Charity wants to redress racial imbalance in commemoration
This photograph taken on November 5, 1934 shows Mohandas Karmachand Gandhi (centre), also known as Mahatma Gandhi, in Bombay (now Mumbai), India. PHOTO | AFP
What you need to know:
Black and brown people represent only four per cent of plaques awarded.
One reason is that candidates must have been dead for 20 years, and many from London’s black and Asian communities only arrived in England after Second World War.
The first black footballer to play for England, Laurie Cunningham, has just been honoured with a blue plaque on what was his childhood home in Stroud Green, London.
For 150 years, these circular metal plaques have been affixed to places where notable people lived or worked, and the total awarded in the capital city is now 900. All the names you would expect are there: Winston Churchill, Charles Dickens, Sherlock Holmes, Charles Darwin and the rest. But Cunningham’s is only the 34th honouring a black or Asian resident.
Although the scheme was set up in 1866, it was not until 1954 that the first plaque for a notable figure of ethnic origin was installed, Mahatma Gandhi. Gradually, others were added: Jomo Kenyatta, who lived in Cambridge Street between 1933 and 1937; Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, whose plaque is in Kentish Town; Pan-Africanist leader Marcus Garvey, and West Indian cricketer and writer CLR James; Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore and spiritual leader Sri Aurobindo are there, as are the sub-continent’s independence fighters, Jawaharlal Nehru and Mohammed Jinnah.
From further back than most is Cetshwayo, King of the Zulus, who lived in the Holland Park area of London in 1882.
But in all, black and brown people represent only four per cent of plaques. One reason is that candidates must have been dead for 20 years, and many from London’s black and Asian communities only arrived here after the Second World War.
English Heritage has appointed Gus Caseley-Hayford, a cultural historian with Ghanaian roots, to lead a working party to redress the imbalance. It will not award plaques itself but will look for black and Asian candidates for the 12 plaques installed per year.
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It must have been those wildlife programmes on television which alerted the animal-loving British public to Africa’s meerkats.
Members of the mongoose family, they stand upright on hind legs, almost a foot high, bright-eyed, front paws dangling, heads swivelling for signs of danger. Then a warning signal and a lightning scurry to the burrows when a predator comes near.
Aaaaaah, everybody says, aren’t they cute! Cute, they undeniably are. So cute that advertisers started using them in TV playlets, dressing them as lordly gentlemen, with monocles and silk gowns and, giving them, for some reason, German accents. Now, alas, the scientists, those cold-hearted pursuers of truth, have given us a different perspective on the cutesy meerkats: They murder their own species like no other creature.
Most mammals will kill their relatives, including apes and monkeys, wolves, lions, leopards, lemurs and so on. But one in every five meerkats is killed by other meerkats, putting it at the top of the mammalcide list. Nice-to-know footnote: One of those mammals least likely to murder others of its kind is the human being.
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The gas company said it was time to service my boiler and I should go online or call a nine-digit number to make an appointment. I called the number and was given the option of the instant robot route or waiting to talk to a real person. I chose the robot route.
In response to the robot lady’s questions and speaking loudly like a backward child learning its letters, I said SERVICE, then I said YES, then I said NO – this latter when asked if Monday between noon and 2pm would be convenient. Instead of being offered an alternative, I was then switched to the live line and told there was a wait of 24 minutes. I put the phone down.
A day later, my schedule having changed somewhat, I tried again. This time when offered Monday between noon and 2pm, I said YES. This seemed to please the robot lady, who said very well, the arrangement was confirmed and a service engineer would call at my house on Monday between 2 and 4pm.
You couldn’t make it up.
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Recording on a tax helpline: If you understand English, press 1. If you do not understand English, press 2.
Recordings on a mental health helpline: If you are obsessive compulsive, press 1 repeatedly. If you have multiple personality disorder, press 3,4,5 and 6. If you are manic depressive, it does not matter which number you press, no-one will answer. If you have low self-esteem, hang up; all operators are too busy to talk to you.
Computer helpdesk: Which kind of computer do you have? Customer: A white one.
Computer helpdesk: Click on the icon on the left side of the screen. Customer: Your left or my left?
Customer: I can’t print. Every time I try, it says Can’t find printer. I even lifted the printer and placed it in front of the monitor, but the computer still says it can’t find the printer.
