This is another video by the artist Lisa Shea, this time looking through the book American Folk Art by William C. Ketchum, jnr. Shea’s blurb for the video runs
‘American Folk Art by William C. Ketchum Jr is a large-format, full-color glossy book which showcases a variety of folk art styles. There are portraits of people, scenes of towns, chairs, jugs, door stops, weathervanes, figureheads of ships, quilts, and much, much more. I like how the book shows that folk art isn’t just one thing. It isn’t just a dour-faced man sitting face-forward on a chair, staring at the viewer. Folk art comes in a wide variety of styles, materials, and personalities. I enjoy this book quite a lot. I find it brings me inspiration every time I read it. Ask with any questions! Direct link to the book on Amazon, no affiliate code: https://www.amazon.com/Folk-Art-Willi…‘
Shea roughly defines folk art as art produced by people without a formal artistic education, although there are some trained artists who work in this style. It’s a kind of naive art, where there may be little perspective and the objects are painted flat to the viewer. The paintings are generally of friends and family, painted by a talented friend or neighbour of the subject, or of scenes the artist found interesting,m such as that on the cover. As the blurb states, it also extends to objects, including weathervanes. Shea comes from Massachusetts, and states that there are many weathervanes on houses in her area. People are more or less confined to their houses when the snow comes in the winter, and so people used to occupy themselves by producing works like these.
This is a fascinating look at the kind of works ordinary people create, some of which cross the Atlantic to here in Blighty. Every now and then a piece of folk art appears on Antiques Roadshow here in Britain. The example I remember is a weathervane which I think was made in Canada. Yes, I know it isn’t the US, but it’s close.
One of the issues regarding hate speech and racism that is particularly worrying some Christian groups is the definition of islamophobia that has been taken up by Labour and the other left-wing parties from the Lib Dems to the Greens. It’s been adopted by something like 62 local authorities, and with the Labour party apparently set to win the general election later this year, there are fears that they will make it national policy. This declares that ‘islamophobia is rooted in racism’ and seeks to ban prejudice or hostility towards Muslims based on their religion or ‘expressions of Muslimness’. The concern here is that it’s a blasphemy law by the back door as it does not distinguish between prejudice towards Muslims and dislike or criticism of the religion. I’ve said before now that I believe all ideologies and religions should be open to reasonable debate and criticism. But this is sharply curtailed in Islamic countries by blasphemy laws, such as that in Pakistan that carries the death penalty.
Mahyar Tousi in one of his vlogs has stated that islamophobia was formulated by the Ayatollah Khomeini when he was busy turning Iran into an Islamic republic. He could ban criticism of Islam there through the imposition of blasphemy laws, but was also determined to stop in the non-western world – what medieval Islam called the ‘dar al-harb’ or the Zone of War, as well. Hence he developed the idea of islamophobia as a form of racial prejudice. This was taken up in Britain by Trevor Philips, who now says he regrets having done so. I’ve more than enough problems with Tousi. He’s very right-wing, and seems to think that anyone to the left of the Tories is a Commie and is another who’s been telling the world that everyone supporting Gaza is an anti-Semite. But he is an ethnic Iranian and so I take some of what he says about Iran very seriously.
The most obvious criticism about the definition of islamophobia is its claim that prejudice against Islam or Muslims is ‘rooted in racism’. Islam isn’t a race. It’s a religion. The global nature of the religion means that there are White, Black and Asian Muslims, and the religion is not itself immune to racism. Although the adoption of Islam by African kings led to a positive attitude by the Arabs, as shown in books with titles like On the Excellence of the Blacks, the enslavement of Black Africans also created racial prejudice against them, very similar to the racist stereotypes that arose in the Christian west following the emergence of transatlantic slavery. During the war in the former Yugoslavia Bosnian Muslims, Serbs and Croats were racially extremely close. They were all White, as shown by a photograph of a group of blonde Bosnian Muslims leaving a mosque. Further north in Russia and, I think, the Baltic states, there are Muslim communities that have been there since the Middle Ages. I think they’re descended from central Asian Turkic tribes, who were pushed westward by the expansion of the Mongols. They’ve now been racially assimilated to the Slav and Baltic populations, as shown by a photo in one of the genuine Fascist rags back in the ’90s of a Lithuanian mullah. This man had blonde hair and blue eyes, as well as a splenetic hatred of the Jews, and so got glowing praise from Aryan supremacist nutjobs publishing the rag. One female Fascist in Mussolini’s Italy was heavily into Sufi mysticism, and so converted to Islam. In the ’90s there was a group of Fascists around Robert Pash, who were very impressed by Gadaffy’s Libya. In this century the BNP’s fuehrer, Nick Griffin, held a debate with the Islamist Anjem Chaudhary. To his surprise, Griffin got on very well with Chaudhary, as they both had similar views about the Jews. Islam got the legal status of a race in Britain following a ruling designed to protect the Sikhs from similar prejudice. The Sikh community, although very definitely largely South Asian, is composed of a number of different ethnic groups, all of which were vulnerable to prejudice because of their religion. After the Sikhs won their legal recognition as a single ethnic group based on their religion, the Muslims applied for a similar status. This is possibly based on the doctrine that all Muslims are members of a single ‘umma, or nation or community.
I don’t deny that Muslim people do need to be protected from prejudice and harassment, but the simplistic formulation of anti-Muslim prejudice makes genuine, necessary criticism of the religion and the behaviour and attitudes of some of its followers difficult. The burka is a case in point. It comes from a time and culture that stipulated that women should be confined to the home. They were not to mix with men who were not close relatives, and if they ventured out they should have to be accompanied by their husbands or another close male relative. Not all Muslim sects accepted its validity. I’ve read that the clause in the Quran demanding the veiling of women actually only demands that the bosom be covered. Nevertheless, when Boris Johnson wrote a piece in his newspaper column years ago attacking it, and comparing the women who wore it to ninjas and bin bags, he was justifiably accused of islamophobia, not least because abuse of women wearing it increased following its publication. On the other side of the Atlantic, a Canadian cartoonist was sued for islamophobia under the country’s hate speech laws because of a caricature he’d drawn a notorious female Islamist. He’d drawn in her in burka with only her eyes and glasses showing, declaring that she was going to sue someone else for prejudice so her husband could yet another Islamist training event. The subject of the cartoon sued on the grounds that it portrayed her in an islamophobic stereotype. This was despite the fact that whenever she did appear in public, in court or on television, she was always dressed in a burka.
