song was originally known as "Faith's Review and Expectation."

 In 2015, President Barack Obama, a man with no previous history of public singing, sang the hymn at a memorial service for the nine African Americans killed by a white supremacist shooter inside one of the nation's oldest black churches, Mother Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina. The moment seemed to resonate with a wide variety of Americans.

In Newton’s age, slavery was an economic reality, as it has been at many times in human history, including today. There is always a profit to be made from human servitude. Newton knew both sides of the economic divide. Having endured slavery, he apparently for some years had no qualms about profiting from it. He knew what it was to be a wretch in two senses: first, to lose physical agency, and then to fail to assume moral agency. But he changed.
In January 1780 Newton accepted the offer from  John Thornton of the benefice of St Mary Wolchurch in Lombard Street, where he wholeheartedly supported the work of the Committee for the Abolition of the Slave Trade, formed in 1787. He became close friends with William Wilberforce and became involved in his campaign against the slave trade.
Wilberforce, a Member of Parliament, was the nephew of one of Newton's London friends. Inspired by the former slave trader, and paralleling Newton's own conversion, Wilberforce began to question his role in life. Although Newton, then a lowly Olney curate, was convinced that Wilberforce was just another wealthy politician, he persuaded him to crusade for change and use his station in life and his powerful friends (including Prime Minister Pitt) to seek reform. One of the chief topics for such advocacy was abolition. In fact, Wilberforce wrote in his journal on October 28, 1787, that one of the two goals that had been set before him was "the suppression of the Slave Trade."
Newton joined in the fight for the abolition of slavery by publishing the essay "Thoughts upon the African Slave Trade." in 1787. He admitted that this was "a confession, which... comes too late....It will always be a subject of humiliating reflection to me, that I was once an active instrument in a business at which my heart now shudders." Newton explained why he had become involved in the campaign against the slave trade: "The nature and effects of that unhappy and disgraceful branch of commerce, which has long been maintained on the Coast of Africa, with the sole, and professed design of purchasing our fellow-creatures, in order to supply our West-India islands and the American colonies, when they were ours, with slaves; is now generally understood. So much light has been thrown upon the subject, by many able pens; and so many respectable persons have already engaged to use their utmost influence, for the suppression of a traffic, which contradicts the feelings of humanity; that it is hoped, this stain of our National character will soon be wiped out."
Because Christians still felt that slavery was justified in the Bible, Newton and Wilberforce wisely avoided building their protests on a religious platform. Instead, they condemned the practice as an inhumane treatment of their fellow men and women. Newton, speaking strongly from his own experiences, also proposed that the captors were in turn brutalized by their callous treatment of others and cited offences including torture, rape, and murder. Newton's friend, William Cowper, joined their fight by writing pro-abolition poems and ballads.
In 1789 Wilberforce introduced a "Bill for the Abolition of Slavery" in Parliament. The bill faced opposition in both Houses, but the forces against enactment became weaker each time it came up for a vote. The bill finally was passed by the House of Commons in 1804 and by the House of Lords in 1807 after which King George III declared it law.

John Newton died on 21st December 1807  aged 82 a few months after the Act abolishing the slave trade throughout the British Empire had been passed. It did not bring slavery itself to an end, as this was only outlawed completely in British territory with the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833. However, the 1807 Act was an incredibly important step in that direction, that encouraged abolitionists around the world.  Newton  was buried by the side of his wife in St Mary Woolchurch on 31st December; both bodies were reinterred at Olney in 1893.
As far as I am aware, there isn’t a statue to Newton in any significant place. If there were then, although I applaud the sentiment behind the pulling down of Edward Colston’s statue, I would be much more startled to see the same thing happen to Newton’s statue if it existed. The Black Lives Matter campaign has been  focussing on educating people about systemic racism and on changing hearts and minds.
After the senseless death of George Floyd and others has awakened an anger and a widespread undeniable feeling of injustice, a feeling that people from black and minority ethnic groups do face discrimination and we cannot ignore. As a result it is possible to wholeheartedly support the Black Lives Matter movement and campaign to stamp out racism but also to acknowledge that we can’t just wipe things out without learning and we also need historical examples of people that can and do change. In Newton’s age, slavery was an economic reality, as it has been at many times in human history, including today. There is always a profit to be made from human servitude. But Newton, a man who had enslaved others, at least changed into a man fighting against the very thing he had been been so much part of. This is why I believe it is important to remember him.

Out of the Shadows.

The world swiftly rearranges
Moving faster than a runaway train,
As the draw bridges shut down
And children grow older faster,
We all stand at the crossroads
Watching each pivotal step,
Kindling hope, igniting rainbows
The pipes of pan serenading,
Beyond the whips and chains that bind
Eternity in mothering bridges,
Delivering confirmation, validation
Following contracts of good and evil,
Gravity of mercy shared
Dynamics of existence,
Between hours of prepared purpose
Shrouds of twisted navigation continue,
As cherry blossom powder the earth
Greed of old, keeps infecting,
We must keep searching for answers
Make magic out of days,
From blue armchairs in sad suburbs
Without inhibition, keep on believing,
Keep on easing minds, bending the rules
Releasing knots, making wishes come true,
Like the old black and white movies
Old wild world keeps on spinning,
Specks of rain softly soothing
Interrupting dragons fangs,
Take to the river at full moon
In the force of currents, believe in change,
Upon the stair cases of ink
Paint flowers, get drunk on imagination.