The Voice Newspaper: January 2022 by thevoicemediagroup

JANUARY 2022 • ISSUE NO. 1926

ONE’S TO WATCH: Our tips for the top in 2022 p36-37

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Happy New Year to all our readers

TIDE WILL TURN IN

2 22 THE VOICE PANEL VERDICT: After a tough year for the black community there’s room for hope

VOICE panel of activists and entrepreneurs has predicted 2022 will be a better year than the last one. Looking into their crystal ball the panel said that although we had survived a turbulent

S O U T H WA R K FREE FOR TAT E M E M B E R S

TAT E MO D E RN 25 N OV 2021 – 3 J U L 2022

past few months for race equality “the seed has been planted” to deliver change going forward. Black Britain was seeing a new generation of activism and entrepreneurship. One panellist said: “The tide is certainly changing.”

Their conclusion was echoed by Britain’s most senior trade union leader, Dr Patrick Roach who said, in a New Year message, that black workers had the power to force change and tackle structural racism.

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Inside THIS MONTH

News, views, stories & videos

THE 10 MOST POPULAR STORIES ON VOICE-ONLINE.CO.UK

Genius toddler speaks and counts in different languages p9

1. Give Lewis Hamilton his things

Columnist Kelechi Okafor says the treatment of Sir Lewis Hamilton is anti-black.

2. The people’s verdict: Lewis Hamilton won

Reaction to the controversial Formula One result.

3. Black Brits ‘most vulnerable’ to losing citizenship under government plans

Dotun Adebayo pays homage to those who joined the ancestors p13

Fears grow over Home Ofﬁce plans in their new Nationality and Borders Bill.

4. Family of Lamont Roper hit out at police after inquest verdict

Black Brixtonians ﬁght the tower p34

Reaction to the narrative inquest verdict after canal death following police chase.

5. When ‘sorry’ seems to be the easiest word Columnist Kelechi Okafor takes the Met to ask over the Nicole Smallman and Bibaa Henry case.

6. ‘I’ve given half my life to education’ The story of dyslexic teacher Sheila Simon.

New faces at 1Xtra

7. Yet another innocent black man failed by the US justice system

Anthony Broadwater spent 16 years in prison for the rape of bestselling author Alice Sebold.

p40

Let's get back to business: Tech your health seriously in 2022 p44 Commonwealth Games: West Midlands will come alive in 2022 p45

8. Nicole Smallman and Bibaa Henry: Two police oﬃcers sentenced

Court verdict as cops jailed over taking sick photos of dead women.

9. Shaun Bailey ‘thrown under bus’

Tory singled out for attending Christmas party during lockdown.

10. Toddler Kemarni Watson Darby suﬀered rib fractures, court hears Forensic pathologist tells court the toddler suffered 'severe force to his abdomen'.

This issue is 48 pages EDITOR Lester Holloway E. lester.holloway@thevoice mediagroup.co.uk

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR Paulette Simpson E. paulette.simpson@thevoice mediagroup.co.uk

CORPORATE AFFAIRS & COMMUNICATIONS Paula Dyke E. paula@thevoicemedia group.co.uk

NEWS DESK E. newsdesk@thevoice mediagroup.co.uk

t h g i l t o p S

ROUNDUP

Abimbola Johnson Abimbola Johnson is a criminal defence barrister at 25 Bedford Row. She was recently appointed to chair an independent board that will scrutinise all 43 police forces across England and Wales against their commitment to an action plan to tackle anti-black racism in policing. She said: “I’ve been at the criminal bar for over a decade and the prevalence of racial disparity in criminal justice outcomes is impossible to miss. “I ﬁght really hard for my clients, but I’ve always felt it’s important to work to change the system itself. If not, ultimately, I’m legitimising all aspects of the system, including the areas that generate or fail to reduce those disparities. “When I saw the chair role advertised, I was initially cynical. My instinct was that this may turn out to be another review, or tick box exercise that wouldn’t really amount to anything. “However, I was sent the advertisement several times by friends who urged me to apply, pointing out that if I were in place to scrutinise progress, I could ensure that the police are truly held to account; that tackling racism remains at the top of their agenda; and that any ‘wins’ assigned to this programme are worthy of that title. “I’ve been able to push the police chiefs to consider making a public admission of institutional racism and have seen a lot of good will and genuine commitment from the police leaders involved in devising the plan. “Progress has however been slow and not transparent enough. I’m currently recruiting six board members and received over 100 applications from brilliant candidates. With the right board in place and strong community connections and accountability, I think we will be able to make a real diﬀerence.” Follow Abimbola on Twitter @barristerabi and @policeisob and visit the Board’s website at policeisob.co.uk

Got a story? email us at yourviews@thevoicemediagroup.co.uk NEWS EDITOR Vic Motune E. vic.motune@thevoicemedia group.co.uk

ENTERTAINMENT EDITOR Joel Campbell E. joel.campbell@thevoice mediagroup.co.uk

SPORTS EDITOR Rodney Hinds E. rodney.hinds@thevoice mediagroup.co.uk

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JANUARY 2022

THE VOICE |

Big interview

BLACK WORKER POWER

Britain’s top black trade union leader issues rallying cry for our communities to join, and get involved in, the union movement. By Lester Holloway

LACK WORKERS have the collective power to challenge racial injustice in the workplace, Britain’s most senior black trade union official has said. In a New Year message, Dr Patrick Roach — who leads a 300,000 member teachers’ union - said “now is the time” to get involved in the movement so the collective power of labour can tackle structural racism. Dr Roach, 57, who is chair of the Trades Union Congress (TUC) Anti-Racism Taskforce, which brings together union leaders from every sector, also said it was time to scrap the public sector pay freeze, which was more likely to deny black workers a pay rise. It was a “scandal” that too many employers were getting away with paying lip service to race equality at work, he said. He told The Voice that black trade unionists should “use the leverage that we’ve got, the influence that we have, to speak up for working people, to speak up for our communities, against the government which, frankly, has been pursuing a hostile

Trade unionists should use the leverage we’ve got to speak up for working people environment policy to the detriment of black communities, to the detriment of workers and of working class communities in general”. Dr Roach, who is generalsecretary of the teachers union NASUWT, added: “I want to see more black workers playing an active role within their trade unions.

MAJOR

“Whether that be as caseworkers, negotiators, organisers, or employees within trade unions, black workers are part of that process of bringing this change, about setting the agenda for what our unions say, and what our unions do in practice.” Dr Roach is only the second black generalsecretary of a major union in British

ON A MISSION: Dr Patrick Roach has important roles at the NASUWT and TUC (inset photo: Pierre Wachholder/Studio Francine) history, after Bill Morris led the Transport and General Workers’ Union (now Unite) from 1992 to 2003. The only other black union boss is Maheta Molango, who took over at the small footballers’ union, the Professional Footballers’ Association, in June last year following Gordon Taylor’s retirement. The son of Jamaican parents who settled in Walsall, West Midlands, Dr Roach is a former teacher and lecturer in social policy. He was elected leader in 2020 after two decades of service as an official at the un-

(BAME) workers rose three

Black times as fast compared to workers at the beginning workers are part white of the economic dip. of the process STRUCTURAL As the UK appeared to be of bringing recovering from the Delta about change variant, the data also showed that BAME workers were and setting rehired three times more slowly, proving a pattern of the agenda ‘first out, last in’ that was also

ion, having previously served as deputy general secretary. TUC research found that unemployment rates for black, Asian and minority ethnic

seen at the start and end of the banking crisis of 2008-09. This cannot be fully explained by factors like being more likely to be employed

in sectors hardest hit by the pandemic, such as hospitality and retail; the figures suggest that ‘structural racism’ is also at play. In recent months, the TUC has also joined forces with the business federation the CBI to press prime minister Boris Johnson to introduce mandatory ethnicity pay monitoring, so that the public can see what the pay gaps between black and white workers looks like. Continued on page 4

The Anti-Racism Taskforce: A plan for a better future AS BLACK Lives Matter protests were taking place in Britain, America and across the world, union bosses representing some six million workers decided it was time for a taskforce to raise the game for unions. At their annual TUC Congress in 2020, unions set up a new group to increase black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) representation within the labour movement at all levels and boost

the anti-racist activity of unions. The group includes TUC generalsecretary Frances O’Grady and the chair of the TUC’s race relations committee Gloria Mills from Unison, as well as several general secretary’s such as Dave Ward (CWU), Paddy Lillis (Usdaw), Dr Mary Bousted (NEU) and deputy general secretary’s including Rehana Azam (GMB) and Steve Turner (Unite). The Taskforce works closely

with black union members and has set itself four key aims: 1. Organising: Improving the recruitment of workers to become trade union members; recruiting 1,000 new BAME workplace representatives; developing a leadership programme; making sure that barriers to progression through the democratic structures are removed; and encouraging unions to engage in more anti-racism campaigning.

2. Collective bargaining: Increasing the effectiveness of trade unions in challenging injustice in the workplace by putting all aspects of racial unfairness on the agenda of union-employer negotiations on par with pay, terms and conditions and health and safety. 3. Public policy: Develop a fresh set of policy demands for change that government, employers and trade unions

themselves can implement to tackle racial disparities in work and across public life. 4. Unions as employers: Set out the steps that trade unions can take to monitor and improve the status of BAME staff on issues like pay, grade and progression, so that unions develop the next generation of black and Asian senior leaders.

4 | THE VOICE JANUARY 2022

Big interview

‘GOVERNMENT HAS FAILED TO LEARN FROM COVID CRISIS’

Continued from page 3

THE VOICE caught up with Dr Roach as the news agenda turned to rising cases of the highly transmissible Omicron variant. Dr Roach said the government had failed to learn the lessons over the way the COVID-19 pandemic has disproportionately hit black communities. And as the country plunges into a new wave driven by the Omicron variant, he expressed fears that black families would be hit hardest once again. Dr Roach said this was an employment issue as well as a public health one and that the government had been “divisive” in seeking to blame black communities for higher death rates, rather than address the workplace issues causing the problem, such as greater exposure to the virus on the frontline. He said: “The government hasn’t really learned the lessons and has been very slow to respond, and even seeking to demonise black communities for getting the virus in the first place with this concept of ‘vaccine hesitancy.’ This has been extremely divisive and upsetting as well. “We know from the start of this pandemic just how

acute the impact of this public health crisis was on black communities. “This is an issue of racial justice, which we need to be focusing on alongside the rights of workers, and the rights of communities to be safe to have decent jobs and the opportunity to look after themselves and their families.

ISSUES

“These are the issues that really do matter in the context of how we deal with racism and the effects of racial injustice in workplaces, and in our society more generally. “I’ve asked ministers during the pandemic to tell us what is their race equality impact assessment of their coronavirus measures, and what the response I’ve had is that ‘it’s not in the public interest’ to

Jobs: The facts Before the pandemic:

 Black workers are twice as likely to be stuck on agency and zero-hours contracts.  Black workers get paid 8.3 per cent less than white workers – costing them an average of £1.15 an hour.  Black workers whose highest qualifications are A-levels earn 10 per cent less than their white peers – missing out on an average £1.20 per hour.  TUC polling shows that over half (57 per cent) of black women affected by bullying and harassment have suffered mental health problems. (Figures: TUC)

CRITICISM: Dr Patrick Roach says the UK Government’s approach to COVID-19 has been ‘divisive and upsetting’ (main photo: Pierre Wachholder/Studio Francine)

These issues matter in the context of how we deal with racism and effects of injustice

During the pandemic:  Black unemployment increased by 41 per cent to 8.9 per cent last year, compared to a 14 per cent increase for white workers.  There was an even larger reduction in hours worked (down 11 per cent for black workers).  Young black workers (16-24 years) experienced a 50 per cent rise in unemployment in the same period.  Black unemployment in the East Midlands increased from 6.7 per cent to 13.2 per cent last year.  Black workers were more likely to fear losing their jobs.

publish information. Well, it is in the interests of black communities.” Trade unions have written to the equality minister, Liz Truss, about the government’s failure to publish equality impact assessments. In 2017, watchdog the Equalities and Human Rights Commission carried out an investigation into the Treasury’s failure to consider the ‘cumulative impact’ of tax and spend budget decisions on black communities and other disadvantaged sections of society, but chancellor Rishi Sunak is ignoring the findings. COVID-19 deaths have had a massive disproportionate impact on black communities, with African and Caribbean people being three times more likely to die from the virus than white people. The picture is even worse for African men, who are up to four times more likely to die. Many trade unionists say the difficulty for some workers is getting time off work to get the jab, especially if they are working two or three jobs. In addition, black workers are much more likely to be in insecure precarious work, such as delivery and cab driv-

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The government has been seeking to demonise black communities for getting the virus

tions such as universities outsourced these services — which often had a far greater proportion of black workers — and this meant those workers experienced reduced pay, terms and conditions. A knock-on effect was a reduction in union organising, because this is sometimes harder to do when working for a corporation than a democratic or publicly funded body.

sourcing and, before that, privatisation. This is when companies dismiss workers and immediately rehire them on worse pay, terms and conditions. Dr Roach said that fire and rehire was already proven to be hitting black workers three times as hard. The writer, Lester Holloway, previously

ers, which increase the risk of catching the virus. For every white worker, there are two BAME workers on zerohours contracts, and even more so for those on agency contracts. But it gets even worse; black workers who are not agency or on zero-hours contracts are still more likely to be under-employed than their white counterparts. They are also more likely to be working for outsourced companies. This is a phenomenon that rapidly increased after the banking crisis when many auxiliary services, such as cleaning and catering, that were previously in the public sector were transferred to the private sector. Local authorities and institu-

OUTSOURCING

There is growing concern that the explosion of outsourcing of previous public services to the private sector has disproportionately further impoverished black families that were already existing on a low income before having their employment transferred. Unions are growing increasingly concerned about a new reshaping of the economy after the COVID crisis, with ‘fire and rehire’ adding to the structural unfairness already caused by out-

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worked for the TUC as policy ofﬁcer for anti-racism which included being the secretariat to the Anti-Racism Taskforce.

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News feature

Tackling vaccine hesitancy Black doctors combat misinformation about COVID-19 jabs. By Vic Motune

OU WILL have heard the fears expressed by family and friends over the COVID vaccine. ‘I’ve heard I won’t be able to have children after I take it. Is that true?’ ‘How did they manage to make it so quickly?’ ‘Can I really trust it? How do I know it’s safe?’ These are just some of the questions that have circulated on several social media platforms and in community group meetings by black Britons hesitant about taking a COVID-19 vaccination or booster jab. Figures released in May 2020 by the Office of National Statistics (ONS) found that black people were more than four times more likely to die from COVID-19 than white people. The figures highlighted the dramatic impact of the pandemic on people from black and minority ethnic (BAME) communities in England and Wales. Despite this, black people are more hesitant to get a vaccine than people from other ethnic groups in the UK. A YouGov poll, published in March last year, found that one in 10 BAME Britons (10 per cent) say they will not get vaccinated, a figure which rises to 19 per cent among people of African Caribbean origin. In contrast, another survey found that only six per cent of white Britons would refuse the vaccine. Personal experiences of insensitive treatment by the NHS, a deep-rooted mistrust of authorities and past unethical medical experiments on black people such as the famous Tuskegee Institute syphilis study have played a role in making some African Caribbeans more sceptical about the benefits of a vaccination. Among those who are trying to challenge this mistrust is Dr Omon Imohi. As well as being a general practitioner in Newton-le-Willows, Merseyside, she is the co-founder of Black Women in Health, a non-profit partnership network for black fe-

Through social media we’ve been able to reach a wide audience and answer questions male healthcare professionals. As well as supporting initiatives such as the NHS’ Grab A Jab campaign and signposting people to their nearest walkin clinics, Dr Imohi, pictured inset left, developed a digital strategy as part of Black Women in Health’s efforts to provide clear, accurate information about the vaccine. “In January last year we started creating short one or two-minute entertaining TikTok videos about the vaccine, what it contains, the benefits and the possible side effects. “We also organised several Zoom webinars, and Facebook Live and Instagram Live events with other black doctors, nurses and pharmacists and people who were involved in the clinical trials when the vaccine was being developed. Through social media and platforms such as WhatsApp, we’ve been able to reach a wide audience, answer questions and help people understand why they need the vaccine.” Addressing some of the key doubts and conflicting advice found in several online forums has been a key part of this strategy. “We know that normally vaccines take

about five years to create. Now we have a vaccine that was created in less than a year, so, of course, people will be sceptical,” she added. “Every webinar we conducted had a panel of people from different medical specialities and non-medics such as faith and community leaders. “What we did was to take the questions and myths we were hearing, such as the belief that the vaccine contains microchips, and create slides to use in the webinar. Then someone on the panel with a medical background would explain why the vaccine doesn’t contain microchips.”

WORRIED

She continued: “In response to another fear that the vaccine was unsafe for pregnant women, we created webinars with gynaecologists and paediatricians to talk it through with people who might be worried about this. “When it came to faith, there were questions such as ‘Does it contain pork?’ or ‘Does it contain alcohol?’ or myths such as the vaccine could be a sign of the apocalypse. And the faith leaders who were on our panels gave their input, which helped reassure viewers.” The collaborative efforts of medical professionals like Dr Imohi, local health authorities and community organisations to create a culturally sensitive approach to the vaccine rollout appears to have had a positive effect. According to NHS data, the number of non-white people vaccinated in the UK rose from 2.4 million to 7.6 million between February and April 2021. Among those who changed their minds about getting a vaccine was Andrew Brown, CEO of the Croydon BME Forum, pictured left. He only came forward to receive h i s first j a b

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SHOT IN THE ARM: More and more BAME people are coming forward and getting vaccinated

We’ve got to recognise the good reasons why black people were nervous about this vaccine after months of deliberating. In a bid to encourage others in his local community he collaborated with the NHS to produce a video of his vaccination at Selhurst Park, home of Crystal Palace football club. “I had some questions which I had to make sure I asked the nurse, such as what symptoms would I have after the jab?” he said in the video.

COMFORTABLE

“She mentioned I might have a sore arm for a couple of days and maybe some headaches as well. “Having the consultation with the nurse for 10 minutes made me feel much more comfortable. I’m glad I came, and anybody else watching this, please go ahead and do it.” He recently attended a special event held at London’s City Hall highlighting the one-year anniversary success of Mayor of London Sadiq Khan’s COVID-19 vaccination and efforts to encourage more people from black and minority ethnic communities to get vaccinated.

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Mr Khan, pictured below, told The Voice that while there had been successes, it was important to continue building trust with people from communities who may have felt that health authorities had not served them fairly in the past. “We’ve got to recognise the good reasons why black people were nervous about this vaccine. “Over the last year we’ve worked with trusted message carriers, people that the communities trust who can go out and talk about the difference the vaccine is making.” He continued: “This has been a game changer and a lifesaver. The great news is that, up to this moment, almost 15 million jabs have been administered and more than two million boosters. “And every day we’re seeing more and more black London-

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ers who’ve never received a vaccine receiving one. Why? Because they’ve got friends, families, neighbours, colleagues that they trust receiving the vaccine. And they know the difference is making. But we can’t stop. “We’re going back again and again to those communities where large numbers of black Londoners live to try and persuade them why it’s important to receive the vaccine.”

DIFFERENCE

Mr Khan added: “One of the things that’s heartbreaking when we visit hospitals is that almost 80 per cent of the people there with the virus haven’t received a vaccine. “That’s why it’s so important that people hear the message about the difference the vaccine makes from those they trust.”

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News feature

‘2022 will be a better year’

We asked six inﬂuential black personalities what they expect to see as the year unfolds. By Vic Motune

THE START of the year is a time that gets people thinking about what the forthcoming 12 months will bring. As we enter 2022, the impact of the pandemic is all around us. It has had a profound effect on the health and livelihoods of people of all backgrounds. But black

Britons have been particularly hard-hit. According to the Health Foundation’s COVID-19 Impact Inquiry report, people from black and minority ethnic communities experienced income loss ranging from 29 per cent to 43 per cent in 2021, compared with 22 per cent among white British people.

And there are some who believe that the widespread support for racial equality that was expressed following the global Black Lives Matter protests has slowed in 2021. The Voice spoke to a wide range of people about what the forthcoming year might mean for black Britons...

‘Feelings of optimism’

‘No signs of progress’

PERSONALLY, I am genuinely optimistic for the black community in 2022. I did expect that after the Black Lives Matter protests and the death of George Floyd in 2020 things were going to slow down a bit. But I believe that a seed has been planted. Conversations have started and I think many more black people are more aware of the power they have to change things. There was a time when we used to take things lying down, but we’re now ﬁnding the voice to challenge racism and discrimination. White people are becoming more aware of things like unconscious bias. They may not get rid of it immediately because it’s a habit of thinking. But, as I said, the conversations have started. When you have conversations you plant a seed, and it takes time for that seed to grow. But the tide is certainly changing.

