Welcome everyone to the first lecture of the Center for Pan-African Studies. My name is Daniel Morugeta. I'm the chair of the Center for Pan-African Studies. It's a pleasure to have you all here today. We are honored and proud to welcome back Professor Hakimadi to so us. I want to say a bit about the format of this evening's lecture. After my introduction, Professor Adi will deliver a lecture titled Pan-Africanism History for about 40 minutes. And we'll have a time for questions and answers. So before formally introducing our distinguished speaker, I would like to take a moment to share some words about the Center itself. The Center we are formally launching today aims to foster scholarship, facilitate policy dialogue and promote public engagement on matters pertaining to African continental and regional politics as well as diaspora issues. We aim to revitalize the spirit of the Pan-African intellectual tradition and cultivate fresh perspectives on contemporary issues relating to African regional and continental issues. This is really particularly important given the gap between scholarship, policy and practice in African and African diaspora issues worldwide. There exists a glaring in kind of an institutional divide African experts in Western institutions like SOAS and grassroots diasporan social justice movements and African policy makers and societies on shared topic issues. African study centers often ignore diasporan communities while continental policy makers often give priority to aspirational and idealistic policy proposals that do not address the daily struggles of Africans and people of African descent. This result has resulted in a disconnection between knowledge policy and action. Therefore, there is a pressing need for a new platform that encourages Pan-African dialogue among diverse groups. At the core of our mission is also the belief that the historical legacy of Pan-Africanism or in the Pan-African movement broadly should guide us in addressing the challenges facing African diaspora today. The fundamental problems of inequality in justice that the Pan-African movement aimed to tackle are still with us. Instead of relying on trendy buzzwords and neologism that divert attention to semantics, we believe Pan-Africanism effectively communicates the fight for emancipation, freedom, dignity and universal humanity. Neglecting this vital tradition would mean disregarding the fundamental philosophies that underpin anti-racist, anti-colonial and anti-imperial politics of emancipation. We believe we must preserve the essence of the Pan-African resistance traditions. The struggles for the emancipation of Africa and African diaspora is ongoing. History in this context remains not just a record of the past, but a living vital for shaping our present and our future. It is in this spirit that I would like to introduce our speaker, Professor Hakim Adi, the first historian of African heritage to become a professor of history in Britain. Professor Hakim Adi is a pioneer in the field of African history and Pan-Africanism. He has extensively explored these topics through his writings, including seminal works such as West Africa in Britain, 1900 to 1960, Nationalism, Pan-Africanism and Communism, Pan-Africanism in Communism, the Communist International, Africa in the diaspora, Pan-Africanism in History, African in the Caribbean people in Britain, a history which was shortlisted for the prestigious Wolfson History Prize in Britain in September of 1923. Professor Adi's contribution extends beyond academia. He is instrumental in the founding of the History Matters Initiative in 2014. He is also the founder and consultant of the Young Historian Project. In 2018, Professor Adi launched the world's first online masters in the history of Africa and African diaspora, which trained many students, including six currently engaged in the PhD program. Unfortunately, this program was suspended, leading to the termination of Professor Adi's employment. Despite these challenges, we are immensely privileged to have Professor Hakim Adi with us today. So please join me in extending your welcome to Professor Adi. Okay, well, many thanks for the welcome. It's very good to be back at SOAS, where I spent 12 years as a student. As I was saying, this is the first time I've ever been invited to return. So it's a historic moment for me at least, if not for SOAS. This building, I think I'm right in saying this was our student union building when we were here in the 70s. And it used to be the scene of some very, very mass union meetings, in which interestingly enough, Ethiopia was often the main topic of conversation. And at that time, one of the key figures here was Abdul Majid Hussein, one of the Ethiopians in the audience. I hope no Abdul Majid was one of the great products, we could say, of SOAS. I'm sure there's not a plaque to him anywhere, or there should be. Anyway, a very, very important figure in the history of SOAS and probably in the history of Ethiopia as well. Anyway, that's a topic for another lecture. Hi, come in, get a seat, hurry up. So what I'm going to do is to say something about the history of Pan-Africanism, but particularly today with a British focus. So I'm going to show, come in, come in.  Obviously, I'm a bit restricted by the images I have and not everything is readily available in an image, but we'll see how we get on to try and present something of this history for you. And I'm starting off with kind of definition. In the book, I go into a much more, hopefully more profound definition. But we can say this is a kind of working definition. I think in the book, I say that Pan-Africanism is like a mighty river with many different streams and currents and so on. But this is the kind of essence of what I'm concerned with or what I should be talking about. And I'm going to start my journey, my historical journey in Britain, with this well-known figure, Elaro Equiano. I suppose we could say I'm starting with a Nigerian, but Nigeria didn't exist then, so I can't be guilty of that crime. But Equiano is important because there are two reasons in the history of Pan-Africanism. One is that he presented to us the concept of being African. So the concept of being African is essential to an Africanism and whatever definition we have. And as you can see from the way that his book was presented, he talks about himself as the African. And not only did he present himself as the African, he represented Africans at that time, of course in Britain in particular, but also more generally. And he was also a member of one of the first Pan-African organisations in this country or anywhere in the world for that matter, we could say. The Sons of Africa, which was an organisation based here, primarily in London, I think most of its members were based in London in the late 18th century, which campaigned at that time for the key things which were concerning Africans, particularly in the diaspora, but also in the continent. And that thing was the enslavement and human trafficking of African men, women and children. So one of the features of Pan-Africanism is it in its different phases and its different time periods, it always deals and addresses particular problems. Later on, we may think about what Pan-Africanism should be addressing or might be addressing today. But at that time, this was one of the key problems, especially for people like Ekriano and his comrades in the Sons of Africa, who were people who had formerly enslaved but had managed to liberate themselves. So that organisation and that concept or conception of being African were extremely important in that period in terms of the development of Pan-Africanism. Now, we often talk or people often talk about some of the founding fathers. I'll use that term of Pan-Africanism. And I just thought I'd mention a couple of a particular relationship with Britain. This is Edward Blyden, some of you may have heard of, who is mainly known for his writing in the 19th century. He was, amongst other things, a journalist and editor of one of the first Pan-African papers called The Negro, which was published and distributed in Africa, the Caribbean, Europe, the US and so on. Originally born in the Caribbean, but he spent most of his life in Africa, particularly in Liberia and Sierra Leone. But he had a particular connection with this country and was actually based in London for quite a lot of his or a significant part of his career. He was Liberia's ambassador to Britain. But he also had a rather interesting connection with the British Prime Minister William Gladstone and Blyden and Gladstone used to correspond with each other. They were both classical scholars and they actually corresponded in Greek or Hebrew or whatever. But they had that correspondence. And in fact, Blyden also corresponded with somebody else who was a classics teacher. I can't remember if it was Ethan or Harrow. But anyway, he had these peculiar friendships that were based in this country. So anyway, more could be said, but for time reasons, I'm not going to go on about Edward Blyden. Another is Africanus Horton, James Horton, who was another very important writer originally from Sierra Leone. But studied in this country, as you can see, was a doctor, studied at the University of Edinburgh and also was an early pioneer of the conception of pan-Africanism. That is the idea that Africans should unite to deal with the common challenges that were being faced. He was, amongst other things, a writer against racism. He was involved in various organizations that were being developed at that time, particularly in West Africa. And organizations which were creating a positive image of Africans in that period like the Fanticon Federation and what was then the Gold Coast and so on. Again, a very interesting guy. You can still find his writings on various things. And he was one of the first to have a conception of West Africa as a kind of political entity that should be united, independent, self-governing and so on and so forth. So he has a particular place in the kind of pan-Africanist who were connected with this country. So then we go to the first Pan-African Conference and whenever I go anywhere in the world, I always tell everybody that Pan-Africanism started in Britain and specifically in London. And this is the evidence if evidence were needed. The first ever Pan-African Conference, as you can see, was held here. It was organized by the African Association, which was formed in 1897. And again, as you can see, the secretary of that association was a man called Henry Sylvester Williams, who I'll say more about in a moment. Another influential activist in that time and the person who composed the music for that conference was Samuel Colage Taylor, the famous classical composer. In fact, after the conference became one of the leading, a Pan-African association was formed and he became one of the leading members of that association. And the idea of the conference was to get those of African heritage together to speak with one voice about all of those things which were of concern at that time. And of course, this is a time of the so-called scramble for Africa, amongst other things. A time when many Africans and those elsewhere in the Caribbean, for example, were living under colonial rule or about to be living under colonial rule. There were all kinds of other problems of racism, of disenfranchisement, of lynching in the US and all kinds of things. So those who organized the conference were concerned to discuss all of these things, but to speak with one