And then there’s the issue of that mosque in Kethley, Yorkshire, whose members were sending death threats to a 14 year old autistic boy who scuffed a copy of the Quran. This, they declared, was islamophobic. It wasn’t. It showed disrespect for the Quran, and would have been a horrendous blasphemy in their eyes, but it was not a comment on Muslims as people. The shrieks of islamophobia served as an accusation of blasphemy. The police complied, and so turned up at a meeting of the mosque in question where the boy’s mother basically pleaded for her son’s life. The cops didn’t act on the mother’s side, and neither did the local authorities, possibly from fear that this would cause mass rioting across the Muslims world as happened when a Swedish man burned a copy of the Quran outside the Turkish embassy in fury at the Turks refusing to allow the country to join NATO. I’m also concerned for the safety of Christians from Muslim majority countries, who have moved here to escape real persecution in places like Pakistan. In the 1970s there was an influx of Christian Pakistanis, who allegedly came here to escape rioting against them in Pakistan after one of the newspapers printed a story about texts from the Quran being used on the wallpaper in a British restaurant. It’s unclear whether this story is true or not, as the sociologists who reported it weren’t able to verify it. But it seems more than plausible to me, given the religious rioting that has occurred more recently against Pakistani Christians.
I do not want genuine asylum seekers persecuted for their religious beliefs over here through religiously intolerant legislation passed under the guise of protecting Muslims from prejudice.
Bruce Gilley, The Case for Colonialism (Nashville, Tennessee and London, New English Review Press 2023)
Introduction
This is a controversial book that arose from an extremely controversial academic article written by the author. It’s particularly timely as yesterday the Guardian reviewed an exhibition on Black slavery with the approving comment that it was a great rebuttal to those who are now arguing that British imperialism was benign and civilising. Gilley is indeed one of the latter. in 2018 he was moved to write an academic article defending European colonialism after researching Sir Alan Burns, the last British governor of the Gold Coast, now Ghana, and reading positive comments about British colonialism from the anti-colonialist activist and writer, Chinua Achebe. Achebe is regarded as a staunch enemy of British colonialism, and yet Gilley presents quotation after quotation showing that his attitude was more nuanced. Achebe stated that by and large, Nigeria under the British was well run and that they cared for their colonies. He noted that he owed his education to European missionaries who ran excellent schools, the state schools and finally the university founded by the British. He had no animus against the British themselves, and lived in London. He was also attacked for writing in English rather than his native Igbo, despite the fact that an Igbo language press did not exist.
Benefits of Colonialism
Gilley argues that colonialism benefited its subject peoples by modernising their countries with western technology, medicine and industry, as well as fundamental institutions of political liberty as property rights and democracy. It was not regarded as illegitimate by the colonised peoples themselves. The book begins with a letter from the peoples of the Lakes region of Nigeria, now Lagos, for the British to take over their lands to protect them from their tribal enemies and inviting them to stay as long as they liked. Their willing acceptance of colonial authority was shown in the way they moved closer to the centres of colonialism, not away from them, seeking the greater opportunities to be found there. The colonies’ indigenous peoples formed the majority of civil servants, police and soldiers so that the number of White administrators in some of these nations was minuscule compared to the vast populations over which they ruled. And some of the former colonies are coming to a positive reappraisal of the colonialists as the founders of their nations. This is happening in Nigeria with Lord Lugard and the former Belgian Congo with A Brazza. Moreover, the abysmal misgovernment and corruption in these nations is forcing many of them to look back on their former colonial overlords requesting them to return. After the explosion at the port of Beirut several years ago, a petition in Lebanon went up calling for the French to return and take over the colony. 60,000 people signed in the first hours it was up on the Net. Macron acceded to the request, so that the French state acted as a kind of supervisor in an international arrangement in which a western company took over the running of the port. A Belgian journalist, van Reynbrouck, was surprised when he visited the former Belgian Congo by the numbers of young Congolese who came up to him asking when the Belgians would return. In a similar case to Lebanon, the Indonesian authorities were extremely concerned about corruption among the customs officers in Jakarta. They sacked all 3,000 of them and brought in a Swiss company to rebuild it. But the projects to reintroduce elements of western colonialism to genuinely modernise and restore good government and business practice to these countries goes far beyond that. One economist has recommended setting up ‘charter cities’ in the former colonies, with the authorities’ consent. These would be leased to the former colonial powers under 99 years leases, like Hong Kong, and governed by the former imperial masters. At the same time, leases granting residential status would be given to a limited number of migrants seeking to live and work there. In this way modern, democratic government and business would return to the former colonies.
Resulting Controversy
Gilley submitted his article promoting colonialism to two academic journals. One turned it down because it was too controversial. He then offered it to another, the Third World Quarterly. They published it to a storm of outrage. Over a hundred academics, including those of his own university, demanded that he be sacked or subjected to something like a Maoist ‘struggle session where he would be forced to recant his sin. Eventually the article was withdrawn because of threats to lives of the magazine’s editors and staff from anti-colonial fanatics in India.
The book is partly a response to this controversy. The first few chapters describe the affair and respond to his critics. The next part of the book provide examples of the positive influence of colonialism around the world, including iconoclastic reappraisals of German rule in Africa and China and a complete demolition of the claim that King Leopold’s rule in the Congo was genocide resulting in the deaths of 8 million Black Africans. The chapter on German imperialism shows that, rather than proto-Nazis, the Germans had made explicit provision for the good government of their subject peoples leading to their eventual independence at the Congress of Berlin in 1880. They ruthless punished imperial administrators and troopers who abused and victimised the natives. In Qingdao their chief judge was keen to incorporate local, Chinese law into that of the colony and wrote three books on the subject. The genocide against the Herero in Southwest Africa was not planned and was largely the result of forces beyond the authorities’ control.
Refutation of Holocaust Allegations over King Leopold’s Rule in the Congo
In the Congo the real death toll from the exactions of the Force Publicque was largely confined to one section of this vast, sprawling country and consisted of 18,000 people. This was largely the result of tribal warfare, not deliberate policy by Leopold himself. The severed feet and other bodies shown in photographs of alleged colonial atrocities were the result of the traditional way the tribes in the area showed that they had killed their victims. Leopold had taken over the country with the specific intention of eradicating the slavery and cannibalism which plagued the area. The photographs of people with severed limbs were staged recreations of mutilations resulting from these atrocities, and not of horrific punishments visited by Leopold and his servants on those who failed to meet the rubber quotas. These photographs were then taken over by British missionaries and the anti-colonialist British press to show the supposed horror inflicted by Leopold over the people of his private empire. One notorious photo showed a man looking down forlornly at severed feet and an arm. This has been presented as limbs hacked off by the Force Publique on those rubber workers who had failed to meet their set targets. But the original photograph states that the man was looking down on the remains of his wife and daughter after they had been eaten by cannibals.
Black Anti-Slavery Activists Embrace of American Constitution
Another chapter presents the positive case for enslavement in America. He does not seek to present slavery itself as a positive institution benefiting its victims, although that was one of the arguments of its supporters. Instead he notes that in America slaves could, surprisingly, have the benefit of the law. In 1791 in Newport, Connecticutt, a slaver was tried for murder for throwing an enslaved woman with smallpox overboard as a threat to the health and lives of the rest of the ship. The trial lasted five years before the man was acquitted on the grounds that he had acted to protect the others on board against the contagion. Moreover, Black anti-slavery activists were well aware of the anti-slavery implications of the American constitution and its enshrinement of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for all. They sought to widen its application beyond White Americans to themselves, in alliance with Whites, writing hymns and other texts supporting this view.
