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GANGSTA RAP: Chancellor George Osbourne said he saw NWA in concert

THERE IS a real risk that Black Britain's voice might be muffled for the next decade and more, despite Chancellor George Osbourne's confession that seeing gangsta rappers NWA at Brixton Academy 25 years ago was a life-changing experience. 

Listening to NWA does that to people. People are never the same after. However, it doesn't transform white people into ‘n**gas with attitude'. 

Why should it? They don't start shouting: “Black Power!" Or even “F**k Tha Police". I don't know a single white person who was so enamoured by their experience of NWA that it made them more empathetic to blackness. Even though I know at least one senior controller at the BBC, two chief execs of FTSE 100 companies and half a dozen MPs who moved to the music and have been moved by it.

Reggae, on the other hand, did have that effect. Particularly on Tony Blair's Labour government which couldn't change the laws fast enough to decriminalise the smoking of herb. 

That government was in power for more than a decade during which time we saw the first black person in government (Paul Boateng) the first black woman to speak from the dispatch box (Dawn Butler) and a ‘statement of regret' from the prime minister about the enslavement of Africans by Britain. All those historical moments were won by the black voice in parliament. The half a dozen or so black MPs on the Labour benches were not afraid to make their voices heard.

It's a very different thing amongst the ‘black' voices on the Tory benches. Who has heard a single pipsqueak from them on the ‘black condition' in Britain? Do Kwasi Kwarteng, Sam Gyimah, Helen Grant and Adam Afriyie see themselves as ‘black' in parliament or simply as so-called ‘one nation' Tories?

UNACCEPTABLE

‘One nation' is all well and good when you have a level playing field. Otherwise it's ‘one nation' for some people and ‘one (race) discrimiNATION' for the rest of us. Have these black members of parliament on the Tory benches uttered a single word on the unacceptably high levels of unemployment amongst black youth? After all 50 per cent unemployment amongst black boys between the ages for 16 and 25 is surely a violation of human rights in our ‘one nation'. Even Stevie Wonder can see that.

Remember these ‘one nation' black Tory MPs could be ‘representing' us for the next decade. Or more. Which one of us believes that those unemployment figures will improve in that time? Or that we will hear a black Tory MP stand up in the House and express themselves on that issue in the next ten years?

Having said that, we cannot chastise the next man for keeping his head down and trying not to rock the boat they're sailing in. Even I believe that in their heart of hearts these MPs are ‘conscious'. But they're between a rock and a hard stone. They are in parliament representing their constituents. Those constituents happen to be, for black Tory MPs, almost exclusively white.

DILEMMA: Kwasi Kwarteng can’t speak up for black youths

Kwasi Kwarteng would find it difficult explaining to those who voted for him in Spelthorne exactly why he is speaking up for the unemployed yutes of Brixton. That is the dilemma of the black Tory MP. They weren't put there by us so why should they speak up for us? Is it because they are black?

We should not leave it down to them. We need to get involved as well. We need to speak up for ourselves. Only when the Tory party conference, which was once again last week a virtually Afro-free zone, is bolstered by a wave of grassroots black members, can we expect to have a real voice at the table. Real talk. 

So where are all you black Tories? Stand up and be counted.