voice on them and to present their views to the world to say that we Africans are quite capable of addressing these issues and putting forward our views and so on. So that was a very important event. The first time that the term Pan-Africa was really used, although some people in the US claim that they used it before this, but really they didn't, not in the way that it was used here. So this is really the first time the term was used. And this is Henry Sylvester Williams, as you can see, was a legal person. And of course, legal people are very important, not least in our current struggle. Yes, so people like Elaine who's sitting here in the front, very, very important. Now, you'll see that all of these people I've mentioned so far have one thing in common. And that is that they're all men. Of course, they would be men, wouldn't they? And so people often said, well, these were the kind of fathers of Pan-Africanism. But in fact, modern Pan-Africanism starts not with these men, but with this woman. So this is not a very good photo. It was sent to me by her family. But this woman is really the mother of Pan-Africanism. Her name is Alice Kinlock. She came from South Africa to Britain in the 1890s. She came to really, she came as an activist to speak about the terrible conditions that her compatriots in South Africa were facing. She spoke all over the country, here in London, in the north, different places. And then she met Henry Sylvester Williams and various others. And she was the one who inspired the founding of the African Association and inspired the idea of the First Pan-African Conference. She was more or less forgotten about and written out of history, probably the best part of a century. But now she's been re-established. And so whenever we talk about Pan-Africanism, we have to mention Alice Kinlock. She didn't stay in Britain long enough to actually attend that first conference because she was the woman who inspired the idea, the creation of the African Association and so on. Okay, so then, well, again, there are many other people that we can mention in this country. One of my favourites is this young gentleman. His name was Bandeli Omoni. He was a young Nigerian. He also studied at Edinburgh. A lot of students in those days studied at Edinburgh University. He's interesting in that he wrote one of the first, we can say, Pan-African books, a book that concerned itself with the problems of Africa and those in the diaspora. Published in 1908 in Edinburgh, it was called a defense of the Ethiopian movement. And Ethiopian not meaning the country of Ethiopia, but Ethiopianism, which was another expression for Pan-Africanism in this very, very early period. And that book, you know, you can't really get it these days. We need to get it republished really. Very interesting young man. He left this country and then went to Brazil where he was imprisoned for his activities and he died at the unfortunately young age of 27 having contracted Berry Berry in prison. Anyway, good looking young man, an important figure in this history. So this is another key British figure in the history of Pan-Africanism. I'm always a bit reluctant to speak about Dussi Muhammad Ali when Ray Bowen is here. Ray is one of the world's leading experts on Dussi Muhammad Ali. But what we will say about him, we can say he was originally from Egypt. He usually referred to himself as Egyptian Sudanese. He's important for us because he produced one of the first publications which had a Pan-African orientation called the African Times and Orient Review, first published in 1912, as you can see here. It was concerned obviously not only with Africa and the African diaspora, but also what he referred to as the Orient, meaning in particular the Muslim world, because he was a Muslim and I think probably the Muslim world rather than Asia in general. But anyway, so an important figure. The African Times and Orient Review was in itself interesting in that it was largely financed by a consortium from West Africa. People like Jay Casey Hayford, some of you may have heard of, and others financed that publication. It had other interesting characteristics. Dussi Muhammad Ali employed Marcus Garvey for a time. Have you heard of Marcus Garvey? Okay, good. Just checking. So yes, Marcus Garvey was employed by the African Times and Orient Review. It also had one of the first, in this country anyway, one of the first black beauty contests. For many years I was a bit reluctant to even say that expression, but in the 21st century you can say it again, I understand. And it's not considered misogynistic or anything like that. But anyway, in 19, whenever it was, having a black beauty contest was actually a very important step forward. The contest was never actually realized, but Dussi Muhammad Ali announced it in the pages of the African Times and Orient Review. He was also in touch with a wide network of people in West Africa, in the U.S., in the Caribbean, who all corresponded with each other in this period. So, as you probably know, the gauntlet of Pan-Africanism was taken up by W.B. Du Bois, the famous African-American activist, writer, academic. And in the 1920s, four Pan-African congresses were held, the first in Paris in 1919 and the last in New York in 1927. But the two in the middle, 1921 and 1923, were both held in this country. And in fact, Britain has hosted more Pan-African congresses and conferences than any other country in the world. So at those conferences in 1921, in particular, this gentleman was very much involved. His name was John Archer. He was a number of things. He was actually the mayor of Battersea. This so happened at that time, came mayor, I think in 1912, I remember rightly. He was also the president of the African Progress Union, which was a Pan-African organization based in London in that period. In that capacity, he was involved in the 1921 Pan-African conference. And the 21 conference was also held in Belgium. It was held in Belgium and in London. In the 1923, Congress was held in London and also in Lisbon in Portugal. So John Archer was quite a key figure during this period of the 1920s. We can say in the development of Pan-Africanism, particularly in this country. He was a photographer by profession. Oh, that's the main great significance. Okay. So I thought I'd just show you another organization just to give you an example of the kind of Pan-African activity that existed during the early 20th century. This is a Nigerian Progress Union formed in London in 1924. But even though it was essentially the first Nigerian organization to be formed in this country, it had a Pan-African character in that the joint founder of this organization who you can see sitting in the middle of the picture was Amy Ashwood Garvey, who you may have heard of, the first wife of Marcus Garvey, who lived in Streatham in South London in that period. And she, with Ladipo Sholanke, is sitting on extreme right to this picture. They jointly founded the Nigerian Progress Union in 1924. So it had a, as other organizations did at that time, it had a Pan-African orientation, even though it was mainly concerned with Nigeria. One of the things that it was very concerned with was the kind of racism that people faced here in this country. It had other characteristics as well. And it led to the founding the following year of this organization, the West African Students' Union, which was probably the main African organization in this country from the 1920s to the 1950s. A very important organization. Obviously, it was Pan-African in the sense that it combines its membership from Britain's four colonies in West Africa, Nigeria, the Gold Coast, Sierra Leone, and Gambia, but also because of its general concern for African affairs, that it was in contact with people throughout the continent, as well as Africans here, people like Jomo Kenyatta and others. And you can see in this picture, again, some of its characteristics, because in the middle of this picture, you can see a very, very famous African-American activist film star, recording artist and all that kind of thing. Communist, I forgot that, most important, Paul Robeson and his wife, there's Landon sitting next to him. And Paul Robeson, of course, if you read what he said, and Paul Robeson was also an alumnus of SOAS, although his plaque keeps getting moved around, I understand. It doesn't show the necessary respect. But Paul Robeson studied here, but Robeson says that I discovered Africa in London. What does he mean? Did he discover it at SOAS? Definitely did not. He discovered it in Camden, because that's where the West African Students' Union had their Africa house, as they called it. And of course, Robeson also worked with African actors during the films that he made in Britain in that time. But he says I discovered Africa in London, and that began his interest in African languages. And one of the reasons why he came to SOAS and all that kind of thing. So this is, again, part of the kind of pan-African character of this organization. Again, much more to be said, I've written almost a whole book about West African Students' Union. But a very, very important organization during the 1920s, 1930s, 1940s. Now, so moving on to the 1930s. Again, in Britain, we have some of the key pan-African organizations of that period, including this one. This is the publication of the International African Service Bureau, which was established in the mid 1930s by 1935. And this is their publication, International African Apprentices. They had several different publications, but this is one of them. And you can see on it some of the concerns that they had. But you can also see at the front cover that it's sold not only in Britain, but in the US, in Canada, in the Caribbean, in Africa, it was circulated internationally. As many of the publications that were produced in Britain were disseminated internationally during that time. One of the key figures in that organization was George Padmore, the former communist Trinidadian activist, very important activist. But there were many others who were involved in the International African Service Bureau. One of them, again, was Amy Ashwood Garvey. And here we see Amy Ashwood Garvey. You can't quite see it from that. She's actually there with the members of the Ethiopian negation in London of that period. This is a demonstration in Trafalgar Square. Here we have Amy Ashwood Garvey speaking. And this is a demonstration probably from 1936 against the fascist invasion of Ethiopia, which of course was the major unifying event of the 1930s. Every African and person of African heritage was united and organized against the fascist invasion of Italy. And at that time, another organization in this country was the International African Friends of Abyssinia. Sometimes the International African Friends of Ethiopia that was formed with C.L.R. James and various other people involved in that period. Amy Ashwood Garvey was also involved in that organization as was George Padmore and many others I won't mention now. Amy Ashwood Garvey, interestingly, had her Afro restaurant just down the road in New Oxford Street. And she's also, amongst other things, she had a nightclub in Carnaby Street and so she's a very active woman in many respects. So just to illustrate again the kind of global significance of this conflict, the invasion of Abyssinia or Ethiopia. This is actually a photo from Cardiff during the same period. But these were the events that really galvanized people, not just in this country, but internationally during this period. And