Tributes to Nelson Mandela

Jack Dromey Excerpts

Monday 9th December 2013 Commons Chamber

[Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)]

Three brief stories, of Kilburn, Kingstanding and Luanda, are linked together by the enduring icon who is Nelson Mandela.

I was born in Kilburn, of Irish immigrant parents. Twenty-five years later, the Jamaicans arrived. Both groups met waves of prejudice. My father, seeking lodgings, was told, “No Irish. No dogs.” Twenty-five years later, the Jamaicans were told, “No blacks. No dogs.” Both communities became the bedrock in north-west London of a vibrant, diverse, thriving multicultural society. People from both communities were present in 1962 at Nelson Mandela’s final meeting in this country before he went back to South Africa and ultimately stood trial for his life. He addressed the Willesden Friendship League in Kilburn high road, but hundreds of yards from where I was born. He enraptured the audience that night, and I will never forget old Tom Durkin, the president of Brent Trades Council, saying, “I have never met a man so optimistic in all my life.”

Both communities then became the bedrock of the Anti-Apartheid Movement. We look back now at that era and see that it was tough. It was tough for black people, including in the world of work, above all in South Africa, but also in this country. All too often, workplaces were scarred by racism, which was compounded and encouraged by the naked oppression of black people in South Africa. I recall one black Transport and General Workers Union shop steward, George, in an Irish pub in Kilburn high road, telling me the story of how grievously he felt having been racially abused in his workplace. But, he said, “I will stand up against it.” Who was his hero? It was Nelson Mandela.

Throughout those bitter years of the Anti-Apartheid Movement, many of us often stood on freezing pavements outside South Africa house or outside supermarkets trying to encourage people not to buy South African produce. During that time, a second battle was being fought against colonialism and racism in the Portuguese colonial empire—Mozambique, Angola, Guinea-Bissau and the Cape Verde Islands. I was deeply involved in that campaign. When Franco died and then Salazar the year after, after 20 years of a liberation struggle the Portuguese colonial empire collapsed. There was a process of rapid decolonisation. In Angola, oil and diamond-rich, the South Africans invaded from the south and the Zairians invaded from the north, and it was only the Cubans coming in to fight with the MPLA that prevented South Africa from taking over Angola.

Stephen Sedley, who retired but two years ago as a Lord Justice of Appeal, and I were invited out there as friends of the liberation movement to serve on the commission that observed the mercenary trials— 13 mercenaries were captured at the end of the Angolan war. I will tell but one story from that experience. I recall one night walking with Stephen and some of the other commission members down the bay of Luanda. On the beach, the black soldiers from FAPLA, the armed wing of the MPLA, and the black Cuban soldiers were boogying around a camp fire. We got to talk, and one Cuban, who spoke very good English, said, “For us, it is back to Africa. For us, it is about the memory of Lumumba, Mondlane and the great figures of the liberation movement who were killed by apartheid and racism.” But he also said, “It is Angola today, it is South Africa tomorrow. One day Nelson Mandela will be free.”

My third, more recent story is from two months ago. I opened the new North Birmingham academy in Kingstanding. That community was once scarred by racism. I spoke to two young black pupils, one from a West Indian background and one from an African background, who were discussing the experiences that one of them and some members of their family had had. They called those who had abused them on one occasion “little people”. One of the guys said, “I am proud to be black.” We then got into a discussion, and I found out that his hero was Nelson Mandela. Worldwide polls were conducted on five continents at the beginning of the millennium asking who was the greatest statesman of the 20th century. It is little wonder that every one of them said it was Nelson Mandela.

I wish to say two things in conclusion. First, I wish to pay tribute to all the veterans from the bitter wilderness years, above all in South Africa: Neil and Glenys Kinnock; Bob Hughes; Richard Caborn; my right hon. Friend the Member for Neath (Mr Hain); and a man I knew very well, a good personal friend who tragically died young, Mike Terry, the secretary of the Anti-Apartheid Movement.

Secondly, what is so remarkable about Nelson Mandela is the sheer triumph of the human spirit. This is a man who endured the unendurable, who saw some of his comrades taken out and hung. This is a man who was oppressed but ultimately broke the will of his oppressors. This is a man who was jailed for three decades and then came out and forgave his jailers, in the most remarkable act of national reconciliation, avoiding what could otherwise have been the most immense conflagration in southern Africa. He was truly the global giant of his century. We mourn his loss. Our world is a better world for Nelson Mandela. But we not only mourn; we remember that infectious smile, infectious optimism and infectious enthusiasm, and we smile at the memory of Nelson Mandela.