Posts Tagged 'Dublin'
Simon Webb's Speech to the Traditional Britain Group: A Critique
One of the great commenters on this blog asked me the other day if I'd watched Simon Webb's speech to the Traditional Britain Group, which has been posted up on YouTube. Webb is the man behind History Debunked, in which he criticises, refutes and comments on various historical myths and distortions. Most of these are against Black history, as well as racial politics. Occasionally he also presents his opinions on gay and gender issues. Like other YouTubers and internet commenters, you need to use your own discretion when watching his material. Sometimes, when he cites his sources, he's right. At other times he's more probably wrong. As much of his material is against mass immigration, particularly Black and Asian, and he believes that there is a racial hierarchy when it comes to intelligence, there's some discussion of the man's political orientation. He's definitely right-wing, reading the Torygraph and attacking Labour as 'high spending'. But it's a question of how right-wing. Some people have suggested he's English Democrat or supports a similar extreme right fringe party.
The other day he gave a speech at the Traditional Britain Group, which is a particularly nasty set of rightists within the Conservative party. There was a scandal a few years ago, you'll recall, when Jacob Rees-Mogg turned up at one of their dinners. Mogg claimed he didn't know how far right they were, but was shown to be somewhat economical with the actualite when someone showed that he'd actually been warned against associating with them. They are fervently against non-White immigration and some of them have a dubious interest in the Nazis and the Third Reich. I've also been told that their members include real Nazis and eugenicists, which is all too credible. They also want to privatise the NHS. I found this out after finding myself looking at their message board a few years ago. They were talking about how they needed to privatise the health service, but it would have to be done gradually and covertly because at the moment the masses were too much in favour of it. Which has been Tory policy for decades.
Webb's speech is about half and hour long, and takes in slavery, White English identity and how Blacks have taken ownership of the subject so that it's now part of theirs, White guilt over it and the industrial revolution and how White Brits are being made to feel ashamed of imperialism. He also blamed Tony Blair for mass immigration and claimed that it was due to this that the health service was collapsing.
The British Empire
He started off by saying that when he was young, everyone believed that the British Empire was a good thing and that we had brought civilisation to Africa and other parts of the world. I don't doubt this. He's older than me, and so I can believe that the received view of the Empire in his time was largely positive. Even the Labour party broadly supported imperialism. Its official stance was that Britain held these countries in trust until they were mature enough for self-government. This has changed, and there is a general feeling, certainly on the left, that it's something we should be ashamed of. But this has come from historians and activists discussing and revealing the negative aspects of colonialism, such as the genocide and displacement of indigenous peoples, enslavement, forced labour and massacres. The end of empires tend to be particularly bloody, as shown in the various nationalist wars that ended the Ottoman Empire in the Balkans and the French possession of Algeria. Britain fought similar bloody wars and committed atrocities to defend its empire, as shown in the massive overreaction in Kenya to the Mao Mao rebellion. Jeremy Black, in his history of the British Empire, also argues that support for the empire fell away from the 1970s onwards as British youth became far more interested in America. I think the automatic condemnation of British imperialism is wrong and one-sided. It's also somewhat hypocritical, as the same people condemning the British Empire don't condemn other brutal imperial regimes like the Ottomans. It's also being used by various post-colonial regimes to shift attention and blame for their own failings. But all this doesn't change the fact that some horrific things were done during the Empire, which politicians and historians have to deal with. Hence the shame, although in my view there should be a space for a middle position which condemns the atrocities and celebrates the positive.
Britain and Slavery
He then talks about how slavery is now identified solely with Black transatlantic servitude. But he argues that the White English can also claim slavery as part of their identity. He talks of the first mention of the English in Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People, when pope Gregory the Great saw some English children for sale in the slave market in Rome. Asking who such beautiful children were, he was told they were Angles. At which Gregory punned, 'Non Anglii, sed angeli' – 'Not Angles but angels'. At the time of the Domesday Book 10 per cent of the English population were slaves. And the mob that tore down Colston's statue in Bristol were unaware that the city had been exported English slaves over a millennium before. These were shipped to the Viking colonies in Ireland – Dublin, Wexford and other towns – from whence they were then trafficked internationally. Slavery existed long before Black transatlantic slavery. The first record we have of it is from 4000 years ago in the form of document from the Middle East recording the sale of slaves and pieces of land. While they weren't aware of transatlantic slavery at school, they knew slavery existed through studying the Bible. The story of Joseph and his brothers, and the Israelites in Egypt. But slavery has now become identified exclusively with Black slavery and is part of the Black identity. It's because we're supposed to feel guilty about slavery and feel sorry for Blacks that Black people over overrepresented in adverts, on television dramas and even historical epics, such as the show about the Tudors where half the actors were Black.
Webb is right about slavery existing from ancient times. There are indeed documents from the ancient near eastern city of Mari in Mesopotamia recording the sale of slaves along with land and other property, as I've blogged about here. One of the problems the abolitionists faced was that slavery existed right across the world, and so their opponents argued that it was natural institution. They therefore also claimed that it was consequently unfair and disastrous for the government to abolish it in the British empire. He's right about Pope Gregory and the English slaves, although the word 'Angli' refers to the Angles, one of the Germanic tribes that settled and colonised England with the Saxons and Jutes after the fall of the Roman Empire. Angles in Anglo-Saxon were Englas, hence Engla-land – England, land of the Angles, and Englisc, English. Bristol did indeed export English slave to Ireland. Archbishop Wulfstan preached against it in the 11th century. We were still doing so in 1140, when visiting clergy from France were warned against going for dinner aboard the Irish ships in the harbour. These would lure people aboard with such promises, then slip anchor and take them to Ireland. The Irish Vikings also imported Black slaves. One chronicle reports the appearance of a consignment of blamenn, blue or black men in Old Norse, in Dublin. David Olasuga has also claimed that they imported 200 Blacks into Cumbria. Bristol's export of White English slaves is mentioned in a display about it in the city's M Shed Museum, which also contains the statue of Edward Colston. I do agree with Webb that there is a problem with popular attitudes towards slavery. Its presentation is one-sided, so that I don't think many people are aware of it and its horrors outside the British Empire, nor how White Europeans were also enslaved by the Muslim Barbary pirates. I very strongly believe that this needs to be corrected.
Black Overrepresentation on TV
I don't think it's guilt over slavery alone that's responsible for the large number of Black actors being cast on television, particularly the adverts. I think this is probably also due to commercial marketing, the need to appeal to international audiences and attempts to integrate Blacks by providing images of multiracial Britain. Many adverts are made for an international audience, and I think the use of Blacks has become a sort of visual shorthand for showing that the company commissioning the advert is a nice, anti-racist organisation, keen to sell to people of different colours across the world without prejudice. At home, it's part of the promotion of diversity. Blacks are, or are perceived, as acutely alienated and persecuted, and so in order to combat racism the media has been keen to include them and present positive images of Black life and achievement. There are organisations dedicated to this task, such as the Creative Diversity Network, as well as systems that grade companies according to how they invest in multicultural enterprises, such as television and programmes with suitably racially diverse casts. Webb has himself talked about this. He's also stated that Blacks are disproportionately represented on television, constituting only 6 per cent of the population but a very large proportion of actors in TV programmes and adverts. This might simply be because other, larger ethnic groups, such as Asians, aren't so concerned with entering the entertainment industry and so aren't represent to the same extent. Hence, Blacks sort of stand in for people of colour as a whole. As for adverts, I've also wondered if some of this might be purely commercial – a concern to sale to an emergent, affluent, Black market, perhaps. It also struck me that it might also be a make work programme. As I understand it, there are too many drama graduates for too few roles. This is particularly going to hit Blacks and other ethnic minorities because Britain at the moment is still a White majority country. There have consequently been demands for colour blind casting, as in Armando Iannucci's recent film version of Oliver Twist. A year or so ago one Black actor announced that there should be more roles for Blacks or else they would go to America. As for the casting of a Black woman as Anne Boleyn, this seems to follow the theatre, where colour blind casting has existed for years. I think it also follows the tacit demand to create an image of the British past that conforms to modern multicultural society rather than how it really was. And some of it, I think, just comes from the feeling that as modern Blacks are as British as their White compatriots, so they should not be excluded from appearing as historical characters who were White. I think these considerations are just as likely, or more likely, to be the causes of the disproportionate number of Blacks appearing on camera than simply pity for them as the victims of slavery.
