Speakers Corner

When I was at university in London a few years ago, a friend of mine told me about Hyde Park Speakers Corner. He said it was a place where every Sunday, you’ll find people giving talks and speeches about various subjects. I never found the time to check it out while living in London, but I was there last week on holiday and decided to see what it was about. I went along not really knowing what to expect, half thinking that I would end up listening to a bunch of crazy people with no sense of reality. Who else would spend a day of their weekend steeped up on a small ladder trying to get complete strangers to listen to them?

The first person I came across did somewhat confirm my idea. He talked about the world being controlled by a handful of super rich people who just play a game to manipulate the rest of us. “How is it that at a house that was worth £2,000 in 1950 is worth £2 million in 2009?” he asked. It’s just a game they are playing with us and the middle class are stupid for accepting it. He went on to criticise everyone from the Bankers to the British Royal Family. Someone in the audience shouted out “you’re very angry at the world mate, you’re just slagging everyone off.”

At this point, I found it very strange that people in the audience actually engage with him. I was thinking that he was just talking nonsense and arguing with him never crossed my mind. Some people in the crowd thought very differently, although some of them strongly disagreed with him, they were listening to him and challenging him on his points.

“Well yes” he replied, “people are stupid, they need to wake up”

“Well what do you suggest they do?”

“They have to come here and listen to me on a Sunday!” he said with a smile.

I may have presented him as a mindless individual up to this point, but that is not fair to him. He spoke a lot about current affairs and history and you could tell that he was very well read.

Eventually, I got a bit bored and went to an area where there was a lot of noise and shouting. The speaker this time was a religious one, standing in front of a poster with the word Jesus.

Unfortunately, 70% of his audience were Muslims and in no mood to be converted! There were three mean right up by him, ridiculing every sentence he spoke. It was useless trying to speak of Christianity to this group so he started to criticise Islam. “If your book is so holy, why is it full of contradictions,” he asked. He took out a copy of the Qu’ran out and read a couple of verses from different chapters about angels. I didn’t really understand either of the verses and by this point it was all turning into a big shouting match and I was too far to be able to hear much so I left.

I moved on this time to see speaker just as he was starting out and trying to draw a crowd.

“Ladies and Gentleman…speakers corner has been invaded by a bunch of religious lunatics!” he shouted out.

“Look at that clown over there” he said pointing to the preacher…“All he talks about is Jesus and heaven and God.”

“I don’t want to go to his heaven”

“There are no black people in his heaven! (its worth mentioning here that the preacher he was pointing at was himself black, which made this comment even funnier)

“Europeans think that Jesus was white and looked like them.” Do they not realise that Jesus was from the f****** Middle East!”

“If Jesus were alive today…and wanted to visit Britain…he would need a f******g visa!”

The crowd were loving him and within minutes he had about a 100 people around him. In the hour that I listened to him, he spoke with incredible knowledge about the Middle East, Barack Obama and Israeli settlements, Darfur, Rwanda and female oppression. On Darfur, he talked about his visit to Sudan and went into the details of the tribes fighting each other and said that while the media present the violence as Muslims killing non Muslims, a large part of it is Muslims killing Muslims over resources.

It turns out his name is Ishmael Blagrove, he is a Jamaican/British journalist and documentary film maker. He is part of a website called www.ricenpeas.com and there are several videos of him at Speakers corner on youtube.

He was regularly heckled by some in the audience – all the speakers were – and had some funny responses. When someone said something that he found ridiculous, he would snap back with “What are you smoking and please tell me where can I get some?!”

There was an Arab guy standing very close to him, constantly challenging him and wanting to speak. “Hold on, I will get to you in a second, let me finish my point! he would say. “Once he made his point, he let they guy speak.

“I’m not talking now, you didn’t let me talk before.”

“Man…you one argumentative mother fu**** ,” he shouted, “you’re even arguing with me about the gaps!”