British Attempts to Supply Food to Famine-Struck First Nations in Canada
The book also rehabilitates British rule on the Canadian prairies, stating that they were not indifferent or complicit in a 19th century famine of the indigenous peoples that has now been described as a Holocaust. The British had scant resources in this corner of Canada and did what they could to provide food. They were also seeking to provide the Indians with modern, industrial education in the now notorious residential schools at the Native Canadians own request. They were hampered by distance and the problems of farming in that section of Canada which stumped even season agriculturalists from Ontario and was only solved ten years after the famine. And the same problems afflicted White Canadians. One man, who moved west, suffered from the loss of vital equipment en route. When he arrived, local people, including the Indians, borrowed his equipment but did not return it. The environment itself proved to be too challenging and after sticking it out for three years he finally gave up and returned home.
Erasure of the History of White Farmers in America
White farmers in colonial era America are also being erased from official history through a movement that claims that the piles of stones they left in their fields are really Native American cairns. This started with a group of old, White men. The founders of the movement were interested in pseudo-history, like finding Atlantis. Farmers in 19th century New England, when clearing their fields of stones, used to pile them up in the centre of the field. They were given to children to play with or sold to workers building roads. When such piles have been excavated, they reveal underneath rusted farm equipment and White American domestic refuse. The indigenous peoples then adopted the idea, passionately claiming that the piles were indeed cairns left by their ancestors. They gained this knowledge after visiting the stones and a few minutes of sacred contact with their gods and spirits. From there it moved on to be adopted by state and county authorities, sometimes as a means of preventing building development of these areas. Yet the fake history presented by this movement damages real colonial history. The stones themselves are the physical remains of the agricultural settlement and abandonment of these areas as the farmers moved to fresh lands further west. Another chapter takes apart this misrepresentation of Malayan colonial rule during the Emergency, stating that most Malayans actually supported British rule against that of the Communist guerrillas.
Achebe and Naipaul on the Benefits of Colonialism
There are two chapters given to the positive appreciation of colonialism by Chinua Achebe and the British Asian writer, V.S. Naipaul. Naipaul believed very strongly that British colonialism had benefited its peoples around the world. For him, it was a universal civilisation that promoted benign values applicable to all humanity. He was sharply critical in his novels of the dictators that took over these countries, plunging them into corruption and horrific bloodshed, and their left-wing White European supporters who followed them around, turning a blind eye to the horrors in the belief that something great and genuinely African would arise. He is also scathing of the hypocrisy behind the critics of British colonialism, who all seek its benefits in London or the West. These include Fazlur Rahman, who led the campaign to the Islamise Pakistan in the 1960s. When this provoked opposition, he fled to a nice tenured academic position at an American university. Vijayamprada Gopal, a professor of Colonial and Post-Colonial Literature at Cambridge University and a favourite with Novara Media, also gets it for her snobbery. She stated that she would no longer teach working class students after the university porters called her by the university’s accustomed form of address of ‘madam’ for all women, rather than calling her ‘doctor’ as she wanted. This conforms to Naipaul’s comment that Oxbridge educated Indians were worse petty tyrants than the Indian landlords, who insisted that their tenants bow and touch their feet.
Criticism of Gandhi
Naipaul was also critical of Islam in Among the Believers, and had scant regard for Gandhi. Gandhi had the right idea when he started out, but then transformed himself into a Hindu holy man, after which he had nothing positive to contribute. It’s controversial, but there have been books and articles written arguing that Gandhi was not the benign figure he’s been presented as. Rabindranath Tagore, another great figure in Indian nationalism, dislike Gandhi because of his tactic of whipping up mobs until they were on the edge of rioting and violence and then pulling back. His sudden embrace of the Dalits in the 1920s was provoked, not by genuine concern for them, but because the British were planning to add an extra clause protecting their voting rights. Gandhi feared that this would lead to them supporting British rule, not Indian nationalism. He also knew absolutely nothing about the Second World War and the nature of Nazism. He wrote a letter to Churchill urging him to make peace with Hitler as ‘he is not a bad man’. On the invasion of Czechoslovakia, he recommended that the Czechs and Slovaks should meet the Nazis with passive resistance. When someone pointed out to him that this would simply result in the Nazis exterminating them, he acknowledged that this would happen, but ‘it would have been glorious’. India today is an emerging industrial and technological global superpower, quite contrary to what Gandhi himself would have wanted for his country. Gandhi hated modern technology with its trains and airplanes. He would have liked India to return to its traditional Vedic social and economic structure. And it is precisely by rejecting his vision that India has developed and become the global force it is today.
Gilley’s View of the Handing of Hong Kong to China
The last chapter is Gilley’s own personal observations of Hong Kong’s handover to China in 1991 under its last governor, Chris Patten and an article he wrote for the final edition of a magazine devoted Asian affairs when this magazine finally folded. Patten comes across as trying to do his level best for Hong Kong and its people despite almost insurmountable opposition from the Chinese. Beijing did not respect the original treaty and simply regarded it as an opportune time to take over the colony. They warned Patten not to introduce democracy just before independence, as the British had done elsewhere. Patten defied them and gave it to Hong Kong anyway. He was very keen to soothe local feelings about colonialism, and so appeared in a lounge suit rather than traditional gubernatorial garb. As for the magazine, based in Hong Kong, this was very much a product of the colonial age in taking a broad view of the politics and economic affairs of the region. But it lost readers with the retreat of colonialism. Instead of a broad, regional view, magazines now presented the specific views of the individual nations, such as India or China, and the broader view was now being lost.
Genocide and Butchery by Post-Independence Dictators
The book also describes the horrors and carnage perpetrated by the colonies’ various dictators, who seized power after independence. Guinea-Bissau’s dictator wanted to destroy the legacy and infrastructure left over by the Portuguese, and so tore his country apart, butchering its people in the process. The British in Zanzibar had set up a multi-party system which sought to balance the interests of African and Arab Zanzibaris. A year after Prince Philip had formally handed power to them, however, it was invaded by anti-colonial forces backed by the Soviet Union and East Germany. Only one in ten indigenous Zanzibaris supported the invasion. The invaders set up a regime of massacre and repression, driving out the Sultan and the Arab and South Asian Zanzibaris. In one massacre, they invaded and slaughtered the tribespeople in one of the islands, whose children were then required to sing suitably patriotic songs celebrating their parents’ deaths.
Frantz Fanon’s Glorification of the Shooting and Murder of Whites
He also attacks Frantz Fanon, the Caribbean psychiatrist whose text on Algerian war of independence, The Wretched of the Earth, is now a classic of the decolonisation movement. Rather than being some kind of benign text on the necessity of Black liberation, Fanon’s book is bloodthirsty, revelling in the genocidal massacre of French colonists and White Europeans, and endorsed with a foreword by Jean-Paul Sartre. Gilley is harshly critical of the western left-wing intellectuals, safely ensconced in their Paris cafes, supporting people who can only be described as monstrous tyrants. No positive view of French rule in Algeria is permitted in the mainstream French press, but there is a large, self-published literature by the Pieds-Noir, the former French colonists, arguing that the mainstream view is incorrect. He also criticised the modern anti-colonial crowd, who angrily denounce America as a colonial power while demanding the right of Africans and Muslims to immigrate there.
