I Have A Dream...

August 28, 1963. This ten-year-old could be seen roller-skating up and down the straight street of St Georges Square in the SW1 district of Pimlico. This Victorian layout barely deserved to be called a Square. Rather, it was an elongated strip of green, back then, boasting a disused set of tennis courts at one end which was towered over by the spire of St Saviour's Anglican Church, built to separate the garden from the main road of Lupus Street at a busy area where this street also intersects with Belgrave Road. Hence the church also served unintentionally as a sound barrier from the busy traffic, making St Georges Square a quiet place to live and to stroll around.

Gardens, St Georges Square, Pimlico.

It would be relatively easy to imagine St Georges Square in its pre-War heyday, especially around the 19th Century. Townhouse owners would leave their servants to tend to their duties while they stroll arm-in-arm with their wives around the central garden. The perfect gentleman, attired in the peak of traditional but rather tightly-fitting English tailoring whilst she would find her corset rather restricting and somewhat uncomfortable, yet does not complain as the two make a comment to each other over the well-manicured flower bed.

Meanwhile, gentlemen dressed in white whack the ball over the net in an energy-sapping tennis rally until the ball hits the net, the rally ends and a point is scored. Like cricket, tennis was perceived as an English gentleman's game, which unlike football, carries an air of snobbery, although they may not admit this to themselves.

All these - garden, disused tennis courts, church - were all nicely slotted in between two parallel streets, each bearing the same name. But the postman would never be confused. One street of terraced townhouses were all with odd numbers. It was the street on the other side of the garden strip which carried all the even numbers. We live in the odd-number street.

But I'll go back a few years before 1963. Probably around 1956 or 1957. Left free to play outside our basement gate. After a while, quite likely after a prolonged silence, Mum decided to see if I was okay. Upstairs from the basement, the street was deserted of any pedestrian or traffic alike. Mum begins to panic, quite likely calling out my name from the top of her voice yet still out of earshot. Eventually, she sees someone approaching. She then asked him if he had seen her son anywhere. The man replied that he did see a three or a four-year-old boy across the other side of the busy Grosvenor Road, past the far end of the square, holding onto some railings and looking down into the River Thames.

Mum ran more than 300 metres down the street and crossed the main road to see me standing there, innocent and totally unaware of any potential danger, enjoying the view of the river, perhaps impressed with the more numerous boats which plied along. Not too long after that incident, when Mum used to send me on shopping errands, we all became aware that travelling as a sole backpacker was a trait I inherited whilst still in her womb.

Indeed, it was a different world in those days! A world when ownership of a car was more of a privilege than a necessity, along with "helicopter parenting" and political correctness were both totally unknown and unnecessary. It was when children were children who could go out to play safely unsupervised, whether roller-skating up and down the street, kicking a football in the central public garden, or if out in the sticks, to play in the woods with schoolmates, perhaps damming a stream or building a secret tree-house. Those days when a grazed knee was quite common, rough-and-tumble was part of growing up, and words such as paedophilia would never appear in any Oxford or Collins dictionaries.

And yet, even during such wonderful and innocent childhood days, under the surface was a feeling of deep discontent. The ship Empire Windrush had brought the first generation of Jamaicans across the Atlantic into Tilbury as early as 1948 under Government recommendations to rebuild post-War Britain. Indeed, it wasn't long before angry young Englishmen began to put up posters ordering Coons Go Home, and other insulting posters. Even as late as 1978, National Front posters were still on display in the streets.

Like the one poster, I saw pinned to a tree every morning after alighting at Weybridge Station in the heart of leafy Surry. And it remained there for months. As I walked along Brooklands Road to the site of a disused car racing track on which the giant British Aircraft Corporation works occupied before closing down during the 1980s, I was confronted with the words:

Support National Front for a WHITE England. 

What more can I say? Seeing this poster in the home country of both Darwinian evolution and Francis Galton's eugenics may send shock waves among our present generation, especially among Black Lives Matter street protestors, there's little doubt that such language was inspired by Enoch Powell's 1968 Rivers of Blood speech he delivered in Birmingham, insisting all coloured immigrants should return to their original home country before any interracial conflict arises.

"Shall we take a stroll, my dear?"

It was worse in America. The black slave as seen as a mere chattel to be used by his owner's discretion and regarded as an animal going back long before Darwin thought up his evolutionary theories.* And so many a British churchgoer would praise the likes of devoted Christian, William Wilberforce to usher in his stance of having slavery abolished, and so, in Washington DC, one black man, Martin Luther King, on August 28, 1963, made his famed speech at the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in front of an audience of 250,000 civil rights supporters which opened with his famous words, I have a dream...

