Local fatcat in our back garden demanding entry (and presumably food), but behind them is a portentous Bergmanesque memento mori!!!

Remembering my Dad, Shem Arungu-Olende, on what would have been his birthday. Here we are newly arrived in London in the mid 1960s. Behind us is the Albert Memorial in Kensington Gardens (& Dad is the one with the cool hat) .

30th national protest in central London against the ongoing starvation and ethnic cleansing in Gaza

1/11 There is a lot of bunk talked about Victory in Japan Day. The media wants to recall the forgotten British Army left thousands of miles from home and how the Japanese were the most brutal imperialists, no one wants to mention a strange alliance between the defeated Japanese and the British…

1/3 Finally finished #BLACKSPARTACUS, the magnificent biography of #ToussaintLouverture by #SudhirHazareesingh. The detail it goes into is remarkable showing his (occasionally contradictory) revolutionary development. If you only read one book #CLRJames’ #BLACKJACOBINS is still it, but to fully…

1/4 George Orwell wrote in 1944 on extreme belief about who was in the pay of who, ‘Anyone acquainted with the [far right/fascist] type will know that no assurance, no demonstration, no proof of the most solid kind would ever convince the writer of this that [left wing paper Orwell wrote for]…

This juxtaposition says it all.

‘At home, racism, nativism, and xenophobia have been bolstered by learned ignorance of imperial history.’ #PaulGilroy in his introduction to #StuartHall: Selected writings on Race and Difference. LEARNED IGNORANCE is a great term here

While celebrating Cleo Laine’s jazz, recall her racial legacy. Born 1927 in London to a Jamaican dad and a white mum (disowned by her family). Laine & husband John Dankworth fought racism through the Stars Campaign for Interracial Friendship. Read about it in Rick Blackman’s Forty Miles of Bad Road!

Online meeting to discuss recent Kenyan uprising tomorrow (Sunday). Annoyed I won’t be able to attend as in London we have anti-fascist protest (so I hope it is recorded).

Today.

1/2 Since I last visited Glasgow’s #KelvingroveArtGallery and Museum has had a #BlackLivesMatter moment. There is a large noticeboard in the central hall admitting to links with enslavement. So now they mark empire related produce and have special exhibitions on colonised countries…

In Glasgow’s #KelvingroveArtGallery, currently overrun by coachloads of multinational teenagers. In the cafe many are rearranging tables & creating mess. I see a mutinous ‘Pirate Jenny’ rage in the eyes of the 2 young female museum staff trying to keep some semblance of order. Hope all survive OK!

Emma Bernard, 33, from Ancoats, finds it difficult to decipher social situations at the best of times – yet has mysteriously managed to last three entire decades without playfully spanking a colleague.

Kenya police killed all ten confirmed fatalities during Saba Saba protests. The nationwide revolt continued with Saba Saba (7/7) demos commemorating attacks on democracy protesters on 7 July 1990. #Kenya #SabaSaba socialistworker.co.uk/internationa...

The final tally from today’s protests in #Kenya. All killed or injured by the police. (KNCHR is the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights).

Jeremy Corbyn MP talking at the #Marxism2025 festival in London on why he’s launching a new party.

Today, after 14 years, I’m resigning from the Labour Party. Jeremy Corbyn and I will co-lead the founding of a new party, with other Independent MPs, campaigners and activists across the country. Join us. The time is now. Sign up here to stay updated: actionnetwork.org/forms/join-t...

Saw fascinating & moving play WHO IS CLAUDE CAHUN? at London’s Southwark Playhouse. With partner Marcel Moore, Cahun created Surrealist photos in Paris. They were both gender queer (or trans). Cahun was Jewish & they organised artistic resistance to the Nazi occupation of the Channel Island, Jersey.

Great birthday present reproduction of #SunRa film poster for SPACE IS THE PLACE (1974) from Sally Campbell. Groovy

𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐊𝐄𝐍𝐘𝐀𝐍 𝐏𝐀𝐏𝐄𝐑𝐒 𝐓𝐎𝐃𝐀𝐘

Protests take place almost a year after several killed and seized by Kenyan police in finance bill protests.

Posting this 1967 Birmingham News editorial cartoon for all the people who don't realize that this is how MLK was viewed by a big chunk of white America.

It’s peak cherry time in the garden. Here’s a cherry picking view from up in the tree. #fruitpicking

Goodbye to Sly Stone

Julian Simpson’s magnificent Mythos repeated on BBC Sounds. Meta myths with laughs, philosophy and Nicola Walker! www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/serie...

