Take it to the limit!

What a week it's been. Of course, events were dominated by the death of Nelson Mandela. It would be churlish not to recognise the magnitude of his achievement. Like Gandhi and Martin Luther King before him and like Aung San Suu Kyi after him, Mandela fought the human injustice in front of him. It takes strong characters to effect such change and all these people carried themselves with immense dignity. That is the key. Bluster and bravado seldom achieve change. We are ultimately judged on the way in which we conduct ourselves and each of these titanic characters has done so with admirable restraint. That two of them were assassinated merely illustrated the extent of the hatred which they had to contend with.

Prison can achieve a certain amount but it is irrelevant in the face of a strong will. I can remember with clarity debating the release of Mandela in 1984 while at Debating Society. I recall few debates which invoked such passion. It seems to strange now to look back and consider that Mandela was still in prison, apartheid was still the normal way of life and the Berlin Wall stood strong and proud. In one generation, much has been achieved. All the people to whom I referred at the start of this piece strived for equality and all achieved great progress in that direction.

Equality though remains a largely Utopian ideal and while we all applaud the demise of apartheid and the Berlin Wall, the world remains a very unequal place. As we descend on the shops in our droves to celebrate a festival whose religious relevance is fast receding, millions starve. Millions also remain homeless with not a penny or a possession to their name.

Any change is gradual and without the efforts of Gandhi, Mandela et al, we wouldn't even be where we are today. This week, we have reacted with uproar to news that we will be expected to work until we are 68. We should think ourselves lucky we have work to go to and an income with which to live. We take all this for granted because we have come to expect a certain standard of living. In truth, we have no right to such expectation because the expectation is not based on anything other than what went on before our time.

Gandhi was a giant among men yet his beloved India still remains a country of enormous wealth and crippling poverty. For all she has achieved, Aung San Suu Kyi remains in the minority in the face of a military regime in Burma and poverty continues. While Dr King did much to end racial segregation in America, racism continues. Mandela was quite right to point out that nobody is born to hate; it is their upbringing and the society around them which teaches them how to. In the end then, it is right and proper to celebrate these remarkable people but equally pertinent to recognise how far we have to go. The actions of Anders Brevik in Norway were a stark reminder of the work which still needs to be done. The BNP continue to garner votes in the UK and facism is dangerously on the rise throughout many European countries. A climate of financial austerity is historically the petrol upon which the bonfire of facism thrives. The challenge is to foster stronger community cohesion to repel such tendencies.

In the early 1980s the UK was in a much worse state than it is today financially and that was the atmosphere in which Jerry Dammers wrote the song, "Free Nelson Mandela" which became the anthem for a generation. He was part of the musical genre two tone - the name speaks for itself and the music was wonderful.