Blair Not Responsible for Mass Immigration
Now we come to his assertion that Blair was responsible for mass immigration. When he made this declaration, there were shouts, including one of 'traitor'. I don't believe that Blair was responsible for it, at least, not in the sense he means. The belief that he was, which is now widespread on the anti-immigrant right, comes from a single civil servant. This official claimed that Blair did so in order to change the ethnic composition of Britain and undermine the Tories. But did he really? This comes from a single individual, and without further corroboration, you can't be sure. In fact Blair seems to have tried to cut down on immigration, particularly that of non-Whites. In order to dissuade people from coming here, he stopped immigrants from being able to apply for welfare benefits. The food banks now catering to native Brits were originally set up to feed those immigrants, who were no longer eligible for state aid. I also recall David Blunkett stating that they were going to cut down on immigration. The Guardian also accused Blair of racism over immigration. He had cut down on non-White immigration from outside Europe, while allowing White immigration from the EU and its new members in eastern Europe. The right had also been concerned about rising Black and Asian immigration for decades, and in the 1980s Tory papers like the Depress were publishing articles about unassimilable ethnic minorities. This started before Blair, and I don't think he was deliberately responsible for it.
But I believe he was responsible for it in the sense that many of the migrants come from the countries Blair, Bush, Obama and Sarco destroyed or helped to destroy in the Middle East, such as Libya, Iraq and Syria. Blair had made some kind of deal with Colonel Gaddafy to keep migrants from further south in Libya, rather than crossing the Mediterranean to Europe. This was destroyed when Gaddafy's regime was overthrown by Islamists. The result has been the enslavement of Black African migrants, and renewed waves of refugees from North Africa fleeing the country's collapse.
He also stated that the industrial revolution, which was something else that was traditionally a source of pride, is now considered a cause for shame instead. Britain had been its birthplace and given its innovations to the rest of the world. However, we are now expected to be ashamed of it through its connection to slavery. The cotton woven in the Lancashire mills came from the American slave south, while sugar came from the slave colonies of the Caribbean. We're also supposed to be ashamed of it because it's the cause of climate change, for which we should pay reparations.
The Industrial Revolution and Climate Change
Okay, I've come across the claim that the industrial revolution was financed by profits from the slave trade and that it was based on the processing of slave produced goods. However, this is slightly different from condemning the industrial revolution as a whole. You can lament the fact that slavery was a part of this industrialisation, while celebrating the immense social, technological and industrial progress itself. After all, Marx states in the Communist Manifesto that it has rescued western society from rural idiocy. The demand that Britain should feel ashamed about the industrial revolution because of climate change comes from Greta Thunberg. It is, in my view, monumentally stupid and actually shows an ignorance of history. It's based on an idealisation of pre-technological societies and an idealisation of rural communities. It's a product of European romanticism, mixed with contemporary fears for the future of the planet. But the agrarian past was no rural idyll. People in the agricultural societies before the urbanisation of the 19th century had very utilitarian attitudes to the environment. It was a source of resources that could be used and exploited. The nostalgia for an idealised rural past came with the new generation of urban dwellers, who missed what they and their parents had enjoyed in the countryside. And rural life could be extremely hard. If you read economic histories of the Middle Ages and early modern period, famine is an ever present threat. It still was in the 19th century. The Irish potato famine is the probably the best known example in Ireland and Britain, but there were other instances of poverty, destitution and starvation across the UK and Europe. Industrialisation has allowed a far greater concentration of people to live than would have been possible under subsistence agriculture. Yes, I'm aware that overpopulation is a problem, that industrial pollution is harming the environment and contributing to the alarming declining in animal and plant species. But technological and science hopefully offer solutions to these problems as well. And I really don't want to go back to a subsistence economy in which communities can be devastated by crop failure.
The call for climate reparations, I think, comes from Ed Miliband, and in my view it shows how out of touch and naive he is. I have no problem the Developed World giving aid to some of those countries threatened by climate change, such as the Pacific islands which are threatened with flooding due to the rise in sea levels. But some countries, I believe, are perfectly capable of doing so without western help. One of these is China, which also contributes massively to carbon emissions and which I believe has also called for the payment of climate reparations. China is an emerging economic superpower, and I see no reason why the west should pay for something that it's doing and has the ability to tackle. I am also very sceptical whether such monies would be used for the purposes they're donated. Corruption is a massive problem in the Developing World, and various nations have run scams to part First World donors and aid agencies from their money. When I was at the Empire and Commonwealth Museum one of these was a scheme for a hydroelectric dam in Pakistan. The Pakistani government was calling for western aid to finance the project. Britain refused, sensing a scam, for which we were criticised. Other countries happily gave millions, but the dam was never built. All a fraud. I suspect if climate reparations were paid, something similar would also happen with the aid money disappearing into kleptocrats' pockets. There's also the problem of where the tax burden for the payment of these reparations would fall. It probably wouldn't be the rich, who have enjoyed generous tax cuts, but the British working class through indirect taxes. In short, it seems to me to be a colossally naive idea.
But these ideas don't seem to be widespread. When he announced them, there were shouts from the audience to which Webb responded that it was coming, and they should wait a few years. Perhaps it will, but I've seen no enthusiasm or even much mention of them so far. They were mentioned during the COP 27 meeting, and that's it. Thunberg's still around, but after all these years I think she's somewhat passe. At the moment I don't think these ideas are issues.
Mass Immigration Not the Cause of NHS Crisis
Now let's examine his statement that it's due to immigration that the NHS is in the state it's in. This is, quite simply, wrong. He correctly states that while Britain's population has grown – London's has nearly doubled and Leicester's grown by 30 per cent – there has been no similar provision of medical services. No new hospitals have been built. As a result, where once you could simply walk into your doctor's and expect to be seen, now you have to book an appointment. And when it comes to hospitals, it's all the fault of immigrants. He talks about a specific hospital in London, and how the last time he was in that area, he was the only White Brit in the queue. This was because immigrants don't have GPs, and so go to the hospital for every problem. We also have the problem of sick and disabled people from the developing world coming to the country for the better services we offer. A woman from the Sudan with a special needs child will therefore come here so that her child can have the treatment it wouldn't get in the Sudan.
I dare say some of this analysis is correct. Britain's population has grown largely due to immigration. One statistic released by a right-wing group said that immigration was responsible for 80 per cent of population growth. It's probably correct, as Chambers Cyclopedia stated in its 1987 edition that British birthrates were falling and that it was immigration that was behind the rise in the UK population. I don't know London at all, and I dare say that many of the immigrants there may well not have had doctors. I can also quite believe that some immigrants do come here for our medical care. There was a case a few weeks ago of a Nigerian woman, who got on a flight to London specifically so that she could have her children in a British hospital. I think this was a case of simple health tourism, which has gone on for years, rather than immigration.
But this overlooks the fact that the problems of the NHS has been down to successive Thatcherite regimes cutting state medical care in Britain all under the pretext of making savings and not raising taxes. Thatcher closed hospital wards. So did Tony Blair, when he wasn't launching his PFI initiative. This was supposed to build more hospitals, but led to older hospitals being closed and any new hospitals built were smaller, fewer and more expensive. Cameron started off campaigning against hospital closures, and then, once he got his backside in No. 10, carried on with exactly the same policy. Boris Johnson claimed that he was going to build forty hospitals, which was, like nearly everything else the obese buffoon uttered, a flat lie. And Tweezer, Truss and Sunak are doing the same. Doctors surgeries have also suffered. Many of them have been sold off to private chains, which have maximised profits by closing down those surgeries that aren't profitable. The result is that people have been and are being left without doctors. If you want an explanation why the NHS is in the state it is, blame Thatcher and her heirs, not immigrants.
While Webb has a point about the social and political manipulation of historical issues like the slave trade and the British Empire, these aren't the reasons for the greater appearance of Black actors and presenters on television. Blair wasn't responsible for mass immigration, and it's underfunding and privatisation, not immigration, that's responsible for the deplorable state of the health service. But he's speaking to the wrong people there anyway, as the TBG would like to privatise it.
I am not saying it is wrong to discuss these issues, but it is wrong to support a bunch of Nazis like the TBG, who will exploit them to recreate all the social inequality, poverty and deprivation of pre-modern Britain.
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Brexiteer Michael Heaver Reveals Reclaim Party's Exciting Warmed-Up Tory Leftovers Policies
Michael Heaver's another right-wing, Brexiteer YouTuber. Most of his content seems to be about how wonderful Brexit it, or would be, if it wasn't for those evil whining remoaners and the European Union trying to sabotage it all the time. He seems to have gone from the Tories to backing the Reclaim party, as well as wanting the return of Johnson. Today he put up a piece revealing Reclaim's new, (ahem, cough, cough) policies. Laurence Fox's party will be fielding 600 candidates, which, if true, is definitely a challenge to the Tories and the other established parties. Their policies are:
Do Brexit properly.
Net Zero immigration.
Cut taxes.
I think there's also something about getting rid of the Green agenda. And I also think they want to support Johnson's return to power, because the other Tory leadership candidates are so terrible and will hand the government over to Starmer. Or such is the fear amongst some Tories.
This is hogwash. Let's go through them.