so there were many organizations, again, some based in this country and some of those based in this country that collaborated with organizations abroad in France and the US in Africa and so on. Okay, so moving on to the post-war period. And here we have the most famous of all the Pan-African Congresses, the 1945 Manchester Congress. And you can see that in this poster it explains very clearly the aim of this Congress to discuss and decide on their economic, social and political position in the post-war world. So again, this was Africans getting together to decide on how the world should be, how Africans should be treated in the world in the post-war period, the period after 1945. As I say, the most famous, most important of all the Pan-African Congresses. And if you read, I'm not sure anybody does read the literature of the African Union, but if you ever do read the literature of the African Union, this Congress will be mentioned. Only the first conference in London will be mentioned and this fifth Congress will be mentioned. In fact, I actually gave a presentation in Ethiopia only last year to an African Union event talking just about this Congress. It's so important. Why is it important? Well, here we can see again, Amy Ashwood Garvey appears in all of these images because she's also one of the key speakers and organisers of this Congress. As I say, why was it so important? Well, one reason is the kind of timing of it, that it came at the end of the Second World War. The world had, or the people we can say had triumphed over fascism, fascism had been defeated. And so it was a kind of historic moment for people to decide, for Africans to decide what should happen to the world in which they lived. And of course, in this period, the whole of this period, the early 20th century, was the kind of high point of colonial rule, of colonialism. So one of the key things which was being addressed at this time was how this colonial system would be ended, what mechanism would be required to end that system. And the Congress deliberated on those questions. And essentially they said to simplify two things. One, that force should be used if necessary. And secondly, that the main force to end colonial rule would be the working people in general. And as I said, the masses of the people would be that force which would bring colonial rule to an end. And they said that because that was their experience, that in the 1930s that had been the experience of people in the Caribbean. It had been the experience of people in Africa. And in fact, just before this Congress met, there had been a general strike in Nigeria, Britain's most important colony in Africa, which had brought the whole country to a standstill. So they recognized very clearly that if you could organize the working people, workers, the small farmers, no force would stop that. So that was part of the significance of this Congress. The other thing was the general politics of it. It in particular in relationship to Africa, it declared that the new Africa must be an Africa without colonial boundaries. Without what they said were alien political institutions imposed on it. And thirdly, without the capital centered system. Now the new Africa would be an Africa in which Africans determine their own affairs and so on. Of course, that Africa doesn't yet exist, which is another reason why the vision of this Congress was so important. It was also important because some of those who attended, people like Kwame Nkrumah, who was one of the key organizers, as well as others are mentioned in a moment. The other thing about it is the general politics of it. Some people get confused about pan-Africanism and its politics. If you look at the posters here in Manchester in 1945, you get an idea of the politics when it was at almost at its high point. So what do we have? Well, on the far right there you have down with anti-Semitism. What could be more topical than that? And on the other side, Arabs and Jews unite against British imperialism. So they were in no doubt what the issue was in Palestine. Sometimes a few people are confused about it today. Not many people here, I know, but in other places.  Sorry, oppressed peoples of the world unite. What else do we have? For the Ethiopians here we have Ethiopian needs and outlet to the sea, always a popular. I'm not sure that's going to be realized, but anyway, in a sense it was meant there. But anyway, and then my favorite one, labour in the white skin cannot emancipate itself while labour in the black skin is enslaved, which is a quote from Karl Marx, some of you may be familiar with. And there are others there. So this was the politics of pan-Africanism in 1945. So who else was there? Well, Joe McKinnyatta was there, sporting a very nice coat. And interestingly, one of the other participants has a very similar coat. I don't know what the significance of that is, but I don't think it's the same coat. But they're meeting in Manchester in October, so you can forgive them. And I should explain to you something about the Manchester Congress. Originally it was going to be held in Paris. But as I always tell people in France, the weather was better in Manchester, so they changed it. Okay, so after this Congress, of course, there are other important people that WB Du Bois was also there. The Congress was organized by the Pan-African Federation. It was partly convened because at the same time, in 1945, a very important conference, in fact two conferences, were held which were the founding conferences of the World Federation of Trade Unions, which was the first and only time when all the trade union centres of the world were united in one organization. And what made that conference, which was one was held in London, one in Paris, what made them even more important was that African and Caribbean, for that matter, trade unionists were represented. And the idea of the organisers, people like George Padmore was that those trade union leaders and others would be the key element in this Congress. And in fact, all the organisations represented at the Congress in Manchester had to be representatives of workers or representatives of farmers. Nobody else spoke. So anyway, the Pan-African Federation, here you can see that it's organizing this rally in solidarity with the struggles of people all over the world. And in fact, again, just before the, in the same period, two, what they called subject people's conferences were held, uniting people of African heritage with people of Asian heritage. And this was another feature of the Pan-Africanism of this very, very famous Congress. And one of the other things that the Pan-African Federation did was produce this newsletter. Well, actually, it's not a newsletter, it's a journal. But I thought I'd show you two examples, not because Ethiopia has mentioned there, but because Tunisia is mentioned. And some people today call themselves Pan-Africanists and not even sure that Tunisia is an African. So in 1945, they seem to be very clear where Tunisia was. I'm not going to say anything about Sudan, but some people have some difficulties there as well. So in 1945, they were very clear what Africa was about, who were Africans, what were the important struggles that needed to be waged. And this Pan-African was an important journal, again distributed internationally during this period. Another development in the period after 1945, in fact, directly after the Congress was the founding of the West African National Secretariat by Kwame Nkrumah and others. And here you can see some of the members of the West African National Secretariat. Kwame Nkrumah seated extreme right. Second from left here, another very, very important activist from West Africa, a man called Isaac Wallace Johnson. In fact, he was so important, he was imprisoned by the colonial authorities throughout the Second World War. But as a trade union leader, he was brought to London for these WFTU founding conferences which I've organized. So this organization was really the, we can say almost the beginnings of the Africa-centered, the continental Africa-centered Pan-Africanism of the post-war period, even though it was actually based in this country. Because Nkrumah and others, I won't go into all of them. But Nkrumah and others began to, one of the first things they did was to try and breach the gap that existed between Anglophone activists and Francophone activists. That had been breached in the past history of Pan-Africanism. In 1945 it was a bit problematic because of the post-war situation. But they began to hold discussions. They used to go to Paris, people from based in Paris used to come here to discuss how they could develop this Pan-Africanism, not from within the diaspora, but more developed within the continent. And as you probably know, Nkrumah returned to the Gold Coast in 1947 and began a campaign. We can say a struggle for independence, which within 10 years was successful. And in the part of the work that the West African National Secretary was planning was to hold a Congress in Africa. Because none of the Pan-African Congresses up until this point had been held in the African continent. There was a plan by Du Bois to hold one in Tunisia in 1927, but it couldn't happen. It was actually banned by the French government. So West African National Secretary began to consider holding a Congress somewhere in Africa, which didn't come to fruition for various reasons, but a kind of attempt at doing that was held at Kumasi in 1953. In the Gold Coast, people often forget about that Congress. So that kind of grew out of the work of the West African National Secretary, which had been based here. The organization itself kind of peated out really essentially after Nkrumah returned to the Gold Coast. So by about 1938, 1938, 48, 49, it was more or less over. Okay, so I'm going to jump ahead because I'm just looking at the time to the 1950s. And here we have another very important Pan-African organization in this country, the Committee of African Organizations. And this is its publication, The United Africa. The Committee of African Organizations was formed. It was a coalition just as the Pan-African Federation before it had been a coalition of organizations in this country. The Committee of African Organizations was similarly a coalition of all the African organizations in this country. West African Students Union, Nigerian Union, many, they were about over a dozen. In fact, as years went by, more and more organizations were added. It was an organization very much in touch with what was going on on the continent. In fact, its members sometimes attended important events in the continent like the All-African People's Conference held in 1958. Some of their members attended that and other events subsequently. This is just another, a later addition of the United Africa from the 1960s. One can say many things about this organization. One of them, well, let me just see what. This is one of the chairs of Cal. Again, very, very clear about the indivisibility of Africa. Some people get confused about that today. Obviously never studied geography when they were at school. But a key thing perhaps that Cal is known for is that it was the founder of the anti-apartheid movement in this country. So you can't get perhaps a more pan-African gesture or more pan-African activism than this. So in 1959 Cal started this boycott committee which gradually grew, as you can see here. And this became the anti-apartheid movement in this country which obviously went on for the next 30 years or so with the many