On Friday 15 July 2016, then Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn joined author Ben Okri on the Royal Festival Hall stage at Southbank.
It was also the day that a coup d'état was attempted by Turkish Armed Forces against state institutions, including the government and President Erdoğan. I was in attendance, sitting in the top section, just me and a friend.
It was a brilliant evening of talk between what seemed like two polymaths at the top of their game. Jeremy with little education behind him had travelled the world, lived in Jamaica for a while and read books constantly. Ben Okri was wise and interested in everything Jeremy had to say, as were we. When we came outside to join with some other people we had gone in with, but who had to sit elsewhere as we got our tickets last minute, we found out that there was an ongoing attempt to overthrow Erdoğan and that he was addressing the nation via facetime. A novel idea, but affective as the state apparatus had been overrun.
Of course Erdoğan prevailed and what followed was a vicious crackdown on some members of the military but also of the media and ‘intelligentsia’.
ANKARA, Turkey (AP) — Turkey blamed military officers loyal to a U.S.-based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen for a failed military coup attempt on July 15, 2016 and declared a state of emergency five days later to clampdown on a vast network of alleged Gulen supporters in the military and other state institutions. The state of emergency led to mass arrests and purges.
Opponents say President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government used its emergency powers to crackdown on all dissent — not just Gulen’s movement. The cleric denies involvement in the coup.
It’s barely spoken about now but the juxtaposition of being inside Festival Hall and coming outside to shock and awe has always troubled me. I wondered if it had troubled Ben Okri too.
Please see below for a recording of the whole event and here for my quick question and a flavour of the London Book Fair, where I was lucky enough to sit down and have a chat with one of the publishers I am interested in.
In the Q and A, Ben also talks about Grenfell, art and activism.
The day Jeremy Corbyn was elected leader of the Labour Party in a landslide victory, he spoke of some of the people who have inspired him on his extraordinary journey. He said ‘The most authentic thing about us is our capacity to create, to overcome, to endure, to transform, to love.’
The author of those words was Ben Okri. Okri responded with a poem dedicated to Corbyn, titled ‘A New Dream of Politics’. United by a desire to make our world a kinder, fairer place, these two men discussed the forces that have made them who they are, the state of the world today and their shared belief that we can transform ourselves for the better.
Text from benokri.co.uk
Have a good day.
Sam
P.S I know there is going to be some non-black women and /or middle class women who try to take my experiences and use them as their own. Trust me, I will hunt you down if you do and you will catch these hands.