It's time to kick some British butt (Star Parker)

A former armed robber and drug user has become one of America's most prominent black activists. Damian Thompson meets her

Star Parker is a Republican Party activist from Los Angeles who has made it her business to tell America's blacks to quit whining about racism, get off their butts and find work. She gets away with this because she is herself black, a single mother and a former user of some impressively heavy drugs. And she once held up a liquor store.

She doesn't look like a member of the moral majority, that's for sure. Her slinky, ankle-length dresses show off a wasp waist that Oprah would die for; her cherry-red raincoat looks as if it has been borrowed from a visiting cardinal.

"Honey, I'm flashy," she confesses. "I don't do drugs any more, but I'm still stuck in the fast lane."

Star arrived in Britain last week to address Civitas, a think-tank that believes in free markets and strong families. It's also against abortions. Star has had several of those, but repented after she "found Jesus". Her new book, Uncle Sam's Plantation (WND Books, USA), blames a swollen federal bureaucracy for turning many blacks into the equivalent of slaves - waiting for welfare cheques "on their butts", as she likes to put it. Her solution: slay the monster of Social Security and pay every last cent into retirement accounts owned by the individuals in the system. Dismantle the War on Poverty - and the War on Drugs, too, because big government is kidding itself if it thinks it can stop lazy bums getting high.

I thought it would be fun to introduce Ms Parker to representatives of Britain's race relations industry, to see what she made of them and vice versa. I did warn them that she was a different sort of black activist, but the message didn't sink in, judging by the expressions of the anti-racist functionaries once she warmed to her theme.

First stop: the Greenwich Council for Racial Equality. When I arrive, Star is already sashaying into the coffee room, swinging her hips like a New Orleans chanteuse. The CRE employees look surprised; pleasantly so.

Dev Barrah, a Kenyan Asian who works for the "racist attacks monitoring unit", sits her down for a power-point presentation on his laptop computer. Up spring photographs of local BNP henchmen; racist graffiti; leaflets saying "niggers out". Most of them date from the late Eighties or early Nineties. Dev looks over at Star, expecting outrage. Her eyes have glazed over. "Yeah, we have these people in the States," she sighs. "You know what we do? We laugh at them. The KKK is a national joke."

Dev looks puzzled. He shows her some genuinely horrifying photographs of old Pakistani ladies with black eyes. "Do you have the death penalty over here?" asks Star. "That would help."

The next slide shows the Rev Al Sharpton, the bouffant-haired black activist running for American president. "Oh, I know about him," says Star. "He gets black folks all riled up so they hit the streets and burn people's stuff down." There's a picture of Sharpton leading a demonstration against racist violence. Star is not impressed: "Hmm, they got time to protest this little stuff, but they don't have time for the big stuff."

Dev, who seems a kind-hearted man, tells us about his visits to tower blocks, where he starts conversations between neighbours who might never talk to each other because of their skin colour. Bearing in mind that the CRE is publicly funded, that seems a reasonable use of my tax dollars, as Star would say.

But look around his office. Posters of Che Guevara and Gerry Adams, anti-Bush diatribes, idiot slogans - "Wherever there is imperialism, there is my struggle". I suggest that we could be in a polytechnic common room, circa 1968. "Or hanging out with the Black Panthers," says Star.

Dev talks about street crime; funnily enough, nearly all the examples he cites involve white youths. But surely black youngsters commit the majority of street crimes in London?

That is too much for Dev's colleague, Surinder, a "racial equality officer", who jumps up from his desk and wags his finger at us like an angry ticket inspector. The gist of what he says is that, in the areas where he works, 99 per cent of crime is committed by whites. "And yes, I am proud to be on the Left," he says.

Star flings open her exquisitely manicured hands. "The black community wants to be free," she says. "But it doesn't know how to, because it's locked into this 40-year-old mindset. It demands jobs, but it hates the capitalism that creates the jobs."

In the taxi afterwards, she asks me about the CRE. "You mean the government pays for that stuff? Oh man, I'm disappointed to hear that.''

From reading her book, I've worked out that Star must be older than she looks. "I just celebrated my 40th birthday," she says. "For the seventh time." As a high school drop-out in East Coast America, she joined what she calls the lazy poor. "I would steal money from neighbours. I lusted after the finest designer labels, but I was idle. I blamed racism and my parents."

Then she discovered welfare: food stamps and free health care - including trips to VD and abortion clinics. But what I really want to know about is the armed robbery in the liquor store. "It happened," she says, not sounding terribly contrite. Where? She arches an eyebrow. "It was in New Jersey. But don't expect me to tell you the name of the town. I was with a boyfriend and we never got caught. I was only 16, but the statute of limitations doesn't run out on that stuff."

Eventually, she joined a church that persuaded her to come off welfare. She took a job answering the telephone. She started a business, went bankrupt and reinvented herself as a talk-show host. She did most of the talking, I imagine.