…The Great War 1914-1919. This is the Artillery Regiment memorial in London. On REMEMBRANCE DAY we hear the war ended in 1918. This date slip reminds us of less remembered imperial business - controlling oil across ARABIA, PERSIA & PALESTINE & trying to crush the revolution in RUSSIA (all listed).

Saw great Dolly Parton tribute band Dumb Blondes at London’s Lexington. With Mother Lori Mae; Yee/Haw and stepping lessons from Strap In Line Dance. Fantastically fun evening of queer country.

1/3 Saw the amazing site specific SPIRITS OF THE BLACK MERIDIAN theatre performance outside around Greenwich in London. Black voices from history demand to be heard, in a place key to slave trade, navy…

1/5 Marched past the statue of Boudicca on today’s massive protest in London to commemorate the Nakba and against the genocidal massacre in Gaza. She was queen of the Iceni (in East Anglia). The Roman invasion defeated them, but the royals were told they could still rule if they submitted to Rome…

Some of the workshops at the Summit of Resistance #WeDemandChange in London today.

At the opening plenary of the #WeDemandChange summit in London. Speakers from strikes, anti-war, socialist and Palestine campaigns. Thousands attending full of anger and hope.

Thousands protesting in an extra, emergency demo outside the Israeli embassy in London’s Kensington against Israel’s resumption of bombing and killing in Gaza. #palestine

1/2 Memorial to Victorian explorer John Speke in London’s Kensington Gardens. It recalls discoveries in East Africa - “Nyanza, [Lake] Victoria and [the source of] the Nile.” The reason it doesn’t say he “discovered” them is not fear of offending people like the Luo who’d lived there for centuries…

Books oddity. Just got a new print-on-demand academic book (on linguistics, sociology and ethnic identity in Kenya as it happens). But when I open it, I find it’s a pamphlet on the life of artist Vincent Van Gogh; but no, after 43 pages normal service is resumed and all my book appears to be there.

Opposing fascism, racism and the far right on the streets of London today.

The front of today’s antiracist, antifarright march assembles in London’s West End with the Waltham Forest Stand up to Racism (which I’m part of). #antiracist #antifascist

Brief reminder of the Tuskegee airmen (known as the Red Tails). Black aircrews in the segregated US airforce during WW2 at a time when most at air command didn’t believe that black people had the skills or intelligence to fly aircraft. But the Red Tails flew spectacularly well.

1/4 It’s the anniversary of the air crash of a deportation plane for Mexican workers killing all 32 on board on 28 January 1948 in Los Gatos Canyon, California. Radical singer Woody Guthrie was outraged that the news named the 4 US crew, but just referred to the 28 Mexicans as deportees… #migrants

Sad to hear of the death of the great cartoonist and writer Jules Feiffer. My favourite cartoon of his seems appropriate in days like these. #julesfeiffer

Elon Musk waving to the inauguration crowd. How could this not be taken for a Nazi Hitler salute. (Not my montage but it makes the point). #antifascist

1/2 Did you know how many of the set pieces in the moving and harrowing film BLITZ are based on real events and images from the time? Steve McQueen’s magnificent WW2 drama is still streaming. Balham underground flooded after a bomb hit a water main killing 70 people; …

My review of SOUNDTRACK TO A COUP D’ETAT, an excellent new film on the imperial overthrow of independence leader Patrice Lumumba in Congo and the role of jazz.

And #letsdoit25 day 11 song 2: "Mbube" by Solomon Linda's Original Evening Birds (1939). The song that was misheard as "Wimoweh" and then ripped off as "The Lion Sleeps Tonight", and which started its own genre of South African music.

Listening to Ornette Coleman's 1988 album VIRGIN BEAUTY. Many people (once including me) don't notice that the beautiful virgins on the sleeve are young men from the Wodaabe people in Niger performing the Yaake dance. This is to attract women, though to Western eyes it can look effeminate.

Ye Nuns supported by Quick Romance and Charley Stone & the Actual Band at London’s Lexington

1/2 It's the birthday of the late, great British comic artist Frank "Dan Dare" Hampson. Few know that when Peter O'Donnell began his newspaper strip Modesty Blaise in 1962 Hampson was signed up as artist. HIs rejected version of the opening is shown here next to the published work by…

1/4 WAS IT NOT CURIOUS? Stevie Smith Was it not curious of Aúgustin Saint Aúgustin, Saint Aúgustin, When he saw the beautiful British children To say such a curious thing? He said he must send the gospel, the gospel, At once to them over the waves He never said he thought it was wicked…