activities that it engaged with. Now, one of the features of Cal during this period was one of its activists. Cal was a man called Obie Gbuna who, in fact, he was actually the editor of the publication for a time. And he became one of the, we can say one of the leaders of the Black Power movement in this country in the late 1960s. And we can say that the Black Power movement, both in this country and internationally, was a form of pan-Africanist. It was a stream of Pan-Africanism. And I thought I'd just mentioned briefly one of the organizations which emerged in the early 1970s, the Black Liberation Front. And of course its Pan-Africanism was not just concerned with the day-to-day needs of people in this country, although that was extremely important. But also with the wider struggles that were taking place on the continent, as well as in the US and in many, many other places that we could mention. And one of the activities that emerged during this period was the celebration of Africa Liberation Day, which appears no longer called Africa Liberation Day now. People think that Africa has been liberated. So these days people just call it, if they call it anything, they call it Africa Day. But in those days we called it Africa Liberation Day, May the 25th. And every year there was an important celebration. In fact, sometimes several celebrations were held during this period. So I just wanted to bring things to a close with the 7th Congress because this is the one that took place at the end of the 20th century in Kampala in 1994. And to, again, because my focus is on British activists. And so it's time to remember here Tajedin Abdul Rahim, some of you may remember, who's there in the purple top. Who was a, I mean, he was a Nigerian at origin, but a British-based activist. Who was the, essentially the secretary of the Pan-African movement and who presided over the Congress in Kampala. So I think that will suffice just to give you an introduction. There's one Congress that I haven't mentioned, which is the 6th Pan-African Congress. Because I haven't got an image to show you, but I've got something better than an image. Because we have with us tonight somebody who was part of the British delegation to the 6th Pan-African Congress in Dar es Salaam. So I think we should, in the spirit of Pan-African unity, we should show our respect to her. So Zaynab, would you accept our applause? Just so the people who you are. Zaynab was part of the British delegation, member of the Black Liberation Front that attended that Congress. She can tell you many stories about all of that stuff. We won't ask you to do that now. Okay, I'm going to leave it there for the time being. Hi. So thank you for the presentation. Every time I listen to one of your presentations, I learn something new, which is so cool. But you mentioned that the 5th Pan-African Congress was supposed to have been taken place in Paris. So if it had taken place in France, who would have funded it? Because it was funded so well when it in Manchester. So how would it have been funded if it was going to have been there? Do we have any information on that? Well, I think that he could say that it was going to be funded. Because the logistics of holding it in Paris were really impossible because of the post-war situation that Paris was. There were all kinds of problems, shortages of this and that and so on. But the original intention had been that it should be held in Paris because the second founding conference of the World Federation of Trade Unions was being held in Paris. So the idea was to, as I said, for the organisers of the Pan-African Congress, the representatives of workers were central. So they had planned to hold the Pan-African Congress directly after this trade union event had taken place. As things transpired, I'm not even sure whether the Pan-Africanists in France would have been in a position to organise it. So they initially told people to come to London, in fact, and then it was switched to Manchester. Manchester had all kinds of possibilities. One thing the Pan-African Federation was actually based in Manchester. And some of the key activists had access to facilities in Manchester, particularly places people could eat, places people could stay, shortly town hall and so on. So they had everything set up. So I would say that Paris was not really a very viable, ever a very viable option. So that's why it was held in Manchester. Thank you. Please, could you repeat the full name of the writer who wrote a defence of the Ethiopian movement? I always have another question. Do you have any idea how many other Africans might be out of print, but were writing around this time? How many said again? Africans might be were writing around that period and would are currently out of print. At the top of my head, no. But I mean, there are many, there are many things that were published. Ethiopia Unbounds, J.K. Sly Hayford, which I put an extract from in the book Black Voices on Britain. I wonder what it's called? Is that what it's called? Yeah, Black Voices on Britain, published by Macmillan. There's an extract from it in there. There are lots of things. There are lots of books. And what are you going to publish them? It works. Which publishers do you work from? Oh, God. I'm upset. Hi. Well, thank you, firstly, for the talk. It was really insightful. This is quite a big question, I think. To what extent was there a disconnect? Because you do say that your expertise is from the perspective of British activists within the Pan-African movement. So to what extent was there a disconnect between those you would consider the diaspora and those you would consider the diaspora? And those you would consider the people on the ground in the movement and how much that play a part in kind of where we are today, where you don't really get the sense of Pan-Africanism as a young person, be that in the UK, be that in Africa. And just leading with that, is it because at the time in the 1930s, 40s, 50s, there were clear movements to follow, be it the anti-invasion of Abyssinia, be it the independence movement. And then now, obviously, there is far too many causes which are all legitimate, but it's hard to have that one united voice or one united focus. I think what you say is a certain amount of truth in what you're saying. Clearly, if we look at the 20th century in general, the kind of problems that people faced in that period were very, very clear cut, you could say. So essentially colonialism and racism were the two interconnected problems that people faced. And so for that reason, it was relatively easy to pinpoint the nature of those problems. They were often those in the diaspora, they were often, not always, but very often those in the diaspora, not just Britain or Europe, but also US and so on, but not always. And people were active on the African continent. People like Wallace Johnson, just to give one example, was an activist mainly based in West Africa, although he was also here. So I think today the situation is different. You could say the problems appear more complex, although if you look into them, it may be the case that the essence of the problems today are relatively few as it were. Certainly if we go back to the, anyway, let me put it another way, let me not go back. If we look at what the problems are today, Africa in general faces, all African countries face very similar problems. But very often if you talk to people within those countries, they all think that their problems are worse than other peoples, or very peculiar to that country, which essentially is not the case. They're very, very similar problems. But people organize in different ways now, whether they're on the ground or not on the ground. And they're all kinds of difficulties that people face. But I think those who are, those who are here or in other places, they're always a possibility of organizing. But the thing is that whatever the problem is, people have to deal with it. You know, in 1900 or in 1897, when people got together to found the African Association, the problems also seemed insuperable. But the key thing is you come together and deal with them. Usually when I talk about Pan-Africanism, I start off with a slide of the Haitian Revolution, which is one of the most important Pan-African events. So to give that as an example in Haiti, the life expectancy of those revolutionaries was seven years. They all spoke different languages. They came from different parts of Africa. They were in the colony which was prized by France as being the most lucrative. And they were enslaved. So is that not a major problem to overcome? And then they had to defeat the three principal armies of Europe, the French, the Spanish, the British. And they did all of that and fought for 13 years and liberated the country. Which maybe has something to do with position 80s in today or the position some people wanted to be in today. So there are always problems that appear very complicated, that appear overwhelming. But those who understand things as you do, then have the responsibility to do something about it. If you're ignorant, if you don't understand anything, you don't have a responsibility to do anything. Except find out. But when you understand, okay, this is a problem, we need to take action on it. People are disunited, they need to be united. Then you have to do something. And that's how history is made, how things get changed by people taking a stand. So I think whatever the complexity of the problems today, there is great merit in people understanding the commonness of their problems. The fact that, you know, the imperialist system of states is the main problem that Africa faces. Whatever, however you want to conceive of it, that is the major problem. Can that problem be solved just by people organizing in one place? Probably not. I mean, it can certainly be breached. But even when it's breached, if people don't stand together, we could say it was breached in, where should we say? Libya, let's say. You know, wherever you might think about Libya, or may have thought about Libya, Libya had its own economic system, its own political system, its independent country. It did what it wanted to do, it didn't bow down to anybody. And so then what happens? Well, then the enemies of Africa will want to attack it and eliminate it. So when they do that, what does the rest of Africa do? And Africa today is, we could say, is more advanced than Africa was in 1945, because you have independent states, allegedly independent governments, an African organization with a whole continent. So when the enemy attacked one of the countries in Africa, what did they do this? Well, nobody said anything. So anyway, if even they'd done that, it would have been more difficult for the enemies to attack the continent, but they didn't even do that. So even at that level, people uniting is very, very important. If we're here and we leave this meeting and we say, OK, well, what should we do? Then let us do something. So what can we do? What role can we play in changing things if we understand there's a problem? So anyway, that's how I would look at it. Whatever the problems are, excuse me, we take the steps to solve it. And as I say, you're one of the people who recognize what these problems are. So you have a particular responsibility. Thank you for your presentation, Professor. My question is about the entire movement as you presented it, but particularly the outcomes of the Manchester Conference. You did mention that one of the important outcomes were some of the