Our second appointment is with Operation Black Vote (OBV), a non-partisan campaign to reduce the "entrenched cynicism about politics within the Black community". Its co-ordinator, Simon Woolley, is a handsome, light-skinned black man ("they're often the most extreme," notes Star). He tells us that he enjoys good relations with all the political parties, even the Tories.

There are no Che Guevara posters in OBV's offices; just pot plants and a coffee machine. I'm half expecting Simon to charm Star by stressing his respect for her conservative views.

Instead, we're swept off our feet by a twister of a PR disaster. Simon's assistant, ushering us into the meeting room, starts telling us about last year's wonderful keynote speaker from America: one Reverend Sharpton.

As soon as Simon takes his seat, Star erupts. "That shake-down artist! He doesn't just create tension between blacks and white, he creates tension between ethnic communities."

Simon counters by pointing out that OBV disinvited another black radical, Professor Tony Martin, once it discovered that he was the author of a book called The Jewish Onslaught. "That was a tough decision," he says. But Sharpton the anti-Semitic rabble-rouser is OK? "We aren't going to allow people with your views to dictate how we address the black struggle," he snaps.

Star, fuming in the car afterwards, says: "So much for your non-partisan black organisation. Why does the Conservative Party talk to these people?"

Our last appointment is at an archive of black history in Coldharbour Lane, Brixton. I brace myself for another difficult meeting. The director, Sam Walker, is from Sierra Leone; he shows us, beaming, into an office hung with posters of Malcolm X and Marcus Garvey. I pop round the corner to the loo, expecting, on past form, to return to the sound of raised voices.

They're raised, all right: in throaty laughter. Star and Sam have hit it off. "British history is a tapestry of many colours, and I want to put the black thread back into it," says Sam. "But that doesn't mean I want to accuse everyone of racism. Self-help, that's what I believe in. And we need more of it."

"Right on!" says Star. Then, for the first time all day, she goes off the record, as she and Sam take the mickey out of mixed-race intellectuals and their obsession with "black roots".

We leave the office and stroll through a darkening market. Star extends a pointy-toed boot towards a discarded Kentucky Fried Chicken box. "I just love these pretty stalls but, man, the garbage," she says. "Who do you expect to clear it up? The government?"

I may be off on this but this is not necessarily the best person to invest our emotional capital in. I congratulate her on her survival, her achievements and her acceptance of the conservative way of thinking but I am reminded of that expression, "There, but for the grace of God, go I"... She has good ideas but the truth is she had help in coming to where she is now. All that I see her doing is criticizing others for the same things she did. Perhaps she can write a good book but please consider the fact that were it not for her very right wing ideas, no one would be giving her the time of day. I look at Janice Rogers Brown and Condoleeza Rice and I do not agree with all of their ideas but I have to say that they let their lives be an example of what they believe in and they are not proxy critics for someone else. They speak loudly but based on experience and they serve the public good more than their own. Their primary goal does not appear to be gettting their 15 minutes of fame. And I am not about to tell my daughter that the best way to succeed in this world is to go and do crazy things and then adopt a political philosophy that most people would not expect you to adopt... And write a book criticizing the same people and institutions that accepted you when others would not.

The thing that we have to remember is that Christians are not perfect, they are just forgiven. This has nothing to do with writing a book and acting like you are ashamed of those that have the same color of skin or background as you... Everyone can find fault with Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, but the truth is, she does not have contact with the vast numbers of black people that work hard and try to lead their familiies, churches, and communities by example.

I think of Saul who became Paul and I do not see her accepting responsibility for her past. That is one of the first rules in repentance...

I have seen her speak and she is only concerned about her message and her views. She is like so many I have seen before looking to kiss up to conservatives by beating up on minorities. I am just as critical of those in my community but I also recognize the history of this nation and I recognize that I do not know the circumstances that bring each person to their station in life.

Also, I am not sure what experience in government policy making she has been involved in but it does sound to me like she is sounding off more to get attention than to actually advance the conservative beliefs.

I hope I am wrong but she gives me a bad vibe...

And how is she different from Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson when everything she speaks about revolves around race? There is so much more to us than that...

the truth is she had help in coming to where she is now. All that I see her doing is criticizing others for the same things she did

I don't think she is "beating up on minorities", as you put it, or recommending her past to the rest of us. She obviously did things that were not right, but the point, I think, is that she stopped doing them.

Yes, there was help available to her, but again, the point is that she took advantage of that help and changed.

I hear her criticizing those who are content to wallow in the past as an excuse NOT to make changes, so yes, she can find fault with Al and Jesse. You may have a point that she does not seem contrite enough about her own past, but I prefer to think that she is merely staying on message.

Her point is not to bemoan her own life in public, because--who cares? Her point is to motivate others who are stuck in a bad paradigm to change it, then change themselves.

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