Do Brexit properly: Can't be done. Uh-huh, no way. It's simply impossible, like squaring the circle or redefining PI as equalling four, which is what the Nebraska legislature did way back in the 19th century. If this had gone ahead, it would have meant that clocks would have gained fifteen minutes everyone hour. But like 'Get Brexit done' it makes a good slogan. You can't enact Brexit without reneging on one of the key policies of the Good Friday Agreement, which was an open border with the Republic. It's either that, or the Irish backstop in the middle of the sea, thus alienating the Loyalists. Johnson got into power claiming that he'd 'get Brexit done'. Well, he did, and it's been chaos. Britain's trade with the EU has taken a massive hit, there are real threats to British industry and agriculture, the financial sector the Tories and Blairites have been so keen to protect and establish London as a international hub has also been threatened. By Brexiteer Tories, like Jacob Rees-Mogg, who moved his investment business across the briny to Dublin. All while he was telling the rest of us that Brexit would be A Very Good Thing Indeed. There were delays at Dover months or even years ago because of the additional red tape added to hauliers and other travellers going to the continent now that we were no longer part of the EU. That red tape is also damaging our music industry, as it's made it extremely difficult for British musicians and performers to travel over there to perform.
We were told that the Tories had an 'oven ready deal' with Europe for Brexit.
We were told that the millions saved on our EU contributions would be spent on the NHS.
We were lied to.
And this, as the late, great Max Headroom used to say, is simply 'more of the same'. Except that he was talking about epic, rocking 80s pop music and videos.
Net zero immigration. More red meat for the Tory faithful, and other sections of the population worried about immigration. Mostly non-White immigration. And there are real moral and practical problems with that. Firstly, there's the moral question of denying asylum to people, who may very well be in real danger of persecution in their countries of origin. I think many of the prospective migrants properly are coming here for economic reasons. One former channel migrant was interviewed on GB News or Talk TV, and he said that most of the other immigrants he was with were trying to dodge military service in their home countries and hoped to settle so that they could bring their families over. I can't say I entirely blame them for wanting to do so, especially when these countries are dirt-poor, corrupt dictatorships like Eritrea. But nevertheless, I think there are people trying to get here because they face real threats to their lives for their views or simply because of their ethnicity or religion. Gay people around the world face persecution, particularly in Africa. Go back a few years, and there were the Yezidis, whose women were raped and enslaved for sex by ISIS. Last year there were Afghans desperate to escape the Taliban takeover. And in the past few months Britain and other European nations have taken in refugees from Ukraine, escaping Putin's genocidal onslaught. I don't see how you can morally turn at least some of these away.
Then there's the economic aspect. As Buddyhell over on Guy Debord's Cat, and just about everyone else on the web has point out, Britain needs immigrant doctors, nurses and other workers for the NHS. Yes, we should be training our own. But we haven't been doing so ever since one of the Tory ministers – I think it may even have been Enoch Powell – decided in the 1960s to solve the shortage of NHS doctors by encouraging them to come from Pakistan and India. I can't see the Tories wanting to spend the money to pay for the proper training for doctors and other medical professionals. Not when they seem content to drive them away by not paying them what they deserve and overburdening them with work and paperwork.
People also immigrate to Britain and settle down and raise families as part of their work. I know a number of people, who came to this country to work, and particularly on ground-breaking scientific or engineering projects. This country is short of scientists, engineers and skilled technicians. These are precisely the type of people we should be encouraging to come here, if only so that they can pass these skills on to Brits.
Education is a major part of this. There's a movement of academics, both teaching staff and students, between countries and across continents. Most university's, I'd say, have international students, some of whom are going to try to settle down here. Academics also take up posts at universities and colleges right across the world. When I was studying archaeology at Bristol, several of the department staff were foreign. One was Portuguese while another was German, for example. At the same time, archaeological work takes people right across the globe. At the time I was there, there was great excitement about Neolithic discoveries in Ukraine. One of the lecturers had also helped carry out excavations of archaic homo sapiens remains in Romania. Another leading member of the department had also been excavating in Iran. Some of these academics will no doubt wish to settle down and make their home here. Either way, I can see Brexit and a zero-net immigration policy causing real problems with universities obtaining needed foreign academic staff.
And it's going to be hypocritical. The Tories have, in my recollection, shown themselves perfectly willing to grant British citizenship to anyone rich enough. Just as Rishi Sunak got his green card to work in America by paying a million dollars. I strongly suspect that if Reclaim got in, we'd have more of the same. It would be easy immigration for the global super-rich, and keep out for everyone else.
Cutting taxes: More of the twaddle you've been hearing from the Tory leadership candidates. What this means is cutting taxes for the rich while passing the burden on to ordinary people at the bottom. This is supposed to encourage more investment, and hence more jobs. Balderdash. The money saved simply rests in the elite's bank accounts. Meanwhile, because there's less money going into the exchequer, the Tories and Reclaim after them will tell us all that cuts need to be made, more pushing of the mythical NHS waste, profligate spending on the welfare state, too many civil servants and so on. The result, more punitive cuts to the NHS, more destruction of the welfare state, more people struggling to survive on food banks, more starvation, malnutrition and grinding poverty.
Attacking the Green Agenda: The scientific consensus supports climate change, and the Green New Deal promises more jobs as well as combating threats to the environment. But the right don't believe in climate change, and, with money coming in from Big Oil, they really don't want to end our dependence on fossil fuels any time soon. All last week while the rest of us sweltered they told us that the rising heat was nothing to worry about, was not cause by global warming, and we were all wimps and weaklings for thinking otherwise. I wonder if Reclaim and its bosses also have their places booked for the biodomes the rich will no doubt retreat into as the deserts march on London, Birmingham and anywhere else.
Bring back Johnson: Really? There are people who really won't be told. There's a petition up for his return. Just like there are Americans who want the return of Trump. That's incredible. Aside from the party politics, Trump was a disastrous president. A friend lent me a book on his presidency, and what came across most strongly was how incompetent he was. He quarraled with his leading generals, one of whom actually swore at him while telling him precisely what he was in the White House. He made up policies on the spur of the moment and then changed his mind just as suddenly. Appointments were made with important visitors, but not kept. Or he didn't tell his staff about them, just forgot them. He deliberately undermined leading White House staff, replacing them and then doing the same to the new replacements, all of whom were determined to undermine their predecessors and competitors. And rather than draining the swamp, Trump was massively corrupt giving government contracts to friends and anybody else, including the Russians, who were prepared to stump up cash. Government monies that were intended to protect workers on bread and butter issues like pensions vanished in various politicos pockets, where they gave it to their favourite businessmen.
Johnson has been similarly incompetent. He was grotesquely tactless and incompetent as foreign secretary. Once he got his behind in No. 10 he showed himself unwilling to knuckle down and do some actual work. It seemed that every few weeks he was heading off to Chequers for a holiday. He caught Covid because he personally broke lockdown rules. And he gave valuable PPE contracts to his friends and other Tory donors. The result was problems with supply. But no worries, eh? His mates were all right. The parties were just a symptom of a man, who doesn't like to work, loves the power and the popularity that comes with it, at least in his own imagination, and really, really, has zero sympathy with ordinary working people and their problems.
And he's still clinging on to power, just like Gordon Brown tried to do with a deal with the Lib Dems after he lost the election to Cameron. Ian Hislop got very excited about this on Have I Got News For You, calling him 'Mr Barnacle'. Well, Johnson is behaving exactly like the marine mollusc, and the same should apply: 'get ye gone!' It says something about the effectiveness of establishment propaganda that someone really thinks he's done such a good job they want to keep him in power.
But back to the Reclaim party, there's nothing new here. It's just the same old Brexiteer Tory policies, promoted by a few new faces. And I honestly can't see many of them getting a seat. Some might, but I foresee a lot of lost deposits, compounded with them splitting the Tory vote in certain quarters so that a Lib Dem or possibly Labour candidate get in.
I have a feeling they'll go the way of UKIP and the Brexit party as another right-wing group trying to 'break the mould of British politics'.
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Is the BBC Really Trying to Change the Name of the Anglo-Saxon Period Because They Think It's Racist?
Simon Webb posted this video on his 'History Debunked' channel nearly three weeks ago, on the 23 November 2020. In it he discusses the BBC's decision to stop calling the period between the departure of the Romans in 410 AD and the Norman Conquest of 1066 the 'Anglo-Saxon period' because the term is apparently perceived as racist. A BBC programme he was listening to on the radio referred to it as 'the early medieval period' and there is, or was, apparently, an article in the Corporation's BBC History Magazine stating that there are moves to change it, as it deters Black people studying it because they associate 'Anglo-Saxon' with White supremacy. And in America there are moves to stop using the term altogether and simply refer to it as the early middle ages.
