…What was most shocking was that all of the prejudices about the fashion world, all the clichés, were based on truths. It is truly amazing how such a mess of an organisation could put out such a glossy product. The employees were all plummy and a little dim; the majority were blonde – one particular department resembled a convention for rather well-dressed Aryians. Did they all have names like Henrietta and Pindy? Mostly. Were they all nasty? Not all were nasty, though most were rude. Some were gentle with the work experience girls, but access to such enlightened souls was limited. Unsurprisingly, those secure in their positions took the time to smile and engage in pleasantries. But the less powerful the position, the more unpleasant the woman holding it.

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Dr Phil Edwards meets me in the teashop by Grantham station, where he gestures towards a black girl sitting in the corner. ‘I thought you were her!’ he laughs. ‘I thought – bloody hell, what have I let myself in for!’ But as we make our way to the local Wetherspoon’s he assures me: ‘I wouldn’t have minded if it was you – I’ll talk to anyone. And besides a lot of them vote for us anyway. We’re very misunderstood, the BNP’.

On arrival at the pub, he ushers me to a quiet corner at the back. ‘I’ve done interviews in places like this before and they’ve tried to kick me out when they’ve overheard the conversation,’ he says. ‘Not that it’s any of their bloody business.’

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So, this blog revolution then, empowering of the citizen journalist and speaking of truth to the powers of the dead tree press: how’s it going? Well, to be honest we had better start by abandoning those lazy clichés: blogs are a method of communication, pure and simple. That’s it, tout court. We can have fun discussing what that method is being used for, who is using it and why, but blathering about revolutions and empowerment isn’t going to get us anywhere…

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Going by choice to someone else’s war is a way of escape. You find yourself very removed from whatever the roots of your life are. Heroin is another escape and the two fuelled each other. The war ended, I came home and was stuck with just heroin. I think it’s trite to say that war is an addiction but many of the same qualities become apparent in one’s life in war as with an addiction.

From drugs and war, you can often get the same adrenalised rush, there are the same essences of escape, the same unhealthy manifestations in character and behaviour in the two experiences. It’s a comparison which can become contrived, it’s just something that happened to be going on in my life at the time.

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The LIP: Why did you start ST?

I think that the literary culture in this country has always been very, very complacent and very dominated by certain values. It gives me great pleasure to shake it up. But also I think in the 80s there were certain voices, like gay and lesbian writers, or black writers, which clearly weren’t getting published. It’s less the case now. I don’t think that you can say that it’s a disadvantage any more in terms of getting published to be black – one could argue that it probably helps. But that certainly wasn’t the case twenty years ago.

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Two propositions are held as evidence that access to the media is increasing and that people are more empowered to articulate their views and opinions. The first is that the Internet offers a chance to partake in debate and the production of ideas. Despite taking into account the self-censorship that Google has undergone in China, and the efforts of the CIA, FBI and other law enforcement agencies to shut down militant Islamic websites, this statement is broadly true. People today can access millions of words of information in seconds, from the comfort of their living room. Intriguingly, it is said that a fourteenth century English peasant would have encountered less information in his or her lifetime than one issue of The Guardian today.

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Any young freelancer trying to carve their niche may do worse than read accounts of what it was like trying to make ends meet as a journalist in London during the early 1800s. The first recommendation is not, as might be expected, Thackeray’s History of Pendennis but William Hazlitt’s essay On the Want of Money. Hazlitt lived the tedious reality of the hack writer’s straitened circumstances. He vividly describes ‘that uncertain precarious mode of existence’ in which money is either wanting or spent, so familiar to those ‘who write for bread and are paid by the sheet’. Every freelancer knows well that ‘intermediate state of difficulty and suspense between the last guinea or shilling and the next that we have the good luck to encounter’, that gap so full of ‘anxieties, misgivings, mortifications, meannesses, and deplorable embarrassments of every description’. Such mortifications characterised life on Grub-street for the early modern freelancer.

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A champion of hip hop and reggae, it seems appropriate that Benjamin’s latest offering is a double release, not of books, but records. His album, Naked, features production from Trevor Morais of sixties legends ‘Faron’s Flamingos’ providing a dub-heavy back drop to the hypnotic recitation of eleven new poems. A side project, The Naked & Mixed Up E.P. sees hip hop aficionado and 1Xtra founder, Rodney P step up to the mixing desk to remix four of the tracks from the album. The records blur the lines between performance poetry and rap, a distinction which Benjamin himself is keen to erase. ‘It’s what we call the griot. You don’t sit there and go, “Do you want to be a poet, or do you want to be a musician?” You use whatever means necessary to tell the story. Rap is just a form of street poetry anyway.’