Like William Wilberforce, Martin Luther King was also a devoted Christian. He was one of the founders and the president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference which encouraged black churches to campaign nonviolently for freedom against pro-slavery bias as insisted by the Ku-Klax-Klan and any other pro-slavery organisations and supporters. And that was a hundred years after slavery was officially abolished, yet the driving force among white American supremacists to revive slavery is very much alive and kicking.

Included in his famed speech was his stance in condemning capitalism as being associated with slavery, as well as his defence for the poor and his opposition towards the Vietnam war. After all, according to him, the average plantation owner used unpaid forced labour to grow and harvest his crops, to put on sale to the market with every intention of making a profit. It's for this particular reason for Luther King to be assassinated whilst still in his prime age of 39 years. That is the belief held by the FBI that Luther was part of a conspiracy towards Communist support. Under orders of FBI director J. Edger Hoover, he died of a gunshot wound on April 4th, 1968, just sixteen days before Enoch Powell gave his Rivers of Blood speech on April 20th, 1968. 

This I find so astonishing! Surely, for America to protect her own interests and also to serve as a warning against any more Communist conspiracies both within and elsewhere, particularly for the USSR, worldwide broadcast of the assassination would have surely reached Enoch Powell's ears in good time before even writing his speech. Yet he didn't call it off in respect of Luther King's demise. Instead, his fiery speech against black immigrants runs almost parallel to the views of the KKK who, incidentally, burn crucifixes, as if in complete denial of the Christian faith, although many of them may claim to be Christian.

What the underlying belief I find really creepy that there is some correlation between the views of Enoch Powell, along with the KKK, the National Front, the English Defence League, and other far-right political parties, and that of the Nazis. In one way or another, all these groups insist that the white man is superior to all other races. While the English far-right believes that all blacks and Muslims should be kicked out of the UK (even if they are born here of immigrant parents or grandparents) - the KKK believe that all blacks should be enslaved and owned as personal property, while the Nazi says that all who don't fit the ideal white Aryan race should be wiped off this planet.

All, except the Nazis, claim to be Christian or have Christian connotations, that is, they hide behind a respectable Christian front while they deny the very essence of the faith - that we are all made in the image of God, regardless of race, that through the trespass of Adam and Eve, we are born with a sinful nature and therefore face Judgement, unless redeemed through faith in the risen Jesus Christ who died to atone for all our sins.

Created in the image of God! If one look can launch a thousand ships, then this little statement can kill all racism stone dead. But instead, the natural man's fallen state allows evolution to percolate into his mind and eventually into his conscience until denying it in favour of Creationism sounds rather loopy, and end up facing ridicule by atheists, many of them are scientists and the rest of the majority are well educated. Therefore, to him, Darwinism must be true after all and therefore holds a degree of justification for believing in, defending, and even advocating racism, whichever form it takes.

Martin Luther King Jr.

And as I write this, I have wondered whether Brexit too falls into the same pit. After all, back in 2016, one of the strongest arguments for leaving the European Union was about immigration, both from non-EU countries and mainly from one EU country, which was Poland. After the referendum results, which was for Leave, won by a narrow margin, spikes of violence erupted in some cities against both Poles and Muslims, and the Union Jack and English St George flags began to make a mass appearance.

Indeed, is any of this Christian?

We want our country back! - was the cry. But we are living in it now, aren't we?

No, I guess we aren't. The country that is wanted back is typified by St Georges Square, Pimlico, in the 19th and early 20th Centuries. White, smartly-dressed gentry, their top hats over milk-white faces gazing at the wet green grass surrounding beautiful flower beds, the soil soaked and beads of recently-fallen rainwater clinging to the petals and leaves as the gentle breeze blows. As English as English gets, maids, cycling along gravel paths cutting through country fields, sporting gentlemen engaged in a game of cricket on the village lawn, the snobbish spirit of tennis players at St Georges Square and at other tennis courts elsewhere. This idyllic, non-eventful, gentle life of the indigenous English who has the God-given right to colonise other "backward" nations but woe betide anyone thinking of colonising them...

I have a Dream... Indeed, don't we all.

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*For a full discussion about American Negro slavery, click here.

Achieving Better Self-Esteem.