Independence Not Expected or Wanted by the Majority of Colonial Peoples
Against this, and attacks on western notions of democracy and human rights, Gilley argues that the independence came unexpectedly and was not wanted by the mass of the colonised. In the Belgian Congo, only 27 per cent of the population supported it, but they were given it anyway, like it or not, by the departing Belgians. The real forces behind decolonisation was European exhaustion following the Second World War. Europe no longer had the ability to afford to run the former colonies and there was pressure from both America and Russia to open them up and decolonise, plus the politics of the Cold War. The countries that did best following independence were those that retained the most of their colonial legacy and infrastructure. This is recognised by many of the former colonies themselves. While colonial rule is hated by the people of most of the former colonies, their rulers are seeking to reintroduce elements of the colonial legacy in order to improve their countries.
Colonialism Preferable to the Alternatives
This all runs counter to what has been taught for decades, at least since the 1970s, about European colonialism, which is still being blamed for the many failures and troubles of the former colonies today. It will certainly not be popular with the Guardian and the other left-wing papers and magazines that hold the view that colonialism was uniformly bad, oppressive and exploitative. But Gilley makes a very strong and clear case. As well as the known facts that contradict the received narrative, it also argues from counterfactuals. What would have happened in the absence of colonialism? There are three possibilities. One is a continuation of tribal warfare and indigenous slavery. The second is the penetration of these colonies by western mercenaries and companies seeking concessions. The third is colonisation by a rival power. None of these would necessarily benefit the indigenous peoples.
As for the brutality of the British and other Europeans, the indigenous rulers and imperial powers were just as ruthless, if not more so. Nader Shah, the Persian emperor, was preparing a common currency for Persia and India, suggesting he planned to invade and annexe the country. During his time in Delhi he massacred 30,000 people. On his return to Persia he gouged his son’s eyes out, castrated one of his generals and had six merchants buried alive for the crime of buying a rug belonging to the imperial court. The British and other colonial powers, on the other hand, erected laws against the exploitation and brutal treatment of natives, sending reports back to the home countries and investigating and prosecuting offenders. This provides the basis for the many works of history denouncing colonialism, which is rather hypocritical in the absence of similar concerns by the indigenous powers presented as being somehow innocent of these crimes.
Arguments for Forced Labour
Gilley also seeks to rehabilitate the system of forced labour the British and other Europeans imposed on their African colonies. Gilley argues that this was indeed to make the colonies pay for themselves in the absence of monetary taxation. He states that the arguments against it are economically illiterate. Perhaps, but in Malawi and no doubt other African countries it was resented as a new form of slavery. He also points out the contradictory arguments against colonialism. For some, it underdeveloped its colonies. For others, it interfered too much. And there is the attitude among many of colonialism’s critics that the British should have provided free education and healthcare to their colonial subjects. In fact, Britons themselves did not have free healthcare until the establishment of the NHS and welfare state by the Labour government in 1948. Education in Britain wasn’t compulsory until the 1870s, and even if it was supposed to be free, the poverty of many working class Brits meant that some were unable to afford items such as school uniforms, pens and pencils and other equipment. It’s a case of presentism, the imposition of modern attitudes on to the past, in this case the expectations of the modern welfare state at a time when it did not exist.
Two Phases of British Colonialism
It is noticeable that Gilley begins his treatment of colonialism when it had entered its paternalistic, liberal phase after 1824. In Britain’s case this followed the abolition of the slave trade in 1809 and the introduction of progressive legislation for the improvement of the slaves’ lives in preparation for their eventual emancipation. The previous phase of British imperialism, such as the Elizabethan conquest of Ireland, James VI’s/I’s plantations and the horrors of the Cromwellian campaigns, in my view cannot be justified. Nor can the conquest of the Caribbean and the New World with the extirpation of the original Amerindian populations and the establishment of transatlantic slavery. Which is, no doubt, why he doesn’t and is silent on this phase of western colonialism. Some anti-imperial historians have written about European colonialism as if it was consciously proceeded according to a pre-set plan. But his was not the case. There was no uniform plan and European imperialism was the result of different economic, political, social and religious forces at different times. The lost of the American colonies and their slave holdings made it easier for the British to ban the slave trade and eventually slavery in theirs. Historians have long recognised that there were two phases of British imperialism, the first in America and the Caribbean, the second in the conquest of India, Africa and Asia. It may well be high time that anti-imperial historians and activists took on board the fact that the nature of colonialism itself changed in these two periods.
Imperialists as Colonies’ Real Nationalists
The book is part of a growing mass of literature seeking to present a positive case for colonialism, such as Nigel Biggar’s Colonialism: A Moral Reckoning. Gilley goes further than Biggar, who merely argues that there were certain aspects of British colonialism that were deeply amoral and oppressive, by presenting this phase of imperialism as benign and positive, and takes friendly issue with Biggar on this point. There are even a very few positive facts in favour of Apartheid. One of these is that under it, 100,000 Black Africans a year sought to immigrate to South Africa. But this probably says more about the horrific state of the other African countries than anything really positive about Apartheid. Despite the barrage of abuse and threats Gilley received for his article, the book also reproduces the positive and supportive comments he received from other academics and activists from Africa and Asia, some of whom said that they and their families had greatly benefited from the institutions, especially schools and universities, left by the British. He also claims at one point that the British and other colonialists were these countries’ true nationalists, in that they had a deep interest in the indigenous cultures and their arts and literature that were often being neglected by the indigenous peoples themselves. Naipaul quotes an Indonesian Muslim as saying that his countries’ historic mosques are now preserved by the West, as previously the Indonesians themselves wanted to pull them down.
Necessity of Proper Academic Debate
This is a powerful counterblast to the received narrative about the evils of colonialism. Whatever one feels about it – and looking at the current state of political corruption and creeping authoritarianism in Britain, I am extremely doubtful about the ability of my country to act as a new, benign imperial force – I strongly believe that it and similar books have a place in academic education and discussion. The attempt to silence Gilley, and indeed Biggar on this side of the Pond, with denunciations, personal abuse and death threats is deeply authoritarian and oppressive in its turn. Gilley at one point states that it may take national legislation in America to restore genuine free speech to campuses. And free speech and genuine academic debate are the cornerstones of genuine democracy. Without it, you just have authoritarianism and indoctrination.