During the 1980s, it’s fair to say that Benjamin Zephaniah had more in common with the anger-fuelled rap scene exploding in LA than with the poetic establishment in London, ‘Hip hop, reggae, who really cares / The essence is loud, the anger is clear’ he proclaims on ‘Uptown Downtown’. I wonder whether being a darling of Radio 4 and black envoy to the middle classes has compromised his message? Is there any way that his poetic vision could be taken as seriously as, say, NWA’s Fuck Tha Police? ‘I think most people move on and want to say things in different ways,’ he comments. ‘I wrote this poem, ‘Dis Policeman Keeps on Kicking Me to Death!’ which was like my Fuck Tha Police, but I wouldn’t write that now. What hip hop did really well and what NWA and Public Enemy did was tell it like it really is. When I performed ‘Dis Policeman…’ on television, black people were coming up to me and saying “At last, somebody’s out there and saying it.” Truth, telling it like it is, is an essential element of Benjamin’s poetry – ‘It’s the truth I’m telling you, poets don’t lie’ as he puts it, tongue in cheek, in ‘Touch’.

Truth and identity are inseparable for Benjamin, and as the title ‘Naked’ would suggest, it is a sense of truth that he is trying to uncover and unclothe. ‘I’m trying to strip myself down and just be as open and honest as I can’, he explains. Such a delight in the poetic truth puts one in mind of Keats’ famous lines in Ode on a Grecian Urn, ‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all / Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.’ An appropriate comparison given the Rastafarian poet’s love for the Romantics. ‘I love this idea that your poetry has a purpose, this is where we want to go, and I may not see it, but I’ll die for it’, he muses.

Benjamin Zephaniah has been called many things – a commentator, an activist, a black poet, a performance poet – and he has seemingly comfortably segued from one sphere into another. Integrity must be important to him, but difficult to maintain in a culture dominated by the bestseller list and the charts. When I ask him about the poet’s image and whether we should listen more closely to what poets have to say, Benjamin recalls the one stanza wonder, Murray Lachlan Young. Styled by his publishers as ‘The Million Pound Poet’ after his lucrative but ultimately unsuccessful deal with EMI just over ten years ago, Young soon disappeared from the scene. ‘It didn’t work’, he notes. ‘And the reason it didn’t work was because when people listen to a poet, they don’t care what you dress like, they don’t care what you look like, they don’t care what race you are…they just want to hear something true that speaks to them.’

Benjamin Zephaniah has certainly spoken to a lot of people. He has toured the world, read in schools across the country, published thirteen collections of poetry and three novels. His charisma and personality have set him apart from other vernacular poets such as John Agard, and have gained him support on both sides of the musical/poetic border. Alongside accessible poems, many for children, are fiercely political collections – the titles ‘Propa Propaganda’ and ‘Too Black, Too Strong’, as well as his much publicised refusal of an OBE paint the picture of an antiestablishment stalwart. Although Naked is celebratory in tone, thanks in part to the musical backing, the familiar rebarbative jibes can be found. ‘I’m one more nigga on your boot / Dis night you want dis coon to die’ he spits on ‘Homesick’, revealing that same distrust of politicians and police. ‘Dis is me. I hate dis government as much as I / Hated the one before it and I have reason / To believe that I will hate the one to come’, he states on the title poem. For Benjamin Zephaniah, hatred of government seems to be a central tenet of his identity. ‘More and more people are realising that there is a difference between…human beings and politicians. There’s all these political figures who claim to represent us, who are actually manipulating us for their own purpose’, he explains.

It is this elision of the personal and the political that appeals to Benjamin in the work of the Romantics, in particular that of Shelley. It is something that he admits trying to emulate on Naked. ‘Shelley is one of my favourite poets of all time, he was so passionate – people went on strike chanting his poetry. I’m trying to connect the personal and the political, Shelley showed that it could be done, that poetry could be revolutionary and personal at the same time.’ A particular favourite of Benjamin’s, ‘Song to the Men of England’ illustrates quite clearly why Shelley has a place in his heart – the themes, the rhyme and the emphatic short lines are echoed both by rap acts such as Public Enemy or NWA and by poets like Benjamin himself. Shelley’s lines,

The seed you sow another reaps;
The wealth ye find another keeps;
The robes ye weave another wears;
The arms ye forge another bears.

could almost as easily have emerged from 1980s Los Angeles as England in 1819. ‘It’s still relevant today’, he says of the poem. ‘It’s a really beautifully written plea to the people of England to think for themselves. It’s saying, “Why are you looking up to these people? You’re looking at them and saying ‘you’ve got wonderful clothes, you’ve got wonderful this and that’, but actually, you put it on them.” And there you are, naked.’