What on Earth is going on? Day after day the Media, through the Press, via television and radio, stories of knife crime seems to be exploding across England, with the majority taking place in and around the London area. Quite a phenomenon really, when considering those monthly train trips to London from my home town of Bracknell around fifty years ago, in the 1960s while I was in my mid-teens, and barely out of school. Mum had never worried too much about her elder son travelling thirty miles on his own during the weekend, for with knife crime being totally non-existent, she had little to be concerned about. The point of this is whether Mums at present are far more concerned about letting their teenage offspring out alone in cities such as London - the present culture of helicopter parenting.

Those monthly leisure trips into London became weekly trips to college, located in Shoreditch in the area of east London, then known for its furniture trade. It was where I could have bought a bottle of shellac, wood stain or even lacquer for French polishing or other forms of wood finishing, items which would have been extremely difficult to get elsewhere in the UK. And it was also the location for the London College of Furniture, where I had to attend during those day-releases which every firm employing school-leavers were obliged under law to give.

London College of Furniture - attended 1968-1970.

If I might add here, throughout the life of the family-owned business manufacturing furniture for the connoisseur's choice, just as every apprentice was given a day release to travel to London to attend college, a set mode of transportation was followed. The student boarded a train from Bracknell to London Waterloo, then from there took an LT bus to Shoreditch. Every apprentice up to my time did the same. But when my turn came, I had to be different! A quick check on the London Underground map showed a quicker and more efficient way to get to the college - Waterloo Station to Old Street underground station on the Northern Line, changing at Kennington. A little later, that was modified to changing at Elephant & Castle, on the Bakerloo Line, thus making the journey a little shorter.

This new mode of transportation caused quite a stir throughout the company I worked for. My foreman's tongue couldn't stop wagging, astonished on how someone like little me, a teenager with no school qualifications, actually launched what could be called a mini-revolution, just because I took a look at a map of the London Underground. As a result, thereafter, every apprentice student working at that firm took the same Underground route which I had first "discovered" - in the years that followed.

But whatever I did in London, I never felt threatened or in any form of danger. After college, I met my first girlfriend, who lived at Wimbledon. Therefore, trips to London became a twice-a-week schedule into the seventies - Wednesdays and Saturdays - and had never encountered any form of threat during those days, and that despite the rise of the National Front causing racially-motivated street scuffles against immigrants of ethnic diversity.

The National Front, formed in 1967 with the amalgamation of the League of Empire Loyalists, the Racial Preservation Society and the Greater Britain Movement, such attitudes going back to the 1950s, when immigration from faraway lands such as Jamaica was at its peak, followed by those from Pakistan. Whether you may agree with me here or not, it does seem that such right-wing extremists have always suffered a problem of self-identification or self-worth. And I could be wrong here, but I have gotten the impression that many of those members are from working-class families. I once had a good friend working on the shop floor of a precision engineering factory throughout the mid-seventies who was a member of the National Front. 

I was impressed with his commitment to his cause, and he asked me whether I was interested in joining his movement. I said that I would consider after I have read their manifesto. This positive attitude towards his ideas was not because I was patriotic, but because of my naivety in being a young, newly-converted Christian believer. Back then, to believe in Christ was synonymous with capitalism, while socialism was, so I thought, arose from the pits of darkness. And I mistakenly believed that supporting the National Front was honouring to God! However, I insisted on reading their credo before making any move.

It was after reading their leaflet when I realised that the whole movement was militaristic, racist and anti-immigrant from which I had a change of mind, and declined his offer to join. Unfortunately, from that moment his friendship towards me cooled, and he left the firm a short time after.

I suppose my former friend needed something of a cause to be committed to, a group of people with whom he has a sense of identity, the feeling of belonging with a bedrock of imperialism and of a sense of racial and national superiority. And to this day, I wonder whether this nationwide feeling of tribalism is the real motive for Brexit, as the Queen suggested on Christmas Day, the feeling of anti-immigrant xenophobia, the underlying threat that these "foreigners" could offer something superior to what many of our indigenous Brits could offer.

At the same time, the quest for status has been suggested by the media for many youths of all races to carry knives. And although the recent killing of Manchester student Yousef Makki was done by two middle-class boys who attend prestigious schools, this was a rare exception rather than the rule. As I see it, those who carry a knife are from those who failed at school or were expelled at an early age, and rather than engage in useful employment, often group themselves in gang rivalry engaged in the illegal drug trade.