AFTER THE death of George Floyd, we saw big companies make the random push to talk about how inclusive and anti-racist they were. And you do see better representation in things like TV ads which are now more diverse than they’ve ever been. But I think 2022 will be really telling. Will those companies that didn’t make statements about how much they valued race equality, and who escaped critical attention, do the same things they were doing before? And for those companies that did say diversity was important, now the spotlight

— Lekia Lee, social entrepreneur

‘Collaborations count’ OVER THE course of 2021 we’ve seen a lot more funds created for black entrepreneurs and founders. We’ve also seen the ﬁrst blackowned unicorn in the UK (a startup company valued at over $1 billion). So in terms of entrepreneurship, I’m actually beginning to feel optimistic about 2022. But what I am worried about is the creation of an elite set of entrepreneurs. We have to be careful we don’t create the kinds of structures that prevented us from progress-

ing to begin with. What often happens is that is that, there’s a group of people who you see everywhere. They’re on all the panels and are called upon as spokespeople. But they don’t necessarily open the doors to allow others in. In 2022 I’m hoping that we’ll see more collaboration across the African and Caribbean diaspora and the creation of more spaces to foster these collaborations. — Giselle Frederick, tech business owner

has moved away from this issue somewhat, what are they doing? Unfortunately, I’m not that optimistic. I think 2022 is going to be a year in which we’ll see a lot of retrenchment on race equality. Companies say they’re improving, but so many of our members tell us that when they look around their workplaces they still don’t see any black people in senior roles. Are things really changing? I’d be surprised if I saw more progress this year. — Ashleigh Ainsley, diversity and inclusion leader and co-founder, Colorintech

‘In the right position’ THE PAST few years has shown there’s been an effort made by different institutions to address diversity, equality and inclusion. Sport, for example, has made great strides in addressing the issue. A lot of this has come from black and ethnic minority athletes asking, quite rightly, ‘Why have we so many black superstars, but none in the corridors of power?’ I think 2022 has to build on these efforts to address the diversity and equality issue. And we only do that by having people in the corridors of power. So in 2022 I’m looking

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for people in the positions of authority to address equality. But we don’t want people placed in jobs who aren’t meant to be there. It’s about getting the right people in the right positions. — Sky Andrew, sports agent

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‘It’s a time to re-evaluate’ I’M AN optimist. We’ve had the most challenging few years, and no one would have envisaged what happened in 2020 and 2021. The pandemic has certainly exposed inequalities and racism to the core. But it’s also enabled us to reevaluate things. For example, if I look at my industry, which is broadcasting, I’ve seen more black people on TV. There have been more opportunities and that’s a great thing. Going forward into 2022, it would be good to have more black people behind the screen, more of us in managerial posts. It would be nice to have a black editor of Good Morning Britain or BBC Breakfast, or someone at the top in the national press, for example. And I suppose there is a

drive to try and achieve this. But it’s relatively slow. The push for diversity hasn’t fully reached the top yet. The other worrying thing is what’s happening politically. Take the recent Nationality and Borders Bill where people could be stripped of their British citizenship without warning. It’s a bit discouraging, to be honest. It leaves you with the feeling that if I did something like cross a red light while driving, for example, I could end up being stateless or kicked out of the country. This type of thing produces conversations where people may be pessimistic and say, ‘Why should I bother if the country I’m in won’t necessarily acknowledge me for who I am?’ — Ed Adoo, radio broadcaster

‘Positivity is always key’ NO MATTER what happened in 2021, it’s about looking to the future, although it’s important for us to look back and understand what’s happened. Positivity is key. I believe we’re moving forward. The work of Black Lives Matter has made a great improvement. We need to recognise our achievements as a community. We have achieved a lot, and that should provide the impetus to push forward. Recognising our

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achievements is what brings us unity in the face of the negative forces we face. And in unity there is strength. It’s up to us to provide the best possible example to our young ones to show them they can achieve greatness. We were made to be great. — Chief May Agbakoba, activist and charity founder

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JANUARY 2022 THE VOICE |

News News

ONE SPECIAL LITTLE BOY

MIND THE LANGUAGE: Isaiah with his mum Jazelle and a furry friend; inset below left, Isaiah is keen to learn more every day and build on his already impressive array of talents

At the age of two, Isaiah can read, write and count in Japanese, Spanish, French and Twi By Vic Motune

SAIAH GYAMFI may only only be two years old – but he can already read and count in Japanese. The talented toddler taught himself to count up to 40 in Japanese in less than 24 hours recently after becoming fascinated with a YouTube video he watched on his mum’s phone. And his love of languages doesn’t end there. Isaiah has taught himself to read, write and count in Spanish, French, and Twi, and can solve multiplication and subtraction maths problems. Proud mum Jazelle, 30, from south west London, told The Voice Isaiah has been able to grasp new information easily from the time he was a baby. But his ability to learn numbers and words in different languages came as a complete surprise. She says just after her son turned two he surprised the family by teaching himself to count in Japanese after watching a phonics video on YouTube as she did the dishes. “One day, he was watching a phonics video on my phone as I was cleaning up,” the early years teacher recalled. “These videos are all about helping very young children recognise and read words. “I didn’t think anything of it. But I was walking down the hallway I heard him saying some words in a language I hadn’t heard before and I quickly went back and realised he was counting in Japanese. “He’d clicked on one of the suggested videos YouTube of-

I was walking down the hallway and heard him saying some words in a language I hadn’t heard fers, which was about counting from one to 10 in Japanese, so that’s what he did. “I called my partner and we stood where he couldn’t see us because we didn’t want him to be shy, and he would just keep tapping the screen to rewind the video so he could learn the numbers off by heart. “And from there, he just continued throughout the day, counting in Japanese. I started to learn it myself so I can make sure he was counting correctly.” She continued: “He loves that Japanese has a pattern. Once you learn numbers one to 10 it’s very easy to learn the rest. “After that, he began teaching himself words and numbers in Spanish and French. The latest language he’s learning is Twi because Isaiah is of Ghanaian heritage. I’m learning it myself so I can support him, and so far I think it is his favourite language to learn.” She added: “At nursery, Isaiah has an Italian teacher and a French teacher. Thankfully, they understand that when he’s there he often just wants to focus on numbers, learning new words and new languages which he’s obsessed with. He’ll often ask them, ‘Please, can we

do Italian today?’ Or, ‘Can we do French today?’ So he gets a lot of support there as well. “And as much as he’s learning all these languages, I’m learning them myself just to catch up with him.” Jazelle revealed that Isaiah has been interested in learning numbers and words since the time he was five months old. She said: “He would often stare at a mug I used to drink tea out of. And every time I held it he would follow me around. I soon realised Isaiah would kind of fixate on anything with any type of letter or number on it. “Then I decided to turn the living room where we spent most of our time into a literacy and numeracy environment. I bought wall stickers from Amazon that had numbers one to 10 and the alphabet on them.”

EXCITEMENT

Isaiah responded positively. Jazelle recalled he would wave his arms with excitement each time he learned a new number or letter. By the time he was 10 months old, he was able to identify numbers one to 10 and the full alphabet. “I would ask him, ‘Where is he?’ and he would point to it or ‘Where is number nine?’ and he’d point to it.” Although unusual, Jazelle said she was more delighted than anything else over her son’s excitement about learning and decided to do what she could to encourage him. “I bought a set of flashcards with words on them. And then I would go through those with him. Not long after he was repeating words back to back and just having so much fun with it. And from 11 months, he was writing numbers one to 10 on a doodle pad that I bought for him. “By the time he turned one, he could count until he got to 200. Isaiah loves focusing on the pattern of numbers. He would skip count in odd and even numbers and that’s how he devel-

oped his love for multiplication and subtraction.” She continued: “From that moment, I thought he might have something quite special. I’ve worked in childcare for 10 years and I’ve never seen that ability to learn from a child that young.” Following their discovery of Isaiah’s ability, his parents set up an Instagram account to share his learning milestones and encourage other parents to get more involved with helping their children to learn.

POSITIVE

While she has received a lot of positive comments, the motherof-one says there are some people who have not been so encouraging. “When I started to share it online, I got quite a lot of positive responses,” she said. “But there was a handful of people who would accuse me of being a ‘pushy parent’ and said I should just let him play. What they don’t understand is that for Isaiah learning is his version of play. And even though learning is what he loves to do, he still does all the things an average child does, like playing in the park with his friends.

People don’t understand that for a child like Isaiah learning is his version of playing “A lot of the time, I have to shut out those people who say I might be pressuring him. “That’s pure ignorance, they don’t understand. And that’s, okay, you don’t have to understand. But I understand, he’s my child and I know how unbelievably happy he is, when he’s learning new things.” Jazelle added: “I’ve joined quite a few Facebook groups for parents who have children like Isaiah and it’s comforting just to know you’re not alone.” Next year Isaiah will start school. In a bid to help him continue his progress, Jazelle has booked an appointment with an educational psychologist for her son. “We wanted encouragement and support for him while he’s in school. We don’t want Isaiah to start reception and begin

to learn how to count from one to five for example, because he knows that. The chances of him being bored are quite high. “The school we’ve chosen is a private school and will meet his needs. “We’ve also been trying to do as much research as possible, and put a plan in place to make sure that his love for learning is maintained.”

CONNECTED

One part of that plan is ensuring Isaiah remains connected to his heritage. “As the school is not very diverse, we need to figure out how to maintain his knowledge about his cultural background. “I’m of Jamaican heritage, my partner is Ghanaian and we do teach him about aspects of African Caribbean culture. “So I will be heavily involved in his schooling because he needs to have a positive education in that regard as well. “We know he won’t be taught about black history in school, so we’ll have to do that at home. “As much as we want Isaiah to go to a private school, he will still be home-schooled, to try and get the best possible outcome for him.”

10 | THE VOICE JANUARY 2022

News feature

Helping us to speak out

VISION: Founder of The Voice Val McCalla was determined to fight for black rights

Campaigners, businesses and charities tell Vic Motune about the major impact that The Voice has had on their important work

HE VOICE’S founder Val McCalla had a goal from the beginning that Britain’s rapidly growing black community should have a voice amid the social unrest and racial tension that marked Britain in the early 1980s. Until then, black media in Britain, such as the West Indian Gazette, The Caribbean Times and West Africa magazine, catered to a generation of immigrants who harboured a desire to some day return to their countries of origin in the Caribbean and Africa. But, as McCalla said in a rare TV interview in 1992: “I decided deliberately to have a newspaper that targeted people who were born here and had spent most of their lives here.”

EXCELLENCE

And The Voice newspaper has been campaigning on the key issues that affect black Britons and celebrating black excellence since its launch in Hackney, east London, in August 1982. For people like Debbie Ariyo, pictured inset right, the impact of The Voice’s campaigning work has been life-changing. In the early 2000s, the national news was dominated by a series of tragic deaths of newly arrived African children. These included Victoria Climbie, Damilola Taylor and Jude Akapa. Ariyo, a civil servant from London, was determined to do something to tackle the issue. She came up with the idea of organising a conference which

What it says is that it’s not a sprint, it’s a marathon, and we are there for you, good and bad would bring together families, social workers and MPs to discuss how to better safeguard children of African origin. As part of a campaign highlighting these issues, The Voice published a story in May 2001 on Ariyo’s plans for the conference and her passionate plea to the community not to ignore these children. Following the publication of the article, things moved quickly for Ariyo and the conference gave birth to a charity called Africans Unite Against Child Abuse (AFRUCA). Ariyo has since gone on to work with government bodies and child welfare organisations all around the world. “There’s no way I can talk about growth of AFRUCA without talking about The Voice newspaper, it’s just that simple,” Ariyo recalls. “Initially, I was only planning a conference. But after The Voice ran

the story about it, mainstream media outlets such as the BBC and several African newspapers picked up on it. “Because of the coverage, so many people attended the conference and it really put what I was trying to achieve in the spotlight. The conference was in January 2002, and by June of that year, I’d started working part time for the civil service because there was so much demand for AFRUCA’s work. That wasn’t my plan but our team was exposed very quickly and we had to learn quickly. Everything that happened to AFRUCA after that conference was because of The Voice’s coverage.” Political and equalities activist Simon Woolley, now Lord Woolley of Woodford echoes the importance of The Voice’s campaigning impact. Despite the historic election to the House of Commons of MPs Bernie Grant, Keith Vaz, Diane Abbott and Paul Boateng, the disillusionment of black Britons with mainstream was something that The Voice reported on and campaigned against. In the years leading up to the 1997 general election, the paper urged readers to realise the potential impact of the black vote. So when Woolley launched Operation Black Vote in 1996, an

organisation which ran voter registration, and lobbied politicians to take the concerns of the black community seriously, The Voice got behind it. Lord Woolley recalls: “OBV was the smallest black activist organisation in the history of activism! We could not have achieved the success we did without The Voice. “It has been our go-to place to speak to the black community for over 25 years. I remember former editor Winsome Grace Cornish saying to us: ‘This newspaper is a mouthpiece for Operation Black Vote to help empower our community’. “Having that level of support for so long is really the essence of The Voice. What it says is that it’s not a sprint, it’s a marathon and we are there for you, good or bad.” The murder of Stephen Lawrence in 1993 by racist thugs and the subsequent handling of the investigation into his death considerably strained an already difficult relationship between the black community and the police. Among the organisations in-

volved in highlighting this and whose work The Voice reported on was the Anti Racist Alliance, (ARA) a black-led, broad-based coalition formed in 1991.

RESPONSIBILITY

For ARA founder Marc Wadsworth, the paper was a natural ally. He recalls: “Val was uncompromising on his opposition to police brutality. I remember when The Voice ran a front page with the headline ‘Black and Blue’. It featured an image of a black man who had been beaten up by the police. “The Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police at the time said to Val ‘please don’t run that front page’. And he absolutely refused. He said ‘This is what is happening in my community. And as a newspaper we have a responsibility to reflect the reality, sometimes harsh reality of our interactions with the police’. This was despite the fact that the Met advertised in The Voice.” The COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant impact on the livelihoods of people from all walks of life. But many black-

owned businesses have struggled to get back on their feet following the pandemic and have had a hard time accessing recovery loans. It was this fact that led global company Fiserv to launch its Back2Business programme last year in to strengthen small ethnically diverse businesses. The programme offers black business owners the opportunity to apply for £10,000 grants, which are administered by the Association for Enterprise Opportunity, a global organisation that provides support to underserved entrepreneurs and businesses. To support the initiative, The Voice ran a series of features and an interview with Neil H Wilcox, head of corporate social responsibility at Fiserv. Lorraine Deschamps, the company’s head of corporate citizenship, says the coverage helped Fiserv achieve its goal of reaching and supporting business owners. She recalls: “We looked at The Voice because it was the channel we clearly needed to use to reach our black community, especially given The Voice’s business publications.”

Fighting for our community from the very beginning A QUICK look through The Voice’s archives shows that the newspaper has remained true to McCalla’s vision for four decades...

questionnaire. Two weeks after the story was published in The Voice, the BBC scrapped its plans for a questionnaire after black staff refused to fill it in.

November 1982: The Voice highlighted controversial efforts by the BBC to monitor staff’s ethnic origin with a specially designed

January 1983: The paper leads calls for a public inquiry following the mysterious death of 21-year -old Colin Roach inside the foyer of Stoke Newington police station.

September 1992: A Voice appeal to readers for a donor to help save the life of 10 year leukaemia sufferer. The appeal struck a chord: over 100 volunteers came forward as a result of its story about Steven — the most received from the black

@thevoicenewspaper

@thevoicenews

TAKING A STAND: Members of the Anti-Racist Alliance during a demonstration in the early ‘90s

voicenews

www.voice-online.co.uk

JANUARY 2022

Terence Channer

THE VOICE

| 11

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Emancipation of the mind is key to black liberation Positive representation matters. It’s time to throw off the shackles of any lingering black self-doubt

S A black child, I grew up ‘believing’ racist lies and opinions. I was metaphorically casting aside black dolls in favour of white dolls. It was not a fervent belief akin to faith in God, more an acceptance or acquiescence of our lowly place in society. There is a profound psychological effect that being exposed to negative stereotypical images of black people has on a black child. I did not escape this and therefore a degree of selfdeprogramming had to occur. Hence, positive representation matters and cannot be overestimated. Therefore, many black children require help to unlearn harmful false life negating beliefs.

PSYCHE

Therefore, one of the most powerfully successful effects of racism is in its success in getting black people to actually believe the lie, “we can’t succeed”, when in fact we can (given fair and equitable opportunities). The minimum effect of racism on the black psyche is to introduce ‘black doubt’. Effective racism not only requires unfairly and inequitably racially skewing the housing, education, healthcare, employment and criminal justice playing fields, but in so doing, also seeks to successfully convince us black players, on the playing fields of life, that we are simply not good enough and that losing the game was purely down to poor individual or team performance (part of the problem is seeing black folk as a “team” — we are not monolithic). To be more precise, the lie is that black folk are only good in certain areas; for example, music and sport performance

No act of parliament has the power to emancipate the mind (not music/sports management). We are performers, we are entertainers. It is fundamentally important that racism not only places obstacles in the way, but that those discriminated against, find such barriers acceptable as part of “our lot” in knowing our place in society. ‘Black doubt’ is a key and necessary part of ‘effective’ racism. However, it’s not just about black doubt, racism is also about preserving and maintaining ‘black confidence’ in what we are viewed as doing best, i.e. sports and entertainment. I distinctly remember feeling black confidence as a teenage boy, as I popped and locked as part of a breakdance crew. I used to get the same feeling at black music events or when watching dominant black sporting performances. Call it black pride in black spaces. I call it black confidence, black confidence in staying in our lane. Yes, I do take immense pride in black artistic and sporting achievements. However, I am acutely aware of the context — of such pride and confidence unintentionally perpetuating and cementing stereotypes (a conundrum). Historically, there have been profound scientific, ideological and political lies, theories and opinions that have been suc-

cessful in portraying black people as intellectually, spiritually, morally and aesthetically inferior. I do not use the word ‘successful’ lightly, if the truth be told we are seeking to undo the gains and ‘successes’ of racism. Some of this success found a firm foothold in the minds of black people, to such an extent that Marcus Garvey, pictured inset below, famously referred to it as ‘mental slavery’. The notion that, even after physical liberation, there remained a potent, stubborn, illiberal threat, that of mental slavery. As a lawyer who brings claims against the police for false imprisonment, I am not lost to the imagery and symbolism, that no act of parliament has the power to emancipate the human mind. Hence, Garvey said: “We are going to emancipate ourselves from mental slavery because whilst others might free the body, none but ourselves can free the mind.” We have the creative intellectual genius that brought jazz, gospel, blues, rock and roll, reggae, calypso, rap, soul, funk, R’n’B, rumba, and Afrobeats to the world, not to mention the countless sporting triumphs. We also have the ability to thrive, unhindered in business, science, technology and a vast array of other key areas of human endeavour. Ironically, given the theme of this piece, many of those that have sought to suppress or stifle black progress, by restricting opportunities, have done so, not out of a fear that such opportunities would be squandered due to lack of ability, but on the contrary, that such opportunities would be fully and successfully exploited as seen

ACT OF DEFIANCE: A sculpture of Black Lives Matter protester Jen Reid stood proudly on the plinth where the statue of slave trader Edward Colston once was in Bristol before being torn down in June 2020 – but it was swiftly removed (photo: Matthew Horwood/ Getty Images)

on Black Wall Street, Tulsa, Oklahoma. It started with the tactical and strategic decision not to educate slaves to read, lest they plot an uprising and liberate themselves. That fight for educational parity between black people

law of ‘separate but equal’ as unconstitutional (many of us would have seen the black and white photography of the little black girl entering a previously white only school under armed guard following the decision in Brown).

It started with the tactical and strategic decision not to educate slaves to read and white people has continued for centuries. It culminated in the most important legal case in this context, the 1954 decision in Brown v Board of Education, when the Supreme Court struck down the Jim Crow

If you were ever under any illusion as to why phrases such as “black is beautiful”, “young, gifted and black” and “black excellence” became part of the anti-black racism lexicon, these affirmations were designed for the benefit of black people, to

militate against racist lies, and for us to confidently hold our heads up high, lest we believe the lie. They are clarion calls, rallying cries. For racism to be effective, we have to believe the lie or at least have nagging black self-doubt leading to poor self-confidence.

MEDIOCRITY

The fact is, there has to be room for black mediocrity (in addition to excellence), as there is room for white mediocrity. Nevertheless, these black affirmations are vitally important in fighting the lie. It is time to throw off the shackles of any lingering black self-doubt. Black is beautiful.

Terence Channer is a consultant solicitor at Scott-Moncrieff & Associates LLP who specialises in police misconduct, injury and healthcare law. He is a passionate anti-racism advocate.

12 | THE VOICE JANUARY 2022

News feature

Melanin in Manchester Business fayre builds on the success of Black Pound Day. By Leah Mahon

H SELLING A VISION: Bianca Danielle and Kelly Morgan of Melanin Markets have been doing a fantastic job helping to put the black business community on the map in the Manchester area

Business guru Tim Campbell and Wellness influencer Vanessa Boachie share their mental health tips for Every Mind Matters

usiness guru Tim Campbell and Wellness influencer Vanessa Boachie share their mood boosting tips in a new video out today for Every Mind Matters mental health campaign. The government campaign champions the little things we can all do to look after our mental wellbeing to help us lead happier, healthier lives and cope with life’s challenges. Tim and Vanessa joined the campaign after a government survey revealed last month that the mental health of Black adults in England has been especially knocked back by the pandemic. Those affected were also more likely to feel lonely and demotivated to work than the wider public. Top executive at trading business OSTC Tim Campbell, says: “This past year and a half has been tough on all of us, but there are little things we can all do to take care of our mental health. Having a training plan was my way to cope during lockdown. I went on daily runs and lifted weights in my garden. I could see myself getting better. In an unpredictable world, this gave me back a sense of control.” At the heart of the campaign is the free, NHS-approved Mind Plan. By answering

five simple questions online, you can generate a personalised mental health plan with practical tips to help you destress, sleep better and feel more in control. So far, over 3.4 million Mind Plans have been created. Simply search ‘Every Mind Matters’ to create a plan tailored to your lifestyle. Therapist and Founder of mental health not-for-profit Inside Out Wellbeing Vanessa Boachie, says: “I know what it’s like when the world gets you down, but I’ve also learned there are ways to fight back. Being present in the moment and doing breathing exercises helps me feel less overwhelmed by everything that’s going on right now. You just need to find the thing that works for you.” Consultant Psychiatrist Dr T Ayodele Ajayi who also features in the video added: “Depending on how you answer the questions, the Mind Plan might advise you to do a workout, cut down on alcohol, or try meditation. The website also features helpful videos and organisations to contact if you need further help.” Other famous faces – including Mercury prize winner Arlo Parks, singer and actor Kelle Bryan, and TV presenter Jay Blades – are supporting the campaign.

