Deported With a Nazi Salute? British Nigerian Writer Finds Poetic Sanctuary in Football City

Juneteenth (June 19), 2025

It was a three-hour session. Halfway through, she was in tears. On the day I had decided to send out this newsletter. I wasn’t even supposed to be in Liverpool. I should have been performing in New Jersey, USA, for the Black celebration, Juneteenth.

Instead, I was at John Archer Hall, Toxteth, with a group of women brought together by Blackfest, for a programme called Sacred Sanctuary. I had been asked to facilitate a workshop encouraging the use of poetry for wellbeing. We decided to write a poem together, and they chose the words we would use to build it.

At the end, the woman had this to say:

“If I had known what was happening today, I wouldn’t have come. But I’m glad I didn’t know, because I enjoyed it very much.”

So, Greetings from Liverpool, a city known less for its poetry than for its football. Liverpool of two Premier League teams, one of which won the 2025 championship, and spectacularly paraded the trophy through the city streets late last month. The event came to a near-tragic ending which moved me to write a new blog soon after, titled Terror on Liverpool Streets as Palestine Supporters Hijack Team Bus.

Before that, I had saved this picture of the England team giving the Nazi salute in 1938.

I had seen it on social media on the anniversary of the event, thinking I might comment on it in this newsletter. I do that in the Parting Shots section at the end, along with the poem written with the women.

The joy that that new poetess gave me when she said what she did was an antidote to the disappointment of not being in America right now, and preparing to go to Canada, for more performances. The folks who booked me in the US decided to postpone the event indefinitely because of the political situation there. A hoped-for paid Canadian gig has also not happened (yet), so I decided to cancel the remaining one in Halifax that I booked a theatre for and paid a deposit on: one that will possibly now be forfeited along with the US visa costs.

I updated the video I made about this episode recently, as a creative response to the situation I find myself in, and featuring the beautiful and poignant poetry of Langston Hughes. As if to confirm my luck at not even having bought a ticket, a friend sent me this account of an Australian deported from Los Angeles airport because of his writing.

This abuse of power by the authorities leads me to the review of a powerful new book I read recently. It is unfortunately not a work of fiction, but the true story of a very brave woman’s decades-long fight against the British state at whose hands her brother died in 1998. Here is one quote from the book that I use in the review:

‘I obtained, by means of a simple phone call to the funeral directors, the documentation surrounding Christopher’s body …. I found it hard to believe that South Yorkshire Police, who spent £500,000 of public money in their investigation, including a return trip to Australia to interview a former mortuary worker, did not think to phone the funeral directors and ask for their documentation’ (p 414).

I highly recommend Defiance, and suggest that it would make a gripping documentary or drama. Having said that, such urgent, important work would require a lot of bravery from a lot of people in the TV/film industry, but we are sadly seeing that in rapidly decreasing amounts these days.

I say this because I have recently agreed to help an Australian actor find some performances while on tour of the UK in September. Ben Rivers recently had a performance offer withdrawn by the White Rock Theatre in Hastings, allegedly because the venue wishes to remain ‘apolitical.’ The great grandson of a pioneer Russian Jewish coloniser/settler of Palestine cannot, it seems, perform The Invaders’ Fear of Memories (inspired by his ancestor’s diaries), without being seen as overly political, or offending the fragile sensibilities of other settlers’ descendants. Perhaps they fear confronting the history in case it explains too honestly how and why some human animals have not evolved very much in their new environment in the intervening generations. Ben will be playing at Hebden Bridge Trades Club on September 16 and at Unity Theatre Liverpool on September 19. Booking details will be available in due course on Ben’s website.

I have done two formal paid performances since the last newsletter. First came Coleridge-Taylor of Freetown in Leeds. The tragic earthquake in Myanmar and Indonesia was still fresh in our minds then, and I reflected that in what I wrote. A few days later, I did Call Mr. Robeson in Sheffield. There, my programme note was a commentary on the recent record-breaking performance (I use that word advisedly) by New Jersey Senator Cory Booker in the Senate, and how Mr. Booker is no Mr. Robeson.

