Watching Caryl Phillips' excellent The Final Passage was a difficult process. Not just because it was a brilliant exploration of the last 30 years or so, showing the achievements and limitations of the Windrush generation, but, more importantly, because it exposed how we have been starved of intelligent, well-made Black programmes which offer us the possibility of serious reflection on our condition in this country. Phillips achieves a wonderful thing in his drama - he converts all our individual stories of moving to Britain and setting up home into a mass celebration of common history. The Final Passage thus becomes a template of sorts of the recent beginnings of Black Britain. Whether we are from an African or Caribbean background, there were scenes and emotions which we all recognised from our own histories. Control Many people didn't like The Final Passage because they felt that it yet again reinforced the negative view of Black men. But they need to be reminded that this is a work of fiction, not reality. And Caryl Phillips' main achievement in the series is to give us, in [Michael], the first truly great tragic-heroic Black character on British television. The lessons of his life should resonate in our time - a sort of angled mirror. He will remain a constant reminder of the need to bury the `colonial creation' - the Black man who is only able to manifest himself through his dreams rather than through the reality of day-to-day action.
Over half a century later, it would be Marcus Garvey, the goer, against WEB Dubois, the stayer. Although, even Du Bois himself was to get so fed up with American racism that in the `60s at the time of the great new possibilities promised by the Dr King's Civil Rights Movement, he left America to go to Nkrumah's Ghana where he was to die on the eve of Dr King's, `I Have a Dream Speech'. Following Du Bois and Garvey, the Rastafarian movement-which was founded in the 1930's in Jamaica, were to be the next manifestation of goers even though its real impact was not to be felt for another forty years. They were followed by the next great two goers and stayers - Malcolm X (and the Nation of Islam) and Martin Luther King. Luther King's `I Have a Dream' speech was in the tradition of frederick [Frederick Douglass], and was perhaps the most eloquent statement yet of the need to sit tight, fight and make manifest the dream of the brotherhood of man. Dream So [Bernie Grant]'s latest call is in the tradition of many others before him - [Martin Delany], Garvey, the later Du Bois, and Malcolm X. Many of those who denounce Bernie at the movement, would turn around and cite some of those whose tradition Bernie embraces as heroes.
"I went on vacation. I went to Jamaica thinking that I didn't want to be bothered. This young man ends up talking to me. I'm like `thank God he's young, I don't have to worry about him hitting on me.' But I was very surprised when he did. Despite the public bashfulness, she feels good about her own very new relationship. It's exciting, she's learning a lot and so is he. "It's just really refreshing to be with someone that doesn't know who you are. I don't really care if it lasts another month or two months or three months, it's all fine. Right now I feel so good and that's what I've written about. What's the point of predicting 20 years from now; after all how many relationships last that long. There's no point living in the future. F**k the future. How about now? After his attempt to get a share of her millions, she went a number of years without talking to him. "He was being a real dog. He was always crying broke and saying he didn't have any money. But I never bad - mouthed him in all these years, I just told [Solomon] `oh your father s under the weather' or `he's having hard times'. But he's pathetic, that's a better word for it."
