The Sunday Times recently celebrated the 25th anniversary of listing men and women of class, rank, privilege, substance and excessive money in the UK. As a professional snooper of the life of the rich and well heeled in the UK, April had always been a much awaited month to undertake an annual ritual of "unroofing" the hidden wealth of the fabulously wealthy. The more I glazed my eyes on the glossy pages of the latest 2013 rich list looking for redemption, the more the grim conclusion hit home. It is still a white and brown affair. It has been a chastening and depressing affair year in and year out.
The Sunday Times recently celebrated the 25th anniversary of listing men and women of class, rank, privilege, substance and excessive money in the UK. As a professional snooper of the life of the rich and well heeled in the UK, April had always been a much awaited month to undertake an annual ritual of "unroofing" the hidden wealth of the fabulously wealthy. The more I glazed my eyes on the glossy pages of the latest 2013 rich list looking for redemption, the more the grim conclusion hit home. It is still a white and brown affair. It has been a chastening and depressing affair year in and year out.
Conspicuously delisted are black faces. We are still hewers of wood and drawers of water to the dominant population of white and brown faces all around us. Caviar-fuelled and champagne parties celebrating the arrival of billions are still exclusively the preserve of white and Asian moneybags who live in pampered lifestyles.
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Money, influence, privilege and power are still eluding black British in astonishing degree. There is yet no fresh-faced black new comers to give me hope of a better days ahead. Rather I am faced with a hard disbelief. How do I grapple with the fact that businessmen from the Indian subcontinent have become the dominant force at the top of the rich list? Myth, fantasy or plain truth, the Asian money miracle is becoming a folkloric legend. In 1972, many of them were thrown out of Uganda by Idi Amin Dada, the then ruler. Many more will walk away from Malawi, Kenya and Tanzania and faced the West. They were prepared to use their mind to overcome matter. They were prepared to use their mind to demolish obstacles and man-imposed glass ceiling.
Over the space of two decades, this island has moved from a land notorious for resenting the rich to being a nation that is intensely relaxed in accommodating filthy rich neighbours. We have the Belgravia set led by Lakshmi Mittal. We have the Chelsea set led by Roman Abrahamovich. And we have the Surrey set led by Hans Rausing. Year ago when I first began to track the life of the rich and famous, this little island was in the hands of the titular oligarchs. Most of the wealth was concentrated in the soft hands of - lucky ones born with silver spoon - dukes, marquesses, earls and viscounts. Landowners and a procession of the privileged dominated the wealth index. The richest woman then was the Queen.
Today, the rich landscape is painted differently. The enduring legacy of Thatcherism, the deregulation of city businesses and the encouragement of entrepreneurism have all combined to change the distribution of wealth in the United Kingdom. Although two third of the personalities in the 2013 rich list had inherited their wealth, the cheer is in the fact that a whopping 77% of the richest British are self made. Their collective wealth is worth £55.3billion. Among the list of men and women with the deepest pockets, there are rosy-cheeked brown faces but troublingly, no black face.
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In the top 100 richest British, 39 are foreign born. These settled foreigners to the UK are collapsing paradigms through sound investment strategies, hardwork, cooperation, deferred instant gratification, risk taking and entrepreneurial hardness to lead this year's Rich List. The richest British billionaire is not a blue blooded Englishman from the leafy shire but a humble lamb from Russia, Alisher Usmanov, the part owner of Arsenal, the club I support. The second richest is yet another foreigner, Russian-born American tycoon, Len Blavatnik. The third richest immigrants in the list are Sri and Gopi Hinduja brothers. With the displacement of Lakshmi Mittal from the usual number one, the elite Rich List is a witness to its own silent coup this year. Mittal who had perched like a lone eagle on top of the Rich List for eight years is in the fourth position. Roman Abrahamovich, the Chelsea club owner, slips into the fifth richest British billionaire.
What is striking here is that wealth is tilting disproportionately towards Russians, Asians and the Chinese. Zong Qinghuo, the Chinese consumer goods tycoon, was recently named among the 50 internationally acclaimed billionaires. Another new record is the number of women minting money in their chosen professions. Twenty years ago the Queen was the act to follow. She was the iron lady in the list of the rich and wealthy. Today, Kirsty Bertarelli (Pharmaceuticals) ranks the richest in this year's Rich List. The Queen is demoted to the thirty three position.
In my comment on the 2012 Rich List I had said, "Will my evocative flourish go in vain? I still desire to see new generation of black British groundbreakers and risk takers to stem the shaming feeling I had to contend with each year when I leaf through the Sunday Times Rich List." I am again confronted with a self-fulfilling fear. Like the Biblical Job, what I fear most has come over me. Why are we conspicuously blacked out in a free-for-all, fair and democratic level playing field of high finance and serious money? Can we blame the iconic compiler Philip Beresford who set the bar of inclusion in the Rich List at £75million? Is there no black British worth that amount? Why do we toil so much for this nation and yet the wheel of big fortune just roll pass us?
Historical amnesia seems to have settled down so hard and fast on black British that we are yet to translate the toil of our suffering into amassing wealth in the UK. More than fifty years after Windrush mass migration from the Caribbean, the epochal 60's of black African student migration and the 80's economic migrants from both continents, there is yet no dynamics to better understand our underachievement in the face of the above historical encounters. The pain of early poverty of our pioneers has not formed the basis of our financial success.
The era of rationalising racism as the authentic answer to our collective financial backwardness can now be seen as mantra for the fools. That old default setting has been used by the Asians to build a template to a soaring wealth and influence. And they are thumping our nose for failing and falling behind the wealth race.
Mo Ibrahim, our yearly redeemer, is the only black man in the 2013 Rich List of 1,000 wealthiest British. With a fortune of £520m, he is ranked as the 168 richest man in the UK. This mobile telecom mogul is a sure signpost foretelling us that the gate to opulent lifestyle for black British are not yet shut. We can still dangle the keys to a gleaming Bentley. We can still receive customised massage from the soft palm of angelic but delicate bunnies. We can still eat caviar, drink the fabled Dom Perignon and wake up on a warm futon bed overlooking the Camana Bay in the Cayman. We can still cruise the sky with shiny Gulfstream.
Another year has passed and we are still stuck in the same rut. Now, it is time for the black community to start producing idea rebels. It is time to work with vision and not black-on-black violence. It is time to risk. It is time to develop noble revulsion for poverty. It is time to use our brain and not our bravura. We have spilled our blood in the boxing ring to bring glory to Queen and country. We have ran the race on the tracks to bring medals to Queen and country. We have cleaned dirty bums of rich elites in nursing homes. We have sold cocaine to the upwardly mobile city stock brokers. We have allowed men in grey suit with stiff upper lips to contain and control our destinies.
It is time to guard our minds with a governing philosophy of "YES WE CAN", an Obama mantra that eventually made him to achieve the impossible. Yes, we can reject and break free from the limiting orthodoxy that continues to regard us as chattels of the old, colonial British empire without hope of breaking into the exclusive zones of industry, retailing, banking, Internet gambling, food, distribution, fashion, high finance, property, investment, steel, diamond trading, supermarkets, construction, aviation, media, pharmaceuticals, horse racing, hotels, packaging, insurance, electrical goods and transport?
Yes, we can reconfigure the demography of wealth, power and privilege. Black colour is missing from the yearly tapestry of billionaire Rich List. It is time to paint the list black.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of SaharaReporters
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