Maxwell Kwaku Maundy shares his ordeal with British Mi5, Metropolitan Police Service and Immigration in new book, ‘Darkest Humanity’

In July 2012, barely weeks before the London 2012 Olympic Games, I wrote an article titled I want to be a terrorist in London. Soon after I published I want to be a terrorist in London on my blog, the British Mi5 and the Metropolitan Police Service launched a manhunt for my arrest.

Prior to publishing I want to be a terrorist in London, I had published my first article My Encounter with the White Manon my blog. My Encounter with the White Mandetails my five (5) years struggle with the British government after my Passport and I had been used by British Intelligence and the Crown Prosecution Service, and then abandoned. Nothing happened after I published my encounter with the white man. I shared My Encounter with the White Manon social media extensively. I printed hard copies and mailed to various British establishments – the Westminster fraternity, including Number 10 Downing Street. But nothing happened – nobody cared!

However, soon after I published I want to be a terrorist in London,British Mi5 and the Metropolitan Police Service launched a manhunt for me. Several raids were carried out on various addresses across London in the search for me. My uncle’s house in Dagenham, which was my correspondence address at the time, was put under heavy surveillance. Undercover officers would lay ambush through the night in Stirling Close in Rainham (Dagenham) in wait for me and my uncle. As soon as my uncle steps out of his flat at 4am to go to work, officers would surround him and take him back inside his flat for questioning. Officers would ask my uncle many questions about me, such as:

1. Courses I studied at the University of Ghana,
2. Countries I had travelled to apart from the UK

I’m pretty sure that the reasons for these interrogations were perhaps, to ascertain where I received my extremism training from.

Well, I’m sure many of you would be wondering why I wanted to be a terrorist or an extremist in London. To answer this, let me quote from Martin Luther King Jr.

“So the question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for hate or for love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice or for the extension of justice? In that dramatic scene on Calvary’s hill, three men were crucified. We must never forget that all three were crucified for the same crime–the crime of extremism. Two were extremists for immorality, and thus fell below their environment. The other, Jesus Christ, was an extremist for love, truth and goodness, and thereby rose above his environment.”

So my answer to you, in case you are wondering why I wanted to be an extremist in London, is that:

“The question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. The nation and the world is in dire need of creative extremists.”

So I was a creative extremist

Ten months into my manhunt by the British Security Agencies, I voluntarily walked into a London Police Station and handed myself in. This led to a lengthy legal battle and I was incarcerated at Pentonville Prison in North London. Whilst in Prison, I joined a journalism class. One day, a reporter from the Guardian Newspaper was invited to give a lecture. The reporter spoke about a new book titled The British Dream, and how immigrants in the UK have been portrayed negatively by the author, a British, an Englishman; David Goodhart:

“Lots of people get their knuckles rapped in David Goodhart’s critical history of post-war immigration, from lazy Somalis and macho African-Caribbeans to inbreeding Pakistanis and standoffish Poles.”

The Guardian reporter expounded on the historical account of post-war Britain, and how Britain opened the floodgates of immigration and sent emissaries to the West Indies to bring in African Caribbeans to help rebuild the country after the Second World War. Britain lost most of its active workforce to the war.

Here then arose the question: can someone re-writethe British Dream from the perspective of immigrants?

One day, whilst reading a book in the library in Pentonville, I had an urge, an urge so strong that I could not resist it. The urge to write The British Dreamcame to me right inside the library in Pentonville prison. The urge for me to write The British Dream from the perspective of immigrants was so strong that I became restless. After reading few pages of the book I was reading in the library, I put the book down. The next thing I did was to start writing the All-African (Commonwealth) British Dream. Here was the birth of our British Dream – Darkest Humanity, a Pan African Book I’ll be launching on Tuesday September 17^th2019 at the British Council Hall!

I take this opportunity to invite you all to the launch of Darkest Humanity on 17^thof September 2019 at 4pm at the Auditorium of the British Council.Thank you.