To find out more, visit: www.nhs.co.uk/every-mind-matters

UNDREDS OF keen shoppers gathered in Manchester to support black-owned businesses at a new kind of market last month. Melanin Markets, one the city’s biggest showcases of black businesses, was put together by business owners and native Mancunians Kelly Morgan, 32, and Bianca Danielle, 31. After being introduced by a mutual friend, the entrepreneurs realised they shared the same passion in creating a space for black talent to thrive. With the success of the ongoing Black Pound Movement, a festive market celebrating the creativity and diversity of their community was born. For Kelly, after spending six years living in London before returning to Manchester, her mission was to make the northern city feel like home for black consumers. “I was spoilt for choice when it came to black-owned businesses or finding shops and places to find gifts that represented us and our culture, and that just kind of honoured multiculturalism to a deeper level,” she told The Voice. “We felt like it would be a really good thing to bring a market to Manchester, which is not only beneficial to the black community, but is accessible to all communities. “We do have some markets that promote the Black Pound Movement. However, they’re very much in places where it’s predominantly just the black community accessing those places, and also feel like it’s important for the wider community to see us and for us to take spaces in public domains.” The highly anticipated event, which was held at one of Manchester’s most popular theatres, was special to the duo who previously worked there at different times, but also for the message it sends to the black community. “Melanin Markets is not just about putting black businesses on a pedestal, it’s us celebrating each other,” says Bianca. “We’re navigating spaces as well like the theatre that historically is not a place for black

There are people really making a noise and doing it loudly. We want to be a part of amplifying it people, and black people in our community don’t go to the theatre normally. “We’re saying to people it’s okay to come into a space that will embrace you, and we’re using the market as that vehicle.” Over 100 vendors applied to put their businesses on the map at the first Melanin Markets, and the pair whittled it down to around 40 stores selling an array of goods from handmade jewellery, self-published books, food and drink and clothing sourced from different corners of Africa.

INSPIRED

Pamela Richards is the founder of Craftspiration, whose handmade jewellery is inspired by giving young people a space to express themselves. She described the turnout of the event as “overwhelming”. “I literally have no words. I hope we can continue to go with it [the promotion of black businesses in Manchester] because I think it’s fantastic.” Bianca’s own brand, Ruby Dean Designs – named after her grandmother who she describes as a “living legend” – takes inspiration from her Jamaican culture when creating her handmade accessories. She and Kelly, the owner of Plantain Avenue, currently sell their products online to regular and growing customers, but have seen first-hand the unique struggles black business owners often face in the market. But they also feel that encountering these everyday micro-aggressions with each other has made them stronger business women. “When you work with whiteled institutions, when you’re trying to translate your values, your aims and your goals, sometimes I get frustrated and

talk about it out of emotion, and I feel like I’m not being able to get my point across,” says Bianca. “But Kelly is able to be there and we navigate that together. There’s just so much power in that because it’s a lived experience, it’s a shared experience.” She adds: “There’s just so much power in that because it’s a lived experience, it’s a shared experience. We understand how to register a business, public liability insurance, the branding of your business, we understand it because we’ve done that too. So, we were on the same journeys as our vendors.” Despite their success, the pair have continued to come up against those on social media who still question why there has to be a market solely dedicated to black businesses. However, a report by the Runnymede Trust unearthed that for every £1 of white wealth, black Caribbeans have 20p and black Africans 10p. A black household on average has one-quarter of the wealth of a white household. “We’ve had a couple of tweets where they say this is not inclusive and it’s racism against white people,” says Bianca. “It doesn’t make any sense, because actually we’re showcasing black businesses. We are constantly saying the whole point is all communities come in and spend black. All communities have this opportunity to be introduced to black businesses as normal practice and not just for festive shopping.” The duo have dreams of making Melanin Markets an annual event for the city of Manchester and hope to be centre stage in bigger venues for more blackowned businesses like their very own to have their limelight. “We’re loud, black women. We’re strong, we’re not meek women. We don’t shy away. “Right now that London energy is starting to push through in Manchester. There are people really making a noise and doing it loudly, and we want to be a part of amplifying that.” To find out more about black

businesses in Manchester, visit Instagram @melanin.markets

JANUARY 2022 THE VOICE | 13

Dotun Adebayo

Join the debate online voice-online.co.uk/opinion

News

Rate him or hate him - you can’t ignore him!

HERE’S TO A BETTER 2022

Let’s hope we start to see US vice-president Kamala Harris stepping up to make a positive difference

021 WAS the United Nations Year of International Peace and Trust and – when on a cold grey day in January in Washington DC, Kamala Harris was sworn in as the first female vice-president of the United States – many were at peace again. After the era of Trump, they felt they could breathe. But could Kamala be trusted to deliver? And what would she be like if she was the main man (so to speak)? By the end of the year we would get an answer to at least one of those questions. But first, we had to say RIP in grieving the passing of a real icon of the black screen – Cicely Tyson.

POWER

She was an actress whose career spanned the trajectory of civil rights, black power and Black Lives Matter. One of the principled beacons representing us with all the pride and dignity of our journey. I first saw her give a blistering performance as the lead in The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, a woman who had come through enslavement and lived to tell the tale at 100 years old. In this year of peace and trust, we said rest in peace to many other greats. The former world heavyweight boxing champ Leon Spinks – remember him, with the big gap in the front of his upper chops where

The trust many people had in her remains unfulfilled his teeth had been knocked out. He was only 67. When in the same month (February) we also lost music artists Mary Wilson of the Supremes and U-Roy, the godfather of reggae emceeing, those of you of my generation will have felt that a beat had been ripped out of our dancing days. After all, Motown/soul and reggae are the two pillar stones of the black British musical landscape still – surely? In March, we lost Bunny Wailer and Marvellous Marvin Hagler. In April, it was the rapper DMX. In May, it was Mr Lawdy Miss Clawdy – Lloyd Price. Also, RIP to Olympic athlete and founder of the Olympic Project for Human Rights, for which Tommie Smith and Jon Carlos took the podium in black gloved support of in Mexico ‘68. We lost president Kenneth Kaunda, one of the giants of post-colonial Africa in June. And the legendary (and extremely eccentric) Jamaican record producer Lee Perry, who must always be given a shout as one of those who could legitimately claim to have ‘invented’ reggae.

Meanwhile, back in the COVID wars in this year of peace and trust, the government struggled to convince more black Britons that they were not trying to poison them by forcing them to take a jab. It seems like not even the large number of deaths of black people from COVID will convince the vaccine ‘hesitant’. And that wasn’t the only issue of black trust that rocked the government. Following the racist abuse that young black England footballers faced within minutes of missing penalties in the shoot-out of the Euro 2020 final against Italy in July, several of their colleagues, primarily Aston Villa captain Tyrone Mings, expressed a lack of trust in the Home Secretary Priti Patel’s outrage.

A SEAT AT THE TABLE: Main, Cicely Tyson (photo: Rachel Luna/ Getty Images); inset below left, Kamala Harris was, in November, very briefly the president of the United States (photo: Andrew Lichtenstein/Getty Images)

CRITICISED

She had earlier criticised the ‘politicisation’ of striker Marcus Rashford which, Mings believes, fanned the flames of racism against black footballers. Trust was also in question in one of this paper’s biggest investigations of the year. The Voice revealed the ‘low lack trust levels’ of black businesses in the main high street banks to give them equal access to financing. The Black British. In Business & Proud report was commissioned by Lloyds Bank and found less than half of over 800 black entrepreneurs surveyed felt they could trust UK banks to support them with the necessary capital to grow their businesses. Lloyds Bank says it is committing to ‘large-scale change’. But young black Brits aren’t waiting for change any more. They’re not hanging around to find out if the next James Bond will be black or whether the banks’ algorithms are ever going to be truly colour blind. In the midst of the pandemic, 2021 saw a growth of new black businesses. For example, after being made redundant, Sarah Akinterinwa picked up her sketchbook and a black British comic series was born. Indeed, among the grief and

The future looks bright for black British business mayhem of the pandemic, the world’s two richest men Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, the Tesla and Amazon bosses (net worth Musk $297 billion [£224bn] and Bezos $201 billion [£151bn]) have seen their fortunes increase. But the growth of young black entrepreneurs in Britain has been the biggest business news of 2021. The security company, The First Response Group Ltd of Leeds entrepreneurs Jamal Tahlil and Edgar Chibaka, saw its biggest growth since they started 15 years ago. Much of that is due to its contract with Oxford University

to protect its vaccine production from international crooks. Other great black business in Britain that broke through into the public consciousness in 2021 include beauty professional booking app Beautystack, fashion label Maniere de Voir, social marketing agency Social Chain (its founder Steven Bartlett being the youngest ever Dragon in the Den – the company’s worth £22 million and he’s only 27), the BYP network for black professionals, and Goodsoil venture capitalists. The future looks bright for black British business. On the world stage, Forbes magazine (which tracks the wealth of the super rich) declared, for the eighth year in a row, the Nigerian Aliko Dangote the richest black person in the world with a fortune of $13.5 billion (£10.1bn) from his commodities businesses.

Oprah Winfrey at $2.7 billion (£2.03bn) remains the only woman in the top 10 richest black people for the 18th year in a row. But back to the issue of trust. In November, for a moment, a black woman was the president of the United States when president Biden was in hospital for a colonoscopy. But that historic moment was overshadowed by the acquittal of a gun-toting anti-Black Lives Matter protestor who shot dead two men and seriously wounded a third. Ultimately, Kamala Harris’s brief moment in the Oval Office proved ineffective in tackling the real issues of BLM that still cost innocent lives by the shedload in the United States. The trust people may have had at the beginning of the year that a black woman at the head of the table would make a difference remains unfulfilled. For now.

DOTUN ADEBAYO, BRITAIN’S MOST CELEBRATED BLACK BROADCASTER, IS KNOWN AS THE KING OF THE NIGHTTIME AIRWAVES. ALL VIEWS HERE ARE HIS OWN. LISTEN TO HIM OVERNIGHT ON BBC 5 LIVE FROM 1-5AM SATURDAY MORNINGS - MONDAY MORNINGS & 1AM - 4AM ON BBC RADIO LONDON (WEDNESDAY TO FRIDAY MORNINGS). FOLLOW HIM ON TWITTER: @dotunadebayo

14 | THE VOICE JANUARY 2022

Lyndon Mukasa

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Eye on the Diaspora

Should we be concerned by China’s inﬂuence in Africa and the Caribbean?

The Asian nation’s growing involvement will impact every area of economic and political development

OLLOWING THE move by Barbados to remove the Queen as its head of state, sections of the British media promoted delusional arguments about the Caribbean nation replacing the Queen in order to appease China. Such patronising arguments underlies the inability of sections of the British establishment to respect, let alone understand, a country like Barbados’ right to self determination given its history with Britain and the Western world. Despite such condescendingly racist concerns, there have been questions raised over the intentions of China in the Caribbean and across Africa by many people in the diaspora. The nature of China’s increasing influence in the Global South, particularly across the black world, is an important and ongoing development that will likely impact every area of economic, social and political development in the 21st and 22nd centuries. Does this development represent a new type of colonialism, or is this a pathway to a multipolar world that African and Caribbean countries stand to benefit from? Formal Chinese economic relations with Africa and the Caribbean go back as far as the early 1990s and have steadily increased since the mid-2000s. China has successfully positioned itself as an alternative to the West in terms of generous loans and its policy of non-intervention in domestic affairs. In the Caribbean, China has largely focused on infrastructure projects, logistics and trade. Trinidad and Tobago, Grenada, Dominica, Antigua and Barbuda and the Dominican Republic have signed up to China’s ambitious Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), an extensive global infrastructure and trade project that aims to link economies closer to China and create

China has positioned itself as an alternative to the West a more unified global market with China at the centre. At present, the BRI already encompasses 65 per cent of the world’s population and is set for completion in 2049. Over 40 African countries are also involved in the BRI with China already being the largest creditor in many African countries. The value of trade between China and Africa is over $200 billion (£151 billion) annually with African exports estimated to be worth $1.2 trillion since the year 2000 and Chinese exports worth $1.27 trillion during the same period. Chinese engagement in Africa is largely centred around access to raw materials, such as oil and natural gas, as well as large emerging markets for exporting finished manufactured goods.

INVESTMENTS

Countries such as Nigeria, South Sudan and Angola have received significant investments in their oil sectors. Despite these huge investments, concerns have been raised by a number of labour unions, civil society groups and other organisations across Africa and the Caribbean. The main arguments being that China exports its exploitative labour practices to the Global South, and primarily employs its own workers in projects relating to infrastructure rather than making use of the local population. The purchasing of land for agricultural and resource extraction purposes has alarmed locals in many countries. According to journalists Juan

CLOSE TIES: Chinese president Xi Jinping with South African president Cyril Ramaphosa at the 2018 Beijing Summit Of The Forum On China-Africa Cooperation (photo: Getty Images) Pablo Cardenal and Heriberto Araujo, Chinese businesses have expressed hostility towards trade unions, unsafe working practices and violation of workers’ rights. In 2010, reports of Chinese executives opening fire on protesters against poor working conditions at the Collum coal mine in Southern Sinazongwe province in Zambia sparked significant outrage. However, a more recent 2019 study contradicts certain assumptions about Chinese company practices in Africa. Much has been said about Chinese practices in Africa and the Caribbean being a new form of colonialism. In one sense it could be successfully argued to a point that the exploitation of labour, land

and resources in Africa and the Caribbean is a manifestation of neo-colonial practices where China is clearly taking advantage of structural inequalities established from the colonialism of European powers. This is a position advanced

these practices have been established with the full consent of the governments of these regions, and the issues being experienced by Africa and the Caribbean reflect more of a continuation of neo-colonialism rather than any new form of it.

At present, China hasn’t threatened any countries outside its region with regime by Professor Kehinde Andrews. China may not be the originator of this weakness, but it is a beneficiary, just like much of the Global North, that relies on the access and availability of cheap labour and raw materials to maintain their economic growth. It is worth noting that

A combination of political weakness and economic desperation caused by Western colonial exploitation has meant that many leaders in the black world struggle to find alternatives to the exploitative forces that affect their countries and regions. China does act as a

new counterbalance to Western influence and exploitation. Whether this is a positive development or not is too early to tell. At present, China hasn’t threatened any countries outside of its region with regime change, nor has it invaded any African or Caribbean country to date. This could change in time, especially after the completion of the BRI, but African and Caribbean countries are not static geopolitical pawns either, and it is becoming increasingly feasible that with the development of a multipolar world, and with the right political leadership, there could be leaders and policy makers that could learn to exploit the widening geopolitical situation for their country’s advantage.

Lyndon Mukasa is a writer and researcher. He studied International Development at the London School of Economics.

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JANUARY 2022

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News feature

KNIVES OFF OUR STREETS

Faron Alex Paul is a man on a mission when it comes to reducing the level of knife crime on London’s streets. But just how big a task is it? Report by Sinai Fleary

EET THE man who is walking London’s streets at night, taking knives off young people to save their lives. Faron Alex Paul, who survived two vicious stabbings in his late teens, said his anti-knife mission is being made harder by the alarming rise in youths buying weapons through social media. Teenagers are using social media platforms like Instagram, TikTok and Snapchat to purchase banned knives and other weapons disguised as everyday items. One New York-based Instagram account is advertising knives disguised as a torchlight and a comb. Mr Paul, a leading anti-knife campaigner, said social media was fuelling the deadly violent crime epidemic which is sweeping across the UK. He uses his own Instagram page to raise awareness about the devastating impact of knife crime and to also document his work getting weapons off the street. Speaking to The Voice, he said social media “thrives on negativity” and is making it very easy for children to purchase and get access to

knives, despite new reforms to legislation. He said: “People are still selling weapons online, and they will keep on doing it, despite changes to the law.” Mr Paul, from Tottenham, north London, revealed he was stabbed nine times on two separate occasions, in 2003 and 2006. The 35-year-old father says his personal experience is motivating him to collect weapons and hand them into police stations, but admitted it can be difficult because of a lack of resources and financial backing.

DETERMINED

He said: “Because of what I went through, and with the whole recovery, I just don’t want anyone else to go through that, so I am determined to do what I can, but there needs to be more support.” Retailers who sell knives to under-18s can be prosecuted and, in May 2019, the UK government made it illegal for online shops to send knives to addresses without checking the buyer was over 18. Changes to existing legislation brought about by the Offensive Weapons Act 2019 meant that from July 14, 2021, all weapons banned in public by the Criminal Justice Act 1988, including zombie knives, shuriken or death stars, and knuckledusters, are now also banned in private, meaning people can no longer keep them at home. A new legal definition of flick knives, banned since 1959, has also taken effect, which means more of these weapons are now illegal. Mr Paul welcomes the new

SHOCKING: Above, Faron Alex Paul has been handed some frightening weapons; inset below left, one of the many social media accounts allowing people to freely buy all manner of weapons (photos: Instagram @faronalexpaul, @MPSShacklewell) changes, but said it won’t stop the banned weapons from circulating in communities or from being shared and re-sold to a new generation. He said: “The new legislation has come in, but it doesn’t stop the knives from being in the community in the first place. “For decades, people have been able to get hold of these deadly weapons, and I’m afraid they are still out there, they are only taken off the streets when they are surrendered or people are arrested with them.” Mr Paul created his FazAmnesty organisation five years ago to deter youngsters from getting involved in violent crime, and said he is still collecting some knives which are now banned in the UK under the new reforms. “Some of the knives I am collecting and handing in to police stations are axes, Rambo and zombie knives. I’ve seen every sort,” he added. He says more action is needed from the government, police, schools, parents and community leaders – as he is inundated with messages every day from young people desperate for help. He continued: “I’ve been doing this for five years and every day I get messages for collections and every day I get

messages of stab stories, people who have been hurt or people who are scared. “I don’t get enough support from the government and I don’t get none from the police.” Mr Paul told The Voice he is doing what he can but it can be difficult and “jarring” as the cycle of violence keeps on repeating itself.

highest number of knife-related deaths in nearly a decade. The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, believes the only way to tackle knife crime is with a robust approach from all sectors of society. Speaking to The Voice, he said he is concerned about the number of young black men in London who are getting “sucked into criminal

For decades, people have been able to get hold of these deadly weapons, and I’m afraid they are still out there Despite his brave efforts and large social media following, Mr Paul is unsure as to how long he will be able to operate his anti-knife crime platform and organisation on just motivation alone. “I’m still spending my own money on this and it is affecting my ability to have financial freedom, and people like me need support,” he said. At the time of going to print, 27 teenagers had died as a result of knife crime in London in 2021. The grim statistic equals the number of teenagers who died in 2017 – which was the

gangs” and said what is happening on the streets is a reflection of “the impact of systemic and structural racism”. Mr Khan added: “It is so important we do much more in relation to suppressing the violence, of course, but much more in relation to dealing with the complex causes of violence. “We know poverty, inequality, high unemployment, family breakdown, domestic violence, school exclusions, poor mental health, lack of youth services, racism, drugs and the negative use of social media all fuel this complex landscape and we

have to do much more.” The Mayor set up London’s Violence Reduction Unit (VRU) – the first in England – to deliver programmes that support young Londoners through education, training and help finding employment. The Metropolitan Police told The Voice tackling knife crime is their top priority and they are regularly conducting weapons sweeps across the capital as a way to take dangerous weapons off the streets.

PRIORITY

In a statement released to The Voice, a Metropolitan Police spokesman said: “Each and every single homicide is a complete tragedy and greatly concerning. Knife crime completely destroys victims, families and communities, which is why tackling it is our top priority. “Officers are working relentlessly every single day, doing everything they can to target those intent on committing violent crime on our streets, to make London safer.” The statement added: “We must all work together – the responsibility lies with us all to create safe communities.”

