Poet and campaigner Benjamin Zephaniah dies aged 65

Transcript

00:00 words. He was born in Birmingham and raised on reggae and rice and peas. On sound systems

00:06 he talked about being cool and fighting oppression. He went to church, he went to prison, he went

00:11 to London. I'm talking about me, Benjamin Zephaniah. It was a mighty rise for a dyslexic

00:17 boy who left school unable to read or write. You see me, when I was at school I never know

00:23 nothing about black history. But in 1980 he published his first collection of poetry while

00:29 part of a workers' cooperative in East London. His books, you know, just have never stopped

00:35 selling. This bookshop was opposite his house and has championed his work ever since. He

00:41 used to cycle by every morning, stop, come in, and then if people came in he would get

00:47 behind the counter and serve them. And people remember that. His poetry and later prose

00:55 tackled racism, poverty and social injustice. The man from Birmingham, son of parents from

01:00 Barbados and Jamaica, responding to what he was seeing in places like Bradford and Brixton.

01:06 I have wrote poems about these places because the riots to me were the fulfilment of a prophecy

01:12 by Marcus Garvey. The prophecy is simple. When there are many hungry and many without

01:17 food, many in bad housing, then an uprising is bound to come. And one of his early works

01:24 drew on his time as a writer in residence in Liverpool. Some would just come and just

01:28 see the city centre, forget about the ghetto, too frightened to enter. Forget about the

01:33 people, forget about the evil, just check places famous for the Beatles. The outspoken,

01:38 unafraid vegan anarchist was a chronicler of Britain's past and present, empire, race

01:44 and immigration. Someone who whilst constantly questioning the land of colonialism and conquest,

01:50 also felt proud of his Britishness and the change that came with diversity. I can remember

01:55 a time when I would complain that there were no black or Asian people on television. I

02:01 remember as a kid we only saw Americans. So things have changed. But change didn't mean

02:08 he embraced all the trappings of the establishment, rejecting the offer of an OBE and being quite

02:14 clear why. The OBE means Order of the British Empire. I've been fighting against empire

02:21 all my life. I've been fighting against slavery and colonialism all my life. I've been writing

02:27 to connect with people, not to impress governments and monarchy. Zephaniah never stopped critiquing

02:33 his surroundings. In the aftermath of Brexit and the Windrush scandal, he said he was more

02:38 angry than he'd ever been before. Black people have been in this country so long and we've

02:43 contributed so much. This is old, this is tired, we've been doing this too long. You

02:48 know, I was the British Council's kind of main ambassador at one point, going around

02:53 the world, spreading British culture. But there is still a part of me that is really

02:59 nervous that says, one day they still might get rid of you. Zephaniah said he still felt

03:05 an outsider, but he was a national treasure, appearing in peaky blinders, taking him back

03:10 to the streets of Birmingham. And judgement is coming, my friends. Judgement is coming

03:16 to this wicked city. Zephaniah died at the age of 65 after being diagnosed with a brain

03:22 tumour just eight weeks ago. A statement from his family said, "Benjamin leaves us with

03:27 a joyful and fantastic legacy." I think we can't underestimate the impact that Benjamin

03:33 Zephaniah has had on literacy rates within the black community, on anti-racism within

03:41 the school sector, and on a national scale. As an incredibly entertaining actor, performance,

03:48 poet, he'll never be forgotten. I know that I will live forever, but now I have no liberty.

03:54 I see the world is hurting me.

03:56 [BLANK_AUDIO]