resolutions that were taken. A continent free of colonialism, a continent without borders, and a continent purged of foreign institutions imposed on it, which I take to be the understanding or conception of emancipation by our leaders at the time. But it seems to me that that conception of emancipation is from a negative perspective, what ought not to be there as opposed to what ought to be. So I'm curious about whether there were any articulations of what emancipation would look like in a positive sense. And I ask that because you can see confusion, if you will, that emerges in the post-independence era, where experiments go astray, a diversity of them across the continent, but also where some of the folks who were part of this conference that took these very important resolutions, in fact, stuck to the old ways. Kenya, for the longest time, to date has held out as a client state, if you will, in that part of the continent. And the foundations that Jomo Kenyatta laid were very important for that, and that continued raw today, despite him having been an important participant of this conference. So I'm curious from your reading of his historical events, was there any positive articulation of what emancipation was intended to look like once these encampments had been dealt with decisively? That's a good question. I think the answer probably is no, to give you a very quick answer. You know, they were dealing with the removal, as you say, of those things which were objectionable. But the articulation of what should be in its place was not well developed. And even some of the kind of principles of the struggle for independence were not well developed. Just to give an example, if we take one of the participants that the Congress was in Krumah, and we could say, you know, to sum up the struggle for independence in the Gold Coast, that probably in that early period in Krumah was one of the most, or the struggle for independence in the Gold Coast was one of the most closest to the vision, as it were, that was articulated in Manchester. But only in a limited way, because in Krumah also, you know, had his slogans, you know, seeking first the political kingdom and all this kind of thing. Well, who's political kingdom are you seeking? Because if you're just seeking the political kingdom of those who've colonised you, then you're not going to get anywhere. And in fact, you're going against the principles of the Manchester Congress, which said we don't want any of these alien political institutions. Alien political institutions being the whole conception of representative democracy and all this kind of nonsense. So you could say what those ideas of the Manchester Congress left unsaid and undeveloped and unelaborated is, OK, if you get rid of the political institutions of the enemy, what political institutions do you put in their place? The second thing is that they articulated the idea that the masses of the people, the wealth producers, should be the key faults to end colonial rule. That if you mobilise the masses, the majority of people, the wealth producers, this is the force which is going to change everything. But if that is your conception that the masses of the people must be at the centre of the struggle for independence, then the logic of that is that the masses of the people must be sensual to what the new state that you create will then never happen. And in fact, even under Nkrumah, actually the organised workers movement, just to take that as an example in the Cold Coast, was actually under quite severe pressure and so on and so forth. So these things were never well developed at that time. Of course, we can't forget about the machinations of the colonial powers because they also, of course, all this took place in the period of the so-called Cold War. So during that period, if you presented an alternative to the Eurocentric conception of things, they said, we're your communists. Obviously, you're communists. If you want the people to govern, you believe in people's empowerment, you're communists. And so we're definitely not going to grant you independence and so on. So these people were placed in a very difficult position and they believed that you could almost, you know, you could gain independence with these institutions which in 1945 they said, no, we need to get rid of. And obviously, as history shows, that's what you can't do. But the Cold War, I think, made things very, very difficult for all of them. I mean, as for Kenyatta, I mean, he was just a man in a big coat, really. Nobody thought very much of him in 1945 or in 19... You know, those activists who were here didn't have a high regard for him. But what we see, again, coming out of the situation in Kenya is the struggles of the people. That what was decisive there was not what Kenyatta did or didn't do or even what Karnu did or didn't do, but what those who fought men and women, what they did, that was the crucial thing. And whether they were in a position to actually empower themselves at the end of that struggle, and as we know, that wasn't possible. But we've seen other attempts since to move things in that direction. You know, particularly some of the liberation struggles, struggling Guinea, for example, under Cabral, you see the beginnings of these people empowering themselves. In some other places, I won't mention Ethiopia, but anyway, in some other places also. But then things tend to go wrong because people don't stick to that model. They go back to the Eurocentric one and so on, everything goes wrong. So these are very complex problems, but the essence of what is required, what's important, is always there. And history always shows that if you don't follow what is required, then you have problems. South Africa is another example, talking about anti-apartheid. So people struggle, not just in South Africa, but all over the world to support this struggle. People give their lives. People, you know, even have a freedom charter. Have you read the freedom charter? Everything's crystal clear. So then on the verge of victory, everybody throws the freedom charter away. Let's not talk about that, but it's all there. It's all clear what should happen, what needs to be done and so on. But then again, a compromise is made. Let's just go for this. It'll be quicker, it'll be easier, but it's not for the majority of people. It's worse or no difference. So these are, this is why I say there are these common problems. Whereas if you go to South Africa, for example, everybody says, you know, we've got these problems, nobody else has them. If you go to Kenya, you've got Ethiopia the same. If you go to Nigeria, they're all the same. They're the same because they've adopted a system of the enemy. And it's only the millionaires and billionaires who are going to benefit from that, just as they do everywhere else in the world. The majority of people are not going to. So that is the crime that's been committed. And you have countries today like South Africa and Nigeria, for example, the two biggest economies in Africa can't even provide electricity to their citizens. Not even talking about water. That's not possible. How can you have the largest economy on the continent? The two largest and you can't provide electricity on water to the majority of people. So these are, as I say, great crimes that where people need to be held to account, both the external enemies, of course, as well as those internal ones who adopt the system and benefit from it. So these are the common struggles that have to be, we have to find a solution to. We have to find a solution in Britain as well, because that Euro-Sedgic system doesn't work here either. And it doesn't work here. How is it going to work in Africa? Hi. Thank you so much for the lecture. You mentioned some solidarity with Palestinians. I was wondering if there's any other examples that you've come across of where Pan-African Congress had speakers or expressed solidarity with other liberation movements outside of Africa, and whether people had an idea that this could be a more global liberation movement? I think most of the Congress is contained elements of those ideas. The fifth Congress is a particularly good example. But Zeynep will tell you about the second Congress. That was also very evident there, the seventh Congress as well. As I said in 1945, it was a particular kind of moment. And so they had had these subject people's conferences, which involved all these guys from India, from what was then Burma, and what was then Ceylon, and not other places. And worked very closely. Again, because everybody was under colonial rule, it was very clear what the issues were. So I think that conception was certainly there. But even in some of the earlier congresses and conferences, some people had those views that these were common problems. They were world problems. They were global problems that needed to be dealt with. And obviously various organizations also had those concerns, particularly the ones in Britain that I'm talking about tonight, but also internationally. So I didn't go into Equiano's politics, particularly other than to say it was a kind of pan-African figure. But Equiano was also a member of the London Corresponding Society, which was one of the main, we can say revolutionary organizations in Britain in the 18th century. I mean, it was so revolutionary, it was banned by the government at the time. In fact, interestingly enough, I took a little anecdote. Maybe I shouldn't tell this, but Equiano has been, I mean, everybody uses Equiano's name. And so there's some interesting young people who have taken Equiano's name. And who seem to be kind of loosely affiliated to the Conservative Party. You can look it up afterwards if you're interested.  But anyway, it's quite interesting because the London Corresponding Society, which Equiano was a member of, was actually banned by a Tory government. So anyway, they don't seem to have realized the irony of their position. But so yeah, so the London Corresponding Society had the view that rights were indivisible. Thomas Hardy, who was the secretary of that society, who Equiano actually lived with. Thomas Hardy wrote to somebody and said, I see that you are a friend to the oppression or the friend to the oppressed Africans or something along these lines. I therefore assume from that that you're also a friend to, you know, all those who are fighting for the rights of men or something worse that effect. In other words, if you're for the rights of black people, you should also be for the rights of white people. And if you're for the rights of white people, you should also be for the rights of black people. So that was their politics, this, you can say, internationalism, the idea that what is important is you fight for the rights of all, not for one section of the people. And in the 21st century, it's important to remember these profound 18th century principles, which you can say are the, I would argue, are the sort of foundational principles of Pan-Africanism. Today, some people who are hardly worth mentioning have another kind of orientation, which is to be exclusive, to try and exclude as many people as possible. And to say this, you know, but Pan-Africanism in general, obviously there have been currents which have had that orientation. But generally speaking, as always, or certainly in the British way it's been developed in Britain, they often had this internationalist orientation, which is of course important. Hello, thank you. Thank you very much for your presentation. I learned a lot. My thoughts