Questions of national identity are of massive importance to Benjamin and he openly rubbishes attempts by Gordon Brown and Trevor Phillips to singularly define ‘Britishness’. ‘Britain, by definition is multicultural’, he tells me. ‘How far back do you want to go? The Celts, the Angles, the Saxons, the Jutes, the Cillas, all different tribes came here. I think it’s only become an issue now because the cultures that are coming here are black and Asian. I say to anybody who talks about some fixed idea of Britishness, “Come on, when did that exist? When the Queen was German?” I always say it’s like the weather. It has different personalities. It’s still the weather, but it’s different across Britain.’ Benjamin remains philosophical about the recent racial tensions in light of the Mohammed cartoon scandal. He himself is unafraid of Islamic iconoclasm – ‘I see women in Purdah naked’ he rhymes on ‘Naked’. But, clichéd or not, ‘if you have freedom of speech, there’s got to be responsibility’ he concedes. Naked is littered with references to the war on terror and the implicit links between Muslims and terrorism. ‘The Muslims I know already hate the idea of being associated with suicide bombers’, he says. In ‘Rong Radio Station’, a meditation on the influence of the media on our political opinions, he complains of having been ‘battered’ and ‘brutalised’ into harbouring racist ideas himself. ‘I was beginning to believe that all Moslems were terrorist / And Christian terrorists didn’t exist’, he admits.

Perhaps Benjamin Zephaniah’s poetic quest is concisely summarised in his stated aim, ‘I want to kill educated ignorance.’ His vision is that of an open minded Britain in which political faction and intolerance are replaced with some kind of philanthropic humanism:

Live de life you love
Love de life you live
Live with massive passion
And live it positive.

But there is a problem here. The political comment, like the rhyme which can be innocently simple, even naïve, frequently lacks the punch that it requires to elevate it above Glastonbury-festival-soapbox socialism. It is appropriate that Banksy, once renegade graffiti artist whose pictures now more frequently grace the pages of the Guardian than the streets of East London, has provided the artwork for the album. Like Banksy’s stencils, many of the poems on Naked, will appeal to a wide audience but are no longer revolutionary. The template is familiar and one can’t help but be moved by the enthusiasm behind their creation, but the overall images are becoming tired, and crucially, no longer make us think. There is no doubt that Benjamin deserves his place in the poetic canon, and Naked is certainly an honest, and truthful collaboration. There is, however, a fine line between truth and truism, a line which is crossed too often for the project to be a true success.

Naked and The Naked and Mixed Up EP are out now on One Little Indian.

So, too, must the very earthly fact of having been a Head of State for fifty-six years – nine years longer than Fidel Castro. Since his formal inauguration soon after China invaded Tibet in 1950, the Dalai Lama has established and run a government in exile, welcoming thousands of his weak and bitter countrymen who have arrived in India after a treacherous journey over the Himalayas to join him. He has met Presidents, Prime Ministers, and Popes, and debated with Chairman Mao. He has campaigned for peaceful justice in Tibet before a comprimised and slothful United Nations. If this was not enough, he has the moral trump card of a Nobel Peace Prize on his mantle-piece.

Not an arrogant demi-God, his manner is more that of an ex-President, the easy nature of a man with nothing left to prove. This is not so far from the truth. “We now have a fully elected Tibetan Government-in-Exile,” he says. “They handle many negotiations, so I am in a position of semi-retirement.” Some retirement: the Dalai Lama continues his arduous diplomacy and fact finding missions, such as his recent visit to the Scottish Parliament to assess its success in operating autonomously from its big brother in Westminster.

The comparison between Scotland and Tibet is perhaps forced, but there are pertinent points. The Dalai Lama repeats the need for ‘justice’ in Tibet, by which he means the need for genuine autonomy in the region, especially over cultural matters. Chinese immigrants in Tibet now outnumber the traditional Tibetan population, leading to the erosion of native customs. Perhaps these could be preserved through Devolution, rather than full Independence? So far as governments are concerned, the foundation of a solid ethical system to underpin the administration is most important, rather than the type of democracy in place. A country and culture may flourish, he says, when a people take responsibility for their democracy. This is what the Tibetan people desire.

For those campaigning for Tibetan liberation, this is hardly a universally accepted solution, and many are critical of the Dalai Lama’s essentially fundamentalist adherance to peaceful negotiations, over any kind of armed response. He has never endorsed any of the various groups of resistance fighters that have grown and withered over the years, some of whom received support, for a time, from the USA.

