Lox. "It is a video of the BNP's national press officer (apparently known as "the doc" as he has a PHD)."

I remember seeing that clip of Phil Edwards when it was first broadcast and thinking "what an absolute schmuck". The idea that Africa never created any great civilisations is a bit of a laugh to anyone who has ever studied African political systems. Likewise, the idea that Africa represented a safe haven, where the mind of man had less need to develop is ludicrous. Perhaps someone could point out to this eejit that the brains of Neanderthals were just as large as ours. I don't remember them producing any great civilisations either. Besides, which, and correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe the thinking of modern biologists is that the brainpower of the human race reached its present form during the very earliest stages of our development as homo sapiens; when our forebears were forced down from the trees by climatic change, and were forced to compete with more powerful but less smart animals than we.

OK., maybe I've been overdosing on Robert Winston, but as a sociology graduate, I do have some understanding of the limitations of IQ measurement; and some appreciation of the difficulties of applying intelligence tests cross culturally.

Come to think of it, if this geezer is right, and intelligence really does represent some sort of inverse measure of criminality, then the large number of thugs and criminals in the ranks of the BNP supports the view that their average member must be as thick as two short planks.

But it's that bit about black people never having produced a Mozart or a Dickens which showed up this alleged intellectual for the ethnocentric moron he really is. European art forms are the products of literate cultures. That means the work of Dickens, Mozart, or any other European creative artist, roughly from about the time of the Norman conquest, is frozen. We know precisely what they created and what it sounds or looks like, because it's written down. (I'm excepting visual art from the argument of course, but BNP bigots might care to ponder the effect which Benin bronzes had on early twentieth century painters.) But, remembering that Africa was historically non-literate, and nothing was written down, how can he "know" that that vast continent never contained anyone as intrinsically gifted as either of the two gentlemen he held up for comparison? All artistic output was non-literate once, and what little has survived indicates that much of it was rich indeed. To extend the geographic boundaries of the argument for a moment, has this gentleman ever heard of Homer, whose creative abilities were preserved purely because the non-literate epic bardic tradition, to which Homer belonged, happened to co-exist alongside a tradition of Greek literacy? How many African Homers have there been down through the ages, whose exegeses have been lost because nobody was there to write them down? Does he not realise that the pre-literate world was stuffed with the most astonishing poets, storytellers, praise singers and musicians? And quite a few of them were African.

For that matter, does he not realise that the compositional form par excellence, throughout the third world (including Africa), was one of spontaneous improvisation? And comparing that with written composition is like comparing chalk with cheese. I'm copying all my old vinyl to computer at the moment, and just by chance I've come to the section on West African griots. OK., we accept that Africa left us no formal musical compositions. But is there any way we can compare the improvisational talent of the best West African griots with the improvisatory abilities of composers like Mozart? We can't unfortunately, because, although improvisation was once a much favoured skill, and although we know that Mozart was a formidable performer in that field, the European tradition of improvisation died out before the invention of audio recording. But if he was as good as of any of the members of the Konte family, or Amadu Bansang Jobarteh, or Jali Nyama Suso, or for that matter as good as any number of black modern jazz players, then by heck, good he must have been.

BTW., Although the BNP membership list shows only 7 Phds, out of 12000 members, or about 0.058% of the total membership, I can't find the name of Phil Edwards among them. Does he really exist? And what I wonder was his Phd in?