Dr Garvey: ‘Racist right wing close down US Gov’

The son of Marcus Mosiah Garvey, Dr Julius Garvey made an impassioned speech at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office earlier this week. He said:

Some Republicans hate President Barack Obama so much they are content that ordinary people will go without pay. The racist Right wing - The Tea Party - will shut down the Government in a bid to the President and his Health Care Bill.”

Dr Julius Garvey was on a rare visit to the UK talking about the life and times of his father, and where we are today in regards to race relations. He told a packed audience:

It is amazing that I am here, in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, an establishment that nearly 100 years ago my father rallied against because of the gross injustice in which peoples of the colonial countries were being treated”.

This majestic building, this powerful institution was at the centre of the African and Caribbean world, and my father took them on to give people of African decent strength and dignity and forge a Black movement of 6 million plus strong”.

He also lamented that big business still controls the modern world and uses and abuses ordinary working people for fat profits.

For all those who were there, it was moving talk and linking his father's struggles to that of the Presidents shows even when you reach the top and have a national political mandate, for the people by the people, a vitriolic sector of the society - America’s Tea Party - can exercise their bigoted will. And what don’t they like? That 45 million poor people, mainly Black, but also white and Hispanic- can be afforded the very basic health care.

Dr Garvey ended with a rallying call for unity, the likes of which that brought 6 million people together in one voice.

Now there’s a thought!

Simon Woolley