Changing your name to Seacole will eradicate your inner racist<br />

I do hope you can forgive this diversion from the usual subject matter of my blog, but just for today I would like to deal with a personal matter. That is not to say it does not have wider implications – I believe it does; in a very real sense it has implications for all of us.

I have decided, after giving the matter much thought, to change my name by deed poll to Rod Seacole-Liddle, in honour of the black nurse who helped out during the Crimean War. As some of you may have noticed I have been using the appellation for some time on these very pages; now I believe the right thing to do is to formalize the arrangement. In doing so, I hope to confront and, hopefully, defeat the racism which exists at the core of my being – at the core of all of our beings, really, if we were brave and humble enough to admit it. Every progressive state institution in the country – hospital, school, local council office, public housing estate, jobcentre, police station – has recognised Mary Seacole’s achievments in helping out during the Crimean War, sometimes with a publicly funded statue in her honour made of copper or brass on a large plinth, sometimes with nothing more than the naming of a hospital ward, a sports centre or a small town. I cannot afford a statue: but what I can I give her, giiii-ve my heart.

As I say, I had been thinking about the matter for some time; the thing which finally prompted me to action was an entry on another blog. It came from a woman called “Brown Bess” and read as follows:

‘My kids’ school (an excellent local Comp.)