There was some kind of upset in parliament Wednesday night. From what I gather the SNP tabled a motion calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. The Labour party tabled an amendment, which some people say the speaker, Lindsay Hoyle, was bullied or tricked into upholding, and the SNP walked out. There have therefore been demands for Hoyle’s resignation, while Labour has been accused by the anti-Islam right of cowardice for supposedly caving in to ‘Islamist’ demands. There was indeed a demonstration outside parliament, and while I don’t doubt that Islamist firebrands were out there, it was a demonstration in support of Gaza and the Palestinians, not a demand for sharia law. But you wouldn’t think that by some of the ludicrous videos put up by GB News. Patrick Christys, a particularly horrible right-wing sprog, has called for sharia law to be banned in Britain. Well, sharia law has no legal standing. I haven’t noticed people having their hands amputated for theft, or being whipped for other offences as prescribed by Islamic law. If they were, the people involved would be arrested for assault of various degrees of severity, and hopefully convicted and imprisoned. But that’s another issue. From what I’ve read of the amendment, not only does it call for a ceasefire, but it also demands a halt to the construction of Israeli settlement and a two-state solution to the problem. Corbyn, I feel, would also have demanded a halt to the expansion of Israeli settlements. Which is ironic, as according to Starmer and his faction, he was a terrible anti-Semite and threat to Jews. I think, however, that most pro-Palestine activists feel that a two-state solution is unworkable and that what should happen is that the Palestinians should be integrated as genuinely full and equal citizens of Israel.
Here’s what Karen Smyth said:
‘Dear David,
On Wednesday, Parliament resolved to call for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, agreeing the text of the Labour amendment to the Scottish National Party motion without a division.
Like all of us, I have watched the events of the last five months in the Middle East with horror and sadness at the abominable loss of life. I know members of Bristol South Labour Party are extremely concerned by the continuing conflict.
This Labour amendment was much stronger than the original motion brought by the SNP, which failed to address violence elsewhere in Palestine and the need for a massive, unimpeded relief effort in Gaza. Not only did our motion definitively call for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, it also called for an end to settlement expansion and violence in the West Bank. In addition, it re-stated long-standing Labour policy on a two-state solution.
It was gravely disappointing and saddening to see this important decision by Parliament being overlooked due to events in the chamber that night.
The fighting must come to an end. The UK must now work with our international partners to bring about that immediate ceasefire, and provide a credible plan to end this conflict. Statehood is the inalienable right of the Palestinian people alongside a safe and secure Israel.
Please see below for the full text of Labour’s amendment.
Yours sincerely,
Karin Smyth
Labour amendment in full
“That this House believes that an Israeli ground offensive in Rafah risks catastrophic humanitarian consequences and therefore must not take place; notes the intolerable loss of Palestinian life, the majority being women and children; condemns the terrorism of Hamas who continue to hold hostages; supports Australia, Canada and New Zealand’s calls for Hamas to release and return all hostages and for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire, which means an immediate stop to the fighting and a ceasefire that lasts and is observed by all sides, noting that Israel cannot be expected to cease fighting if Hamas continues with violence and that Israelis have the right to the assurance that the horror of 7 October 2023 cannot happen again; therefore supports diplomatic mediation efforts to achieve a lasting ceasefire; demands that rapid and unimpeded humanitarian relief is provided in Gaza; further demands an end to settlement expansion and violence; urges Israel to comply with the International Court of Justice’s provisional measures; calls for the UN Security Council to meet urgently; and urges all international partners to work together to establish a diplomatic process to deliver the peace of a two-state solution, with a safe and secure Israel alongside a viable Palestinian state, including working with international partners to recognise a Palestinian state as a contribution to rather than outcome of that process, because statehood is the inalienable right of the Palestinian people and not in the gift of any neighbour.“
There was a piece on the internet yesterday – I can’t remember whether it was from one of the papers, from a YouTuber or GB News, asking why the Labour party was going after Kemi Badenoch. This message, which I also got yesterday from the pro-democracy organisation Open Britain shows why. Badenoch has gained more than a little support from the anti-woke crowd because of her attacks on the ideology, especially over the trans issue. But this piece is a salutary reminder of how untrustworthy she is as well as her support for the government’s bills attacking democracy. Open Britain are, by contrast, cautiously optimistic about the future Labour government because they are considering an independent ethics commission. I’ve no doubt that after the Tories’ flagrant violations of the code governing parliamentary ethics, such as a commission is needed. But I don’t trust Labour to deliver it, not with Starmer’s record of ditching every decent or left-wing policy that he initially embraced and they also have their very-well founded doubts.
‘Dear David,
Delusional Brexit fantasies. Gross misconduct. Shameless lies. Kemi Badenoch scored a hat trick this last week, hitting every note of the Tory trifecta in quick succession. But will she be held accountable?
Badenoch is not just some rogue backbencher. She is – somehow – this country’s Minister for Business and Trade. And she’s also tipped to lead the Conservative Party in the future. This aspiring Prime Minister (or, perhaps more likely, leader of the opposition) is openly perpetuating the toxic legacy of Boris Johnson – and once more exposing the desolate void where political accountability should be. This week alone, she:
Pretended to be engaged in trade talks with Canada (in a likely effort to show off those very real Brexit “wins”), until Ottawa diplomats pointed out that no such negotiations took place.
Engaged in a public battle with recently terminated Post Office chair Henry Staunton over the handling of the Horizon Scandal. Based on their exchange, Badenoch has been credibly accused of misleading Parliament in breach of the Ministerial Code.
Got called out for a lie in December that she had “engaged extensively” with LGBT groups as Equalities Minister – an FOI request revealed that she hadn’t met a single one.
Sunak is, at the time of writing, backing Badenoch to the hilt. In doing so, he emulates his predecessor, Boris Johnson, who dismissed complaints against her in 2021 when she lashed out at a Huffington Post reporter for sending her a request for comment. So the answer so far is no, she will not be held accountable. It seems that Badenoch, like other figureheads on the Conservative right, is more or less untouchable. For now.
It is not just Badenoch’s lack of professionalism or integrity that raises alarm bells. As Levelling Up Minister, she was the driving force behind the recent anti-democracy Elections Bill (that Open Britain and its allies fought so hard against). She regularly fans the flames of the so-called culture wars with nonsense ‘anti woke’ statements.
In short, she is the epitome of the rot that is eating away at our political system. As our Functional Democracy Goals report made clear, we desperately need a new standards system in Parliament – one that is clear, enforceable, and ruthless in holding to account those who would undermine our democracy.
We need to make our political leaders accountable again. We need to learn the lessons of recent years and ensure we don’t repeat past mistakes in the future. We need to fix this broken system.
Rumours of what a future Labour government might do in this space are encouraging (they are reported to be considering the creation of an “independent ethics commission”) but we’re not getting carried away. We need to wait and see whether those rumours translate into concrete plans or become just the latest Starmer u-turn.
I caught a headline from the Torygraph today. Jordan Peterson, the Canadian psychiatrist who became an international right-wing celebrity for defying the law regarding the mandatory use of pronouns for trans people, was in the rag claiming that Labour will ruin Britain if they come to power. The way the Labour party is going by adopting just about every Tory policy they can, I don’t doubt it. But as the Guardian has also said in a headline for an article they’ve put up attacking his pronouncement, ‘has he seen the Tories?’ And yes, it must be said that they’ve done a very fine job of destroying this great and beautiful country over the past thirteen years. Or possibly forty, if you go right back to Maggie Thatcher and John Major. Yes, I know that in the middle of this period, from about 1997 to 2010 the country was ruled by Blair and Brown of New Labour, but they were also Thatcherites and so almost count as Tories. But there’s another dimension to the Peterson story that needs comment.
