Biography

Deep down, I am a revolutionary. I have no faith in the political system as it is. I've voted, but it's always for the least of the evils. On that track ["I Am a Revolutionary", from his 2017 album "Revolutionary Minds"], I say I go on Question Time and I talk to politicians and get involved, but actually I'd like to just burn the lot of them. The system stinks. I can't understand why I'm almost 60, and I'm still fucking angry. Everyone told me I was going to be mellow by now. I've got a house, I grow my own vegetables, and I'm still angry.

[2017, on his support for Jeremy Corbyn] It's not about being a Corbyn fan. It's not about the cult of personality. Corbyn is not even, in my view, a very charismatic speaker. People laugh at him sometimes, and say he sounds like a teacher, and he does, but what he says makes sense. It's not about worshipping him; it's about being desperate for something different. In terms of mainstream politics, he's the best thing that's happened here for a long time.

[on refusing an OBE in 2003] I thought, OBE me? Up yours, I thought. I get angry when I hear that word "empire"; it reminds me of slavery, it reminds of thousands of years of brutality, it reminds me of how my foremothers were raped and my forefathers brutalised. It is because of this concept of empire that my British education led me to believe that the history of black people started with slavery and that we were born slaves, and should therefore be grateful that we were given freedom by our caring white masters. It is because of this idea of empire that black people like myself don't even know our true names or our true historical culture. I am not one of those who are obsessed with their roots, and I'm certainly not suffering from a crisis of identity; my obsession is about the future and the political rights of all people. Benjamin Zephaniah OBE - no way Mr Blair, no way Mrs Queen. I am profoundly anti-empire... This OBE thing is supposed to be for my services to literature, but there are a whole lot of writers who are better than me, and they're not involved in the things that I'm involved in. All they do is write; I spend most of my time doing other things. If they want to give me one of these empire things, why can't they give me one for my work in animal rights? Why can't they give me one for my struggle against racism? What about giving me one for all the letters I write to innocent people in prisons who have been framed? I may just consider accepting some kind of award for my services on behalf of the millions of people who have stood up against the war in Iraq. It's such hard work - much harder than writing poems.