16 | THE VOICE

JANUARY 2022

Finance

Make sure you get what’s yours in divorce deal January 10 is National Divorce Day – and while going through a divorce can be difficult and expensive, support is at hand, says Kaya Marchant

ACH YEAR, family lawyers in the UK see a surge in enquiries on the first working Monday of the New Year – January 10 in 2022 – as couples wait until after the festive season to avoid a messy divorce during the holidays. A divorce can be very expensive, so it’s important to think about what costs need to be covered. However, if you make a plan early on, so that you can budget for all the necessary expenses, this can help make the process much less stressful. The first thing you should think about is how much you can sort out on your own, or whether you need a solicitor. This will depend on several factors, including how easy you and your ex-partner find it to discuss financial issues. A divorce or separation can be complicated and emotional, so in those cases you may need professional help. In some cases, it is possible to do it yourself, or you could opt for mediation, which tends to be considerably cheaper than paying a solicitor. Depending on your situation and which part of the United Kingdom you live in, it might also be possible to get help with the costs of divorce, and you can check the divorce and separation section of MoneyHelper’s website to see if you might be eligible for support. What many people don’t realise is that pensions can often be a couple’s most significant asset. But on average, women receive less pension in retirement. For the age group 45-54, married men have an av-

A divorce or separation can be complicated, so you may need professional help from a solicitor erage pension wealth of about £86,000 compared with £40,000 for married women. At 55-64, the difference is £185,000 compared with £55,800, so it’s vital to factor pension savings into your divorce settlement. If the divorce proceedings have started, it’s important to get a full and up-to-date value of all the pensions, including the state pension, to work out how you will finance your retirement. As a couple, you might have borrowed money in the form of a joint personal loan or mort-

HELP IS AT HAND: Divorce can be an emotional and expensive business, so it’s vital you make a plan and consider what costs need to be covered. MoneyHelper’s site can point you in the right direction (photo: Getty Images) low one person to spend money without the other’s permission. But you can set up an account so that joint permission is needed before any money can be withdrawn. You or your partner may already receive or become eligible for benefits following your sep-

In the case of joint accounts, your ex-partner could still run up a debt in your name gage. However, be aware that whether you stay together or separate, you could be asked to repay the full debt, if the other person can’t. In the case of joint accounts, be aware that your ex-partner could still run up a debt in your name. Most joint bank accounts al-

aration. It’s important to know how these might be impacted by your divorce. For example, you might become eligible for Universal Credit. If you have a child, and depending on your income, you might need to update your details for Child Benefit. Take a look at MoneyHelper’s ‘What

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Benefits Can I Claim If I’m Divorcing Or Separating?’ guide to get started. If you are planning to divorce, know that you are not alone. MoneyHelper has plenty of free and impartial online guides to help you understand your options and their associated costs, and ultimately help you to make the right decisions for your situation. Kaya Marchant works for the Money and Pensions Service. MoneyHelper’s free and impartial guide, ‘How Could Getting Divorced Affect My Pension?,’ can help you understand more. You can also call the MoneyHelper pensions helpline on 0800 011 3797 or can email virtual. appointments@moneyhelper. org.uk to book a confidential Pensions and Divorce Appointment.

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How Rita got sorted with expert advice RITA* recently separated from her husband of 30-plus years. While she was married, she gave up work to care for their children and moved around to support her husband’s career. Together they own their home, mortgage-free. Now in her 50s, Rita works part time and has a modest workplace pension. She called the MoneyHelper helpline to explore her options. Initially, she wanted to keep their property and to ‘offset’ this against any additional pension entitlement from her husband. She did not want to use a solicitor. Rita told MoneyHelper: “Career-wise I’m about 20 years

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behind him. I want a fair outcome, but I want permanency. I don’t want anything to be challenged later.” Pensions specialist Martin explained why Rita’s initial plans to keep the house and ignore the pensions would not be a fair deal for her. He explained the high value of her husband’s pension and how this could far exceed the value of their property. Following the appointment, Rita intends to do more research. She also agrees there is value in employing a solicitor and a Pensions on Divorce Expert to value their pensions accurately. *Rita is not her real name

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JANUARY 2022

Montel Gordon

THE VOICE | 17

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Decolonising the Caribbean Is it time for Jamaica to follow Barbados and become the next Caribbean nation to sever its ties with the ‘Mother Country’, thus removing the Queen as head of state?

OLLOWING IN the footsteps of Guyana (1970) and Trinidad and Tobago (1976), Barbados became the latest British Caribbean country to become a republic, thus removing the Queen as head of state. Barbados was the first Caribbean colony acquired by the British empire in 1625 with enslaved Africans and Irish indentured servants shortly following in 1627. It remained one of the most profitable slave-trading colonies and the crown jewel of Britain’s slave-trading monopoly until slavery’s abolition in 1833.

QUESTIONS

Now, as they endeavour to move forward formally cutting ties with Britain, questions may arise over the feasibility of other Caribbean islands receiving their independence. More specifically, is it time for Jamaica to follow suit and remove the Queen as sovereign head of state?

Colonial nostalgia over the British empire has ended Republicanism is a topic many Jamaican people and those across the Jamaican diaspora in countries such as Britain, Canada and the US subscribe to advocating the removal of Jamaica’s current constitutional monarchy. The main difference republicanism serves from independence is eradicating hereditary rule, which is apparent through monarchism, the basis is mainly upon rule of law rather than rule of man (king/queen). The Queen does not have a daily running/interest with Jamaica or any other countries in the Commonwealth (who are not already republics of course). Instead, a governor-general is appointed by the Queen acting

as a representative giving formal assent to laws passed. So, in this context, what will republicanism mean for Jamaica? Foremostly, this allows Jamaica to move forward from the colonial shackles and imperial legacies of the British Empire, giving the people the ability to have supreme power. Slavery and colonialism underpinned the underdevelopment of Jamaica and the economic dependency it has on Britain.

ADMIRATION

In 2021, it is clear to see the colonial nostalgia over the British empire has ended among the Jamaican people. The admiration our elders had for the royal family and the ‘Mother Country’ as it is commonly regarded has not passed to the present generation, with young people becoming more conscious about the histories and atrocities faced by our predecessors. Serving as a prominent member in the CARICOM, Ja-

COLONIAL SHACKLES: Sir Richard Sharples inspects a guard of honour in Bermuda to take up his post as Governor of Bermuda in 1972 (photo: Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images) maica holds the largest population of the British West Indies (just under three million) and holds significant political clout in the region. Nonetheless, the cultural exports of Jamaica through food, music and sports have enabled

it to be a popular tourist destination which is instrumental towards the country’s GDP (gross domestic product) and a common dependency for the people. With Barbados serving as inspiration, the time has come

for the Caribbean nations to reconsider their relationship with Britain and move forward having their own sovereignty. The self-determination of Jamaican people has been a long struggle to achieve, and the time may be around the corner.

Is Pan-Africanism feasible in the 21st century?

HERO: Toussaint Louverture led the Haitian revolution, defeating the British and French armies (photo: Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images)

JANUARY 1, 1804 witnessed a monumental moment in African diasporic history with the birth of the first independent black nation, Haiti. This French Caribbean slave colony defied all the odds defeating the three major European nations (Spain, Britain, and France) in the only successful slave rebellion in the Atlantic world. This was a pivotal moment in Pan-African unity that hastened ending the iniquitous and inhumane act of slavery. It united Africans born in different parts of the African continent, as well as those born in the Caribbean. Pan-Africanism can be defined

as both an ideology and movement that encourages the solidarity of all African people across the diaspora. It is based on the concept of black unity as a vital component to the economic, social and political progress to ‘unite and uplift’ those of African descent.

FIGHT

Pan-African activists and organisations such as the African Union, the Pan-African Congress, and the United Negro Improvement Association focused on uniting a global black front to fight racial oppression, colonialism, and neo-colonialism.

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Two centuries on from the Haitian revolution, Pan-Africanism is still alive. For some, its focus is on gaining reparations for the trans-Atlantic slave trade and colonialism to people for the African diaspora living in the West and repatriating to Africa (Ghana declared 2019 as “the year of return”). Pan-Africanism is not perfect. There are valid critiques of its idealistic aims and attempts to homogenise every black person across the globe. Despite its failures and critiques, it’s hard to ignore the fact that is still alive and thriving. Amidst the “Diaspora Wars” (the cross-cultural disagreements

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amongst African diasporic people sharing their grievances) in recent years, let Haiti serve as a beacon to what Pan-African unity can achieve and how powerful we can be as a united front. One of the most famous pictures of The Haitian Revolution depicts slaughtering of the remaining white French residents by former slaves under the under of General Jean Jacques Dessalines. Toussaint Louverture was the leader of the only successful slave rebellion in the new world. Trinidadian scholar C.L.R James canonical text The Black Jacobins (1938) depicts the revolt in much detail.

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18 | THE VOICE JANUARY 2022

Midlands News

by Veron Graham

CEREMONY CELEBRATES EXCELLENCE OF BLACK NHS STAFF

WINNERS: Clockwise from top left, Dr Femi, Paul Maubach, Maureen Peter-Dike and Olga LeachWalters were all award presented with awards, while 95-year-old Second World War veteran Neil Flanagan MBE was a guest contributor. Inset below left, Maria Arthur was honoured with the Black African/Black Caribbean Leadership Award

Proud to Be event honours workers of African and Caribbean descent as well as recognise the sacriﬁces made during the COVID-19 pandemic

OLLOWING ANOTHER traumatic year for the NHS, its Head of Equality, Diversity & Inclusion (EDI) has spoken of her determination to help the organisation “get to a place where we are building traction and gaining real commitment” in 2022 and beyond. Speaking to The Voice, Donna Mighty reflected on the tribulations of the NHS staff, particularly those on the frontline during the past year – specifically those of African and Caribbean heritage — in coping with the COVID-19 pandemic. “The EDI agenda is a hot topic at the moment. We’re not seeing traction across the region, but its profile has been raised. The pandemic has shone a light on the inequalities that have existed for a long time. This is why it remains so important to recognise and celebrate the contributions of our black colleagues given all they have endured.” Accordingly, she lists the Proud to Be event — organised with Sabrina Richards, Walsall Healthcare NHS Trust Talent, Inclusion and Resourcing Lead, as a highlight of 2021. “I wanted to bring our colleagues together physically, not virtually, to recognise their professional contributions and potentially their own personal losses.” Despite some internal organisational resistance, the event took place in the opulence of the Edgbaston Park

There are pockets of good things happening. I don’t want to detract from that but there is more that can be done

Coghill continued: “I do a lot of events, but this was particularly special because it celebrated black excellence and didn’t get merged within the BAME/inclusion thing. It was heart-warming and uplifting. “The majority of our nurses are at Band 5 — which means they are at the coalface, facing the virus down, not working in offices or from home. “That means since March 2020 they have been more likely to get the virus and lose friends and family yet kept putting themselves in harm’s way.”

Hotel in Birmingham. Yvonne Coghill CBE, former director of the NHS’ Workforce Race Equality Standard, served as host and presided over an awards ceremony which included a variety of categories, including White Ally of the Year, and guest contributions not least from 95-year-old Second World War veteran Neil Flanagan MBE. Mighty added: “We were specific in that this event was to celebrate our colleagues of African and Caribbean descent — we should feel within our rights to not shy away from this. The event did not take place in BAME History Month — and we now have South Asian History Month, which I will support [when it comes around].”

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Coghill said that figures showed people from black backgrounds were up to four times more likely to die from COVID, adding: “The issue of inequality is no longer a minority sport — in which only a few people are dealing with.”

HOPEFUL

“There are pockets of good things happening,” Might commented. “I don’t want to detract from that but there is much more that can be done.” She pointed to the continued use of derogatory language directed at black nurses and the failure of current systems to appropriately address such matters upon escalation. “I’ve got to be hopeful but recognise there needs to be a collective responsibility to fix this, it’s not for an EDI department alone, which needs to be properly resourced. For example, my EDI team consists of three people across 7,500 staff with a patient population of 525,000. “When we track the progress that’s been made, it’s in baby steps. We need to get to the point where we are building traction and seeing real commitment, and not just keep talking and talking over the same issues. I had the event recorded because some of our senior

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white leaders made some (sup- more of the same. My hope portive) comments that we may is that these leaders make an need to remind them of.” unequivocal commitment, out So, with the Proud to Be loud, to race equality. If they event delivered, both were don’t own it, we’re not going asked what they hope to see in to see change.” 2022 and what will be accomplished in the NHS? Coghill responded: “That’s two different Mighty added: “Personally, I questions! What we have in the want to continue disrupting UK is an unequivocally rac- the system because the current ist society: I would like to see one isn’t working. In reality, it white folks begin to acknowl- could be another three to five edge the damage they do and years, if we get that commitare doing, not only to black ment from senior leaders for people, but to the country in things to start looking and maintaining and retaining sys- feeling different. tems, which make the country “I also want to see more repuntenable. resentation at all levels: there’s “This country has sent nurses not many people that look like from Europe and other coun- me at my level in my Trust.” tries away, made it difficult for them to come into the country, yet we have 100,000 vacancies in the NHS. I don’t understand it: this  Black African / Black dislike for difference and foreigners Caribbean Frontline Hero far outweighs what’s Award – Dr Femi good for the country.  Black African / Black This ‘thing’ that has Caribbean Leadership Award existed for 400 years during COVID-19 – Maria Arthur has to be dismantled  White Ally of the Year Award for their own good. – Paul Maubach “What will we  International Nurse of the achieve? It’s a tricky Year Award – Maureen Peter-Dike one because the NHS  BAME Staff Network of is going through the Year – Royal Wolverhampton massive changes — NHS Trust including a health  Special Workforce Race and social care bill, Equality Standard (WRES) while we have the Award – Olga Leach-Walters same senior leaders so we might get

COMMITMENT

The Proud to Be Award Winners

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JANUARY 2022 THE VOICE | 19

Midlands News

UNSUNG HEROES HONOURED

Specially arranged ceremony organised for nurse who was behind the ﬁrst triage system to be introduced in a GP practice

N “UNSUNG hero” has joined famed human rights campaigner Maxie Hayles in collecting an MBE after the presentation was delayed by COVID-19. While Hayles journeyed to London to receive his accolade, Advanced Nurse Practitioner Paulette Bolton received hers in a specially arranged ceremony at St Mary’s Church in Handsworth, Birmingham courtesy of her daughter Tonya.

FIRSTS

Both elders came to the UK as teenagers, but while the nowretired Hayles, pictured below, progressed to become a wellknown fixture on regional and national stages, Bolton quietly established herself in the medical profession, going on to achieve a number of firsts including innovating the first triage system in a GP practice in 2004, which is still being replicated today. “She was originally booked to go to Buckingham Palace last March to receive t h e M B E from the

As a person that gives and gives, it was only fitting that she had that opportunity to receive the award Queen,” said Tonya. “Mum is an unsung hero that has touched thousands upon thousands of lives in 55 years in the medical profession and she deserves to be celebrated and her achievements formally recognised. “I knew it would mean the world to her, and as a person that gives and gives, it was only fitting that she had that opportunity to receive.” Bolton continues to serve the community at Birmingham’s E n k i Medical Practice.

WELL DESERVED: Paulette Bolton MBE, left, with daughter Tonya, received her award at St Mary’s Church in Handsworth

Call to join Taskforce THE NEWLY appointed chair of a West Midlands’ Race Equalities Taskforce is calling for qualifying applicants to take up membership. Yetunde Dania said: “I am looking forward to driving forward the Taskforce’s vision that in the West Midlands, ethnicity, race, and heritage should never be obstacles to people having a fair start in life, or the opportunity for people to reach their potential and flourish. “My ambition is to make the West Midlands a national leader in addressing race inequality, and I know I cannot do this alone.

“That’s why my first priority will be to appoint more members to the Taskforce. Applications are open (until January 16), and my call is to anyone with the right experience, energy and enthusiasm: if you can genuinely help us to make a difference, please take a look.” Applicants must be 18 or over with a strong connection to the county and appropriate experience. Membership of the Taskforce is voluntary. For more, visit wmca.org.uk/careers/

Commonwealth Games tickets on sale TICKETS are now on sale for the Commonwealth Games, the largest sports event to be staged in the UK for a decade. Although a number of tickets have been pre-allocated, the remainder are being sold on a firstcome, first-serve basis so if you a buy a ticket, you’ll guarantee your seat at the Games. Also, on March 17, the Birmingham 2022 Festival will kick off in the centre of the Second City with a free spectacular outdoor production featuring a cast of over 300 performers. Wondrous Stories will open in Centenary Square with free

performances every evening between March 17-20. Running until September, the Festival will feature hundreds of creative commissions across the region, benefiting hundreds of artists and thousands of participants, communities and audiences. The Commonwealth Games will centre on Birmingham, with events also taking place in several regional venues, between July 28 and August 8, 2022. For more, visit the ofﬁcial website birmingham2022.com

If you have a story for the East or West Midlands, call/text Veron Graham on 07954 572 988, email veronpgraham@gmail.com, or find him on Facebook or LinkedIn

20 | THE VOICE JANUARY 2022

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Polymath & Baby Girl

GIVE SIR LEWIS HIS TINGS

Just what does Hamilton have to do to be given the respect he deserves in Formula One?

HE F1 2021 season has been fi lled with many highs as well as lows. A high for me was being able to attend the British Grand Prix at Silverstone and witness Hamilton’s win. A low would definitely be the Italian Grand Prix where both Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen crashed out of the race and the latter’s car mounted the Briton’s vehicle. It was while watching this particular race that I seriously started to consider the potential danger Hamilton could be in as he contended for his eighth world championship while navigating Verstappen’s very dangerous driving. For someone who likes to harp on about sportsmanship, Verstappen walked away after the crash and didn’t check whether Hamilton was okay. In fact, he said over his radio: “That’s what he gets.” Extremely sinister. Hamilton’s saving grace during that collision was a safety measure added after the tragic death of F1 driver Jules Bianchi — known as the “halo”. This contraption had protected Hamilton’s head from what could’ve been a fatal collision. But here’s the thing – everyone acted like this was normal. “They were just racing hard,” is what a lot of the wayward

SO CLOSE: Lewis Hamilton was pipped at the post by Max Verstappen, pictured inset below left, denying Hamilton of a record eighth world title (photos: Kamran Jebreili/Getty, Giuseppe Cacace/ Getty

There is a particular way that Hamilton is treated in the sport commentators and a spiceless team principal had to say about it. Hamilton appeared to brush it off by attending the Met Gala in New York City soon after. How many times have you found yourself hard done by and even put in harm’s way in your work environment only for everyone to collectively decide to sweep it under the carpet?

TROPE

Now, if you speak up about it and call it out for what it is, then you are the bad guy and pretty much every trope about black aggression will be weaponised against you. There is undoubtedly a particular way that Hamilton is treated within this sport that he dominates, which feels extremely anti-black but people don’t want to call it what it is because talking about racism makes certain people uncomfortable. From the start of the 2021 F1

season the new FIA regulations had already put Mercedes on the back foot and it was truly a hard-fought battle that Hamilton ended up equal on points to Verstappen going into the final race. Hamilton winning the championship for the eighth time would’ve meant that he surpassed Michael Schumacher as the driver with most championship titles. I am of the opinion that the desperate desire to not have Hamilton set this new record is what influenced the farce that took place in

the final lap of the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix. Hamilton had an 11-second lead ahead of Verstappen when a crash by Nicholas Latifi in a Williams car meant that a safe-

of the stewards. So now I ask, what would it take for Hamilton to be talked about with the respect he deserves? I notice that when the pundits are talking about these rac-

in the sport, is the same way that Hamilton seems to be despised for being so consistently great. The myth of whiteness being supreme is negatively impacted when black athletes come through and start breaking records.

Hamilton will continue to rise, no matter the circumstances MATURED To some, this observation might that attempt to pull him down sound far-fetched, but you only ty car had to be deployed. Those of us who watched the race saw the race director Michael Masi shift the goalposts to allow Verstappen to not actually pass the cars he had lapped and for those cars (a select few) to go ahead, and for the two championship contenders to race on the last lap. Hamilton was at a disadvantage as his tyres were much older and his 11-second lead had been severed at the whim

es, there is an undeniable glee they express when Hamilton is in any sort of trouble. There is a clear bias and yet people like myself who could also commentate on the races, are seen as merely “influencers”. F1 by design is an elitist sport, just like tennis — and the same way the media and commentators insisted on trying to humble Venus and Serena Williams for having the audacity to disrupt the white dominance

have to pay attention to how upset certain white drivers (and their parents) get when it is suggested that Hamilton is the greatest driver of all time. Hamilton has demonstrated that he has matured through the years and his gracious behaviour when this championship was stolen from him is a clear example of that. Hamilton will continue to rise, no matter the circumstances that attempt to pull him down.

Kelechi Okafor is an actor, writer, public speaker and host of the Say Your Mind podcast and founder of Kelechnekoff Fitness studio.

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The tech lifeline The COVID pandemic has affected business across Britain and further afield – but Strive UK is there to help small and medium-sized enterprises thrive and build back stronger through technology

URVIVING the COVID lockdowns has been a huge challenge for many small businesses, and embracing digital technology has been a lifeline. As the world moves more online than ever, many business owners have found that embracing the right digital options is more than a lifeline – it is a doorway to new customers and a more successful business. A survey by economics consultancy Cebr for Mastercard showed that 45 per cent of businesses reported an expanded customer base as a result of using technology. But the same report also noted that there were many barriers getting in the way of embracing the digital age, such as being overwhelmed by the plethora of technologies and fears about security. Both of these factors are more acute for black and minority ethnic business owners, leading Mastercard to launch a new initiative called Strive UK, to connect Britain’s entrepreneurs with the right digital technology and skills tailored to their business. One business-owner that faced a major dilemma at the start of the COVID lockdown was Diana Muendo. Her central London creative studio, M.Y.O, was a place for adults to unwind and get in touch with their creative side, and this expanded to creative workshops where customers can try their hand at various crafts. M.Y.O. (Make Your Own), which began as a pop-up in 2017, had hosted over 10,000 guests, and within six months Diana, and her partner Sam Lehane, who are both from finance backgrounds, were able to quit their jobs and concentrate on this business full-time. Diana and

When COVID struck, the pair were determined not to be beaten Sam were far from alone in facing this situation, but often for business owners it can seem like a lonely and frightening experience. When COVID struck, the pair were determined not to be beat-en. They had their backs to the wall but knew the future lay in eCommerce. But like many, they confronted with were bewildering choices of technology, and the decisions they made could

make or break their business. The Cebr survey showed that 41 per cent of small businesses believe they would have folded were it not for digital technology, yet many entrepreneurs struggle to know which digital tools are the most effective. This is especially true of ethnic minority businesses. The study, called Striving To Thrive: The State Of Play For Uk Micro And Small Businesses, found that as Britain emerged from the lockdown adopting technologies boosted the success of many small enterprises. Diana faced these challenges by embarking on a learning journey.