Peterson has launched his own think tank, the Association for Responsible Citizenship, which is another organisation claiming to regenerate proper democratic values and conduct. But it’s another right-wing bunch like the various lot out on Tufton Street. No Justice did a video on YouTube about it a few days ago, and although I only watched a few minutes of it, that was enough to show how nasty it was. It’s connected to Legatum, another hard right outfit, and I think it includes Iain Duncan Smith. Smiffy was the man in charge of the DWP under Cameron, who, with his collaborator the Wicked Witch of the Wirral, Esther McVey, was responsible for swingeing cuts to disability and other benefits that saw people falling into starvation and misery. In a couple of cases, they took their own lives.
Peterson’s organisation isn’t going to do anything for the poor. It looks like another think tank demanding further cuts to the welfare state to benefit the rich. And any policies it has about democracy and political discourse will be part of that wider political end. So don’t listen to him.
This came earlier this morning, and is an appeal for people to get on social media to send a message condemning the UK’s abstention on this crucial issue.
‘Dear friends,
Rishi Sunak just made the U.K. the only member of the UN Security Council to abstain during a crucial vote for a humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza.
In stark contrast, the U.K.’s close allies – Canada, New Zealand and Australia – have joined 150 nations backing a ceasefire.
Some estimate that 1400 more Palestinian children will die before Christmas. What are our leaders waiting for?
Make no mistake, the U.K. government is feeling the heat – it’s increasingly isolated and rebellions are growing in both main parties. It’s working: let’s keep up the pressure! Send a message to Rishi Sunak via Twitter and forward this campaign to your friends using the buttons below:
Over 2 million people live in Gaza, and almost 50% are children under 18. The blockade has left them largely without drinking water, food or fuel. This is illegal under international law. Hospitals are operating on wounded civilians without anesthesia. Imagine – screaming, wounded children with no painkillers to help them.Now, calls for help from Gazans have no way out with the airstrikes cutting off access to cell phones, internet and landlines — and the rest of the world is unable to see what’s really happening.This isn’t a targeted strike on Hamas — it’s the collective punishment of an entire people.The Israeli people are also in danger. After the horror of October 7th, their far-right, Trump-like Prime Minister is drawing them into a war that could take years and thousands more lives. Standing with Israel does not mean standing with PM Netanyahu or supporting a war that will make everyone less safe.With key governments, like the US, giving Netanyahu the greenlight to plunge into war, the hawks of war are far louder than the voices for peace. And that is one thing we can change if we act together — demanding the leadership we need to bring security and justice to both sides.Join the massive call to STOP this insanity before it’s too late. Add your voice below and Avaaz will put our message in ads around the world and deliver it directly to key heads of state.
There is no liberation for any of us when we let this kind of harm come to innocent people, and we all have a role to play in stopping it. We can be the people who choose justice over revenge. Who choose life over death. Who choose peace over war. Let’s call the world to its senses together!With hope and determination,Nell, Abdelrahman, Alice, Christoph, John, Kanika, Lily, Mo and the rest of the Avaaz team
Doug Stokes, Against Decolonisation: Campus Culture Wars and the Decline of the West (Cambridge: Polity Press 2023)
The murder of George Floyd by a White police officer three years ago sparked a wave of protests across America and then Britain under the banner of the Black Lives Matter organisation. It was loudly trumpeted that western civilisation is institutionally racist and that it was based on ‘Whiteness’, the underlying racist ideology by which Whites maintained the social, economic and educational advantages against Blacks and people of colour. This ‘White privilege’ extended to all Whites, even if they were not personally racist. There have since been demands to dismantle this perceived systemic racism. This has entered the university, where, according to Stokes, it has set off a moral panic. There is supposed to be a gap between the number of Whites and ethnic minorities enrolling at university and the numbers of Whites achieving top grades and Blacks and other people of colour. This is ascribed to personal racism on campus and the content of the university curriculum. This is held to be Eurocentric and too White. Blacks and other ethnic minorities, it is argued, do not enrol in uni because they are marginalised and put off by the overwhelmingly White content and the personal racism they experience, including microaggressions. At the same time, modern science and Enlightenment rationality are attacked as merely western forms of knowledge that are alien to people of colour from outside Europe. This needs to be removed from the centre of European teaching so that proper space can be made for non-White cultures and their ways of knowing.
Decolonisation and the Advancement of Privileged Members of Ethnic Minorities
Stokes is, according to the brief personal bio on the back cover, a director of the Strategy and Security Institute at the University of Exeter, a fellow of the Legatum Institute and a member of the advisory council for the Free Speech Union. He’s also written for a number of right-wing journals like the Times, Torygraph, Spectator and The Critic. Most of the attacks on ‘wokeness’ come from the right, but elements of the left are also turning against it. A few weeks ago the Free Speech Union put up a panel of left-wing writers and academics, who were also very much against it and its malign cancel culture. And there are certainly important points people on the left can take away from this book. Stokes argues that the determination to appoint people to prominent positions in the university and elsewhere is very much a class issue. It allows rich and privileged people of colour like Priyamvada Gopal, a history professor at Cambridge, to present themselves as somehow more marginalised than the Whites underneath. For example, Gopal declared that she was less advantaged because of her colour than the porters at Cambridge. The Beeb’s senior journo is an Asian woman, who declared that she wouldn’t have got her position without the Corporation’s diversity scheme. This is questionable, as her father is billionaire owning one of Britain’s football clubs, and her mother is millionaire in her own right.
The Professional Managerial Class and the Neglect of the Working Class
Stokes also argues that the decolonisation movement is strongly linked with the emergence of the Professional Managerial Class. This is a class of mostly White technocrats, who appeared after the dismantling of the Post-War consensus. As the trade unions were neutered and the welfare state and NHS cut and privatised, the functions of the nation state were increasingly subordinated to the authority of multinational bodies, staffed by ‘anywheres’ – officials with no particular connection to any country, who looked down on the ‘somewheres’ who still retained their loyalty to their particular location or country. And this highly privileged elite particularly despised the White working class. Stokes presents statistics that show, contrary to the image promoted by the intersectional left, it’s the White working class, and particularly boys, who are now marginalised and excluded from the academy, but this is ignored by the university sector. Bristol university set up a bursary worth millions to support 30 more Black students. By contrast, there were only two bursaries set up for people from a generally disadvantaged background. These were only worth £2 million each, compared to the tens given out under the Black bursary scheme. But even one of these two was reserved solely for Blacks. Such schemes proliferate, but only a tiny minority of universities have schemes to support people from a working class background. But Stokes goes through the statistics to show that there are a number of complex factors preventing people from going to uni which have nothing to do with class. The most important is class. Another factor is education. Most Blacks go to state comprehensive schools, which are far less successful at sending their pupils to university than the elite private schools.