are that what you've expressed seems to denote some form of divide between formal Pan-Africanism and informal through the lens of that economic, social, and cultural, and political. I was wondering if there is any way to bridge that so that there is some form of cohesion. Basically what I'm asking is perhaps your views on what you think is the way forward for Pan-Africanism to make it relevant to what's happening now and for the future that's forecasting. Well, I think that wherever people are struggling to solve the problems that are confronting them and realize that these problems are not specific to one geographical location, but to some degree affect all people of African descent or African heritage as well as others. What we've just been discussing is that the fact that you're very, very concerned about the liberation of Africa, for example, doesn't mean that you shouldn't be concerned with the liberation of Palestine or the liberation of Ireland or the liberation of anywhere. So that's really the kind of issue. So you may be, and many movements which develop may be particularly concerned with a particular country and with organizing people in that country. And obviously there's nothing wrong with that. That's very important. But they shouldn't be done in opposition to or against people in other countries. They should recognize the common struggles which exist and do whatever they can to support those struggles and to be involved in those struggles. So I think that's the issue. Today we have the problem that people didn't have in the 1940s, for example, in the sense that we have governments in Africa or in the Caribbean or wherever it might be, which formally speaking are supposed to be independent and so on. But in fact they're not actually representative of the populations that they govern and don't reflect the interests of them. They can't because of the political and economic systems which have been imposed on those places, those countries. So the only point I'm making is that what needs to be taken up for solution is how to change the situation. And there are many Pan-African organizations on the ground in Africa and in other places that are trying to solve these problems and trying to... So it's not that they have to necessarily be invented. It's just that people have to work to develop all of these things and to find ways of uniting them and so on. So that's really the question. And the same is true in this country. There are Pan-African organizations of various kinds. But the question is, what are they doing? How can they be made more effective? What work needs to be taken up? And that might be different things at different times depending on what kind of problems we're trying to solve. So in the past we can learn from the history but the situation is different and more complex in some ways. In some ways easier. Maybe it's easier to communicate with people all over the African continent. It's very easy now. In the 1930s, you have to wait for a letter or you have to send a telegram or you have to actually travel. Equiano is time even more difficult. But these guys traveled all over the world. So in some ways we have easier things to... But the point is to find solutions. And that generally means coming together, discussing, uniting people. As I said earlier, how did people do that in Haiti? They had very difficult problems to solve. But they found a way of overcoming those problems, overcoming their own divisions. And so we have to do the same. But one of the complicated things now is that there are governments that create complications. Say to take the example of Haiti today, just to give an example. So you have the governments of the organization of the Caribbean, Caracol, saying there should be an invasion of Haiti. Whereas these things are very, very complicated. But life is always complicated. We have to find a way through all these things and we start where we are by trying to solve the particular problems that are facing us. There might be particular problems in SOWAS. I'm sure there aren't, but there might be. So then there's a necessity for there may be particular problems which face African students. For example, those of African heritage in SOWAS. So then is there an organization that's taking these things out for solutions? And working to solve them. I'll just give that as an example. I don't know the situation here, but that's just an example. And then is concerned, okay, does that organization unite with similar organizations in Birkbeck or UCL or others and so on? To deal with whatever the situation in Haiti or the situation in Congo or the situation in Ethiopia or in Eritrea or Sudan or Egypt or wherever. Do people do those things? Because we might say, well, why don't they? But first you have to have an organization here that deals with it. So step by step these things can be solved. What history teaches us is that we have the solution to all these problems.  We have to actually take them up for solution and then they can be solved. Okay, let's take two or three more questions. One here, two, three or a lot of fans. We have to discuss four, five, six, okay, five. That's all, yeah. Let's start here and I'll come back. Second, third, fourth, yeah. And there is one more hand. Okay, shall we start? Yeah, I was just going to ask, were there any countries or key, actually I had two questions. So the first one was, are there any countries or key figures that were kind of opposed to the Pan-African movement or who thought that it would be better to tackle like British imperialism as like, like independently rather than as a collective? And I guess the second one is you mentioned like in Krumar, Kwame Krumar a lot. So what was it about his influence on like Pan-Africanism that made him so distinct to like other key figures and like was his influence on Pan-Africanism a bit like more successful or like how did he help Pan-Africanism like specifically? I think in the British context, they were going back to the 20th century, but there were often individuals who, you know, there were various rivalries, for example, just to give an example, there were often rivalries between Nigerians and Ghanaians just to give that, just pull that out, nowhere, or gold toasters as they were then. You know, and these were, you know, sort of partly personal rivalries, but, you know, those who wanted to focus on particular things and sometimes squabble over various things and so on. But again, generally, they would come together when there were important issues. I mentioned the invasion of Ethiopia or issues of racism, or the Pan-African Manchester Congress itself or the Committee of African Organisations. It's quite interesting that the Pan-African Federation was a federation. It was many, all the principal organisations in Britain united, it was a coalition. Even those organisations that weren't part of that coalition, like the West African Students' Union, like the legal column peoples, still worked alongside the Pan-African Federation. Even those who had political differences, you know, George Padmore was a former communist, was a bit hostile to the Communist Party certainly. But when it came to individual African communists, like Desmond Buckle, for example, you know, he wrote one of the most important manifestos for the Pan-African Congress. So people tended to work together, even though they might have other specific interests. You know, one of the interesting things, again, just to use Manchester as an example, that you have this Pan-African gathering, immediately it finishes. The West Africans are going to have their own organisation now. Why? Well, all kinds of reasons. One, because there were a lot of them, and they had, you know, particular concerns that they wanted to organise in this way. It didn't mean they didn't, you know, talk to anybody else. So, you know, there were these different emphases, different, yeah, different, folk-eye at different times. But people generally want to gather on those important issues, I think. As for Nkrumah, well, I kind of said, you know, I mean, the key thing about Nkrumah, I suppose, was his attempts to develop unity on the African continent. So starting with, and you know, his famous phrase, the liberation of Ghana is meaningless without the total liberation of the African continent or whatever he says. So that shows his concern or his understanding that if you have an African continent which is not liberated, then Ghana's independence is kind of meaningless because you're going to have, you know, problems all around it. It's going to be isolated and so on. So to secure the safety, the security of one place, you need also to fight for the liberation of everywhere else. And then he put that into practice through the Kumasi Conference in 1953, the All-African People's Conference, the Conference of Independent African States and their Successors. And then with his, you know, attempts to not just to form the Organization of African Unity but to form a United States of Africa and to write Africa must unite and all these kind of things. So that's why I think he's held in such high regards because of those efforts. Also because, you know, obviously the Gold Coast is one of the first countries to struggle for its independence, not the first but one of the first. And also because of his kind of later work and analysis of, you know, neocolonialism and so on. So for all of these reasons and probably others I haven't had time to mention, you know, people hold him in that high regard. But anyway, as I've said, if you actually look at what he achieved in Ghana itself, you know, maybe it's not as impressive of what he achieves, you know, in terms of Pan-Africanism generally. Yeah, I'll come back to you. Do you want to go first? Hello and good evening, everybody. For those of you who are students and staff at SOAS, my name is Emma and I work in the library. I'm saying that because I'm putting it into context. Thank you, Hakim, for pulling together some of the hidden histories of the struggles of African peoples in Britain. And I say that because I want to put it into a context of, for those of you who are students in the room, that not just students, we all can and have a responsibility to contribute towards and covering some of those hidden histories. And there are two resources which I'll highlight. One are libraries, but two are the libraries around you. And that is in your families. I would hazard a guess that almost everybody in this room has somebody who has made a contribution towards the history of the struggles of our peoples. Within SOAS, within this room, there are people who have made that contribution. One has been highlighted. I will tell you just based on my knowledge of people in this room, there are many others. I'm going to talk to ordinary everyday people who are around you. My question is, based on what I've said, how can we, and my question is an open question, how can we, each of us in this room, contribute towards organizing, towards building that better world? And my question to the Centre for Paid African Studies in particular is, how do we encourage and listen to the voices of everybody? Because as valuable as I have found this lecture here today, I think one of our challenges is this kind of like, what do you call it, expert and audience approach to things. There is expertise in this room. And one of the things that those of us who are in the academies need to do more of is to draw on the expertise within our communities, within our families, within this