Jesse Jackson: You must launch war on poverty to stop teenage killings

LONDON will never defeat the scourge of teenage gang killings until it beats poverty, American civil rights campaigner the Rev Jesse Jackson said today.

In an exclusive interview with the Evening Standard, the charismatic black activist urged: "There must be a war, not just on knives but on poverty and illiteracy."

He also issued a challenge to next week's G20 summit, gave his verdict on Barack Obama's first two months and revealed why he thinks Britain has yet to have a black prime minister.

Mr Jackson, 67, is in London to give evidence to a home affairs select committee inquiry into Britain's epidemic of knife crime and violent youth gangs.

He has promoted projects to ban knife-carrying in schools and to educate youngsters about the dangers, but he said the real issues were about social justice.

"Most violence takes place among the poor and the alienated who do not feel they have a stake in society nor a future," he said.

"Many are driven more by fear than hope.

"They fear their future prospects and their present environment.

"Often, people will fight fear by seeking a false sense of power, and the gun, the knife and the gang can provide that false sense of power. Our challenge is to offset fear with hope."

The Baptist minister is an iconic figure after four decades in the civil rights movement.

Arriving for our interview in Leicester Square, he was constantly embraced by passers-by, among them Daniel Mogorosi, 91, who left his native South Africa 50 years ago.

He recalls Mr Jackson marching to Trafalgar Square to campaign for Nelson Mandela's freedom.

Mr Jackson believes police here and in the US have not focused enough on money launderers behind the illegal drugs industry.

"All the focus is on kids with guns and knives and not on the source of what I call a form of economic exploitative warfare," he said. "Drugs are a form of money and weapons are a form of control."

Raised in South Carolina, Mr Jackson attended a segregated high school before working for Martin Luther King.

He ran for president in 1984 and 1988 and in 2006 was voted the US's foremost black leader - just before Mr Obama's emergence.

Mr Obama's triumph in last year's election still leaves him emotional. On election night, he had tears streaming down his face in Chicago's Grant Park.

"I've thought about that night a lot," he said. "It was the joy of the moment but also the journey to get there.

"You know, I was arrested in July 1960 trying to use a public library and over these 40 years I've seen jailings, marches and martyrs. And I thought about the martyrs who could not be there, like Dr King. So many people beaten and killed... and in my mind's eye I could see little children in Kenya, Haiti and Brixton who were seeing a new face of America rise to the top."

And has the Obama presidency lived up to expectations so far? "Oh yeah, by the fact he's moved quickly, because we are in a desperate [economic] situation."

He challenged Britain's political elite to nurture a future black prime minister, claiming that America's vigorous tradition of protest contrasted with British "denial" of a problem.

"It is not that American blacks changed - whites did," he said "Those who once locked us out of school are now recruiting us.

"But while there have been some protests in Britain led by people like Bernie Grant and Diane Abbott, Britain has been in some senses more in denial."

Next week's G20 in London will be a chance for economic "heavy lifting" but Mr Jackson said: "Why do they give gifts to the banks but only a loan to the automotive factories?"

He added: "If we globalise capital, we must also globalise human rights. Those in power must make room for those on the margins."

Mr Jackson dined with Bollywood actress Shilpa Shetty and Labour MP Keith Vaz at Kensington's Bombay Brasserie last night.