The Lament of the SS Mendi

Radio 4, 11am

There is no reason for the majority of British listeners to have heard of the tragedy that befell the troop ship Mendi on February 21, 1917. After all, few South Africans will know that more than 600 members of the 5th Battalion, South African Native Labour Corps died in the freezing waters off the Isle of Wight. Few white South Africans, that is - the victims were mainly black, men who had volunteered to fight for King and Empire but were being shipped to France to dig trenches (black men being taught how to shoot white men not being deemed a wise idea). They died after the Mendi was cut in two by another ship that was travelling too fast in thick fog, a crime of seamanship compounded by the negligent captain's failure to launch boats to search for survivors. The Scots poet Jackie Kay tells the story, revealing the accumulation of sloppiness, callousness and most probably racism that resulted in such a high death toll. Prepare to be angered.

The Moral Maze

Radio 4, 8pm

Had Michael Buerk and his coterie of cynics been broadcasting via the cat's whisker in 1917 they would have had a field day with the sad fate of the Mendi. Instead Melanie Philips, Michael Portillo, Kenan Malik and Claire Fox will have to skewer other, lesser moral criminals on the rotisserie of their rhetoric (like it? I'm quite proud of that one). Still, given the moral turpitude that surrounds us at every turn, there should be more than enough to keep their sense of moral outrage ticking over for the next five weeks.

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