Webb takes this view that this is an attempt by the Beeb to rewrite the past so that it resembles the multicultural present. But he points out that his was the period when what had been Roman Britain was settled by Angles, Saxons and Jutes. 'English' comes from the word 'Anglish', for Angles, who also supplied the country's name, England, from Engla Land, 'Land of the Angles'. He states that this process of settlement is described in the last chapter of his book, Life in Roman London, published by the History Press, which is one of the few popular treatments of this subject. As for the term's racial connotations, well, the Anglo-Saxons were White. Webb shakes his head in amazement at this attempt to rewrite history in the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement, and wonders where it will end.
The BBC wish to replace longstanding historical expressions – YouTube
I'm not sure what's actually going on here. Historians have referred to the period between the Fall of the Roman Empire and the Norman Conquest for a long time as the early Middle Ages. It used to be referred to as the Dark Ages. Some older readers of this blog will no doubt remember Michael Wood's great series, In Search of the Dark Ages, broadcast by the Beeb in the '70s/'80s. However, historians and archaeologists have largely stopped calling the period that as more has been found out about it, and the period has increasingly seemed to be less dark. I think it might still be used for the couple of centuries after the departure of the Romans from Britain and the emergence of Anglo-Saxon England. Other terms used for those centuries are 'Post-Roman' and 'Sub-Roman'. And the term 'early Middle Ages' of course makes perfect sense for the rest of Europe, which weren't settled by the Anglo-Saxons, although northern Germany, the Netherlands and Jutland in Denmark were their ancestral homelands from which they migrated to Britain. The term also makes good sense for Ireland and the Celtic parts of modern Britain, Wales and Scotland. But in the context of English history, the period absolutely should be called the Anglo-Saxon period. That's what the people, who founded and created England have been called following King Alfred himself. There were Black people seen in the British Isles and Ireland during this period. Round about the 8th-9th century or so the Vikings of Dublin brought in a shipload of 'blamenn' – blue, or Black men. I think the historian David Olusoga has also talked about the arrival of another shipload of Black people in Cumbria round about the same period. Medieval people certainly knew that Black people existed. They describe them as living in Africa and believed they had acquired their Black complexion through being burnt by the sun. But Black people in Europe at the time would have been very, very rare and the vast majority of the population would have been White. That's not racism, but a simple statement of historical fact.
I'm afraid that racism has cast a very long shadow over this period ever since the Nazis. For many years I was a member of a Dark Age re-enactment society, Regia Anglorum. This tried to recreate the history of the British Isles round about 1066. While re-enactment in Britain is largely acceptable, except for World War II, or at least, the idiots who want to dress up as the SS, in Germany it's regarded very much with loathing and contempt. This is because of the appropriation of the history and archaeology of the Teutonic tribes and the Vikings by the Nazis. The overtly Fascist fringe has done the same over here, harking back to the Celts and especially the Anglo-Saxons. As a result, some perfectly historical symbols were banned for very obvious reasons. Some of the pottery from migration period Anglo-Saxon graves is decorated with the Swastika, and you can find it on rock carvings in Scandinavia. But obviously no self-respecting re-enactor for the early middle ages is going to use it on their clothing or equipment because of the connections with Nazism. I can't talk about re-enactment as a whole, as it's a very large milieu and there were are large number of different groups, but the organisation I joined was very definitely non-racist and certainly had members from different ethnic groups. A number of the people in Regia when I was there, including some of its leading members, were Jewish. And their religion made absolutely no difference to anyone, whatsoever.
From what I can make out, there was little racism in Europe until after the Middle Ages. There was conflict between ethnic groups, states and nations, but little in the way of racism based on colour. From what I've read I think that modern racism really emerged through transatlantic slavery, although I think that the wars with darker skinned people, such as the Arabs and Moors during the Crusades and the Muslim conquest of the Balkans also played a part. The term 'Anglo-Saxon' in 'Anglo-Saxon' history, simply refers to a period. It has, or shouldn't have, any connotations of racism or White supremacism.
This needs to be got across, assuming that some people genuinely feel that it is somehow racist and that this isn't a misperception or exaggerated reaction by whoever makes these judgements after Black Lives Matter. But to stop calling that period of English history 'Anglo-Saxon' is in itself a falsification of history. It should go on being called the Anglo-Saxon period, but also made clear, if necessary, that it is an historical term, not one from any racial or racist ideology.
Tags:Anglo-Saxons, Balkans, BBC, BBC History Magazine, Blacks, Celts, Crusades, Cumbria, David Olusoga, Dublin, History Debunked, In Search of the Dark Ages, Jews, King Alfred, Michael Wood, Middle Ages, Moors, Norman Conquest, racism, Re-enactment, Regia Anglorum, Romans, Simon Webb, SS, Vikings, Whites, World War II
Posted in Africa, Arabs, Archaeology, Denmark, England, Fascism, Germany, History, Ireland, Islam, Judaism, LIterature, Nazis, Netherlands, Persecution, Politics, Rome, Scotland, Slavery, Television, The Press, Wales | 4 Comments »
History Debunked on Anglo-Saxon Slavery in Bristol
Yesterday there was another Black Lives Matter protest in Bristol. The demonstrators walked through Cabot Circus, and there was a speech by one of the Green party councillors for the city calling for Bristol to apologise for its part in the slave trade. She told the news teams that it was about reparations and would send an inspiring message to the community in Britain and around the world.
In fact, as this video from History Debunked shows, the slave trade in Bristol dates from long before the transatlantic slave trade which began in Britain from the 16th century onwards. Bristol was a major centre of the slave trade in the 11th century, exporting White English slaves to Dublin, from which they were exported further abroad. He states that about 10 per cent of the population of Bristol during this period were slaves. He also goes on to say that Dublin, Waterford and other Irish towns were founded by the Vikings as slaving centres and tells the old story of how Pope Gregory came to send missionaries to evangelise the English. The Venerable Bede recounts in his History of the English Church and People how the pope was passing through the slave market in Rome. He saw two beautiful, blond children for sale. When he asked the slave dealer who they were, he was told, 'Angles'. The Angles, along with the Saxons and Jutes, were one of the Germanic tribes that came to form Anglo-Saxon England. It's from the Anglo-Saxon form of their name that the world 'English' is derived. Gregory then replied with a pun in Latin: 'Non Angli, sed angeli' – 'Not Angles, but angels'. He also makes the point that St. Patrick was also a slave. He was English, and was captured and taken to Ireland as a slave by pirates. This is also correct, though I don't think Patrick was English. He would have been British, coming from part of the British Isles that hadn't yet been conquered by the advancing Anglo-Saxons, and may well have spoken a form of early Welsh. Certainly one of the places which claims him is in Wales.
This is all fact. Bristol was a centre of the slave trade in Anglo-Saxon England. In the 11th century the Anglo-Saxon bishop Wulfstan visited the city to preach against it. He was so successful that the citizens turned on the slavers, beat them and threw them out. However a hundred years later it was still dangerous to visit the Irish ships in the harbour alone at night. In the 12th century a team of French clergy went on a tour of England to raise funds for rebuilding one of their cathedrals after it fell down in a disaster. One of the places they visited was Bristol, where one of them had dinner one evening with an Irish ship's captain aboard his vessel. When the visiting clergyman told his host, he was warned that it was very dangerous. The ship's captains would invited the unwary aboard to have dinner, but then kidnap them, slip anchor and sail off. The cleric wisely didn't go back for a second visit the next night.
History Debunked seems to be a man of the right, and many of his videos are arguments against some of the fake history that is being told as part of the anti-racist campaign. In one video, for example, he refutes the claim that the Black inventor Benjamin Banneker built the first clock in America. He didn't. Banneker did make a wooden clock, but these were also being made in the US long before him. While this is obviously going to be controversial, as far as I can make out the history is absolutely sound.
I'm putting the video up here because I really honestly don't believe that Black Lives Matter in Bristol and its marchers are aware that slavery and the slave trade in Bristol predated that of Black Africans. I think they want a simplistic narrative in which slavery is just something that racist Whites did to Blacks. But slavery existed all over the world, and while Black African slavery is a crime and holocaust, White slavery existed in Europe, and White Europeans were enslaved by north Africans from the Middle Ages right up to the French conquest of Algeria in the early 19th century. This is also part of the history of slavery, and needs to be included and remembered in any discussion.
Tags:Anglo-Saxons, Benjamin Banneker, Black Lives Matter, Blacks, Bristol, Demonstrations, Dublin, Green Party, History of the English Church and People, Local Councils, Pope Gregory, racism, Slave Trade, St Patrick, Venerable Bede, Vikings, Welsh, Whites, Wulfstan
Posted in Africa, Algeria, America, Democracy, Environment, France, History, Ireland, Languages, LIterature, Persecution, Politics, Roman Catholicism, Science, Slavery, Technology, Wales | 2 Comments »
Shaw's Classic Defence of Socialism for Women Part One
George Bernard Shaw, The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Socialism, Capitalism, Sovietism and Fascism, foreword by Polly Toynbee (London: Alma Classics 2012).