room, within London, because there's a whole lot of history. And I know Hakim, you've made a wonderful contribution to this, that there's a whole lot of history, particularly from the 70s, right up to the present of struggle around Pan-Africanism, which nobody seems to know or write about. Some of it I know is in this room. Kedi, I'm going to highlight you as one person who I know. There are others. I'm not going to just give an example. I said that this room, this hall here, was actually used to be a much bigger space and was the kind of student union room, should we say, hall. I thought it was called junior refectory, wasn't it? Back in the day of some funny word like that. So we in the 80s, in fact in the 80s there was some important, actually, yeah, probably 80s, there were some important events here. I won't go into all of them there. But one of the events that we organised, I remember, was we used to organise these big fundraising events in this space. It was actually a bigger space. This would go back to the time of the... I mentioned earlier Abdul Majid Hussein, who was probably the person who kind of introduced me to Ethiopian politics a long, long time ago in the 1970s. And it was actually a president of the student union here one time. I just want to say it's clearly not recognised by size. But in the 80s we organised quite a lot of events. At that time the struggle against the DERG was reaching its high point. And of course there were major problems of, some of you may remember of problems of food production and distribution in Ethiopia and in Eritrea at that time. And so we worked with some of the liberation organisations at that time, TPLF and EPLF at that time, and that they're associated agencies to organise very, very big fundraising events in this space. And they were, we can say they were kind of pan-African events. We used to, we had actually fashion shows in here. African fashion shows, which raised money, raised quite a lot of money. And we used to go out and get various performers. I can't remember all of them. People like Janet Kay, I remember, was one who would come and perform here and we'd raise money and so on. What was going on in Africa at that time? It wasn't the only struggle, but the struggle in Ethiopia and Eritrea was particularly acute in this particular period. We organised, we had a committee, a committee of Ethiopian and Eritrean relief, and we organised, which was, one of the organisations was the Black Liberation Front and there were other organisations involved and we organised things here. So I just give that as an example. There's actually history in this room of what was that people probably don't know anything about. And so, as Anna says, there's lots of things that we can do, whether it's organising, whether it's telling and recording histories and so on. There are so many things that people can do if they want to do them, really. Africa's sort of a good example, isn't it? And the one reason why people want to do it is there's just so much history that happens that the African culture in common ground is moving away from it. So I'd say, actually, don't actually just wait. It's moving away from it. There's a lot of people that don't want to do it. Yeah. I'd like to ask, referring to this last image here, about the Pan-African movement right now, is still liberation the main goal of the Pan-African movement today, knowing the independence of the African, much of the African countries, many of the African countries? And the other thing is, my other question is, because I'm a Spanish speaker from the Pateragina in Spain, how are those Spanish speakers or Portuguese speakers involved in the Pan-African movement also? Or they are not really involved, because it looks like more between Anglo speakers and French. I think, you know, historically that was the case. It was principally Anglophone and Francophone speakers, as it were, although as I explained, the Third Congress was held in Portugal, and obviously there were organizations based in Portugal as well as individuals who came from Portuguese colonies in Africa who were involved in those. I think in recent years, there are Pan-African organizations in Spain, as you are well aware. There are Pan-African organizations throughout Latin America, as I'm sure you're aware. So language isn't so much the issue, and there have been whole conferences that have been organized, particularly of Afro descendants in Latin America, which obviously have a Pan-African character. So there are probably reasons why that didn't happen sooner, maybe, but I think it's that they certainly exist. Those organizations, those gatherings exist today. So, yeah, I don't think there are any problems of that kind today. I'll come up with another question. It's about... Oh, yes, yes, yes, yes. Well, that's right, yeah. Well, I think the issue is when we say the Pan-African movement, what does that mean? That's one of the problems, because again, as in the past, there's not necessarily one movement. There are different streams and currents and so on. I mean, there are even almost rival Pan-African congresses are held these days. So that's not new. I mean, Zeynepo tell you about the sixth pack in Tanzania. Again, there was major divisions between just the orientation that people come with. In fact, he was telling me a story on the way here. Somebody was saying, well, why aren't you wearing African dress? People wanted to mobilize or organize or disunite and what people were wearing. When what was going on in the continent was people engaged in armed struggles, struggling to wear anything, probably, or to find. So anyway, there have always been these differences and divisions and people may have different views. But I think certainly the liberation of Africa or the total liberation of Africa is a very key issue which everybody should focus on, definitely should focus on. But as you know, it has its local manifestations which kind of seem insuperable. What's going on in DR Congo? I mean, where do you even start? What's going on in Sudan or whatever part of it you want to talk about or even dividing it even? You could look at anywhere. There are massive problems. What's going on in Egypt? There's a massive problem. What's going on in the Horn generally? So there are enormous issues but all of them come down to yes, the liberation of the continent. Are the people of Africa in a position to decide their future? At the moment the answer is no. They're not in the sense of the way things are set up. Potentially yes. But in order to do that, people have to organize themselves and struggle and overcome all these difficulties and so on. But the problems in individual countries, I mean look at Libya as another, I mean anyway you could go on and on and on and on and on but the problems are the same. That the intervention of the big powers, the contention between the big powers and the new scramble for Africa is intense and the dangers of it, what happened, what was the result of the first scramble? The first world war. So that's not serious enough. So now we have another, not to say they've only been two, but we have another massive contention, particularly between so-called the old powers and the new powers, whether that be China or whether it be the Gulf or whether it be the old powers who are becoming new again like Turkey, they're all contending. The casualties of that are Africans. So these are enormous problems. So if you're asking my view, my view is that it's the key thing because the liberation of Africa means the empowerment people of Africa empowering themselves and being in a position to be the decision makers on everything. And of course, one of the major impediments is the political systems in force at the moment prevents the majority of people being decision makers. The decisions are taken somewhere else. I even remember a few years ago, just to give you an anecdote, actually I won't give you that anecdote, but anyway, the decisions are taken somewhere else. So that's the central problem. The people of Africa must empower themselves and take control of their future. So in my view, that's the issue. Okay, one last question here. I'm sorry, I don't think we will be... Can you make it brief so we can take two questions? Yeah. Okay, so two questions here, there, and one comment. I just wanted to reiterate that I might say that we are very deeply involved in the analysis of the African continent and its problems that start far back. And also, I think most importantly for connecting the regions of Africa, the Caribbean and the African continent and being able to let us see and share with you this vision of Africa as interconnected in its struggles. The comment I wanted to make, but we're running out of time, that brother over there had asked a question about solidarity with other struggles around the world, and I had seen Zaynab nodding at the time, and you had, I think, mentioned that she might give us a slight taste of the conference where she went as a rep. That's really what I was... I know there's no time for that, but if she could just... Yeah. Yeah, please, yeah, if you can... One of the greatest moments of my life was at the Sixth Pan-African Congress when a Palestinian brother frog-marched through the hall to the stage and presented arms to Julie Snorri. Now, the significance of that was, the OAU as it was then, the Organization of African Union, recognized the Palestinians as an African liberation movement, as a liberation movement, but focused on Africa. What's interesting is that Hakim mentioned that after the 45 Congress, the First Pan-African Congress in Manchester, the Manchester Pan-African Congress, we were faced with the First World War. No, what am I talking about? After the First Pan-African Congress. There was the First World War, and it's interesting that what's happening now in the world, we're seeing Gaza being destroyed. While we're all sitting here, our sisters... This moves me terribly, so forgive me, but our sisters are dying in Gaza. This is very much a reflection of what the struggle is. The struggle has never been about Africa as a continent in isolation from the rest of the world. It can't be. Africa is the richest continent on the planet. On the planet, there's nowhere more richer than Africa. So when you talk about the liberation of Africa, the freedom of Africans, we're talking about the liberation of its resources. And those resources will make Africa the most prominent continent in the world. With that, you have the strength, the political strength of Africa and its impact on the rest of the world, including Gaza and generally what's happening. Everybody wants to interfere with Africa, because if you didn't interfere with Africa, we would have this amazing, amazing, powerful place. But they will constantly interfere with Africa. But we did. We had major relations with everybody. We had an Africanism stretched across the pond to the diaspora in America with all the liberation movements of Southern Africa. And there's something I want to mention here that I, and then I'll shut up very briefly is you've got to remember in terms of the liberation of Southern Africa, there wasn't one Western country who supported or gave aid to towards the liberation of Southern Africa. Not one. Not one. So when Mandela came to power and they all trotted over and wanted to have their pictures taken with Mandela, remember, not one of them, not one of them supported the liberation of Southern Africa. That's why Mandela said to Clinton, bugger you if Mama Gaddafi