A little while ago I put up a piece about a video posted by Simon Webb on his History Debunked channel about the Windrush migrants. Webb claimed that the travellers on board the ship weren’t actually invited into this country, but did so merely to take advantage of the opportunities made available to them. The ship hadn’t managed to sell all its cabins, and so offered them cheaply to anyone wishing to go to Blighty. This was the reason the first group of Black and Asian commonwealth migrants came to Britain. This has been challenged by some of the great commenters here, one of whom distinctly remembers Birmingham council advertising in the Caribbean for people willing to work on the buses. Further evidence supporting the official invitation of BAME workers from the Empire to work in Britain appeared the other day on one of the Beeb’s afternoon antiques shows. I’m afraid I can’t remember which one it was, but one of the members of the public, who appeared on the programme showing their prized possessions, was a lady with her father’s official invitation from the British authorities to come over here and work. The invitation was made in the name of Her Maj. She said that these had been issued when their very many jobs available. She said that the inclusion of the Queen on the official document had allowed her father to make an excellent rebuff to the racists questioning his presence in the country. When one of them asked him why he was over here, or why didn’t he go back to his own country, he waved the invitation in their face and replied that he had an official invite from the Queen. And you can’t really argue with that.
Tags: Antiques, Asians, BBC, Birmingham, Blacks, Empire Windrush, History Debunked, Jobs, Migration, racism, Simon Webb
Beastrabban\'s Weblog 
May 28, 2022 at 4:03 pm |
I can’t bear to watch or listen to Simon Webb, he makes me so angry I could vomit. The country would be a much better place without opinionated Right wing racist bigots like him. Good thing is he’ll probably die soon.
May 29, 2022 at 10:47 am |
As much as I dislike Simon Webb’s videos, I wouldn’t wish him dead.
I would, however, like to see more and more people call out videos and opinions like this when they are clearly ill-informed and made solely to appeal to a certain audience.
The problem here is that it takes a long time to research and put together videos of the length required.
Simon Webb usually puts out videos between 3 and 10 minutes long, sometimes more than once a day.
As I have commented previously, most well informed comments disagreeing with him get deleted (free speech eh…)
Unfortunately, Dr Sivier is a busy man, so as much as I would like him to have one, I very much doubt there will be a Beastrabban YouTube channel.
May 30, 2022 at 8:26 am |
Thanks, Jim, for that very kind compliment. I do have a YouTube channel, which I haven’t put anything on for ages. I’ve just been too ill. I also had another one, which is still up. I used that one to post about archaeology and the models I’d made of prehistoric monuments out of cardboard, as well as musical instruments I’d made from plywood. I haven’t been able to use this earlier one, however, since I tried getting my mobile phone to post images on it, and so did something wrong that means that it no longer recognises me as its owner.
As for Webb, he’s not quite as bad as some of his commenters. He’s no anti-Semite, and has posted videos against the anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. But many of his commenters are. You can read coded comments about ‘the people with small hats’ being responsible for the Great Replacement. Presumably, the small hats they refer to are the yarmulka skullcaps worn by Orthodox Jews. One of them even signed himself ‘My Irrelevant Defence’, which was the title of a pamphlet published by a British Fascist after his successful prosecution in the 20s/30s.
I have posted political stuff on my new YouTube channel. This included a video about a book I self-published about the need for a separate parliamentary chamber to represent the workers, and the Nazi persecution of the unemployed and neurotics, like the Tories.
May 30, 2022 at 9:39 am |
OFF TOPIC AGAIN. SORRY! Just recently I read an article in one of the Guardian online newsletters (No, I don’t buy the rag!) stating that the government plans to withhold approval from certain university education departments, including Birmingham and Nottingham, one of which recently received a glowing endorsement from Ofsted. This is a sinister development. In future, Tory Teachers Only? Though I routinely keep these newsletters, I cannot locate this one. Could you, or a fellow reader, help me, please!
May 30, 2022 at 9:53 am |
False alarm! It appeared on msn news under The Guardian’s masthead. You can find it by googling “Government pushing England’s Universities Out Of Teacher Training”. The excuse given being “left-wing politics”!
May 30, 2022 at 10:59 am |
Slightly off topic, but I don’t think that Simon Webb has put up a video about the first black actor to play Othello in…1825 (a chap called Ira Aldridge). I learnt that fact from, surprise…Antiques Road Trip.
May 30, 2022 at 12:34 pm |
I think I remember a programme about him, or someone like him, on Radio 4. If it’s the same man, then I think he played it in Whiteface.