This is a great book. It's the kind of book on socialism I was very much looking for in the 1980s when the papers were all praising Margaret Thatcher and alleged superiority of capitalism to the heavens. What I wanted then was a classic defence of socialism, which clearly showed the destructive nature and defects of capitalism, and how these would be removed for the better under a proper socialist government with a clear idea of what needed to be done and how it could be achieved.
This is a rather long review, so I've split up into four parts.
The book was written between 1924 and 1928, when it was first published. George Bernard Shaw is one of the great figures in British socialism. An Irishman, he was one of the founders of the Fabian Society along with Sidney and Beatrice Webb, and editor of its anthology of socialist writings, Fabian Essays. He's best known for his play Pygamalion, about a linguist, Henry Higgins, who takes Eliza, a rough working class girl, and tries to mould her so she can pass as a lady of the genteel classes. It was filmed as the musical My Fair Lady, starring Rex Harrison.
Shaw wrote it between 1924 and 1928, when it was published, at the request of his sister-in-law, Lady Cholmondley. She had asked him to write a letter explaining socialism for women. Shaw looked into it, and discovered that amongst the masses of literature about socialism, there weren't any books that realised that there were such creatures. And, he adds in his 'Instead of a Bibliography', very few that recognised the existence of men either. The book's addressed to a female audience. The reader is a 'she' and the examples given are taken from women's lives, jobs and experience. Shaw recognises that most women are occupied as wives and mothers, or shop girls and workers in the great weaving mills, the common female roles at the time. But he also recognises and fully supports the fact that more professions were being opened up to women in science, law, medicine and so on. If done badly, this approach by a male writer can seem patronising, but Shaw, as a great writer, manages to avoid it. And even though it's aimed at women, I greatly enjoyed it, and would recommend it to other blokes.
Capital, Equality of Incomes and Imperialism
Shaw tries to present complex ideas about capitalism by simplifying them down to the level of ordinary people's housekeeping or domestic economy. He defines capital as left over money. It's the money you have left after spending your income on rent, food and so on. This is the money that the idle rich, the landlords, invest in industry. And money's only real value is for the food and clothing that it will purchase. You cannot eat money, and the food it will buy must be eaten or else it will be spoilt. Which means that money must be invested and used, rather than stored up.
At the heart of Shaw's view of socialism is the equalization of incomes. He believed that everyone should earn exactly the same amount. Capitalism had created vast inequalities of wealth. On the one hand there was a small minority of the idle rich, who had to invent pastimes and diversions in order to use up their wealth. On the other was the vast mass of the poor, living at or near starvation level. He begins by asking the reader how they would divide up the nation's wealth, challenging the reader to think for herself rather than let him do her thinking for her. He then proceeds to argue that it is impossible to decide that one person should be paid more or less than another because of their personal morality or ability. He sharply criticises the quasi-feudal economy of his day, when 90 per cent of the country worked to support the gentry, who only comprised ten per cent of the country's population. They do nothing for it, don't benefit from it, as they can't personally eat or drink more than anyone else. And instead of investing it, they simply take it out of the country to invest it or spend it abroad. He also attacks British imperialism for this same thing. It hasn't benefited the peoples we have conquered nor British tradespeople, businessmen and workers. It has led to the exploitation of Blacks abroad, who can paid far less than their British counterparts. Thus Britain is flooded with cheap imports, and British companies are going bust and their workers laid off.
The Progress of Capitalism and Decline of the Businessman Owner
Shaw then describes how the middle class have their origins as the younger sons of the aristocracy, with a few acute remarks on the absurd gradations of class which meant that a wholesaler was socially superior to a retailer. His father was a businessman, who had been a member of the gentry. As such he looked down on the elite Dublin shopkeepers, even though they were richer and entertained the local Irish aristocracy, which he very definitely couldn't. But business was changing. The age of the small businessman in personal possession of his business, was giving way to joint-stock companies owned by their shareholders and managed by professional, salaried staff. Under pressure from the unions, they were combining to form monopolistic trusts. This made them ready for nationalisation.
Nationalisation and the Coal Industry
He presents the coal industry as particularly needing nationalisation. At the time he wrote, there were a number of different mining companies. Some worked poor mines and were close to bankruptcy, others very rich. However, miners wages were set at the level the poor mines could afford, which was near starvation. Coal prices were set for the rich mines, and so prices were high. The miners were thus being starved and the consumer overcharged. The mines should thus be nationalised so that the workers were paid a fair wage, and the consumer a fair price. Shaw advocated nationalisation so that costs and prices could be brought down and goods sold at cost price.
Banks and the Stock Market
He also discusses and explains finance capitalism, stocks and shares, debentures, futures and the stock market. He warns the reader against get-rich-quick scams, like the bucket shops which will charge his prices for very risky shares. If people want to invest, they should do so with the government or municipality. Their shares won't provide a great yield, but they will be safe. He recommends that banks should be nationalised because of the problems the small businessman had acquiring capital. The big businesses rely on financiers, who certainly won't lend the small businessman wanting a modest loan anything. Neither will the banks. He pointed to Birmingham as an example for the future, as it had established a municipal bank to serve the customers the big banks wouldn't.
Tags:'Fabian Essays', 'My Fair Lady', 'Pygmalion', 'The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Socialism Capitalism Sovietism and Fascism', Aristocracy, Birmingham, Blacks, Business, Capitalism, Class, Dublin, Fabian Society, George Bernard Shaw, Imperialism, Lady Cholmondley, Margaret Thatcher, Middle Class, Mining, Nationalisation, Polly Toynbee, Rex Harrison, Shareholders, small Businesses, Starvation, Stock Market, the Poor, the Rich, Women, Workers, Working Class
Posted in Banks, Coal, communism, Democracy, Economics, Fascism, Film, Industry, Ireland, Law, LIterature, Medicine, Politics, Science, Socialism, Stage, Theatre, Wages | 1 Comment »
Netanyahu Rages as Eire Passes Pro-BDS Legislation
Last week the Israel lobby was on the warpath again. We had the Blairites and Likud sycophants in the Labour demanding that Jenny Formby show them what's being done to root out all the anti-Semites they claim are in the party, the Jewish Labour Movement, formerly Paole Zion, and the recidivist liars and Fascist shills the Jewish Chronicle hysterically proclaiming that there was a culture of anti-Semitism within Labour. And Rachel Riley, Frances Barber and their army of trolls tried attacking Mike and Owen Jones as anti-Semites, and got their rear ends royally handed to them. And Wes Streeting decided that he could combat Jew hatred by falsely accusing a 70-year old woman of it and doxing her.
This video below from the Middle East Monitor might explain why some of that rage and fear suddenly erupted. The Dail – the Irish parliament – a fortnight ago passed legislation banning Israeli exports from the Occupied Territories. And predictably Netanyahu was not amused, and accused the Emerald Isle of anti-Semitism.
The video's just under two minutes long, and begins with footage from the Irish parliament of Fianna Fail senator Niall Collins saying, 'We need to do the right thing here and that is what that legislation simply sets out to do. The video explains that the Irish parliament has passed a bill banning the import of Israeli settlement goods. Senator Collins asks, 'Why should we turn a blind eye to blatant and flagrant breaches and abuses of international law?' This video goes to say that the legislation
'would make Ireland the first EU country to take such a bold action against the Israeli occupation despite attempts by the US and Israel to thwart it. The bill was backed by all of Ireland's opposition parties and was voted in with an overwhelming majority of 78-45.'
The video then shows Frances Black, an Independent senator, explaining that 'The Occupied Territories bill is a modest piece of legislation that stands up for basic human rights and international law.' It then moves to Senator Collins, who says, "It simply isn't good enough condemning the ongoing expansion of settlements across the West Bank'.
It then goes back to scenes inside the Dail, and explains that 'after the vote Israel reprimanded the Irish ambassador, and quotes the office of Israeli prime minister Netanyahu. Which ranted
'Israel is outraged over the legislation against it in the Irish parliament, which is indicative of hypocrisy and anti-Semitism.'
It then goes back to a speech by Senator Collins, in which he very effectively rebuts these accusations by Netanyahu's minions. He says,
'This outrage and offence which has been built up by Israel that we're somehow anti-Semitic. We're not! We recognize the state of Israel and we will trade with them but they are on the off-side line in terms of the Occupied Territories.'
The video goes on to say that 'the move is seen as a great victory for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement.' It quotes a tweet from Senator Black, who said 'Ireland will always stand for international law + human rights, & we're one step closer to making history, Onwards!' The backdrop to the tweet shows a group of Irish and Palestinian adults and children, a Palestinian man wearing the distinctive keffiyeh, while the kids have the tricolor on the cheeks in facepaint.