CLIENTS

She and Sam immediately began to podcast, where they interviewed other creatives, including jeweller Monica Vinader, and also took part in creative challenges on Instagram to keep their customers updated. Diana said she was grateful to be supported by big clients such as Google and ITV, who ordered many craft kits for their employees. They created kits and sent sending them out to people so they could do classes over Zoom. This was essentially creating an e-commerce shop, and this quickly evolved into a brand-new eCommerce business called Creative Jungle. The video virtual workshops – which involved making kits proved very popular with employers who were keen to keep their employees engaged with mindful activities during the COVID period, when many were working from home. The technology they used connected the various cogs that needed to work together and get the whole enterprise moving. Diana got help and advice by reaching out to the start-

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LEARNING CURVE: Strive UK is helping businesses like Diana Muendo’s become stronger up community, who were only too happy to share useful tools. Asking other small business owners questions on social media proved invaluable, so they can learn from other people’s experiences about what worked for them.

JOURNEY

Diana and Sam admit they are still on a learning journey and are keen to explore advanced event management on Zoom, especially when hosting events of over 100 people, and how

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to bring the full force of a live experience to clients, with use of multiple cameras and how to flick between different screens. The products are out there, but the trick is knowing where to find them so that a business can scale-up efficiently and safely and is tailored for the size of business and between short, medium and long-term support. Diana has learnt that the potential audience for their products are almost limitless in the online sphere but entrepreneurs need to understand the avail-

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able technologies in order to grow. Mastercard’s Strive UK exists to help businesses like Diana’s to come out of the pandemic stronger and go on to even better things through one-to-one mentoring, free guidance and helpful tools. It is a programme dedicated to supporting Britain’s micro and small businesses, who are the beating heart of the economy. Find out more at https://myo. place

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JANUARY 2022

THE VOICE | 23

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Cooking up success

During the first nationwide COVID-19 lockdown almost two years ago, Ashleigh Bossman saw an opportunity to capitalise on changing consumer habits – and launched her own business

SHLEIGH SPOTTED an opportunity to showcase her culinary skills in Hucknall, outside Nottingham, when she set up her cuisine business offering the local community healthy food options during the pandemic. Her range of tasty fusion dishes went down a treat, and her Caribbean coconut prawn curry and plantain burritos proved a particular favourite. Her business, Cook It Up, is now going from strength to strength thanks in part to the help she received from Digital Boost which provided her with free workshops and 1:1 mentoring sessions. Ashleigh said: “I saw an opportunity to offer healthy and nutritious meals with an international flavour. During lockdown, people were at home, ordering on their devices and they wanted comfort food. “What better than fresh and tasty food with a feel-good factor being delivered to your door.” Her interest in feel-good food was inspired by travel around the world, including a five-month tour of South America from Mexico to Colombia, where she learnt recipes from the locals, often over an open fire. After practising the dishes she took the plunge into business. Ashleigh wanted to expand her online orders, but was unsure of which technology to use, and where to seek support. She is not alone – this can often be a challenge for entrepreneurs. A report by Cebr, commissioned by Mastercard, found that a large proportion (41 per cent) believed their business would not have survived the pandemic without digital tools, but almost half (49 per cent) of ethnic minority business owners surveyed reported challenges in accessing those tools.

People were at home, ordering on their devices, and wanted comfort food One in three small businesses don’t know how or where to access the digital and IT skills they need, which is why Mastercard’s Center for Inclusive Growth created Strive UK. Strive UK aims to empower micro and small businesses around the country to succeed in the digital economy through free guidance, helpful tools, and personalised, one-to-one mentoring. Ashleigh found help through one of Strive UK’s partners, Digital Boost, saying: “The mentors from Digital Boost have been fantastic. I thank them very much for their support and encouragement.”

EXPERIENCE

Ashleigh had help to improve her digital marketing and brand awareness, as well as improve the customer experience when using the website to place an order. She added: “I implemented the advice they gave me and saw immediate results in social media marketing and branding. BT and Google also gave me some useful feedback.” Around half of those surveyed by Cebr said they used social media to promote their business. Digital Boost is a community of volunteer experts from the likes of Google and BT, ready to help start-ups, small businesses and charities. Ashleigh’s business is now thriving with more digital marketing and the use of QR codes to access the menu. She is also offering more choices such as a

COOKING ON GAS: Ashleigh Bossman founded Cook It Up after Strive UK put her in touch with one of its partners, Digital Boost; inset below right, Ashleigh’s services focuses on providing fresh and healthy dishes in and around Nottinghamshire

I implemented the advice they gave me and saw immediate results in marketing and branding food gift range with a personalised touch. Ashleigh added: “After lockdown restrictions eased, I also started trading at markets and food festivals which has been great for sales, face-to-face feedback and to serve others healthy food outside my delivery zone.” She believes that it is vital

business owners get the support they need to improve their digital skills in order to get the most out of the technology available to them. “As a business owner you have to wear many hats and upskilling in key areas such as marketing and technology is really beneficial for the future.”

24 | THE VOICE JANUARY 2022

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Turning go-karting green Nile Henry turned to tech to get his business on track – with some help from Strive UK

ILE HENRY’S VISION for his business was more than achieving a healthy turnover or helping his community, it was to do his bit to save the planet. As the founder and CEO of The Blair Project, which describes itself as a ‘disruptive social enterprise’, Nile wanted to transform go-karting from petrol to electric. In doing so, he wanted to make his contribution to the ‘green industrial revolution’ – a term to describe the shift from an economy reliant on fossil fuels to one driven by renewable and sustainable energy and practices. But in order to achieve his dream, he has accessed mentoring to allow his business to thrive. Mentoring and tech skills are increasingly important for micro and small businesses, as a report by Cebr,

STRIVING FOR SUCCESS: Nile Henry, left, founded The Blair Project, based in Manchester, when he was just 18 in 2014 after being inspired by Sir Lewis Hamilton’s then-second Formula 1 World Championship title; above, one of the go-karts created by The Blair Project commissioned by Mastercard, discovered. Nile was not alone. 50 per cent of small businesses say that new technologies are a priority for them, and almost three quarters believe it can help their businesses grow.

CRITICAL

Nile said that collaboration with others who have this knowledge already is critical for small businesses to succeed, adding: “What has worked well for us, is partnering with engineering and technology companies who have complementary skillsets, that we can work with to create new products and services, where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.” Nile set up the Blair Project when he was just 18, having left college with a triple distinction in software engineering. His journey began after watching Sir Lewis Hamilton

We are the only black-led organisation in the world doing this win his second World Drivers’ Championship at the 2014 Formula One World Championships. Seeing a black man make it in the motorsport industry inspired him to follow that path. He said: “The Blair Project is a trailblazing social enterprise based in Manchester, which I founded when I was 18 years old. It exists to build the diverse talent pipeline needed to tackle climate change. “Through the provision of exhilarating motorsport STEM

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education, we support girls, black and minority ethnic youths and those on low incomes, to transition into well paid green tech careers through the building and racing of electric go-karts. “Our hands-on activities equip young people with emerging skills such as installation of battery technologies, powertrain systems and using data analytics to improve performance. We call this our ProtoEV STEM Challenge. We are the only black-led organisation in the world doing this.” Nile was all-set to roll this out nationally in March 2020, with 20 teams from Manchester, London and Oxford due to take part, when the COVID pandemic struck and the competition had to be cancelled. Fortunately, he managed to turn his potential disaster into a springboard for growth by partnering with one of the big-

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gest motorsport brands in the world to run an EdTech Challenge; where teams of college students competed to translate The Blair Project’s ProtoEV STEM Challenge into an augmented reality app.

UPSKILLING

As a tech business, Nile said that he is constantly thinking about how digital skills can help his business. “Technology is the driving force that enables us to do what we do. We constantly invest in upskilling our staff and keeping abreast of emerging skills and technological advancements to ensure that we remain ahead of the curve.” Now his programmes aim to excite and engage young people from ages 10-19 about the electrification of transport. It teaches them skills from the use of IT to physics, aerodynamics, design, manufacture, branding, graphics, sponsor-

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ship, marketing, teamwork and much more. Digital upskilling is a cause that Mastercard is passionate about. That’s why it launched Strive UK, a philanthropic programme to empower half a million micro and small businesses to succeed in the digital economy, particularly those owned by people from ethnic minority backgrounds. By offering help such as free guidance and personalised, one-to-one mentoring, Strive UK aims to unlock the tremendous potential and entrepreneurial drive of ethnic minority owned businesses, and also benefit their communities. Their aim is to help more ethnic minority and female-led businesses get access to funding, technology and advice. For more information about Strive UK visit mastercard.co.uk/ en-gb/vision/priceless-causes/ empower/strive.html

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JANUARY 2022

THE VOICE | 25

Advertising feature

Mastercard partners IN THIS TOGETHER: Strive UK is helping micro and small business across Britain (stock photo: Darlene Alderson/ Pexels)

The organisations offering support for small businesses through Strive UK

IX MILLION micro and small businesses make up the backbone of the UK economy. Collectively, they are the country’s biggest employer – making up 48 per cent of the labour force and accounting for around 36 per cent of turnover in the private sector. These small businesses have been the lifeblood of local communities, especially during the pandemic, and the resilience they have shown over the past 18 months will be crucial to the post-pandemic recovery. Strive UK is a programme

Small businesses have been the lifeblood of local communities, especially during the pandemic

A one-stop shop

ENTERPRISE NATION is dedicated to turning people’s business ideas into a reality. Launched in 2005, Enterprise Nation has helped thousands of people start and grow their own successful businesses by providing practical events and a supportive community to guide and support budding entrepreneurs. Joining Enterprise Nation connects people with over 75,000 business owners and enterprise experts. This one-stop-shop for micro and small businesses exists to shortcut the route to trusted support with a dynamic platform that

gets business owners the answers they need quickly. Lack of support was one of the main barriers identified in a survey by Cebr, which was commissioned by Mastercard, so the help offered by Enterprise Nation is aimed squarely at addressing this. There is a wide range of advice on offer, from marketing and sales to PR and funding. Whatever the challenge, there is a solution on offer. Enterprise Nation is also part of Mastercard’s Strive Learning Network in order to connect SMEs with help and advice from big corporates and notfor-profit organisations to enable those enterprises to thrive.

created by the Mastercard Centre for Inclusive Growth focused on supporting micro and small businesses around the country to succeed in the digital economy. In partnership with Enterprise Nation, Digital Boost and Be the Business, Strive UK will support 650,000 British entrepreneurs over the next three years – including female business owners and those from minority ethnic backgrounds, by offering free guidance, helpful tools, and personalised, one-to-one mentoring in digital skills.

Black business in focus BE THE BUSINESS exists to grow businesses and equip the owners with the leadership skills they need to succeed. They have a special focus on female business owners from minority ethnic backgrounds and offer fully-funded support programmes for entrepreneurs as part of Mastercard’s Strive UK initiative. Cebr estimated that Black, Asian and minority ethnic owned businesses could see revenue growth of £204 billion if entrepreneurs were supported to fully realise their aspirations. Be The Business believes there is huge potential for more leaders from these communities to thrive, especially given the higher-than-average levels of entrepreneurialism and innovation.

Be The Business is a not-for-profit movement backed by the government, and founded by Sir Charlie Mayfield, the Chairman of John Lewis & Partners. Free resources include a ground-breaking mentoring programme, insights and practical tips on how to make businesses productive. The Mentoring for Growth programme brings senior leaders from John Lewis, GSK, BAE systems and more together with micro and small business owners, with incredible results. Other resources include productivity benchmarking to identify the changes a business needs to make; a Productivity for Growth programme with practical workshops and peer-to-peer learning; and a masterclass in collaborative networking.

Boost to biz DIGITAL BOOST is a company on a mission to ensure small businesses are making the most of digital technologies to grow and thrive. It is a learning platform where experts run workshops and courses to allow entrepreneurs to access new customers through online trading. Cebr noted in its report, commissioned by Mastercard, that accessing digital technology was the second most frequently mentioned factor in achieving growth, behind getting grants and government support. Digital Boost works with Strive UK to provide mentoring, workshops and a resource library to help business owners to bring their products online with eCommerce websites, search engine optimisation advice, social media, sales

and marketing and much more. It is free for any registered business or sole trader to sign up and, because the courses are online, business owners can jump in and out whenever it suits. The courses are a selfpaced learning journey, with no assessments, and include daily Q&A sessions, regular ‘fireside chats’ and access to support. This includes ‘Boost Calls’, which are one-toone mentoring sessions with digital volunteers from top technology, agency, consulting and finance firms. As businesses emerge from the pandemic, it is more crucial than ever that business owners take advantage of the move online to reach new customers.

26 | THE VOICE JANUARY 2022

News feature

Sickle cell and dating

It’s about time we learned more about a disease that affects so many of us. By Leah Mahon

HEN ALIDOR Gaspar was diagnosed with sickle cell disease as a young child, he couldn’t have predicted how the hereditary condition would go on to shape his path as an adult. Despite his mum having sickle cell disease herself, and his dad carrying the sickle cell trait, the 33-year-old told The Voice that he never really understood the disease he’s lived with everyday until an encounter in his early twenties. “When I was 21, I was actually in a relationship with someone who knew that I had sickle cell,” he recalls. “And she told me we couldn’t continue [the relationship] because her mum told her she shouldn’t date anyone with sickle cell. “I did understand what it meant, but I knew then that it was something serious.” That moment stayed with Alidor, and years later it prompted him to search for more understanding about the condition that he admits only went as far as being told that he ‘couldn’t get a cold and had to stay hydrated.’ “I started to do research on what sickle cell is, and how it affects you in regards to genotypes,” he says. “When you have AA - or AS - that is the [sickle cell] trait, but then having SS means you have full blown sickle cell. “I started to understand that if I want a child to have less of a chance of having sickle cell, I should definitely make sure I marry someone that has AA and doesn’t have any form of sickle cell whatsoever.” According to the Sickle Cell Society, around 15,000 people are living with sickle cell disease in the UK, with almost 300 babies being born with the hereditary disease each year. The condition can affect anyone, but disproportionately impacts those from African and Caribbean backgrounds. This year, the No One’s Listening report, published by the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Sickle Cell and Thalassaemia and the Sickle Cell Society, goes on to detail the racial inequalities and ig-

Her mum told her she shouldn’t date anyone with sickle cell. I knew then it was serious norance around the condition that black people face with the health service. However, Alidor believes that as well as combating the failings within the NHS to better treat sickle cell patients, more needs to be done in the black community to tackle the disease. “It definitely is taboo and I don’t think people are having enough,” he said. “People ask when they should have the conversation about sickle cell, and I always say on the first date. “If you’re someone who is a full-blown carrier, that is something that is a major thing in your life. I don’t see why the conversation could not come up. I’d rather if I was still dating, just give that person what is straight away so they have a choice whether they want to continue.

TEST

“My now-wife, she asked her mum what her genotype was when I told her I had sickle cell, but I still had to ask her to get another test.” He added: “I take it very seriously because I know what I’ve been through as a young person, and any sickle cell patient will tell you the kind of things they have been through, and how it affected their parents. “Especially with my mum having sickle cell and I always tell the story of me going to visit my mum in her ward while we both had a crisis. “I just wanted to make sure that sickle cell wasn’t something that would continue in my family and be something that stops, hopefully within my generation.” Iyamide Thomas, an NHS Engagement Lead at the Sick-

CHAMPIONING THE CAUSE: Alidor Gaspar wants more people to understand about the condition (photo: Ope Odueyungbo) le Cell Society, told The Voice that research in sickle cell carriers being tested while dating and encouraging conversations around the issue is a work-in-progress. Ms Thomas currently leads a project by the Sickle Cell and UK Thalassemia Society that encourages pregnant mothers to be screened before giving birth.

AWARENESS

“The screening programme is officially for antenatal and newborns and is to ensure that people know about sickle cell and to raise awareness about sickle cell and to take away from the myths people have about finding out about their genotype. “With screening, the woman gets pregnant and she’s tested, and if she’s found to carry the gene, they then call the fatherto-be to do the testing. Prior to that, it’s very important to also know that men knew about

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sickle cell, which is why with the outreach project we went into the barbershops, mosques, churches, you name it. “People can also go to their GPs and NHS Centre for testing, but we don’t have enough research or data collection to say how many are doing this. “Sickle cell continues to

released a song about living with sickle cell, says his priority has been his work in encouraging these difficult conversations and dispelling “ignorance in 2021 for us [black people] to say they don’t know their genotype.” “I think it [genotype testing] has to be a necessity within the

More conversations need to be had with family and friends about the disease, and also encourage black people to give blood have a lot of stigma – religious and cultural – so we try to get people to talk about it in everything we do.” Alidor marked his five-year wedding anniversary with his wife in August, and has since welcomed their young daughter into their lives who has the sickle trait. The music artist and youth advocate, who previously

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black community,” says Alidor. “The other day, I had a phone call from my friend and he was upset because he found out that his son had sickle cell, and for me it made me question whether I was doing a good enough job.” “What I want is for the voices of sickle cell patients to be heard within the NHS and how we are being treated by doc-

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tors and nurses when it comes to medication, A&E and the response to our pain. “If it was a sickness that affected mostly white people, would the outcome be different? For me, that’s a ‘yes’.

DONORS

“More conversations with friends and family need to be had about sickle cell and encouraging black people to give blood, because we make up only one per cent of donors.” He adds: “I have a one-yearold daughter and when she grows up I’ll have to explain what sickle cell is and encourage her to find a future partner who is AA and for her to take that very seriously. “Because this is what dad had to go through in life, and I don’t want that to continue on through the generations.”

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MARCH 2020

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JANUARY 2022

Faith

Let’s embrace the principle of putting God ﬁrst in 2022 TAKING A STAND: A dog wearing a placard lends his support to a woman marcher about to leave Hyde Park bound for Trafalgar Square for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament Easter March; inset, Bob Marley came out with an uncomfortable message in the Redemption Song

It’s good to have conﬁdence that God will look after us in the year ahead, but also let’s not to be fatalistic about issues. He gives us the power, agency and responsibility to shape our futures, says Rev John Root

AVE YOU been to church recently? At the church I belong to in Tottenham, the New Year service is often the best attended service of the year – and bigger than any of the Christmas services. Plus, the first Sunday of the year usually sees higher attendances. In the Old Testament, God commands the people to give the first fruits of the harvest to him (Exodus, chapter 23, verse 19). It was a symbolic way of saying the whole harvest is a gift from God and belongs to Him. In the same way, it is good to begin the New Year by consciously offering to God both yourself and all that 2022 will bring. ‘God first’ is a good principle for our year ahead. So, what will 2022 bring? The obvious answer, of course, is that we just don’t know. Did anyone on January 1 2020 predict that so soon we would be engulfed in the biggest world-changing event since the Second World War, and maybe even before that? Approaching 2022, there are two dangers we need to avoid. The first is fatalism – believing that what will be, will be, and there’s nothing we can do

Did anyone on January 1, 2020 predict we would soon be engulfed in the biggest world-changing event since the Second World War? about it. That can sound very pious, as though we can’t control the future so just leave it in God’s hands. ‘If God wills’, ‘if the Lord spares life’. I can understand that. We are surrounded by forces we can’t control – political, economic, climatic, and now especially of epidemics, that we just have to live with. But it easily turns into passivity. Just letting things happen. I have never been comfortable with Bob Marley’s line: ‘Have no fear for atomic energy, ‘cause none of them can stop the time’ (from Redemption Song). Song I am glad politicians in the ‘70s and ‘80s did fear atomic power, and took policies that, for several d e c a d e s at least, removed the fear of a nuclear war. I wish the politicians today were more afraid of disastrous

global warming, and took stronger steps to reduce it. The right sort of fear energises us and awakens us to evil. Many of those who resisted slavery in the 19th century, such as Sam Sharpe and Paul Bogle, were inspired to rebellion because they believed God was calling them to oppose injustice and oppression. They knew he gave us agency and responsibility. So, when it comes to how far we humans are responsible for our future the Christian faith says two apparently contradictory things: 1. God is responsible and in control so we should trust the future to him, and 2. We are responsible so need to take control of our future and destinies.

FASCINATING

It is illustrated in a fascinating story St Luke tells in the Acts of the Apostles. Paul is in a ship being taken captive to stand trial in Rome. The ship’s captain goes against Paul’s advice and decides to risk a journey before the winter storms begin. A bad decision! A horrendous hurricane builds up and the sailing ship is driven before the wind for 14 days. In this crisis, an angel of the Lord appears to Paul in a vision and tells him to have no fear. The Lord will keep the ship safe and no lives will be lost. But what happens when some sailors make plans to abandon the battered ship and seek for safety in a lifeboat? Paul doesn’t tell them that since God has promised that no lives will be lost, it doesn’t matter what they do. No, he says (despite God’s promise) if they go ahead they will drown. The lifeboat is cut adrift so they can’t go ahead with their plans. In other words, the situation

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is in God’s hands, but it is also in the sailors’ hands – both at the same time! (Acts, chapter 26, 13 to 38). That’s not watertight logic, but I think it is true to expe-

sibility to shape our own future in the year ahead. It underlines that there is a wrong way and a right way to fear God. We all know a motorist who has a wrong fear and drives at

I wish politicians were more afraid of disastrous global warming and took more action rience. It is right to have the confidence that, as a loving father, God will look after us in 2022, yet it is also important not to be fatalistic but to realise instead that God gives us power, the agency and respon-

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40mph up the middle lane of a motorway is a menace. On the other hand, there is a right fear that if we drive carelessly and wildly then we can cause accidents and cost lives. A responsible fear of

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God makes us wary, but also not timid or passive. There is a verse in the Bible that I like that brings together both the need to be responsible in how we live in the fear of God, and yet that we can also rejoice in a confident, energised trust that he is carrying out his good purposes for us: “Continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose” (Paul’s letter to the church in Philippi, chapter 2, verses 12 and 13). Maybe you might like to make this verse your motto, and even try and memorise it for 2022.