comes, I'm having it. Because Mama Gaddafi supported the liberation with material aid, including training and arms. So that's pan-Africanism, the best of it. Thank you very much, Elena. I don't want to deny the opportunity. So we are going to take two questions together. So can you make it brief, please? Thank you. Thank you for a wonderful conversation. And also for highlighting some of those female contributions. Alice Kinloch and Amy Ashford-Garvey is a shame that we don't often hear about how they have contributed and the role women have played in this movement. So I just wanted to make a quick question and comment on what you mentioned earlier around in the quest of removing these alien structures, there was a lack of development for alternatives. And for me, when I hear alternatives, I immediately think about the indigenous practices. And so we all know, obviously, during colonialism, there was extra effort to demonise and stabilise these indigenous structures and practices and remove anything to obviously serve the colony. But while we know they didn't exactly disappear, a lot of them were driven underground and to the peripheries. And one of the main peripheries, not just on a social aspect, political aspect, but also environmentally, the rural areas. And so I was interested to see if you came across any examples of Pan-African efforts that were aimed to integrate and develop some of those indigenous-based alternatives at all in the movement. Thank you. Okay, can you take the question and I can kind of answer them together. Hi, I'm actually laughing because me and Ebbe are friends and I had the exact same question. I recently came across a scholar called Toyin Falola, and he talks a lot about knowledge systems. And he says something that's really interesting. He said that Africans are incapable of representing the world in their own terms, therefore they become more susceptible to being changed by other powers. So similar to the previous question, I was wondering, to what extent did Pan-African scholars kind of draw from indigenous thought, like oral histories or religious philosophies, like Ubuntu, or were they mainly drawn to kind of western scholars like Marx to kind of shape their political thought? And do you think that if more kind of focus was placed on kind of going back to the source of kind of pre-colonial traditions that exist in ways of affirming life, then Pan-Africans would be able to kind of create their own knowledge and way of thinking that could be like more cohesive and kind of like very much African? Yeah, yeah. Well yeah, the short answer is yes, I do think that there may be one or two examples of those who at least tried to look at things from a different perspective. I'm not sure whether we could say in general thought about things in terms of indigenous knowledge systems as such, but rejected kind of Eurocentric orientation. So I think that I mentioned, early I mentioned Cabraus being an example and the PRGC in general. One can, the key thing is what are we taking from these traditions? When we say traditions, there are many traditions and some of them are not very good traditions. So when we talk about traditions or indigenous knowledge systems, we have to take those that are commensurate with the problems and the needs of the time, let's put it that way. If we look back into Africa's history in terms of like political institutions, for example, we can find all sorts of political institutions. The key thing is that Africa had its own institutions and so why would you then choose or adopt institutions that don't work but then come from somewhere else? That clearly doesn't make sense. So I think that for various reasons, part of the problem is people are almost forgetting about those traditions and those political systems, those ways of operating, those ways of organizing. I mean, Amma raised a very, very good point earlier. She talked about the Eurocentrism of this event. That's not criticism. I mean, that very often happens that we have, you know, we operate in a Eurocentric way and getting out of that thinking is extremely important. So, you know, in whatever African country you want to look at or if we look at the continent in general, there are those traditions which can be drawn from which can enable us to operate in a different way and can which establish political systems, economic systems which have a different character. And the main character they need to have is that they need to be people-centered and they need to be able to serve the majority. Now, obviously, not all political and economic institutions, historically in Africa, operate in that way because the one thing Africa, the first states anywhere in the world were established in Africa and what kind of states were they? Generally speaking, they were states which enabled some people to live off the backs of others. That's really what nature of a state is, generally speaking. But there are other traditions about how we discuss, about how we reach consensus, about decision-making which definitely can be drawn from and are very, very important. When we talk about, you know, Marx, for example, what do we even mean? Because if you look at the, just to give an example, we think of, you know, Marxism as being something very, you know, European in origin, but if you look at the principles of it, like dialectics and materialism, is that European or is it African? So we have to actually look into the, you know, were the ancient Egyptians, you know, did they have, did they develop the conception of materialism? Did they, you know, did they believe in the issue of matter in motion and that the world emerged out of matter? Yes, that's what they did so. So they were materialists. So did they develop the concept of dialectics and the struggle of opposites? Of course they did. So we're, we're lulled into the Eurocentric view that this is all down to the Greeks. So of course we all know that the Greeks learned these things from Africa. Oh, some of these things. So anyway, we have to, we look into all the traditions of the past, but yes, certainly within Africa there are knowledge systems, there are institutions, political and economic, and other ways of thinking about the world which offer an alternative to Eurocentric thinking. And one of the key things about Eurocentric is it tells you there's only one way of doing things. And there is a one way of doing things. There are many different ways of doing things and we need to embrace those things which assist us to liberate ourselves. So, yeah. Thank you very much. I came in, thank you everyone for coming. I have a reminder to contribute for the pin bags. Oh yes, badges we're asking for donations for our campaign. So if you want to contribute and you can come here and donate, I think we set a pound donation for a very historic badge defending the history of Africa and the African diaspora and supporting our struggle. So yeah. And we have Hakim's wonderful work. It's a new edition and it's being sold outside, I think. I'm sure Hakim will be happy to sign the book. Yeah. Thank you everyone. Thank you very much Hakim.


The IDF are so good at killing Israelis, they should consider joining Hamas. Notes from the edge of the narrative matrix. Israeli forces reportedly drove bulldozers over hospital patients' intents and buried people alive. Palestinian officials are seeking an urgent probe into allegations of an IDF bulldozer attack on patients at the Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza, killing some 20 people. It's one of those things where even after everything that's happened, you still look at it and go, I must be reading this wrong. You'd be considered a monster if you killed livestock in that way. IDF troops killed escaped Israeli hostages who were holding up a white flag, apparently because they mistook them for Palestinian civilians holding up a white flag. Israeli forces have a long and well documented history of killing Gazans while they are waving white flags. The only reason they bothered to check if the abductees might be people whose lives they care about was reportedly because one of them had a Western appearance, i.e. looked white. Imagine being held hostage by Hamas for months, finally escaping, trying to make your way back home, and then getting killed by your own military forces because they mistook you for Palestinian civilians. Israel supporters always say, Hamas just needs to surrender and everything will be fine. Surrender? You mean wave a white flag? Friendly fire during October 7th, friendly fire on the battlefield in Gaza, friendly fire executions of Israeli prisoners. The IDF are so good at killing Israelis, they should start making GoPro videos with red triangles about it. Mossad discovers sinister Hamas plot to just sit back and wait for the IDF to destroy Israel via friendly fire. It's not the Israel Hamas war. It's the Israel babies and children and women and journalists and health care workers and UN staff and hospital patients and civilian infrastructure and Israeli hostages and sometimes occasionally Hamas war. It's interesting how outside the IDF Israel and its supporters are predominantly all about freeing the hostages, but within the IDF the attitude toward the hostages seems at best to be depraved in difference and at worst outright hostility. Some weeks ago I saw a Hamas claim being circulated on Twitter that Hamas fighters had been luring IDF troops into ambushes by playing recordings of the sounds of children and it was working because Israeli troops reliably go after kids. I didn't pay much attention to the claim at the time thinking, no way, that one can't be true. But now the IDF is indignantly complaining that, quote, in an attempt to ambush our troops, Hamas terrorists connected dolls to speakers playing crying sounds and set them up in an area rigged with explosives, end quote. This keeps happening. Israel's actions are so horrific and depraved that I keep thinking I must be misinterpreting what I'm reading or disregarding a claim as too implausibly over the top, only to find out that, no, that's exactly what happened. As bad as I know Israel is, it keeps finding new ways to show me I still don't know the half of it. It's so hard to say who's in the right in this conflict. On one side you've got facts and evidence and a non-stop deluge of raw video footage documenting massacres of civilians day after day after day. But on the other side you've got people calling you an anti-Semite if you disagree with them. It's very complicated. It is not a coincidence that a video documentation of Israeli atrocities in Gaza has been extremely damaging to Israeli information interests and B, journalists in Gaza are being killed by Israeli attacks at a rate which has no historical precedent. Biden's presidency has turned out to be everything anti-imperialists feared it would be and so much worse. If you follow the, they started it. No, they started it, arguments of the Israel-Palestine conflict back to their source at the beginning. You come to, Palestinians should have laid down and accepted their violent mass displacement and theft of their homes by Israel in 1948. People are still yelling about from the river to the sea chants at pro-Palestine demonstrations, but you know if a different pro-Palestine chant becomes ubiquitous, it will with 100 percent certainty be attacked as evil and anti-Semitic, too. Pro-Palestine slogans aren't opposed because anyone sincerely believes they support genocide. They're opposed because they are pro-Palestine.