The law very obviously isn't anti-Semitic. It's not against Jews nor Israel as a whole. It's only against Israeli goods produced in occupied Palestine. Now I'm sure there are anti-Semites along with other varieties of racist in Ireland, and the country, like just about every other western nation including America and the nascent Jewish colony in Palestine also had a Fascist movement. This was Owen O'Duffy and his Blue Shirts. They fought in the Spanish Civil War but seem to have vanished after that. I've certainly not heard of them surviving into the Second World War. I doubt most people in Ireland and elsewhere have even heard of them. They're only claim to fame is that the great Irish poet, W.B. Yeats, was briefly a member c. 1919 before giving up on them. Most people when they think of Irish nationalism are far more likely to think of the various Irish independence movements and associated militant groups, like the Fenians and later the IRA and other Republican terrorist organisations in Ulster. They one thing the majority of folk won't associate with Irish nationalism or national identity is Nazism and anti-Semitism.
However, the Irish, it seems to me, do take state terrorism and Fascism in other nations very seriously. Way back in the early '80s, when Reagan was backing the Contras in Nicaragua and other Fascist butchers in Latin America, there were mass protests when he decided to pay a state visit to Ireland. I think it was during his birthday, as the news showed footage of him being given a present by someone in full Irish patriotic dress, who told him that it came from Irish-Americans everywhere. Well, I wonder, as I always under that Irish-Americans in New York were traditionally the backbone of the Democrats. And Reagan was definitely not welcomed by a large part of the Irish population. There were boycotts and demonstrations at the airport and at Trinity College in Dublin, as I recall. The explanation the Beeb gave was that Ireland was closely involved with the Roman Catholic charities working in Latin America. And therefore they weren't going to be impressed by Reagan and these Fascist regimes' death squads torturing and murdering the very people they were trying to help. I got the impression from reading some of the pieces written by Irish contributors to the radical American magazine and website, Counterpunch, that left-wing Irish people see themselves and their country as anti-imperialist, and this piece of BDS legislation strikes me very firmly as within that tradition.
Economically, I'm not sure how much damage this will do. Ireland's a small country with a small population. I think it might be around 4-6 million. But culturally the country is a very big hitter. There's a large Irish diaspora spread across the globe, particularly in Australia and America, where it's very politically important. Irish music and literature are enjoyed everywhere. Classic Irish bands include the Dubliners, Planxty, Clannad and the Chieftains, and you can't get away from the Pogues' 'Fairytale of New York', which is played every year at Christmas along with Slade's 'So Here It Is, Merry Christmas'. The Dail's vote to pass this legislation could be immensely influential simply because of the country's immense cultural cachet.
And that's what Netanyahu and his thugs are afraid of. Because once one EU country passes legislation banning goods from Occupied Palestine, others may follow suit. It's why the Israeli state and its minions over here have been trying their level best to smear Jeremy Corbyn and his supporters as anti-Semites, simply because he supports the Palestinians and genuinely condemns further Zionist expansion and human rights abuses.
The Israeli state is running scared. Thanks to the BDS movement, 1/3 of Israeli businesses in the West Bank have been forced to close. Young Jewish Americans are increasingly turning away from Israel. Many are repulsed by its treatment of the Palestinians. Others simply think that it's ridiculous for them to be expected automatically to support a country they were not born in and have no intention of moving to, when the indigenous inhabitants of that country are being forced out. It's why the Likudniks are increasingly looking to Evangelical Christian Zionists for support in America instead of the country's Jews.
Now that Ireland has banned Israeli goods from occupied Palestine, it'll be interesting to see how many other countries start to debate doing the same. And you can bet the angry smears of Corbyn and his supporters will get even louder and more shrill over here on this side of the Irish Sea, as the Israel lobby fears that under him, Britain will be next.
Tags:'Counterpunch', anti-Imperialism, anti-semitism, Anti-Semitism Smears, BBC, BDS Campaign, Benjamin Netanyahu, Blue Shirts, christmas, Clannad, Contras, Dail, Death Squads, Democrat Party, Doxing, Dublin, Dubliners, Evangelical Christians, Fenians, Frances Barber, Frances Black, Human Rights, Independence Movement, International Law, IRA, Irish Parliament, Israel Lobby, Jewish Chronicle, Jewish Labour Movement, Jews, Labour Party, Likud, Middle East Monitor, Mike Sivier, Nationalism, New York, Niall Collins, Northern Ireland, Occupied Territories, Owen Jones, Owen O'Duffy, Palestine, Palestinians, Paole Zion, Planxty, Rachel Riley, Ronald Reagan, Slade, Spanish Civil War, the Chieftains, the Pogues, Trinity College, Universities, W.B. Yeats, West Streeting, Zionism
Posted in America, Arabs, Australia, Central America, Charity, Democracy, Economics, Education, England, European Union, Fascism, History, Industry, Israel, Judaism, Law, LIterature, Music, Nazis, Nicaragua, Persecution, Politics, Popular Music, Roman Catholicism, South America, Spain, Terrorism | 3 Comments »
250 + Companies to Leave UK for Holland Due to Brexit
According to yesterday's I for Thursday, 24th January 2019, the Dutch are claiming that more than 250 firms currently based in the UK are planning to move across the North Sea to them due to Brexit. The article on page 10, entitled 'More than 250 firms plan to relocate from UK to the Netherlands' by Nigel Morris and Benjamin Butterworth began
More than 250 companies are looking to follow Sony by moving from the UK to the Netherlands because of Brexit, it emerged yesterday.
The Netherlands Foreign Investment Agency (NFIA) said that scores of companies with UK headquarters had expressed interest in relocating, and the number was expected to rise.
Many business chiefs have been dismayed by Theresa May's refusal to rule out leaving the European Union without an agreement, leaving Britain immediately operating on World Trade Organisation rules.
The article then goes on to list some of the companies moving. They were Sony, Panasonic, which moved last year, P&O, while the car maker Bentley was stockpiling parts.
It quote Michiel Bakhuizen of the NFIA as saying
"The number of businesses we are in contact with for a possible arrival is growing. At the start of 2017 it was 80. At the start of 2018 it was 150, and now it's more than 250.
"This increase will continue and it is not strange, because there is great uncertainty at the moment in Britain. And if there's one thing that's bad for business, it's uncertainty."
One of Tweezer's little minions said in reply that it was clear that companies around the world would continue to invest in Britain and its people. Against this was the Labour MP Rupa Huq, who backs a second referendum. She said
"This shows the shrinking appeal of Britain as a decision-making base for top companies as a result of Brexit.
"The Japanese were supposed to be a top ally for Brexit, but time and again they have been shocked at the scale of self-destruction." The below the article was another which also listed other firms leaving the UK. These included the Japanese financial houses Nomura Holdings and Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group; HSBC, which is moving its HQ from London to Paris; Barclays and Bank of America, which are moving to Dublin, MoneyGram, which is going to Brussels; the European Medicines Agency, which is going to Amsterdam; the European Banking Authority is going to move to Paris, while the German engineering company Schaefler is going to close two of its plants, in Plymouth and Llanelli.
Brexit is going to be a disaster for Britain. but it's going to be great for rich financiers like Jacob Rees-Mogg and Nigel Farage, because they can move their investments around the world without worrying about losing profits. It's the rest of us, who depend on manufacturing and trade in goods for our jobs and businesses, who will take the real hit.
We were lied to by the leaders of the 'Leave' Campaign, who were chiefly members of the Tory right. Well, it's high time to kick the Tories out of office and put in someone who really can clear up this mess: Jeremy Corbyn.
Tags:'I' Newspaper, 'Leave' Campaign, Amsterdam, Bank of America, Barclays, Benjamin Butterworthm, Bentley, Brexit, Business, Conservatives, Dublin, European Banking Authority, European Medicines Agency, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Jeremy Corbyn, Labour Party, Llanelli, London, Manufacturing Industry, MoneyGram, Netherlands Foreign Investment Agency, Nigel Farage, Nigel Morris, Nomura Holdings, P&O, Panasonic, Paris, Plymouth, Referendum, Rupa Huq, Schaefler, Sony, Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group, Theresa May, Trade, World Trade Organisation
Posted in America, Banks, European Union, France, Industry, Ireland, Japan, Netherlands, Politics, The Press | 5 Comments »
Declassified Irish Documents: MI5 Tried to Get UVF to Assassinate Charles Haughey
There's an interesting article in Counterpunch today by John Wight, which might add a new dimension to the government losing around 2,000 files from the National Archives last week. The files were supposed to have been taken out by Home Office civil servants, and covered a range of very sensitive incidents, from the notorious Zinoviev Letter, through to the assassination in the 1970s of the Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov, and the dirty war in Northern Ireland. Human Rights campaigners were alarmed in case this was an attempt to cover up human rights violations by the British state in Ulster in the long campaign against the IRA and related terror groups. The Zinoviev Letter, you will remember, was the forged letter by the British security services, which purported to be from Zinoviev, the head of Stalin's Comintern, congratulating the Labour party on preparing to take over Britain in a revolution.