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JANUARY 2022 THE VOICE

News

Top black lawyers get recognition at awards

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24 | THE VOICE DECEMBER 2021

30 | THE VOICE SEPTEMBER 2021

UK Diversity Legal Awards shine a spotlight on some of the most talented lawyers in the business

OME OF Britain’s top lawyers were celebrated at the prestigious UK Diversity Legal Awards, the only industry awards focused on recognising and promoting equality, diversity and inclusion across the legal profession. More than 300 guests turned out to see the winners unveiled at a glittering ceremony held at the Plaisterers’ Hall in London to celebrate exceptional individuals and teams who are making a difference in the legal sector. The awards were presented by BBC News reporter Nancy Kacungira, and guests were entertained by talented cellist, composer and singer Ayanna Witter-Johnson. The 11th UK Diversity Legal Award is an initiative of the Black Solicitors Network (BSN) which aims to raise standards across the profession, as those making submissions seek to create ever-more impactful policies, processes and initiatives. There were many inspirational highlights from the ceremony. One that stood out was the BSN Lifetime Achievement, which was awarded to Dr Grace Ononiwu CBE, Director of Legal Services at the Crown Prosecution Service and the first African Caribbean to hold this post. Grace was honoured for her distinguished and accomplished legal career and for beLIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT: Dr Grace Ononiwu, CBE

ing a trailblazer and champion for racial diversity in the legal profession. In a well-received acceptance speech, Grace reaffirmed that “we can all be part of the change we want to see”. Other notable wins on the night included Natasha Shotunde, family law barrister with Garden Court Chambers, who won the BSN Rising Star (Chambers) award for her work tackling racism at the Bar and being the driving force behind the Black Barristers Network which actively promotes the advancement of black barristers by providing support, increasing visibility and community outreach. Jivaan Bennett, an Associate with Linklaters LLP, pictured inset, won the BSN Rising Star (Private Practice) award for his legal and entrepreneurial skills in developing a Caribbean practice within his firm’s regional offering and designing and delivering an initiative (Headstart) to prepare future black trainees for professional life. In the Access to Justice category, MTC Solicitors (Naga Kandiah) were rewarded for their selfless commitment to representing Windrush victims to asylum seekers, deportees and falsely accused. For more information and how to lend your support to the BSN and the Awards programme, visit blacksolicitorsnetwork.co.uk and diversitylegalawards.org.

PROUD WINNERS: Main, left, MTC Solicitors won in the Access to Justice category; above, Natasha Shotunde, centre, was named BSN Rising Star (Chambers) 22 | THE VOICE SEPTEMBER 2021

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30 | THE VOICE JANUARY 2022

Lerone Clarke-Oliver

Join the debate online voice-online.co.uk/opinion

Barbados, the Queen and LGBTQ+ rights LGBTQ+ Bajans currently do not enjoy the same rights as heterosexual citizens. As the world’s newest republic begins life, it’s vital that the island nation ends its laws penalising the community

ARBADOS IS the world’s newest republic, after swapping out Queen Elizabeth II for its first president, Dame Sandra Mason. This change is an important one for the island nation and Barbados joins a long list of former colonial outposts removing the Queen as their Head of State. But Barbados must ensure that the Queen isn’t the only colonial relic they do away with: LGBTQ+ Bajans currently do not enjoy the same rights as heterosexual citizens, as Barbados still has colonial-era laws on the books penalising same-sex intimacy. While the maximum penalty for those caught in “homosexual acts” is a life sentence, these laws are currently under review and not widely enforced. Still, societal stigma remains and these homophobic laws make LGBTQ+ Bajans vulnerable to discrimination, violence and persecution. While Barbados has transitioned to a republic, it will remain part of the

We will not make progress by simply condemning the past Commonwealth of Nations, an important membership organisation that could help further the fight for LGBTQ+ Bajans. One of the ways anti-LGBTQ+ laws are being challenged, in Barbados and across the Commonwealth, is through the Commonwealth Equality Network, or TCEN, a network of over 60 organisations working to defend the human rights of LGBTQ+ people, and an essential intervention in the collective struggle against homophobic colonial-era laws. Kaleidoscope Trust, the UKbased charity working with LGBTQ+ activists across the Commonwealth and which serves

as TCEN’s Secretariat, recently hosted their tenth anniversary celebration at the Institute of Directors. Speaking to an audience of LGBTQ+ influencers, activists, parliamentarians and changemakers, Kaleidoscope Trust’s president, Lord Fowler, raised an important point: “We will not make progress by simply condemning the past. “Remember, yes; but progress will only be made by taking on the issues of today.”

ACTION

As Bajans continue to reckon with the harms of a colonial past and take decisive action in their own interest, Lord Fowler’s insight speaks to the necessity of tackling the effects and impacts of the past in the present. Prime Minister Mia Mottley has taken a proud stance in support of LGBTQ+ people everywhere, including the Bajans under her care. In 2017, Barbados held the first of its now-annual pride

PROUD: Mia Mottley is supportive of the LGBTQ+ community (photo: Randy Brooks/Getty Images) events (on Rihanna Drive, no less!), and organisations like B-GLAD (Barbados Gays and Lesbians Against Discrimination) continue to fight on behalf of LGBTQ+ Bajans.

The well-known phrase “none of us is free until all of us are’’ is apt. The break from the Queen and a colonial past will be in vain if the future Barbados

imagines and creates for itself doesn’t include honouring the full human rights of its LGBTQ+ citizens. They must make this moment count for all.

Mental health at the intersection of sexuality and family AT LONG LAST, it seems black communities are having more meaningful conversations about mental health and wellbeing. From where and how to seek help, to the myriad ways we are impacted by varying structural and societal factors like racism, we’re making leaps and bounds in tackling an issue blighting our communities. Yet black and brown LGBTQ+ people still find themselves estranged from their families, and this has an ongoing detrimental impact on the mental and emotional health of those already vulnerable within black communities. In a country that likes to let us know that black people are

not welcome, family for most offers respite and safety. Those without this valuable safety net, like myself, can often feel unworthy of love and, to a degree, flawed.

LET’S TALK: Don’t let loved ones suffer (photo: JGalione/Getty Images)

ACCEPTED

While acceptance from family and friends may still be a problem for many LGBTQ+ people, a survey by UK Black Pride finds that nearly half (42 per cent) of respondents say they visit family less often because they don’t feel accepted for who they are. This was particularly high among trans and non-binary respondents (67 per cent and 64 per cent).

selves with family, and of those that can rest in the safety of home, share their joys and woes, enjoy their favourite home-cooked meal, and feel unconditional love. I see the difference it makes to how they navigate the world.

HOSTILE

While my relationship with my family has had an impact on my mental health, I’ve been lucky enough to

access therapy. However, I continue to be envious of my black LGBTQ+ peers who can be their full authentic

The UK Black Pride report makes several recommendations, and I’d like to put one forward to readers of The Voice: do not let your LGBTQ+ loved ones suffer alone. Black LGBTQ+ people are worthy of love and support, particularly in a hostile environment for black people in the UK.

Lerone Clarke-Oliver is a PR, publicist, artist manager and ghost writer. He is a commentator on the black LGBTQ+ community and contributor to a number of media outlets.

@thevoicenewspaper

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JANUARY 2022 THE VOICE | 31

News feature

BLACK IN EASTERN EUROPE

MAKING THEIR VOICES HEARD: Foreign students shout as they hold posters reading ‘killed by fascists’ during a rally in St Petersburg, Russia, in 2006 (photo: Alexander Drozdov/ Interpress/AFP via Getty Images)

Much more is now being done to tackle racism in nations including Russia, writes Lyndon Mukasa

N RECENT times, Eastern Europe has gained a reputation for its hostility and nationalism against predominantly non-white immigrants. Due to the increasing and ongoing migrant crisis spurred on by conflict in the Middle East, increased repression and inequality in parts of Africa, and the unwillingness of the richer European countries such as the UK to do more to take in more refugees, it has resulted in more hostility. In the popular imagination, Eastern Europe is often characterised as a backwards, xenophobic and racist region. For many black communities across the region, the emergence of ultra-right nationalist governments in countries such as Hungary or Poland is a concerning development.

This has not been helped by reports of increased racist attacks such as the 2018 attack on a 14-year-old black girl by a Polish nationalist. However, the history and relationship of black people in this part of Europe is a lot more complicated than what is often presented in Western Europe.

HORRORS

There has been a black presence in Eastern Europe for centuries, often through contact with the Ottoman Empire but more recently in the 20th century. In the 1920s and 1930s, notable black Americans such as singer Paul Robeson and Langston Hughes found a home in the Soviet Union where they escaped from the horrors of racism and segregation in the United States. For a while, the Soviet Union

and much of Eastern Europe challenged the various forms of anti-black racism and white supremacy through propaganda in what Soviet leaders such as Lenin saw as one of the biggest crimes and failings of Western capitalism. Later, following the independence of many African countries in the 1960s, many Africans migrated to the Soviet Union to work and study, settling throughout Russia and Eastern Europe. Today, the legacy of this cultural exchange lives on, with the most notable black populations in Russia estimated to be at 70,000, Hungary 7,200 and Poland at 5,000. Despite this legacy of cultural exchange, many black people across Eastern Europe describe experiences of hostility and sometimes violence towards them. In Russia, the human rights group SOVA

has documented a consistent increase in neo-Nazi attacks against non-whites across Russia since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. In Hungary in 2020, solidarity protests for the murder of George Floyd by black and Hungarian students were met with opposition from the public. Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban has stoked antiimmigrant sentiment in the

country that has greatly increased white nationalism.

NATIONALISM

This is all while Orban is attempting to increase Hungary’s outreach to Africa by increasing its scholarship programme. The future is at present uncertain with the increasing racialised nationalism across the region. However, many black people would argue their com-

munities will continue to endure as they have for decades. In cities such as Moscow, Russia and in Budapest, Hungary, racism is at the very least starting to be examined and challenged. While there is a lot of work to do, many black students across the region are looking at the work and activism of their counterparts around the world in challenging anti-black racism in all its forms.

| THE VOICE JANUARY 2022

Richard Sudan

Join the debate online voice-online.co.uk/opinion

No justice in a rigged system

JUSTICE AT LAST: A Netflix series about Malcolm X’s death led to a reopening of the investigation into his killing; inset below left, Kyle Rittenhouse walked free from court in November

Kyle Rittenhouse’s release after being acquitted of killing two men at a BLM protest highlights the injustices we continue to face

NDIVIDUAL BATTLES don’t mean the war is won. In 2022, anti-racists must unite to fight for racial justice. It’s tempting, especially during Black History Month — in the United Kingdom and the United States — to not only marvel and celebrate black achievements from the past and present, but to consider how far we might have travelled down the path of racial justice. Indeed, as we look back on 2021, it is easy to imagine we’ve made huge strides in tackling racism both here in the UK, across the pond, and around the world. However, as we reach the start of 2022, I would argue that it’s equally important we stay wise to the reality of racial injustice, and understand that while the dynamics of white supremacy might have changed over time, racism itself is as rampant as ever. Don’t take my word for it – just look at what the United

It is easy to imagine we’ve made huge strides in tackling racism Nations has had to say in recent times about the realities faced by those of African descent, both here and in the wider diaspora. Let’s start by taking a look at the United States’ socalled justice system in the wake of recent high profile court cases which have been taking place, dominating news headlines. On the one hand, the exoneration of the two men wrongly convicted of the assassination o f Mal-

colm X is heartening. On the other, the only reason it happened is because of the relentless work and scholarship of Abdur Rahman-Muhammad and others over many decades, culminating in the hit Netflix series Who Killed Malcolm X?, which led to a reopening of the investigation. We now know that the FBI and NYPD suppressed evidence which might have secured justice at the time. Those institutions are meant to deliver justice, not shroud it.

HEADLINES

What about the murder convictions of the men who lynched Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia in the early part of 2020? The fact is that had Mr Arbery’s murder not been caught on camera, and arguably, had the case not attracted global headlines, both the McMichaels and Roddy Bryan might never have faced a courtroom, let alone a guilty conviction. Furthermore, the apparent systemic corruption at the heart of Georgia’s legal apparatus might never have been exposed. And lastly, we saw Kyle Rittenhouse walk free having killed two people at a Black Lives Matter protest in Kenosha

last year. Some will argue, until rapture, that white supremacism had nothing to do with that case. Mr Rittenhouse is white, after all, and killed two white men. But, all the evidence seems to point to strong ties between Mr Rittenhouse and groups like the Proud Boys, in addition to the favourability he was reportedly afforded by the judge, the fact that he continues to be a poster pin-up for the far-right, while clearly adored by Fox News, figures like Donald Trump, and other unsavoury politicians. Mr Rittenhouse posted bail,

paid for by groups who would swear they are American patriots and Christians. However, groups feigning respectability while supporting white vigilantism in the US is nothing new.

RULES

The years have rolled by, but the rules haven’t changed. Many contend that had Mr Rittenhouse been black he’d have been shot dead in the street, rather than allowed to leave by the police and head home. What, therefore, can be said about the United States’ so-called justice sys-

tem? That justice for black people is possible, but can prove elusive without public pressure. The system looks rigged, but must be held to account, nonetheless. Individual victories can happen, but the long-term battle is far from over. Now let’s look a little close to home. Perhaps racism to some extent, for some at least, is not as overt in Britain as it is in the United States. But it’s there, and we don’t have the luxury of deluding ourselves. A few black and brown faces walking among the corridors of power does not equal progress.

Culture of fear in communities

Don’t be fooled by Boris’s ‘war on drugs’

THE Windrush controversy continues. Priti Patel’s home office has yet to ensure that compensation allocated for those unjustly impacted by the scandal reaches those it should. Many of those impacted are too frightened to come forward. The hostile environment has created a culture of fear and crisis of trust in black communities. And there’s little to suggest the failures which led to the scandal have been fixed despite promises they would be. The very same Home Office is also presiding over what many argue are the

IN THE past month, Boris Johnson’s government has announced a ‘war on drugs’. Anyone familiar with what this once meant in the United States should be on high alert, for the potential of what this might mean in the UK. How this might look in the shape of policy is one thing. But the very fact Johnson, pictured inset, has intentionally

harshest policies towards immigration in living memory. Those policies are costing lives, including black ones. And let’s not forget about the ongoing impact of police stop and searches, which we know targets black youth more than any other group. These are dangerous times when we think about the new powers police will soon have. Some might say it’s better they manage the powers they already have more effectively, than to be given more.

used this kind of language is deliberate. Some might say it’s dogwhistle politics — you don’t need to be a rocket scientist to work out that it won’t be wealthy white privileged politicians targeted by Johnson’s ‘war’, nor to guess the audience he is playing to. I believe the stakes have never been higher for our communities. What happens in the diaspora is not in a vacuum.

We are connected by a shared history, which informs the present. The system of injustice is worldwide and requires global solutions.

ORGANISE

More than ever, we need to organise, by forming stronger links with anti-racists and those seeking equality around the world. Our future demands it. And we owe it to those who walked before us.

Richard Sudan is a London-based journalist, activist, campaigner and performance poet.

@thevoicenewspaper

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DECEMBER 2021

THE VOICE| 33

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News

Black youth fight the Tower Texas millionaire’s plans for Brixton cause major anger By Leah Mahon

OUNG BLACK Brixtonians are taking on a Texas millionaire who wants to build a 20-storey tower “monstrosity” at the heart of the local community in south London. Campaigners and local residents have rallied together to oppose the building of a new tower complex as fears grow that gentrification is continuing to drive out the black community who have made Brixton their home since 1948 when the Empire Windrush landed. Young local filmmakers have made a mini-documentary about growing opposition to the ‘Hondo Tower’. Texas property developer Taylor McWilliams, who already owns a significant slice of Brixton Market, angered locals in January 2020 after an eviction notice to the popular shop, Nour Cash & Carry. His property company Hondo Enterprises is now trying to erect the large block in the middle of Brixton, and 50,000 people have already signed a petition opposing the eviction of local businesses to make way for the development. The controversy led to the creation of the Save Nour campaign group who are now working to stop the building of the tower, which has already been approved by Lambeth Council’s planning committee, but is now the subject of a forthcoming public hearing at London City Hall after the mayor, Sadiq Khan, intervened. Tia Watts, a student and amateur filmmaker, is campaigning to bring light to the po-

It’s just not going to make it a very nice place. It’s not what the community want here tential impact of the tower on Brixton’s residents. “The commuters going into the tower to work there will just completely change Brixton, it won’t be a very friendly place for families,” Tia told The Voice. “On an environmental scale as well, with all the different cars coming in, the traffic will be horrible. It’s just not going to make it a very nice place. It’s not what the community want here and they’re still pushing it – that’s what the issue is.” She added: “The history [of the Windrush Generation] could be washed away when there is already a severe lack of knowledge about this community.”

REPLACE

Local assets like the local Canterbury Arms pub have been replaced by trendy bars, and cosmopolitan eateries and clubs that “made Brixton unique” have been transformed into flats. Prominent community figures, such as author and former Brixton resident Alex Wheatle, feature in the documentary, alongside Danai Nardi, a member of the Fight the Tower campaign, who have all opposed Hondo Enterprise’s proposal. Joe Cole, an organiser on the team at Save Nour, said that black communities were

TAKING A STAND: The young filmmakers bidding to make a change and stop ‘Hondo Tower’ are shown in a screengrab from their investigative video; inset below left, an artist’s impression of the tower being driven out of Brixton due to gentrification, and that amounted to “ethnic cleansing”. He said: “I’ve engaged in conversation with a woman who owns an Eritrean cafe on Station Road, and she said that once Pop Brixton moved in it’s become a box park of high-end bougie businesses with majority white clientele.” She added: “Once Pop Brixton moved in, the police repression on Station Road increased dramatically to the extent that the police were harassing Eritrean men who were having their coffee in the cafe. It’s ethnic cleansing happening in a modern context where people are getting forced out because the land that they own can be used for more profitable uses.” Other campaigners involved in the fight against the tower, such as the No Hondo Tower group, have amassed more than 7,000 signatures in opposition to the office block development. Local Labour MPs, including Bell Ribeiro-Addy and Helen Hayes, have also spoken out against the proposed building. The activist group says they spend most weekends talking to residents at the planned development site. Since March, the Save Nour campaign has been waiting on a date for a public hearing on the fight to stop the tower after the London mayor acknowledged residents’ objections. Lambeth Council says the development will create 2,000 jobs, but the developer puts the figure at 1,800. The building of the tower

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We strongly refute the notion that our proposals will gentrify the area on Pope’s Road has stirred up anger from some residents, although others were in favour of the tower. One resident wrote on the Brixton Buzz blog: “This is an absolute monstrosity. It doesn’t fit in with anywhere around it and it dominates the entire centre of Brixton.” Hiba Ahmed has lived in Brixton since moving to London but says she was pushed out by rising living costs. “It was almost accidental when we started looking into Taylor McWilliams and his company Hondo Enterprise, and the plans they had in store for Brixton when we found out that he had the tower in the pipeline,” she said. “These are people who usually don’t hear about these kinds of [things] and also often don’t have the means or access to digital spaces – we gathered around 10,000 objections.” Tsiresy Domingos, a civil engineering student and anti-tower campaigner, told The Voice: “I think the general idea is that a massive office tower appears and draws predominantly middle-class, upper-middle class people who then inflate the rents and property prices. Gentrifiers don’t actually go to the

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same businesses as a local community, they bring their own artisan bakeries, for instance, all of these shops that locals don’t really go to.” The Caribbean community settled in the area immediately after the Windrush landed in 1948, because those pioneers were sent to a ‘labour exchange’ (a form of job centre) in Brixton.

FAMOUS

Since then, the neighbourhood has become famous for its market stalls, community spaces, cultural foods and clothing. A Lambeth Council spokesperson said: “As a privately owned piece of land, the planning application was decided on the basis of the national planning framework. However, Lambeth Council worked hard with the business owners to secure community benefits that reflect local needs. “We are committed to supporting our diverse communities and leveraging the benefits of growth for local people. In Brixton, we have also used council land to create the Black Cultural Archives, the forthcoming Brixton House theatre, as well as building new affordable homes in the area. “The benefits negotiated by the council from this development include more than 2,000 jobs with a focus on delivering them for local people, more than £1.8 million for local employment and skills, affordable workspace for more than 500 local start-ups and freelancers – and money for local trans-

voicenews

port and public infrastructure improvements. The application is now subject to a Greater London Assembly consultation through which people are encouraged to have their say”. A spokesperson from Hondo Enterprises denied the accusations of ethnic cleansing in the area. “We strongly refute the notion that our proposals will gentrify and erase the history of the area, indeed we are proud of the fact that we have provided support and assistance to fledgling and established black and minority ethnic (BAME) startups in the area. “These include Sole, a social enterprise which donates trainers to those in financial hardship, as well as supporting local entrepreneurs such as Karl Lokko and Cyril Lutterodt, who run Black Seed, a community and seed fund set up to break down the historic barriers BAME entrepreneurs have faced when trying to obtain funding. “The proposals will support the delivery of 1,800 jobs over what exists currently, including 25,000sq ft of affordable workspace, which will be managed by social enterprise Impact Brixton, who are the only black-owned co-working space in Europe. “Alongside this, we will be delivering a £1 million bespoke skills and training fund, targeted at local residents, in addition to a jobs and skills programme aimed at Lambeth Council worth £1.875 million. The final package of benefits have been arrived at following extensive consultation with the local community and Lambeth Council.”

www.voice-online.co.uk

Lifestyle

22 TO WATCH IN 2022

Who’s going to be making waves this year? Lifestyle gives you the lowdown...