“Violence always creates more problems than it solves. It always has side effects. The alternative is indeed a compromise through negotiation and dialogue.” Few people have the patience for this approach, which is probably why he won the Nobel Prize. It is as if the achievement of a partial goal, or a goal achieved piecemeal over a long period is preferable to a quicker and more violent solution with untold side-effects. If you have been reincarnated fourteen times, it’s easier to play the long game. Everything the Dalai Lama says suggests he considers himself just a part of an ongoing historical narrative – a chapter in a longer story, not a whole book.

An answer to the problem of Chinese occupation of Tibet is, he says the first of three main focal points in his life. The second is the promotion of human value. If we see the whole of humanity, indeed, the whole living world as one body, then violence is merely violence against oneself. These are common values which underpin all cultures and religions, and a focus on human value is gaining ground.

“Compare the world today, with the world during the two world wars and the cold war. Although there is a problem with terrorism and despite the war in Iraq, there is more peace than in previous years”, he says. “War is the mobilisation of large numbers of people to violence. It legitimises and legalises violence.” He notes the anti-war protests that arose in 2003, and suggests that the ideal and philosophy of peace and negotiation is gaining ground. He suggests the promotion of peace, negotiation and non-violence from kindergarten upwards: “the spirit of dialogue” could invigorate societies in which neighbourly compassion is on the wane. Indeed, by being loyal to humanity as the whole, then conflict becomes not only an appalling way to operate, but also a ridiculously inefficient way to organise things. What he is saying (and what there is not enough acceptance of in the world) is that since we have a shared humanity, then any war should be considered a civil war between humans. The concept of wholeness and unity within Buddhism, and especially within the Dalai Lama’s writings, is probably his most important message for the rest of us.

What advice does he have for The West? Do we begin by adopting a more Buddhist way of life? “Not necessarily,” is the surprising answer. “Different people find different religions and spiritualities effective. Religion is like medicine for the mind, and not everyone needs the same medicine. So there is no particular need to be Buddist.”

“My opinion is that the West has its own religious tradition, which is Judaeo-Christianity (and to some extend Muslim). So I always say it is better to keep your own religion, it is not easy to change your own religion. So I say that westerners should be sincere Chrisitians.”

What if you are not Christian? Even if there is a strong Christian tradition running through our culture, many people do not have faith and it could not be said that they practice any religion at all.

“Of course, if you have no interest in a particular religion, then OK, but be a good human being.” Most ethics and values, he says, come from common sense, not religious text or religious leaders. It is therefore possible for everyone to adopt the idea of secular ethics. “The meaning of secular has two different interpretations. My understanding of the English word is that ‘secular’ means the rejection of religion. But in Indian, secular means the respect of all religions, including the non-religious approach.”

“People everywhere want a happier life, a happier family, a happier community and society. Our inner values, such as a sense of responsibility, a sense of compassion and the oneness of the entire humanity, are values that you can reach without religion as such, and I think these are the basis of values that will bring about a happier humanity. So, with secular ethics, we do not talk about God or the next life or salvation, but just about making this life a happy one.”

These ideas of a co-operation, and examining all faiths, seem to be the basis of interfaith dialogue, and in turn ideas of multiculturalism. What, I ask the Dalai Lama, does multiculturalism mean to him, and what should it mean for us? He says it is a difficult question.

“Actually, my rough impression is that in the UK, ‘multiculturalism’ means a society where there are people from different backgrounds: Multi culture, multi racial, multi religion. In this sort of society, it means we need harmony, respect for each other, and to recognise others rights.”

The Dalai Lama suggests that most cultures and the morals that underpin them are based on religious faith, so to talk of multiculturalism is really to talk of “multi-religious faith”. A religion has its own unity and consistency, offering different ways of live, so religion and variety of religion is important, providing a diversity of ‘medicines for the soul’. What is important is finding the common ground between religions and therefore cultures, identifying those common morals that can unite us all. Multiculturalism, then, is not so much about celebrating differences, but emphasising our similarities.

For the Dalai Lama, arguing over religion is pointless. “From a Christian view-point, I have a Godless religion, so strictly speaking, I am a nihlist. And from my view-point, since the Christian value system does not accept the concept of nirvana (among other things), I may call them nihlists. I might as well argue with you over whether to eat spicy food or not. There is no use in arguing like this. They have been doing so in India for three-thousand years and have not come up with an solution!” Religion is personal, and cannot be imposed on a plural society which has a heritage of many different religions. Multiculturalism is the acknowledgement of this pluralism. It is denying that other cultures are a threat, and instead seeking the earthly, secular common ground, on which we can all agree. And it is in the concept of secular ethics that we can find this commonality of purpose.