A number of Labour MPs have already made their feeling about the disappearance of the files clear, stating that this is another Orwellian attempt by the Tories to rewrite or obscure history.
It is, and this isn't the first time the Tories have borrowed sensitive files to make sure they're out of circulation. Anyone remember a similar incident a few years ago, when government documents similarly went missing from the archives, only for the minister responsible to claim that he had just 'innocently' taken them away to help him with a book he was writing? I didn't believe that story then. The Tories have offered no excuse now, which does make you wonder what they're trying to hide.
Some clue to this comes from Irish government documents from the 1980s that have been released under their 30-year rule. This includes a letter from the Protestant terrorist group, the UVF, to Charles Haughey, informing him that they were approached by an MI5 officer, who wished them to assassinate the Irish president. John Wight in his article about this in today's Counterpunch writes
Said papers confirm that in 1987 the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), one of the oldest and most notorious of the various loyalist/Protestant paramilitary organizations that were engaged in sectarian violence in the province during the Troubles, wrote to the then Irish Prime Minister Charles Haughey in Dublin, informing him that in 1985 they were approached by Britain's domestic intelligence service, MI5, with a request to assassinate him.
We learn that in the letter the UVF told Mr Haughey, "In 1985 we were approached by a MI5 officer attached to the NIO (Northern Ireland Office) and based in Lisburn, AlexJones was his supposed name. He asked us to execute you." The letter subsequently goes on to allege that Britain's MI5 supplied the group with information such as pictures of Haughey's home, his private yacht, and details of the vehicles he travelled in.
The UVF refused follow through on MI5's request, telling Mr Haughey, "We have no love for you but we are not going to carry out work for the Dirty Tricks Department of the British."
https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/01/03/britains-dirty-war-in-ireland-revisited/
In fact, MI5 and the British government probably weren't the only ones making covert plans to overthrow the opposite side. Way back in the 1980s or '90s, Lobster covered a piece in the Irish Republican newspaper, An Phoblacht, which claimed that there had been a scheme during Haughey's premiership to stir up sectarian violence in order to provide a pretext for an invasion of Ulster from the Republic. The plan was that after rioting and sectarian violence, armed forces from the south would enter the Six Countries as a peace-keeping force. If this is also true, then nobody, on either side of the Irish border, ends up looking good. Or anything other than deeply duplicitous and murderous.
In fact, there is plenty of evidence that the British state was supplying intelligence to the loyalist terror gangs, so that they could assassinate leading Republicans, as Wight's article goes on to discuss. And there is also evidence that secret SAS units were being embedded within regular army units in Northern Ireland to act as death squads. All of which makes it very clear that there's much in the files that this Tory government would very, very much want to hide.
Mike has already suggested that a way to stop files going missing in the future would be for the National Archives to be run like a proper library: those borrowing books have a ticket, and it is known who has borrowed what, and that they must return it on time. I completely agree, but this is too efficient, and would prevent the government from having a convenient pretext with which to lose files when their contents prove inconvenient.
And the government's behaviour in this respect is very much like the Russian authorities during the old Communist system. Foreign researchers were at liberty to use files in the Soviet archives. However, if you wanted something sensitive or incriminating, you'd be told that those files were out. Which sounds exactly like what has been going on here.
Tags:'An Phoblacht', 'Counterpunch', Archives, Assassination, British Army, Charles Haughey, Comintern, Conservatives, Death Squads, Dublin, Eire, Human Rights, John Wight, Labour Party, Libraries, Lisburne, Lobster, National Archives, Northern Ireland, Revolution, SAS, Soviet Union, stalin, UVF, Vox Political, Zinoviev Letter
Posted in communism, Crime, Democracy, England, History, Ireland, Politics, Russia, Terrorism, The Press | 2 Comments »
Review: The Liberal Tradition, ed. by Alan Bullock and Maurice Shock
(Oxford: OUP 1967)
I picked this up in one of the secondhand bookshops in Cheltenham. I am definitely not a Liberal, but so many of the foundations of modern representative democracy, and liberal political institutions, rights and freedoms were laid down by Liberals from the 17th century Whigs onward, that this book is of immense value for the historic light it sheds on the origins of modern political thought. It is also acutely relevant, for many of the issues the great liberal philosophers, thinkers and ideologues argued over, debated and discussed in the pieces collected in it are still being fought over today. These are issues like the freedom, religious liberty and equality, democracy, anti-militarism and opposition to the armaments industry, imperialism versus anti-imperialism, devolution and home rule, laissez-faire and state intervention, and the amelioration of poverty.
Alan Bullock is an historian best known for his biography of Hitler: A Study in Tyranny, which remains the classic work on the Nazi dictator. In the 1990s he produced another book which compared Hitler's life to that of his contemporary Soviet dictator and ultimate nemesis, Hitler and Stalin: Parallel Lives. The book has an introduction, tracing the development of Liberalism from its origins to the 1930s, when the authors consider that the Liberal party ceased to be an effective force in British politics. This discusses the major issues and events, with which Whig and Liberal politicians and thinkers were forced to grapple, and which in turn shaped the party and its evolving intellectual tradition.
The main part of the book consists of the major historical speeches and writings, which are treated in sections according to theme and period. These comprise
Part. Fox and the Whig Tradition
1. Civil Liberties.
Two speeches by Charles James Fox in parliament, from 1792 and 1794;
Parliamentary speech by R.B. Sheridan, 1810.
Parliamentary speech by Earl Grey, 1819.
Lord John Russell, An Essay on the History of the English Government and Constitution, 1821.
Lord John Russell, parliamentary speech, 1828.
2. Opposition to the War against Revolutionary France
Speeches by Charles James Fox, from 1793, 1794 and 1800.
3. Foreign Policy and the Struggle for Freedom Abroad
Earl Grey, parliamentary speech, 1821;
Marquis of Lansdowne, parliamentary speech, 1821.
Extracts from Byron's poems Sonnet on Chillon, 1816, Childe Harold, Canto IV, 1817, and Marino Faliero, 1821.
4. Parliamentary Reform
Lord Melbourne, parliamentary speech, 1831.
T.B. Macaulay, parliamentary speech, 1831.
Part II. The Benthamites and the Political Economists, 1776-1830.
1. Individualism and Laissez-faire
Two extracts from Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations, 1776.
Jeremy Bentham, A Manual of Political Economy, 1798.
2. Natural Laws and the Impossibility of Interference
T.R. Malthus, Essay on Population, 1798.
David Ricardo, The Principles of Political Economy and Taxation, 1819.
3. Free Trade
Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations,
David Ricardo, Principles of Political Economy,
Petition of the London Merchants, 1820.
4. Colonies
Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations.
5. Reform
Jeremy Bentham, Plan of Parliamentary Reform, 1817.
David Ricardo, Observations on Parliamentary Reform, 1824.
Jeremy Bentham, Constitutional Code, 1830.
John Stuart Mill, Autobiography.
Part III. The Age of Cobden and Bright.
1. Free Trade and the Repeal of the Corn Laws
Petition of the Manchester Chamber of Commerce to the House of Commons, 20 December 1838.
Richard Cobden, two speeches in London, 1844.
Cobden, speech in Manchester, 1846,
Lord John Russell, Letter to the Electors of the City of London (The 'Edinburgh Letter') 1845.
2. Laissez-Faire
Richard Cobden, Russia, 1836.
Richard Cobden, parliamentary speech, 1846.
Joseph Hume, parliamentary speech, 1847.
John Stuart Mill, Principles of Political Economy, 1848.
T.B. Macaulay, parliamentary speech 1847.
John Bright, parliamentary speech 1847.
4. Religious Liberty
John Bright, two parliamentary speeches, 1851 and 1853.
5. Foreign Policy
Richard Cobden, parliamentary speech, 1849;
Viscount Palmerston, speech at Tiverton, 1847;
Richard Cobden, parliamentary speech, 1850; speech at Birmingham, 1858; speech in Glasgow, 1858;
John Bright, letter to Absalom Watkins, 1854;
W.E. Gladstone, parliamentary speech, 1857;
6. India and Ireland
T.B. Macaulay, parliamentary speech, 1833;
John Bright, four speeches in parliament, 1848, 1849,1858, 1859;
Richard Cobden, speech at Rochdale, 1863.
Part IV. The Age of Gladstone
1. The Philosophy of Liberty
John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, 1859;
John Stuart Mill, Representative Government, 1861;
Lord Acton, A Review of Goldwin smith's 'Irish History', 1862;
Lord Acton, The History of Freedom in Antiquity, 1877.
Lord Acton, A Review of Sir Erskine May's 'Democracy in Europe', 1878.
Lord Acton, letter to Bishop Creighton, 1887.