36 | THE VOICE JANUARY 2022

Lifestyle

22 TO WATCH IN 2022 Joel Campbell picks out some of the ﬁnest black talent destined for great things this year...

If you haven’t heard of this presenter and broadcaster before, go check out the interview we did with him following his stint with The Hundred last year, where he cohosted the stage at The Kia Oval. His energy is infectious and his ambition knows no bounds, he wants to do it all, his words. Lifestyle have a sneaky suspicion that, following the 2021, he had a few more people in powerful places are aware of him... and it’s not going to be long before he becomes a household name. Having being awarded his own Kiss Fresh show, he now also has a weekend show on Kiss FM, hosted with Sam Darlaston.

Her forthc o m i n g feature film Birdsong was selected by industry heavyweight Deadline as one of their “2021 Lineup Of Best Unproduced Film & TV Scripts Revealed”. She’s an award-winning filmmaker who has written, produced and directed several internationally renowned projects including Zion, Victim and feature film David is Dying. In November 2020, Sheila secured an unprecedented development deal with the national broadcaster, SKY. Shortly after this announcement, she was selected to join the BFI Network x BAFTA Crew 2021. Sheila recently produced Stay Close starring Cush Jumbo for RED and Netflix.

Hannah John

Natalie Fiawoo

Omah Howard

Currently the Resilience Manager at Black Cultural Archives, Hannah John is fast becoming a leader in the culture, arts and heritage sector. Hannah has historically worked within the charity sector and on community-based projects such as Tea with the GP, looking at social prescribing for older people suffering with loneliness. She has global experience, having volunteered in townships in South Africa and holds ties in Sierra Leone. Her strategic mind mixed with an interest in people allows her to combine two often very polar, but necessary worlds.

Stephen Bediako

Stephen Bediako OBE is an innovator, designer and evaluation expert. Hailing from the heart of East London, Stephen now splits his time between the UK and the US, driving change across multiple continents for everyday people. Awarded an OBE in the 2021 New Year’s Queen’s Honors for innovation in charity and social enterprise, the legacy of Stephen’s work spans across some of the biggest and brightest names in social innovation.

Sheila Nortley

It’ll be a strong year for Shelia.

Natalie Fiawoo is a vanguard on the British creative scene, building iconic legacies with some of the biggest names in arts, culture and heritage. A producer and cultural curator with a career spanning over a decade, she has an insatiable passion for telling stories of the African Diaspora, uncovering tales overlooked by the mainstream. In the last year alone, Natalie has curated Africa Writes for The Royal African Society, produced the Apples and Snakes podcast with season one celebrating the best in Black British poetry talent, and curated Before Them, We at Black Cultural Archives.

Karen Arthur

Karen is a woman with a powerful message to send. A former teacher, she’s a fashion creative, private sewing tutor, stylist, model, content creator and speaker who has been honing her craft for over 40 years. Not only has Karen been asked to use her design skills to dress a 14ft statue of Queen Victoria in Liverpool as part of the documentary Statues Redressed, she’s also taken her experiences with the menopause to the world creating the podcast Men-

CREATING GOOD THINGS: Resilience Manager at Brixton’s Black Cultural Archives (BCA), Hannah John is bringing her global experience to the London stage

opause Whilst Black, appearing in Channel 4 documentary Sex Myths and Menopause and speaking to parliament’s women and equalities committee on Menopause in the workplace. She lifts the veil on the inevitable and fundamental changes that every woman will go through. She sheds light on coping with the realities of the transition for young women and reminds mature women to own their value and to buck convention, stereotypes and the world’s attempts at erasure. All this with a wicked wit and uncompromising truth.

Juanita Rosenior

Juanita is the founder and Managing Director at TGRG (The Girl in the Red Glasses), a boutique Marcomms, PR and Talent agency. Their roster includes talent from across a number of sectors including arts and heritage, social impact, media, health and wellbeing and social justice. From running virtual literary events with the likes of Benjamin Zephaniah, Alica Garza and Dorothy Koomson to clients working with the likes of Sky, Netflix, Sir Steve McQueen, Channel 4, Channel 5, Net A Porter and more. Most journalists understand the need for good PR representation and Juanita is building a cuttingedge agency which is disrupting the talent landscape.

Backroad Gee

Heavily influenced by his mother blasting Congolese music in the house as a youth few artists in the scene right now carry the effervescence possessed by Backroad Gee. On the red carpet of the 2020 MOBO Awards, he told Lifestyle that he was tar-

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geting ‘greatness only’ and after the year he’s had, which has seen his co-signed by some of the biggest names in the game, it’s easy to see how the rapper has endeared himself to his legion of fans so quickly. He’s definitely one to watch in 2022.

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Enny

The only person to make it on the list who was on the 2021 Ones To Watch, Enny is far from just any talent. Nope, this young lady has that thing, that edge, poise, a universally e n d e a ring vibe about her that is still evolving (she is only 17), yet defining all

voicenews

at the same time. Her music belies her age but at the same time she speaks for her generation, most importantly of course she speaks to them. Asked what she wanted 2022 to look like at its greatest, she told Lifestyle editor Joel Campbell: ‘2021 on steroids, that’s what I want.’ Enny, we get it. Good luck, not that you need it.

Rellik Tha Don

A host and award-winning radio presenter from London, Rellik

www.voice-online.co.uk

JANUARY 2022 THE VOICE | 37

Lifestyle limit. His pro debut last October ended in an exciting victory and in his second fight just before Christmas he demonstrated again why so many are tipping him to go the distance. Looking forward to the year ahead he plans to be busy. After his last victory he said: “It’s still early days and I plan on having a long career. We’re pushing for six to 10 fights in my first year as a professional, and I want to be as active as possible.”

Tha Don can be heard regularly on Represent Radio and has also appeared on No Signal. The 26-year-old is making big waves having interviewed the likes of Kojey Radical, Mahalia and Raye. Last year Rellik hosted The Cloud X Festival and took home The Golden Halo Award for Best On-Air / Digital Personality and he’s only at the beginning of what he’s going to do. 2022 is set to be a huge year, so watch this space.

Margs

A lot of the newer Margs fans might not know this man’s ‘real’ journey, but trust Lifestyle when we say, the transformation is real, and we love to see it. Reading his post on Instagram last year highlighting how far he’d come with his creative media endeavours, will serve as great motivation for a lot of the community who identify with the brand of content the east Londoner is famed for. One hundred episodes, one million+ streams, three million+ views and three sold out shows is no mean feat, we definitely agree that his ‘little podcast ting is doing alright’, and this year could definitely see @nobehaviourpodcast to da world.

Samson Kayo

Lifestyle have got a real feeling that this actor and writer is going to start popping up on radars further and wider afield than his core fanbase are used to and more power to him. His role in the Aml Ameen Boxing Day movie was brilliant, it was what we know he can bring to the table. In the TV series Bloods, he spread his wings and confirmed his talent knows no bounds. It’s understood a new series of the Sky show will be airing later this year but aside from that, expect to see him in a plethora of places.

HOT PROPERTY: M1llionz’ mixtape catapulted him into the eardrums of people across the UK

Ayra Starr

Nominated for her first MOBO Award in the Best African Music Act category last year and named as one of Spotify’s Equal Artists Of The Month all the signs are that this young artist will be here for a while. The only one we’ve featured from overseas, the Afro-pop future stars self-titled EP and debut album 19 & Dangerous racked up over 45 million global streams. Look out for some successful link ups.

Vanessa Cruickshank

Vanessa is a producer, TV presenter and actress, who recently started her own production company. From starring in 2021 in the BBC creative short film Dinah, Vanessa also wrote

and produced her first play. 2022 is only set to get better with her new TV show airing on Sky in the New Year.

Henrie Kwushue

By her own admission her success of recent is down to ‘god’. We’ve seen her work hard and plug a w a y and whatever she’s putting in her breakfast, it’s setting her up nicely for each day. the radio and TV presenter, host, voiceover artist and DJ can add influencer to her list of monikers but we feel it’s her creative spark and amenable smile which will see her continue to shine this year.

Makala Green

You may have seen this young lady on these pages last year or you may have taken in the interview we did on our YouTube channel, either way, you would know that where finance and money are concerned, the first ever black female Chartered Financial Planner has you covered. Look for her name to ring out this year as she continues to dish out top grade advice on how to look after your pennies.

Zara Afﬂick

From an early age Zara was inspired by the craftsmanship of clothing and the world of creative arts. Her company, Box Of Prints, founded in 2016 with the

aim of releasing boldness, optimism and passion to prints, has seen a rapid growth of interest over the last year. From the first letter of these words, was created Box of Print, BOP. The company creates exclusive prints, often regarded as vibrant and rich in layered textures used for interior and fashion Zara desires to see a greater interest in the world of textile printing.

Shiloh Defreitas

Nicknamed ‘Sugar Shy’, where this young boxing hopeful is concerned the sky is the

Alana Maria

Born and raised in West London and inspired by the likes of Brandy, Kehlani and Summer Walker, 19-year-old Alana’s been steady building throughout the whole of 2021 which saw her drop her debut EP Lala. The impact of her hard and diligent work was there for all to see when she held her own show at the back end of last year. The former model, who recently featured in the JD Sports X Kickers campaign, has already earned co-signs from the likes of PA Salieu, Tion Wayne and Pink Sweats and is on her way to cementing her status as the princess of R’n’B.

M1llionz

Who doesn’t rate M1llionz, like, seriously? Who didn’t like Provisional Licence, the debut mixtape he put out last year? His rise has been measured and decisive. There’s a drive about the young man that let’s you know he’s about his business. There’s an authentic raw-

ness about him that underpins his popularity and something tells us that this year could be a massive one for him. As music evolves standing out from the crowd is a must and M1llionz does that and then some. Standards are high in the 0121, make no mistake about that, but he’s carrying the load of expectation on his shoulders well.

Clive Lewis MP

Labour MP Clive Lewis, 49, challenged for the leadership in 2020 but the Corbynite wing of the party went for the librarian-esque Becky Long Bailey instead, who lost out to Sir Keir Starmer. Since then, the outspoken Mr Lewis has been impressing progressive party members with regular appearances on podcasts such as Novara Media and Owen Jones. He now stands in poll position to win the ‘Left’ ticket should Mr Starmer fall under a political bus, and *if* the Left can unite behind a single candidate, which is not a given. However, many Left members have literally left over the treatment of Jeremy Corbyn, so even if Mr Lewis does carry the red flag in a contest he would be a longshot to win it.

Rt Hon Kwasi Kwarteng MP

It has just been one year since Kwasi Kwarteng made history as the first black Tory to get into the Cabinet when he was appointed Business Secretary, but he’s already being talked up as a leadership candidate should B o r i s Johnson be dethroned, which might well happen this year unless their polling picks up. The 46-year-old son of Ghanaian parents is doing nothing to stop the speculation. Whether his party is ready for a black prime minister – even an Eton and Oxbridge-educated one – remains to be seen. Stranger things have happened in Tory leadership contests, but a tilt at the top job might well earn him the one of the ‘big’ departments of state – Chancellor, Home Secretary or Foreign Secretary.

38 | THE VOICE JANUARY 2022

Lifestyle

Gaming

The gaming world is stronger than ever – and it’s here to stay

A trip to Ghana for Esports Medicine physician Dr Melita N. Moore proved an eye-opener BY JOEL CAMPBELL

HERE’S SO much happening in the world of Esports, and Dr Melita N Moore, aka The Level Up Doctor, is imploring those who love their gaming not to be left behind. In 2021, the Sports and Esports Medicine physician (yep, the latter is a real role), visited Ghana for the first time with former NBA player Pops Mensah Bonsu to engage with and educate gamers on health and wellbeing. The region is experiencing a groundswell of numbers joining the gaming army as access to mobile phones become more and more attainable. Last year, The Voice spoke to Esports programme developer and lecturer at East London University, Roberto Reid, who was steadfast in his assertion that his industry is about to experience a meteoric period of growth as adoption speeds up at an eyewatering rate of knots. Dr Moore, pictured inset above, told Lifestyle that Africa is most definitely not being left behind. Sharing her thoughts and experience of the appetite for Esports in the Motherland, she enthused: “We were so lucky to be here in Ghana with Pops Mensah Bonsu who is from Ghana and one of the few basketballers to make it in the NBA, and he is now a General Manager with the Nicks organisation in New York. “With his basketball academy called Seed Academy Ghana, we came to help put on a sports, Esports and health event in association with African Health Now, which is a not-for-profit organisation, and our non-profit Health e-Gamer Foundation,

along with our brand ambassador and supporter Aerial Powers, WNBA champion. “And so we had the Powerz Up NBA 2K21 tournament Ghana edition and it was just a fantastic opportunity for all of the gamers here in Ghana to show up, represent and have a safe space to show their skills.” Moore admits the fervent appetite for Esports that greeted her in Ghana left her taken aback. She said: “Esports is alive and well in Ghana and across the continent of Africa. I think a lot of people don’t understand that there are three billion gamers worldwide. “If you think about that, you too maybe a gamer, whether it’s mobile gaming, console gaming or PC gaming.” She added: “This event was beyond my expectation, truly beyond my expectation. “We partnered with Esports Association Ghana who have really been developing Esports here in Ghana, as well as Esports Academy. “The gamers were so excited to be here, we had some beautiful products by HyperX, that support us, some beautiful headsets that all of the gamers were able to get. “We had some swag from T-Wolves Gaming, which is the NBA team that is associated with our brand ambassador Aerial Powers from Minnesota. “And we had some books by myself, The Level Up Doctor. I am the co-editor of a book called The Handbook of Esports Medicine, the first of its kind. So now we’re able to educate the healthcare community about how you can take care of a gamer. “We were also able to do health screenings for the gamers here. Some of them hadn’t had their blood pressure or pulse rates checked before, so we were able to do health

“What parents also need to understand is that there are so many beneﬁts to be gained from the gamers everywhere” screenings and we did a Health e-Gamer Summit. It was a fantastic event, and I can’t wait for the next one.” Born in the United States and living in the Washington DC area, Dr Moore admits it was her affinity to sport that has ultimately lured her into the world of Esports.

PLAYER WELFARE: It’s important gamers are in the best possible shape, mentally and physically their team physician I said, ‘What does a gamer need a doctor for?’. I really didn’t know about Esports before 2019. “But just like I take care of my WNBA team, my NBA team, I gave the same care to our NBA2K gamers. “So that’s where I came up with this concept of health and wellness, because there’s not a lot of it out there and that’s kind of how I got started and since then I’ve just been on a roll.” Sharing some advice for parents who may be worried their child might be compromising their physical health by sitting too long playing games, Moore says she understands the fears but encourages parents to stay educated on how to combat any ill-obtained habits.

“I’m known in the community as The Level Up Doctor, that’s my gamer tag, and so what I really try and focus on is health and wellness for gamers worldwide.

EDUCATE

“From the Level Up Doctor perspective, I’m really here just to educate people on what you do to stay well during and while you are gaming and to have a healthy digital lifestyle.” She added: “I know there is a lot of concern for parents, as there should be. “But I think we are changing that narrative of Esports and who this Esports player is and what this Esports player does. “From a health and wellness perspective we focus on sedentary lifestyle, lack of exercise,

nutrition, proper seating or what we call ergonomics. “Proper sleep is important, eye health, which a lot of people don’t realise, and mental health, so all of these things combine under that health and wellness umbrella. “What I think parents also need to understand is that there are so many benefits to be gained from the gamers everywhere, and so if you have a child or someone in your family who is actively gaming, there is a lot of educational benefits to that. “There is a lot of social connectiveness and positive mental health aspects of that. So, I think parents need to take a deeper dive into Esports, especially as we are transitioning currently.”

DEVELOPMENT

She currently wears multiple hats. As well as being a quadruple board-certified sports medicine doctor, a board member and chair of the health and wellness commission at Global Esports Federation, last year she was also named Vice President of the Pan Am Esports Development Federation. “I’m a physician, I’m not a gamer,” Dr Moore says. “I played volleyball in college on a scholarship so I have always loved sports, but at the hospital I was working for at the time they pretty much told me to look after a professional NBA2K Gaming team under the umbrella of a WNBA team that I was already taking care of. “So, I didn’t find Esports, Esports found me. “I was the team physician for Wizards District Gaming, which actually won the NBA2K gaming championships last year, so I am excited about that. I have since transitioned on from that hospital, but that’s how I got into gaming. “When they asked me to be

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GUEST APPEARANCE: Pops Mensah Bonsu, left, helped to give The Powerz Up NBA2K21 Tournament in Ghana an impressive seal of approval

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Lifestyle

Radio

Burgz’ new slot

ALL CHANGE: Remi Burgz, left, is taking over from Yasmin Evans on BBC Radio 1Xtra’s weekday show, while Cuppy, bottom right, will host the new Weekend Breakfast Show on Sundays from 7am to 11am

1Xtra presenter Remi says it’s an honour to be named as replacement for Yasmin Evans BY JOEL CAMPBELL

ANDING A brand-new weekday show on BBC 1Xtra is ‘truly an honour’, Remi Burgz said following the announcement that she was taking over from Yasmin Evans. Burgz, who started at the network a year ago, has won an army of ardent supporters and fans during her time as host of 1Xtra’s Weekend Breakfast Show and is relishing the step up, kicking-off her new role on January 10. Hailing the great rapport she has struck up with listeners, Faron McKenzie, Head of BBC Radio 1Xtra, said there are ‘exciting times ahead’ for Burgz. McKenzie enthused: “In a short space of time Remi has forged an incredible relationship

“Her energy, and positive and uplifting outlook on life, is an exciting new element”

fronted 1Xtra’s Africa 360 – a week of specially curated content celebrating African music and culture. Fans may have also spotted Burgz on TV, most recently collaborating with DJ Target for BBC Three’s Tonight With Target, where she interviewed UK acts such as Jorja Smith and Ghetts.

with our listeners and has proved she is an amazing broadcaster. “Her infectious energy, positive and uplifting outlook on life coupled with her love of music and culture is going to bring an exciting new element to such an important show in 1Xtra’s schedule. I expect to see more clips of her dancing in the studio and bringing the laughter and warmth to our audience. Exciting times ahead for her!” As well as bringing an infectious energy and good vibes to her shows, Burgz has

On her new role, Burgz said: “This is big! A year on 1Xtra and I still pinch myself because I can’t believe I’m even there, but more so that I could stay awake during Weekend Breakfast! “So to be given such an important weekday slot after what the amazing broadcaster, Yasmin Evans, has built, is well and truly an honour.” Burgz will take over from Evans, who has decided to leave the station after just short of a decade there. An integral part

AMAZING

of the 1Xtra family, Evans hosted different shows across the network and has been behind some of the most memorable moments, interviewing stars such as Jamie Foxx and Michael B Jordan. Evans said: “From joining BBC Radio 1Xtra in 2012 to hosting The Breakfast Show and

now with my afternoon show, I’ve spent almost 10 years at what has become my second home. “It’s been an incredible journey for both me as an individual and as a broadcaster. “I am beyond grateful to the BBC for giving me the opportunity to learn my craft and to liter-

ally grow up on air. Thank you to everyone who has been along for the ride, particularly over the last two years when I have realised how important the relationship with our amazing listeners is. So I’m sad to be leaving, but would rather exit on an only good vibes high and I’m excited about what comes next.”

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JANUARY 2022

This is Brukout!

THE VOICE | 41

by Seani B

Who’s ready for 2022? 2021 saw plenty of drama in dancehall and reggae and some names rise to the top of their game – so what’s on the cards for this year?

HAT A year 2021 was! I don’t think a month passed without some form of drama in the dancehall and reggae world. I will be the first to admit that I was glued to many of the vloggers’ YouTube channels just to stay up to speed with what was going viral. As much as I love the mix-up and passa passa like everyone else (I’m hoping!), it’s not something that I use my platform to discuss and bring attention to. There are many others that do the 24-hour rolling news far better than me, so I leave them to it and get on with what I think I do best... MUSIC! 2021 saw the discussion of content and lyrics within music come to the forefront once again. With the murder rate in Jamaica and other regions worldwide rising at an alarming rate, the first place everyone looks at is the music and what it is saying. This is something I have written about openly in this column and how I felt I was at a crossroads at that time. What I didn’t write about is how graphic some of the videos have also become. You don’t have to look too hard to find a video from one of the trending stars that sees them brandishing a gun or even someone getting a headshot. I’m genuinely hoping this is just a passing phase that some of the newer video directors are going through with the availability of processing power behind their computers that allows them to create such Hollywood ready visuals. One of the artists we saw come through at the tail end of last year who firmly is seated in the harder side of dancehall is Spanish Town artist Skeng,

STARS OF THE SCENE:

Jahshii has now come of age, with singles in heavy rotation; bottom, from left, Ms Bandy and Episode

“This year, dancehall and reggae have to show their strength in numbers” pictured inset below left. His brand of dancehall is straight gangster, gun slinging badman business. As you hear his gruff tone in his delivery married up with the no-nonsense lyrics with simple chorus’s like “Brrrrp” you draw the comparison to Skillibeng’s music which it seem the younger audience are drawn to. Just like many of today’s younger stars, his music isn’t designed for radio airplay, but this hasn’t stopped him growing his audience online with one of his biggest trending songs Gvnman Shift released on the 1Matik riddim which has already acquired some 10 million views on YouTube. Another new artist that you should be paying very close attention to also come from the same camp as Skeng, is an artist that came to my attention in 2017. Jahshii, who hails from the Grants Pen community in Kingston, Jamaica, was one of the main competitors in Popcaan’s Unruly Clash. But Quada was the artist that was signed to the Unruly camp at the end of the clash series, but I kept a close eye on Jahshii and actually recorded a freestyle with him as I was so impressed with

this schooler who hadn’t even reached 15 at the time. Jahshii has now come of age a has a few singles in heavy rotation. Cream of E Crop and 25/8 showcase this young talent in crafting songs with mean-

ing. I think Jahshii took a look at the landscape of dancehall and thought, ‘There is a space for me over here with these kind of songs’. I have to take my hats off to an artist that had been working hard all of 2021. Yung Saber from south London delivered a big knockout at the top of the year with his single Tump N Kick. Not one

to waste a moment, he had three different remixes featuring the likes of Stylo G, Big Zeeks and an almighty All Star Diva remix. His work ethic is something that must be commended as he tirelessly puts out singles and videos all year round working with people like Jamie Rodigan from Crate Classics. Moving up the motorway from London to Birmingham to a young lady that featured on the Tump N Kick Diva Remix.

