Last updated 19:42, Thursday, 10 April 2008

FIVE deaths are indelibly printed on my mind: my dad’s, Elvis Presley’s and the three men who helped shape my thoughts and attitudes as much as anyone else in the world.

Those three were John F Kennedy, his brother Bobby, and Martin Luther King.

Of course, as well as inspiring many of my generation, the three established themselves in history for the worst of all reasons - their violent deaths at the hands of fanatics.

It is hard to believe that last Friday was the 40th anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King, on the balcony of his motel room in Memphis, Tennessee.

His death came after his last recorded speech, a prophetic Moses-like promise that his people would see the Promised Land, even if he was not there to enter it with them.

He was cut down before he saw the fruits of his endless labour and certainly 40 years before he would see a black man looking like a winner in the race for the American presidency.

Forty years after his death we can almost taste the milk and honey of the Promised Land. But are we there yet?

I think not. Certainly there are laws now protecting those who can’t protect themselves.

In the United States and here people of all races, colours and creeds have the right to live and worship and be respected.

And elsewhere in the world we have seen things happen that can only be described as miraculous; apartheid has gone but the problems in Africa since, and Zimbabwe in particular, shows how far we still have to go.

So the Promised Land is certainly there. All we need to do is take a few more paces and we will reach it. But the sad fact is that we are not taking those steps.

The law may be protecting people but our attitudes have changed too little.

We still hate and fear each other because of our religions, because of our colour and because of our class.

We still treat people who are different with suspicion, and we still fear what we do not know.

We don’t love our neighbour. We want more than them.

We don’t mind who we step on in the race to the top and we don’t even let our children play any more because we are too fearful of all the evils and dangers in the world.

We have given freedom to people and then taken it away by a stranglehold of debt or by withholding life saving drugs that they can’t afford.

What a shame and what an indictment!

But it is not all doom and gloom. Think about Live 8 and that whole G8 summit in the UK. I know that in the end it did not achieve all it was supposed to.

But imagine the leaders of the eight most wealthy nations in the world actually taking the time to seriously consider poverty in the world instead of just concentrating, as usual, on how to accumulate more wealth and more power for themselves.

Imagine pop stars and movie stars giving such considerable time and energy to raising the profile of those too poor, too sad and too hopeless to plead their own case.

Then there are the telethons like the recent Sport Relief where people give and give more for those less fortunate.

There is still hatred, there is still suspicion and, as we all know, there are still wars - and wars waged in the name of race and colour and, more than anything, in the name of creed.

But just as you wonder why John and Bobby Kennedy or Martin Luther King or even Abraham Lincoln put themselves in the firing line, somebody does something kind or thoughtful or someone from nowhere and nothing rises to prominence.

All it proves is that none of us are perfect. Goodness, if we believed all we heard about the womanising ways of the Kennedy brothers and even Martin Luther King, we would see that they were anything but perfect.

But they cared, tried and fought for the freedom, dignity and welfare of others.

We might never get the chance to lead our people into the Promised Land but if we could even just be willing followers, if we are only prepared to take part in the journey then you and me and the guy next door can work together to make the world a better place.