Ethnic Racial Oppression Challenged by Statistics
As for the supposed gap between the number of BME pupils going on to university and Whites, the opposite of what is claimed is true: Blacks and ethnic minorities comprise 18 per cent of the population, but 30 per cent of the students enrolling at university. Many ethnic minorities are as successful and some more so than the White population. Indians and other ethnic minorities are as successful as Whites, but people of Chinese origin 30 per cent more. White working class pupils on free school meals are the least successful apart from Travellers.
Stokes cites statistics to show again and again that the Black Lives Matter narrative of racial oppression is wrong, drawn from EU and EHRC reports that claim the opposite. In America, more cops are shot by Blacks than Blacks are shot by Whites. Where there is a statically higher chance of Blacks being shot by the cops than the general population, it’s because Blacks are statistically more likely to commit violent crimes. As for racial offences, while most of these are committed by Whites, 24 per cent of them are so are also committed by Blacks, despite the fact that they only constitute around 13 per cent of the American population.
The stats also show that Britain is a far less racist country than others. 89 per cent of people are comfortable with someone of a different colour being prime minister. Other stats show that most people have no objections with their children marrying people of another colour and with working with people of different ethnicities. The incidence of racist crime is much lower than claimed. Most people from ethnic backgrounds are proud to be British at 65 per cent, slightly higher than Whites, and the police is actually more trusted by Blacks and ethnic minorities than by Whites. As for the university sector, while there are fewer ethnic minority professors than Whites, this is not true of certain subjects. 53 per cent of the students and staff in chemical and electrical engineering departments are Black or Asian. Similarly, the degree attainment gap is closing and for some groups it’s statistically insignificant.
There’s also a gender aspect to this. Increasingly more women are entering university than men. 53 per cent of university students are women, and this proportion is increasing so that it has been predicted that in a few decades’ time women will comprise 73 per cent of all students. They are enrolling in all the professional subjects except the mathematical sciences. This implies that in the coming decades the professions, and particularly medicine, will be female dominated.
Needless to say, these stats attacking the narrative that Britain is racist are not what the intersectional left wants to hear. The book quotes the automatic denunciations of a government report published a year or so ago, which concluded that Britain was not a racist society, by prominent members of the Labour party like Jeremy Corbyn, Keir Starmer and Bell Ribeiro-Addy.
Intellectual Origins
As well as attacking it at the level of statistics, Stokes dissects the history of the movement. It emerged in the early 20th century in the thinking of the Marxist Frankfurt school and the Italian Communist, Antonio Gramsci. They felt that in order to radicalise the working class it would be necessary to change the culture. This effectively stands Marx on its head, as Marx claimed that the economic substructure created and influenced ideology. This was then taken up in its turn by the American Marxist Herbert Marcuse. Marcuse was concerned by the failure of the western working class to adopt revolutionary socialism. Instead, he and other radical decided to appeal to the new marginalised groups, such as gays and the ‘people of the ghetto’ – Blacks. This occurred roughly at the same time that similarly disappointed western radicals adopted the ideology of ‘Third Worldism’. They looked to the new national liberation movements of the colonised peoples around the world as an attack on western capitalism which would eventually result in its destruction. These radicals took over as their texts works like Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth. And their attitudes show a mixture of White self-hatred and sheer bloodlust. Sartre, in his introduction to Fanon’s book, declared that if you shot a European, you killed two people: the European and the man he oppressed. Michel Foucault, despite being an openly gay man, was an enthusiastic supporter of the Islamic Revolution in Iran because it was a revolt against ‘western rationalism’. This included the mass purges, including that of homosexuals, by the revolutionary regime.
Foucault and similar thinkers were also responsible for the attack on science and rationality. According to Foucault and the structural and post-structural linguists that preceded him, no objective knowledge about the world is possible due to the all pervasive influence of language. Language structures people’s thinking in binaries – man/woman, Black/White and so on, one of which is always in inferior. Thus language ensures that men enjoy a more privileged position than women, and Blacks and other ethnic minorities are inferior to Whites. At the same time, knowledge is not objective but serves the interest of those in power. It does not advance. Instead, there is merely a change in viewpoint between one historical epoch and another.
Capitalism, Not Science and Rationality, Responsible for Rise of the West
Similarly, the role of the rise of science and the industrial revolution in producing Britain and the West’s global supremacy is also denied. Instead it is argued that a crisis in feudalism in the late Middle Ages led to the rise of capitalism and its institution which created the conditions for European dominance and the enslavement and destruction of indigenous peoples.
Readers of this blog will now that I am particularly concerned about the focus on British and European involvement in the transatlantic slave trade and the way this obscures the existence of slavery across cultures from antiquity onwards. Stokes tackles this issue, exposing its existence in China. Arab merchants to China took with them Black African slaves as their personal servants. This started a craze for African slaves amongst the Chinese, but this has been erased from history. Chinese children are not taught about it in schools, nor is it discussed either officially or in popular culture. At the same time, the slave trade within Africa was very firmly in African hands. The largest collection of documents on the slave trade comes from the Dutch East India Company comprising 100,000 volumes. But these documents hardly anywhere mention the Dutch doing the actual business of capturing slaves. It was done instead by Black Africans, who then sold them on to Europeans. And some Black slavers did extremely well, such as Tippoo Tipp, who enslaved Black Africans to provide labour for his plantations on Zanzibar.
As for the supposed role the slave trade played in enriching Britain, historians have said that in fact it played the same role in stimulating the economy as sugar. The real driver of the industrial revolution and Britain’s wealth was textiles. In fact, it may even have been a disadvantage. One historian has estimated that the country would have been £500,000 better off if we didn’t have the West Indies.
Working Class Whites Did Not Benefit from Slave Trade
He also rebuts the assertion that all Whites somehow benefited from the slave trade. This is again untrue on several levels. Imperialism and colonialism were policies devised by the upper classes. Democracy was only established in 1928 when the vote was granted to all adult men and women without property qualifications. Before then, in the 18th and early 19th century, the franchise was severely restricted to only a tiny percentage of the electorate. And most White people’s lives in 19th century Britain was one of desperate poverty and misery. The average life expectancy in the early 19th century was forty. Child labour was the norm, with small children working down the mines. He gives examples of the long hours one seven or eight year old child worked in total darkness operating the ventilation shutters in the pits, and of a mine disaster where flooding killed both adults and children. But the anti-slavery movement was strong amongst the British people as a whole and particularly among the working class. He also points out that almost all civilisations accepted the existence of slavery, and that the anomaly isn’t British and European slavery, but how the British and the West abolished it.