TOOLBOX

Ms Bandy has the qualities to continue to fly the flag for the Midlands just as Brixx and J Kaz have in recent times. Even though I haven’t heard that breakout song as yet, her delivery and style tell me to keep a very close eye on her as it feels like it’s just around the corner for everyone to be asking “Who’s That Girl?” One more artist to add to the list of who we should be watching for 2022, is the

Ghanaian dancehall artist of the year, Episode. On my visit to Ghana in 2020, he was one of the artists who spat a freestyle for me in the streets of Accra that stuck in my mind. The very good, bad boy as he likes to call himself has big shoes to fill from the likes of Stonebwoy and Shatta Wale who are the poster boys of Ghanaian dancehall. However, last year, his Odeshie hit song and video showed that he is more than capable of the challenge ahead of him. In this song and video, he shows the creativity that you have to have in the toolbox to stand out amongst the masses that want to buss through that gate. I truly believe that this year dancehall and reggae have to show their strength in the numbers game, but what I have written about in this column is just the tip of the Iceberg when it’s comes to emerging talent and I’m ready and waiting to see who else is ready to step up to the plate in 2022. Let’s get ‘em!

42 | THE VOICE JANUARY 2022

Lifestyle

Stage

Fitting tribute

This Bob Marley musical is a massive hit and helps bring the legendʼs legacy to life BY JOEL CAMPBELL

F YOU’RE in the UK and can get to London, Lifestyle recommend that you do your utmost best to attend the Lyric Theatre, Shaftesbury Avenue, where they are currently showing Get Up, Stand Up! The Bob Marley Musical. It’s brilliant! With unlimited access to Marley’s platinum-selling catalogue of music, the multi award-winning team of Lee Hall, Clint Dyer and Arinzé Kene (playing Bob Marley) capture the rebellious spirit and story of this universal icon. The attention to detail where telling the story of Bob Marley and the Wailers is concerned is captured fantastically in this production. Kene’s performance is an absolute 10 out of 10 and he has the audience mesmerised with his almost pitch-perfect renditions of classic after classic from the Bob catalogue. So much about the production is of a high quality that it’s difficult to pinpoint one element

“We are proud audiences will be able to sit in his company for a little while” that particularly stands out, but at a push it would be the nuance of the backstory which sets it apart from others. There’s so much we think we know about Bob Marley and his journey, yet a lot of information is rehashed and spun, and given the impact the man has had, and still continues to have to this day, - it is no surprise key facts are overlooked. To witness the mainly white audience soak up the gems being offered during Get Up, Stand Up! was deeply satisfying. It’s of significant importance that one of the world’s musical heroes is understood, even more so that the origin and motivation for some of the all-time classics we all sing without even thinking we understood in the same way.

There’s a scene that beautifully tells the story of Is This Love, it’s just one of the many moments throughout that leave you with a warm fuzzy feeling, you leave satisfied, your cup overflowing. If you felt you understood Bob and his many songs before, you leave The Lyric with a renewed sense of what he went through to produce the timeless music that is still very relevant today.

TRUTHFUL

Context can be a very subjective thing, but with Get Up, Stand Up! you know there has been no need to overdramatise anything, it’s an authentic and genuine attempt to portray a truthful reflection of the journey taken by Bob and everyone closely connected to him. Prior to the opening of the production, Cedella Marley, the first-born daughter of Bob and Rita Marley, said: “Our father’s music has for so long been an inspiration to so many people. “We are proud that audiences will be able to sit in his company for a little while and, we hope, feel better about themselves, and the world.

Talented script writers – we need you! CALLING ALL frustrated script writers. The Bush Theatre wants to see your work. But get a move on, the deadline is January 21. Getting into the theatre industry without representation can be almost impossible, but in keeping the vision of Artistic Director Lynette Linton, pictured inset, and the venue’s tradition, The Bush, in west London, is offering that opportunity with their latest script submissions window. The theatre is internationally famed for developing the very best of the UK’s leading writers, often through cold submissions or its talent development programmes, which open routes into theatre to people who didn’t previously have access. They have been supporting writers for nearly 50 years and has most recently helped launch the careers of Ambreen Razia, Sophie Wu, Temi Wilkey and Ella Road, whose latest play Fair Play can be seen at the Bush until January 22 and online from January 10-16, 2022. During the window, the theatre will welcome submissions of full-length plays (running at 60 minutes or more) from writers based in the UK or Ireland who are not currently represented by an agent.

This year, two writers will be selected for the Bush Theatre’s Emerging Writers’ Group (EWG); the theatre’s literary team will meet with 25 writers and 100 more will receive feedback via email. Deirdre O’Halloran, Literary Manager of the Bush Theatre, said: “Open submissions have become our most exciting way to get to know new talent, bringing us 10 members of our Emerging Writers Group, four commissioned writers, and even a production over the last two years. “I can’t wait to meet the brilliant writers who come through this year.” A previous member of the EWG, Benedict Lombe, whose play Lava was produced at the Bush earlier this year, said: “The Bush is my theatre family. “I submitted a script during their open calls for script submissions, and they invited me to join their Emerging Writers Group. “This was an investment, in every sense of the word. From giving me the space to experiment and develop my craft – straight through to programming the world premiere of my debut play on their main stage. “If you think it’s just another scheme, think again. And then send in your play – they really are rooting for you.”

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SPECIAL EVENT: The production at The Lyric Theatre has received rave reviews “The wonderful team bringing this story to the stage will create a special evening in honour of our father.” It’s more than special. The dynamics between The Wailers, Peter Tosh, Bunny Wailer and

Bob, the wooing of Rita, the galvanising of Jamaica, the uniting of political enemies, so much is covered in Get Up, Stand Up! that will serve to educate the audience. No matter how much you

think you knew about Bob Marley, this production will teach you a lot more in addition. Everyone involved in bringing this to life should be immensely proud.

Out of Africa ... and into Glasgow THIS YEAR’S Glasgow Film Festival (GFF) is set to feature fresh new cinematic voices from Africa, forming part of a new hybrid format, with screenings both in cinemas and online. Taking place in March, Allan Hunter, GFF Codirector, told Lifestyle there was an abundance of films to choose from emanating out of Africa and they had been ‘spoilt for choice’ when pulling it all together. GFF will screen a programme of African Stories, a collection of contemporary films celebrating the rich diversity of life in countries across the continent. The films range from Casablanca Beats, a joyous salute to the power of music to transform lives in Morocco, and Khadar Ayderus Ahmed’s multi award-winning Djibouti-set The Gravedigger’s Wife, to documentaries including Once Upon A Time in Uganda, about one man’s mission to create an action movie industry in Uganda. GFF is working with Scotland’s Africa in Motion film festival on events around some key titles. This programme of films will combine to provide a taste of a vital and thriving filmmaking continent. Hunter said: “Over the past year, we have seen so many outstanding films from countries

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all across Africa that we have been spoilt for choice in collating African Stories. “This is a showcase for the films that have impressed us most, ranging across dramas and documentaries and including Khadar Ayderus Ahmed’s award-winning The Gravedigger’s Wife, which is Somali’s Oscar candidate. “I think this will be a real voyage of discovery for audiences filled with exciting discoveries.” For the first time ever, GFF’s gala premieres will screen simultaneously at both the festival’s home venue, Glasgow Film Theatre, and at cinemas across the UK, including London, Manchester, Sheffield, Aberdeen, Dundee, Edinburgh and Stornoway.

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SEPTEMBER 2021

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44 | THE VOICE JANUARY 2022

Lifestyle

Reach your goals with trusty tech The time has come to take our health into our own hands and make sure we’re on the right track to be in the best possible shape in 2022

tals to detect your heart health could be vital. RRP £249.95, withings.com/ uk/en/

BY YEMI WILLIAMS

HERE HAS been a lot of things we’ve had to take seriously over the past year. Rules, restrictions and ultimately our health. As we hit 2022, maybe it’s time for us to take our health into our own hands with the help of some much-needed tech. These items are sure to get you started on the right path to getting some elements of your life back, starting with your physical wellbeing.

WITHINGS SCANWATCH

With lots of popular smartwatch

INCUS NOVA RUN

options available, the Withings ScanWatch is a very strong contender. If you want a smartwatch that boasts a medical-grade ECG and oximeter for Sp02 (measurements of the amount of oxygen being carried in your blood), look no further. With all that possibly on the horizon, having a smartwatch that continuously scans your vi-

Now this unique device is from the team at INCUS Performance which allows you to track your running and/or swimming

Fitness (whichever you prefer). Unlike other fitness trackers, the INCUS Nova offers detailed measurements while you wear it on your back. This allows it to track left/right technique analysis and uses cutting-edge sensors used in drones. Weighing an impressive 30g, you won’t even notice it’s on during your run or swim, and the impressive data you receive help in preventing injuries. If it is good enough for professional athletes, then it is more than good enough for you. RRP £199.99, incusperformance.com/

ter training with their NB HEAT technology which keeps you warm while wicking away moisture. The tights also feature a warm polyknit construction with brushed interior fabric to add to your warmth. This may be your perfect winter training companion. RRP £65, newbalance.co.uk/ pd/reflective-nb-heattight/WP13273.html

WATTBIKE ATOM

alternate training options with the connectivity to other cyclists through popular apps such as Zwift and Peleton. Why not see this purchase as something the whole family can enjoy? RRP £1,999, wattbike.com/ products/wattbike-atom

BERGHAUS MEN’S ARKOS REFLECT DOWN JACKET

NEW BALANCE WOMEN’S REFLECTIVE HEAT TIGHTS

We are in the cold months of the year and training outdoors (lockdown permitting) may be quite a daunting task. New Balance offer these tights for win-

Over the past couple years, it is reported that indoor cycling has had a massive increase in popularity. You get a great cardio workout from the comfort of your own home. This next generation WATTBIKE offers a sleek modern design while providing amazing accurate analysis. One of the benefits of indoor cycling is its versatility and ability to connect with other cyclists. The WATTBIKE ATOM combines

Another great contender for these cold months, especially for those who enjoy a scenic walk, is this Reflect Down Jacket from Berghaus. It is super lightweight and is more than capable of storing heat through its Hydrodown and Hydroloft technology. This jacket impressively traps heat through its Reflective technology and directs valuable heat back where you need it most – so your workout won’t be disrupted by the cold. RRP £250, berghaus.com

JANUARY 2022 THE VOICE | 45

A 2020 vision

OF SPORT NEWSPAPER

TOP SPORTS COVERAGE 24/7 VOICE-ONLINE.CO.UK/SPORT

READY TO FLOURISH KEY ROLE: Olympic athlete Donna Fraser is rising to the occasion and relishing the challenges ahead – and, below, mascot Perry is ready, too!

Olympian Donna Fraser writes for The Voice as Birmingham prepares for this summer’s Commonwealth Games. This month she gives an insight into her role as the Games’ Head of Inclusion and Engagement

S WE reflect on 2021 and look ahead to 2022, I can hardly believe it is the year of the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games. The year that the West Midlands will come alive and erupt in a celebration of sport of culture. I, for one, cannot wait for Birmingham 2022 to show the world just how diverse yet united we are. I have many memories of competing at previous Commonwealth Games, which have been known as the ‘friendly’ Games and are proud to be called the Games for Everyone. My last and third Commonwealth Games representing England was in Melbourne in 2006, where I was selected to compete in four events, but sadly injury struck and I had to pull out. So this time round, 16 years later, I’m on the other side of the fence not competing but part of a team who are putting in hours and hours each day to bring the ‘friendly’ Games to the heart of England. I joined the Birmingham 2022 in May 2021 as the Head of Inclusion and Engagement. This role is the first for any previous Commonwealth Games and a role that I’m hugely passionate about, not only from an Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) perspective, but also the opportunity to share my athlete experience to support plans to deliver the best athlete and spectator experience. The purpose of my role is to provide proactive leadership, expertise and direction for Equality, Diversity and Inclusion activity across Birmingham 2022 and to build strong relationships with community leaders and key regional partners. We want to focus on education, sustainability, creating a

“We’ve made improvements to the way we attract talent and been able to find ways to bring them into the team” diverse workforce, and ensuring that accessibility and inclusivity, culture and community are at the forefront of everything that we, at Birmingham 2022, do to deliver a successful Games and beyond. We are making positive progress. We’ve been making improvements to the way we attract talent and bring them into the team, ensuring that we share job opportunities with as many people as possible from across the city, and we will continue to do this as we adapt and evolve our inclusive recruitment process.

NETWORK

For our workforce we have created staff networks, including an ‘Inclusive Network’, a ‘Women at Work Network’ and an ‘EmbRace Network’. These networks act as a safe space for our staff to share comments, ideas, concerns and support fellow colleagues. We believe we are the ‘Games for Everyone’ and our accessibility team are working closely with contractors and key stakeholders to ensure the Games are accessible for all. Connecting communities through engagement and participation play a big role in the success of the Games. Our community engagement team

have delivered a number of events and we are running regular online EDI Forums for community leaders and groups to hear updates from different departments within Birmingham 2022. The sessions have been interactive and valuable to all attendees to understand any concerns from within the community. Through a number of different programmes, we aim to educate and develop our shared understanding on issues of inequality. These initiatives include: our Internal Mentoring Programme where senior leaders within Birmingham 2022 are mentoring staff from underrepresented groups (women, disabled and ethnic backgrounds) to support them with their personal progression. We teamed up with the National Careers Service, Sandwell College and DWP to deliver the InspireOne Programme – a series of webinars for jobseekers in the region. The webinar involved careers advice, support and information on how to apply for roles at Birmingham 2022. The aim is to inspire individuals to think outside the box and gain a better understanding of roles within sport. Our Elevenses programme takes place at 11am each month where we invite internal and external people to share learning about a topic. To date, Elevenses sessions have included discussions and awareness on diabetes, breast cancer, safeguarding and unconscious bias. These sessions have proved educational and engaging for our staff. With eight months left to the start of the Games, I’m looking forward to the chance to show what Birmingham 2022 has to offer and to watch this brilliant and diverse city flourish on the world stage.

Okolie on top of the world WORLD CHAMPION Lawrence Okolie has received an Honorary Doctorate of Sport from the University of East London (UEL) recognising his achievements inside and outside the boxing ring. From working in McDonald’s at 19 to winning his first professional title at 25, Okolie’s rise to the top is almost as fast as his hand speed. Some might say Okolie is living proof you can do anything if you put your mind to it. He told students at a graduation ceremony at ExCel London: “Everyone has the power to change the world – so push on and keep striving. “Everyone here today has shown great resilience, perseverance and great character to actually get a degree. I want everyone here to know you’re not only capable of getting to this point, as there is so much more out there in the world for you to go out and achieve. I believe anyone who puts their mind to something and truly believes is going to go on and achieve amazing things.” Still only 28, Okolie has achieved impressive feats in sport and beyond. The British cruiserweight is the defending WBO cruiserweight world champion, retaining the belt after knocking out Dilan Prasovic in the third round of their bout at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in September. In doing so, he continues his perfect 17-0 record as a professional boxer, with 14 of these wins coming by knockout. Global sporting success would be enough for most, but Okolie used the COVID-19 pan-

demic to focus on his other passions, including music and writing. Last year, he released his debut single TKO. In April, the talented pugilist published his book Dare To Change Your Life. In 2014, he enrolled at UEL on the high performance sports scholarship programme. This allowed him to focus on his boxing while doing a psychosocial studies course with a view to becoming a social worker, and he has recalled how the flexibility offered to him during his time at UEL helped him get to where he wanted to be in his boxing career. Fast-forward to today, and you might think becoming a world champion in the sport he loves is the pinnacle. Yet legacy is hugely important to Okolie, as he seeks to become one of the best cruiserweights ever from Britain, if not the world.

46 | THE VOICE JANUARY 2022

Sport

THE VOICE OF SPORT AFRICA CUP OF NATIONS: JAN 9-FEB 6

Algeria were winners in 2021 – but who will prove victorious in the 2022 AFCON?

COMMONWEALTH GAMES: JUL 28-AUG 6

England netballer Layla Guscoth is ready for Birmingham to host this year’s Games

JANUARY

APRIL Golf: April 7 – 10: The Masters, Augusta National, Georgia Horse-racing: April 9: Grand National, Aintree Snooker: April 16 – May 2: World Championships, Crucible Theatre, Sheffield American Football: April 28 – 30: NFL Draft: Las Vegas, Nevada

Cricket: December 8 – January 18: The Ashes, various venues, Australia Darts: December 15 – January 3: PDC World Championships, Alexandra Palace, London Football: January 9 – February 6: Africa Cup of Nations, Cameroon Snooker: January 9 – 16: Cazoo Masters, Alexandra Palace, London Tennis: January 17 – 30: Australian Open, Melbourne Park, Australia Cricket: January 22 – 30: West Indies – England T20 Series, various Caribbean venues

JUMP TO IT: The Grand National takes place on April 9

MAY FEBRUARY

Winter Olympics: February 4 – 20: Beijing Rugby: February 5 – March 19: Six Nations, various venues American Football: February 13: Super Bowl, SoFi Stadium, California

Basketball: February 20: NBA All-Star Game, Cleveland, Ohio Football: February 27: Carabao Cup final, Wembley

MARCH Cricket: March 8 – 28: West Indies – England Test series, various venues Horse racing: March 18: Cheltenham Gold Cup Formula One: March 18: Bahrain Grand Prix

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IN CONTROL: Can Nikita Parris make the difference for Arsenal in the WSL?

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Football: May 8: Final day of WSL, various venues Football: May 14: FA Cup final, Wembley Football: May 15: Women’s FA Cup final, Wembley Football: May 18: Europa League final, Seville Golf: May 19 – 22: PGA Championships, Southern Hills, Oklahoma Tennis: May 22 – June 5: French Open, Paris Football: May 22: Final day of the Premier League Football: May 22: Women’s Champions League final, Turin Football: May 28: Champions League final, St Petersburg

www.voice-online.co.uk

JANUARY 2022

THE VOICE | 47

Sport

CALENDAR 2022 RUGBY LEAGUE WORLD CUP: OCT 15-NOV 19

After postponements and a lot of doubt, the Rugby League World Cup will be taking place

FIFA WORLD CUP QATAR: NOV 21-DEC 18

Could it finally be glory for Gareth Southgate’s men in the FIFA World Cup?

JUNE Basketball: June 2 – 19: NBA finals, TBD Horse-racing: June 4: The Derby, Epsom Horse-racing: June 14 – 18: Royal Ascot Golf: June 16 – 19: US Open, Brookline, Massachusetts Tennis: June 27 – July 10: Wimbledon, All-England Club

SEPTEMBER GOING FOR GLORY: Can Serena Williams achieve a record number of Grand Slam titles?

Rugby: September 9 – 11: World Cup Sevens, Cape Town Rugby: September 24: Super League Grand Final, Old Trafford

OCTOBER Rugby: October 15 – November 19: Rugby League World Cup, various venues, England

JULY

ON A MISSION: Will Sir Lewis Hamilton make it title number eight after heartbreak in Abu Dhabi last season?

Your essential guide to the year’s sporting action!

Formula One: July 3: British Grand Prix, Silverstone Football: July 6 – July 31: Women’s European Championships, various venues in England Golf: July 14 – July 17: The Open, St. Andrews Athletics: July 15 – 24: World Championships, Oregon Cricket: July 16: Vitality Blast T20 finals day, Edgbaston, Birmingham Commonwealth Games: July 28 –August 8, Birmingham

Cricket: October 16 – November 13: Men’s T20 World Cup, Australia

NOVEMBER NEW KID ON THE BLOCK: Joe Fraser will be looking to improve on his Tokyo 2020 results

Football: November 21 – December 18: World Cup, Qatar Gymnastics: October 29 November 6: World Championships, M&S Bank Arena, Liverpool Formula One: Abu Dhabi Grand Prix: November 20, Yas Marina Circuit

DECEMBER AUGUST Football: August 6: Opening day of the Premier League Tennis: August 9 – September 11: US Open, Flushing Meadows, New York

Football: Sunday, December 18: World Cup final: Lusail Stadium, Qatar

Compiled by Jack Francis

Football: December 26: English Premier League 2022-2023 season resumes after World Cup

48 | THE VOICE DECEMBER 2021

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