The Dalai Lama is fortunate that his fame has ridden the wave of advances in global communication. In his claret and saffron robes and thick glasses, he is a highly visible figure. The index specimen of a wise old eastern sage, he has written several books on self-help and spirituality. One half expects expects him deliver life changing words of wisdom with every breath. Perhaps it is inevitable then, that his sentences seem to finish early, before the life changing bon mot has been delivered. This is, of course, an unfair expectation on the part of the listeners – the Dalai Lama never claims to have answers, just guidance from a the perspective of Buddhist philosophy. Nevertheless, the broadness of his approach has drawn criticism. The oneness of humanity and the need for unconditional peace may be self evident for a monk who has studied nothing else. But convincing other people, especially those who have been born into suffering under occupation, is a somewhat harder task.

This sort of persuasion may be beyond the Dalai Lama. In any case, it is probably not his goal and not the point of his office. His symbolical nature stands for something longer. He is a cypher for the long-term. When he invokes ideas of unity, the Dalai Lama is very aware that he is advocating a paradigm shift in our thinking. These ethics, he says, must be impressed upon children from a very young age, so a new generation of leaders will be born with “the ideas of peace and human value at their heart”. He, and we, will not live to see these ideas bear fruit. As it is with Tibet, so it is with lasting peace – a long term project.

Set against the background of the violence in occupied Palestine, the film sketches the lives of two young men who find themselves on the front line of the Palestinian resistance movement, for very different reasons, and with very different consequences. For Khaled, the allure of martyrdom lies in religion and infamy, for Said, his darkly brooding best friend, the motivation is personal and historical – to atone for his father’s collaboration with the settlers which resulted in his execution. The suicide mission they are sent on by local teacher and family friend Jamal promises to make the two men all that they perceive they are not – heroes, winners, and the rightful inhabitants of a peaceful kingdom in which they can live in the present, free from the violence which has formed the past and the uncertainty which haunts the future; a paradise – now. But all does not go according to plan and the two men find themselves separated on the way to Tel Aviv. Whether to go ahead with their mission after their initial effort is jeopardised is the question with which the two wrestle, a question which forces them to reassess their most fundamental beliefs.

The voice of common sense comes from Suha, the daughter of a famed Palestinian activist whose life was claimed in the conflict some years previously. The influence of her father has the obverse effect to that played on Said – she detests violence and is horrifed when she learns of his devastating intention to commit mass murder in the name of the Palestinian cause, especially given their developing romance.

Khaled, like his best friend, sees life in the Occupied Territories as ‘a life sentence’. He is unmoved by the pleas of Suha to shake off his delusions, ‘I’d rather have paradise in my head than live in this hell’, he exclaims. His almost infantile excitement at the prospect of his fate gives way to doubt just as Said’s initial reticence is galvanised into an unshaking commitment to right the wrongs of history, and of his father.

Yet Said and Khaled are not presented as fanatical monsters. Abu-Assad employs some wonderfully deft human touches- Khaled forgetting his sandwiches on the day of the mission and being pursued by his mother, the camera malfunctioning as the men make video statements for broadcast after their deaths. It is the avuncular Jamal who is chilling in his conviction and callousness, sending two of his friends to their deaths with a smile on his face. Khaled is comforted by the detailed organisation of the mission. ‘What will happen afterwards?’, he asks on the way to Tel Aviv. ‘You will be met by two angels’, Jamal replies, hesitating momentarily and drumming his fingers on the dashboard of the car. For Khaled, it is the reassurance he needs. Said’s mind is already made up.

Inevitable criticisms have been levelled at Abu-Assad for humanising suicide bombers, portraying them in a sympathetic light. The effect of Paradise Now is to bring to the forefront the human drama of the most inhuman of situations. We see in Said a normal young man driven to abnormal action by the conjunction of events beyond his control and a life that offers him nothing. His dedication is not to Islam, nor primarily to the liberation of the Occupied Territories, but to correcting mistakes from the past. Unlike Suha (and to an extent Khaled) he is unable to see the metaphor represented by the bomb belt –that of a restrictive force from which it is only possible to free oneself with the co-operation and cautious action of others, like the cycle of historical violence which calls him to arms. This film movingly illustrates the hopelessness of the situation in the Middle East and shows that whilst paradise may not be completely lost, it will take a long time to get there.