What a shame it is that in our culture, an individual's self-worth is determined by others on his level of education. The brighter he is, the greater the respect he gets. And I have seen this both inside as well as outside the church. And that was so vividly demonstrated in the nineties on at least two occasions.

I was exhorted to deliver a preach on one evening service during the mid-nineties. I had never done this before, so I felt nervous, draining one glass of water after another throughout the talk. On the front row, right in front of me sat a patriotic Englishman who was either reading something or doodling. After the service, I actually heard him boasting to others around that he didn't listen to a single word I had said! Driven by a strong sense of inferior complex, this one-time kitchen porter always acted as if he was nationally and culturally superior to me, because of my "backwards" Italian origins and heritage. A strong advocate of the British stiff upper lip, he never fulfilled his dream of marrying and raising a family. Just three years my junior, he remains single to this day.

On another occasion, which occurred in 1997, after arriving home after a Round-the-World backpacking trip, I stood at the front to give my testimony of the ten-week journey. Within the talk, I mention a possible link between what was displayed and sold in American shops, especially in Santa Barbara, to the future "strong delusion" of 2 Thessalonians 2:11. Looking back at it now, I realise that I might have been way off track, but that didn't stop someone in the audience to say:

What is that fool talking about? What does he know? He's just a window cleaner!

What a contrast all that is compared with the universal respect shown to any graduate who stands at the front. Regardless whether he takes the Bible as literal history or not, within the very same church, he receives reverential respect, simply because of his high level of education.

Putting it all together, it comes as no surprise that many who failed at school carry a knife as a status symbol. Gripped and driven by a deep sense of inferiority, such a person who instantly retribute anyone who dares pose a threat to his ego. Therefore lives are eternally lost by means of a stabbing, which is now growing at a frightening rate in this country.

And I, myself was from time to time felt a sense of inferiority complex throughout the seventies and eighties. That is until the nineties when it was dominated by world travel, which was a psychological therapy and an emotional panacea which contributed well to my sense of self-worth. 

But it is the Bible itself which offers a more permanent therapy for feelings of lacking self-worth. It is found in Psalm 139, which contains these verses:

For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb.

I praise you because I'm fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful,

I know that full well.

My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place.

When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body.

All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.

Psalm 139:13-16.

We are created and each one of us is unique to God! That is a far cry from believing in Theistic or Darwinian Evolution, which in themselves promote a sense of lacking self-worth.

Everyone born is unique and was knit together in the womb by God himself. As such, God loves each one of us so dearly and has a yearning heart for all to come to him through faith in Christ. As the Scripture says, God commands all men everywhere to repent (Acts 17:30) and that he is patient, not willing that any should perish, but all should come to repentance (2 Peter 3:9). Maybe that's why, in verse 19, he writes, 

If only you would slay the wicked, O God!

If only...But God doesn't. He is not willing that any should perish but to come to repentance instead, and to receive life. This could be the reason why many Old Testament saints were puzzled over the longevity of the unbeliever persisting in his sin. God is patient, waiting for such to change their minds about him, and to trust him for his promise of a future Messiah.

But equally important, God has formed each and every one of us secretly in the mother's womb. Every one of us is unique to him, and therefore objects of his love. So sad it is that the awareness of sin, combined with guilt, the feelings of rejection and of condemnation, making the soul crying out for love and acceptance, to be respected as one of the in-group, along with the lie that he is nothing more than an animal, along with another lie that he's nothing more than a random collection of atoms in a lucky chance of evolution by natural selection.

I know - the omniscience of God. How could God pay so much attention to the unborn if he also knows that this person will never repent throughout life? This is a mystery of God, him being infinite and ourselves finite. It can be heartbreaking to watch a newborn of unbelieving parents, lying asleep in his cot and wondering whether he will ever be drawn close to God's heart. I'll be honest here, but this is one of God's infinite questions to which I cannot provide an adequate answer.

Perhaps the closest I could come was once suggested by one of our church leaders during his sermon. He visualised an open door, over which was read, WHOEVER WILL, LET HIM COME THROUGH. But when the believer walks through the door, he turns to look back, to read another sign which says, CHOSEN BY GOD IN HIS SOVEREIGNTY.

I know, it might look rather naff, but it could be the closest suggestion made by a finite mind to the infinite mind of God.

However, the real cure for a lack of self-worth is to meditate on Scripture such as Psalm 139 with a believing heart. Reading the Bible and mixing it with faith produces a recipe which is so nourishing to the soul and spirit.