Lord Acton, letter to Mary Gladstone, 1881;
John Morley, On Compromise, 1874.
Richard Cobden, two speeches at Rochdale, 1859 and 1863;
John Bright, speech at Rochdale, 1863; speech at Birmingham, 1865; speech at Glasgow, 1866; speech at London, 1866;
W.E. Gladstone, speech at Chester, 1865; speech at Manchester, 1865; parliamentary speech, 1866;
W.E. Gladstone, two parliamentary speeches, 1877 and 1878; speech at Dalkeith, 1879; speech at Penicuik, 1880, speech at Loanhead, 1880; article in The Nineteenth Century, 1878.
John Bright, speech at Dublin, 1866 and parliamentary speech, 1868.
W.E. Gladstone, two parliamentary speeches, 1886 and 1888.
Part V. The New Liberalism
1. The Philosophy of State Interference
T.H. Green, Liberal Legislation or Freedom of Contract, 1881;
Herbert Spencer, The Coming Slavery, 1884;
D.G. Ritchie, The Principles of State Interference, 1891;
J.A. Hobson, The Crisis of Liberalism, 1909;
L.T. Hobhouse, Liberalism, 1911;
2. The Extension of Democracy
Herbert Samuel, Liberalism, 1902;
Sir H. Campbell-Bannerman, speech at Plymouth, 1907;
D. Lloyd George, speech at Newcastle, 1909;
H.H. Asquith, speech at the Albert Hall, 1909.
L.T. Hobhouse, Liberalism, 1911.
3. Social Reform
Joseph Chamberlain, speech at Hull, 1885, and Warrington, 1885;
W.E. Gladstone, speech at Saltney, 1889;
Lord Rosebery, speech at Chesterfield, 1901;
Winston S. Churchill, speech at Glasgow, 1906;
D. Lloyd George, speech at Swansea, 1908;
Manchester Guardian, leading article, 8th July 1912;
4. The Government and the National Economy
H.H. Asquith, speech at Cinderford, 1903;
Sir H. Campbell-Bannerman, speech at Bolton, 1903;
D. Lloyd George, speech at Bedford, 1913, and speech at Middlesbrough, 1913;
5. Imperialism and the Boer War
Sir William Harcourt, speech in West Monmouthshire, 1899;
J.L. Hammond, 'Colonial and Foreign Policy' in Liberalism and the Empire, 1900;
J.A. Hobson, Imperialism, 1902;
Sir H. Campbell-Bannerman, speech at Stirling, 1901.
6. Armaments
Sir H. Campbell-Bannerman, speech at London, 1905;
William Byles, parliamentary speech, 1907;
Sir E. Grey, two parliamentary speeches from 1909 and 1911;
Sir J. Brunner, speech at the 35th Annual Meeting of the National Liberal Federation, 1913.
House of Commons debate 22nd July 1909, featuring J.M. Robertson and Arthur Ponsonby;
Sir E. Grey, two parliamentary speeches, 1911 and 1914;
House of Commons debate, 14th December 1911, featuring Josiah Wedgwood and J.G. Swift MacNeill;
Manchester Guardian, leading article, 1 August 1914;
Part VI. Liberalism after 1918
1. The End of Laissez-faire
J.M. Keynes, The End of Laissez-Faire, 1926;
Britain's Industrial Future, the Report of the Liberal Industrial Inquiry, 1928;
J.M. Keynes and H.D. Henderson, Can Lloyd George Do It? 1929,
Sir William Beveridge, Full Employment in a Free Society, 1944.
2. The League and the Peace
Viscount Grey of Fallodon, The League of Nations, 1918;
Gilbert Murray, The League of Nations and the Democratic Idea, 1918;
Manchester Guardian, leading article, 24th June 1919;
J.M. Keynes, The Economic Consequences of the Peace, 1919;
D. Lloyd George, speech at London, 1927;
Philip Kerr, The Outlawry of War, paper read to the R.I.I.A., 13 November 1928;
The Liberal Way, A survey of Liberal policy, published by the National Liberal Federation, 1934.
J.M. Keynes, Am I a Liberal? Address to the Liberal summer school at Cambridge, 1925.
In their conclusion, Bullock and Shock state that Liberal ideology is incoherent – a jumble – unless seen as an historical development, and that the Liberal party itself lasted only about seventy years from the time Gladstone joined Palmerstone's government in 1859 to 1931, after which it was represented only by a handful of members in parliament. The Liberal tradition, by contrast, has been taken over by all political parties, is embodied in the Constitution, and has profoundly affected education – especially in the universities, the law, and the philosophy of government in the civil service. It has also inspired the transformation of the Empire into the Commonwealth. It has also profoundly affected the British character at the instinctive level, which has been given expression in the notion of 'fair play'.
They also write about the immense importance in the Liberal tradition of freedom, and principle. They write
In the pages which follow two ideas recur again and again. The first is a belief in the value of freedom, freedom of the individual, freedom of minorities, freedom of peoples. The scope of freedom has required continual and sometimes drastic re-defining, as in the abandonment of laissez-faire or in the extension of self-government to the peoples of Asia and Africa. But each re-definition has represented a deepening and strengthening, not an attenuation, of the original faith in freedom.
The second is the belief that principle ought to count far more than power or expediency, that moral issues cannot be excluded from politics. Liberal attempts to translate moral principles into political action have rarely been successful and neglect of the factor of power is one of the most obvious criticisms of Liberal thinking about politics, especially international relations. But neglect of the factor of conscience, which is a much more likely error, is equally disastrous in the long run. The historical role of Liberalism in British history has been to prevent this, and again and again to modify policies and the exercise of power by protests in the name of conscience. (p. liv).
They finish with
We end it by pointing to the belief in freedom and the belief in conscience as the twin foundations of Liberal philosophy and the element of continuity in its historical development. Politics can never be conducted by the light of these two principles alone, but without them human society is reduced to servitude and the naked rule of force. This is the truth which the Liberal tradition has maintained from Fox to Keynes – and which still needs to be maintained in our own time. (pp. liv-lv).
It should be said that the participation of the Lib Dems was all too clearly a rejection of any enlightened concern for principle and conscience, as this was jettisoned by Clegg in order to join a highly illiberal parliament, which passed, and is still passing under its Conservative successor, Theresa May, legislation which is deliberately aimed at destroying the lives and livelihood of the very poorest in society – the working class, the disabled and the unemployed, and destroying the very foundations of British constitutional freedom in the creation of a network of universal surveillance and secret courts.
These alone are what makes the book's contents so relevant, if only to remind us of the intense relevance of the very institutions that are under attack from today's vile and corrupt Tory party.
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Posted in Africa, Asia, communism, Democracy, Disability, Economics, Education, Ethics, France, History, Industry, Ireland, Justice, Law, Liberals, LIterature, Morality, Nazis, Politics, Poverty, Scotland, South Africa, The Press, Unemployment, Wales | Leave a Comment »
Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton and Henry Kissinger
Just a few moments ago I put up The Young Turks' long list of the war crimes and vicious mentality of Henry Kissinger following the PBS debate between Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton. Hillary had been flattered that the old butcher had complimented her on the way she ran the state department. In the clip below, Sanders criticises Hillary for accepting Kissinger's friendship, stating very clearly that he's proud Kissinger isn't his friend, and pointing to his involvement in the coups and military interventions across the world. He states very clearly that it was Kissinger's bombing of Laos that destabilised the country, leading to the seizure of power of the Khmer Rouge and the attendant horrors.
And here's a clip from Democracy Now! about an attempt by activists from Code Pink to arrest Kissinger when he arrived in 2015 to talk before the Armed Services Committee. McCain was particularly annoyed at their protests, declaring he'd seen nothing like it and called them 'lowlife scum'. The protestors wished to arrest him for his crimes against Chile, Vietnam, Laos and East Timor.
Six years ago a group in Ireland also tried to enforce an arrest warrant for Kissinger when he was attending a meeting at the Trilateral group at the Four Seasons Hotel in Dublin. The warrant was signed by a judge in France and another in Spain, demanding Kissinger's arrest under an EU convention for mutual assistance in justice. Kissinger was wanted in connection with crimes against French and Spanish citizens in Chile. Presumably, this was for the arrest and torture of people rounded up during General Pinochet's 1973 CIA backed Coup.
The people of Eire have a long tradition of moral disrespect to senior American politicians for their war crimes in Latin America. When I was at school there was an incident where Ronald Reagan turned up to visit Dublin. There were mass demonstrations against Ray-Gun's visit. A number of the demonstrators were students at Dublin University. The BBC covering the event stated that many Irish people were particularly upset over Reagan's visit, because the Irish Roman Catholic church was particularly involved in charity work in the Latin American countries, which had been victimised by Reagan's death squads.
God bless Code Pink and the people of Ireland for trying to get this monster and bring him to justice.
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