Mr. Robeson was always a presence in the life of the late Dr Marika Sherwood, who I interviewed in December 2023. I have now completed an edit which has been shown to her family and to those who contributed some money toward my costs. I sent it to a professional filmmaker who was very complimentary about it, gave me some pointers, and very importantly says the material is good enough to do some additional work to and then submit for film festivals in the documentary section. He is going to introduce me to someone who specialises in documentaries for guidance. Here is the trailer, which will also be seen on the web page, along with details of how to contribute.

One short film that I am part of has been released. The Blood Connection was commissioned by an NHS trust to encourage more Black people to donate blood to help people suffering from Sickle-Cell Disease.

The feature film I also have a part in, TERRA, is still in post-production. I gather the director recently got good news in that a major post-production company in London has offered to do the grading of the film without immediate payment as part of its commitment to supporting and championing independent filmmakers. More financial assistance is still needed, and if you’d like to help, let me know, and I’ll put you in touch with the director. Some Nigerian doctors working in the US and the UK have very kindly supported it (as I play the role of a doctor in a war zone) and we are hoping others would do the same.

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor Day Festival. I am in the process of making a funding application to hold a festival in October to celebrate the music of Mr. Coleridge-Taylor. The day-long festival will involve orchestra, chorus and ensembles, drawn from musicians responding to an open call from around the UK. Please see the open call here, and share it with any people you think may be interested.

That festival is one of many things I am planning even though I have a trial coming up that may complicate things somewhat. The Bad Packing 4 Hearing starts at Stafford Crown Court on August 4 (not 5 as currently stated on the website). We, the four co-defendants, hope to persuade the jury not to convict us. Even if they do, I am advised by my lawyers that incarceration is not guaranteed, and if that is the sentence, it will not follow immediately. Fingers crossed.

This architect-turned-actor/activist coincidentally has a little progress to report on another legal matter. I brought a case against Liverpool City Council for deliberately acting (I argue) to prevent me from being able to develop a piece of land owned by the city. This happened over six years ago, and I first wrote a blog about it then, titled Washing Away All African Blood. The latest of the periodic update/postscripts (no. 10) has a link to the case documentation. I need to raise £591 for the court fee, and would ask anyone who is minded to help with that to please get in touch.

I wrote Paul Robeson’s Love Song during Covid, and worked with artists in USA, Canada and London to premiere it in April 2021 in the first iteration of the current US presidency. Little did I know at the time that it would end up speaking even more forcefully to today’s dystopian reality. The irony and sadness is that the real anti-Semitism of the time in which it is set (1949/50) has been replaced by Islamophobia and a complete capitulation to Zionism. I have decided to put on two pay-what-you-feel Zoom broadcasts of the play in coming weeks, to be followed by a Q&A: at 12 noon and 6pm UK time on Sunday 20 and Saturday 26 July. It would be good to see some of you there. I’ll be inviting the other creatives to join me if they can, too.

Before that, I’ll be a participant in an online Trans-Atlantic Song Exchange: Songs of Struggle and Freedom, and after that a live performance of Call Mr. Robeson. Details on my performances page.

Before I wrap up with Parting Shots (where I share some interesting stuff I have come across recently, and I comment on some issues of the day, including the Nazi-saluting England football team photo at the top of this missive) I will leave you with this video by the brilliant Lowkey, offering a different (true) account on the Israeli attack on Iran – and elsewhere: a necessary antidote to the narrative being fed to us by the BBC and other mainstream media: the same people who sold us the lies about the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

Thank you to the free subscribers for reading this far. The Parting Shots section is behind a paywall. If you decide to support financially by becoming a paid subscriber, you’ll get the ability to see the contents immediately. Otherwise, you’ll have to wait till the next newsletter, whenever that might be. The gap between the last one and this was a whole ten weeks!

With best wishes for the rest of the summer.

Tayo Aluko

p.s. Please follow me on Blue Sky: ‪@mrtayoaluko.bsky.social

Parting Shots

The Nazi Salute, Poetry, more expressions of uncompromising creativity, and exclusive access to a great documentary, so good they tried to suppress it …