Geopolitical Dangers
He also argues that the decolonisation movement is dangerous on a geopolitical level. The book presents statistics that show that 47 per cent of Africans believe that colonialism benefited their countries, a higher percentage than westerners. However, slavery and colonialism are used by extremely corrupt African politicians to explain their countries poor performance rather than in the massive greed of the kleptocrats running them. One of these was James Ibori, the governor of one of the Nigerian states, who stole over $100 million but was lauded by his admirers as a great patriot. But other states, such as Russia and China, are weaponising Western guilt as part of their own foreign policies against the West. China has particularly attacked the West as racist and White supremacist for opposing the Great Chinese Dream. This includes further commercial penetration into Africa, which has alarmed some observers as a new form of colonialism.
Nations are bound together by their common histories, and the attack on the West’s history as one of shameful exploitation is designed to stop America and its allies exercising any kind of global dominance. But this retreat from a unipolar world will make international politics much more cut-throat. The state of international relations before the rise of America following the Second World War was one of competing empires which attacked and preyed on the weak. Following the Second World War, America set up a number of international bodies to protect and extend the liberal international order. This included western Europe against the Soviet bloc and Japan in Asia. The result has been that the percentage of the world’s population in desperate poverty has declined from 40 per cent to 10 per cent. He recognises that America’s position as the world’s policeman hasn’t been free from terrible mistakes, but argues that without the security afforded by America international affairs will revert to what they were before as nations compete ruthlessly for resources. He also criticises the various anti-colonialist intellectuals who were all too ready to attack the west, but said nothing about rival empires that were just as brutal or even worse. Like Edward Said, who didn’t criticise Russia, China or the Ottoman Empire, whose Barbary pirates also enslaved White Europeans. Said claimed he didn’t have to. As a Palestinian he was quite comfortable in an eastern milieu, which means that there is a shocking bias and one-sidedness in his critique of imperialism.
Decolonisation Mandatory University Policy
Despite these objections, decolonisation has become a mandatory policy across the university sector. It is demanded and enforced by the Equalities and Human Rights Commission, Universities UK and the Race Equality Charter as well as the Universities and Colleges Union. And it’s extremely authoritarian. Students in some universities are required to attend compulsory courses on anti-racism. This is not the kind of anti-racism which most people grew up with in the 1970s, when Dr Luther King called on us to judge men by their character, not their colour. If a student responds to the questions presented to him or her on questionnaires devised by the activists with slogans like ‘I believe in one race – the human race’, she or he will get a lecture on how this is itself racist and people of different races need to be treated differently according to their culture and background. Ditto if you’re a believer in meritocracy, in which the best people for a job should get it regardless of their colour. In fact Thomas Sowell has shown that sheer commercial necessity has frequently acted against institutional racism. Despite legislation in apartheid South Africa banning Blacks from certain jobs, some employers nevertheless sought to circumvent it to employ Black workers, simply because it made commercial sense. The activists are also vindictive and highly authoritarian. These course will also ask their White students how guilty they are and openly encourage such feelings as part of an indoctrination campaign to turn them into ‘allies’ concerned to make a fairer Britain for Blacks and other ethnic minorities. Microaggressions are a part of this programme in some universities. These are gestures or body language that suggest hostility on someone’s part, even if no such hostility is openly expressed. Not sharing a lift with a personal of colour is one such microaggression, as is lifting your eyebrows if a Black person enters the room. These gestures are deemed racist if they are perceived as such by another, regardless of what was meant by whoever performed them. One university department set up a group of seven young spies to monitor and report on students and staff committing such microaggressions. It’s been said before, but this is totalitarian with a distinctly Maoist tinge. You are under authoritarian surveillance with people spying on you, and you must confess your guilt, just as Mao forced ordinary Chinese to do during his wretched struggle sessions.
Stokes has no time for racism, but sees the decolonisation movement as dangerous, not least because it attacks the principles of equality, rationality and the rule of law that have been at the heart of Western society and its success since the Enlightenment. These are values that need to be defended, especially given the global threat of Russia and China. The movement is also causing social division in the West. Polls show that the upper middle classes in America are far more optimistic about the values of diversity than most Blacks, and have an increasing contempt for the White working class. These last are especially the people who voted for Trump in the US and Brexit in Britain, which Stokes denies was primarily racist. They are the people one American politico called ‘semi-fascists’. This attack on the working class also affects Stokes himself, as he states that he grew up in urban poverty in London after his father’s suicide in Canada. But Stokes doubts that the decolonisation movement will get very far outside circles like the BBC and the universities.
Woke Capitalism
As for woke capitalism, the book argues that this is an attempt to prevent criticisms that a corporation is racist or otherwise exploitative, and so a form of virtue signalling and political Danegeld. Even when that corporation is otherwise so, as in the case of those multinational companies that have been accused of using slave labour in China. There is also a political aspect to it. Woke capitalism does not challenge the class structure of society or the nature of capitalism itself. It merely wants better representation of Blacks and people of colour through affirmative action, but does not want to challenge more concrete factors that are holding people from working class backgrounds back. And affirmative action may be a real danger in promoting people because of their colour rather than their ability. If this is done, then it could mean a loss of efficiency and performance in industry, and is actually dangerous in medicine. This aspect of woke capitalism, as something that seems left but actually isn’t, sounds correct. It certainly seems like the reason Starmer has loudly embraced a new set of policies that will supposedly attack British institutional racism and make sure Blacks and Asians get high positions. While not doing anything for the working class as such.
Criticisms
The book’s certainly thorough in its attack on the academic decolonisation movements and its allied campaigns in industry and geopolitics. It’s also going to be controversial. Some may take issue with the reliability of the statistics used, such as the Labour politicos who howled loudly at the last government report. It also has a rosy-eyed view of America as the world’s policeman. America was responsible for some horrific atrocities through supporting genuinely fascist regimes in countries like South America. And the regimes it overthrew as part of its campaign to promote international capitalism were often just left-wing, not Marxist. President Benitez of Guatemala was a democratic socialist, not a commie as he was painted, when he was overthrown in the 1950s. Similarly, the president of Guyana who was also overthrown in an American led coup was a liberal. The Iraq invasion wasn’t launched primarily to give the Iraqi people their freedom from Saddam Hussein’s tyranny, but to loot their oil and state industries, as Greg Palast shows in his book Armed Madhouse. And Henry Kissinger, who died a few days ago, was a monster responsible for death, torture and suffering on a global scale.
And while it has to be admitted that capitalism has been successful in raising the world’s people out of poverty, globalisation and neoliberalism have had the opposite effect. Ordinary working people across the world have become poorer as elites have become richer, resulting in social unrest and a destabilisation of international relations.
Conclusion
But this doesn’t alter the fact that Critical Race Theory, the ideology at the heart of the Black Lives Matter and decolonisation movements is a malign, racist, anti-White ideology which ignores the material reasons for poverty and inequality in its pursuit of systemic White racism and has a very skewed, bias view of history. If we are to build a genuinely fair and non-racist society, then it needs to be tackled at every level. Including the universities, where it is actively preventing White working class students from having access to a mechanism that has historically allowed the poor social and economic advancement.
This video comes from al-Jazeera via the Muslim Central channel on YouTube. Yuula Benivolski is a Jewish filmmaker resident in Canada. She talks here about handing in her application to renounce her Israeli citizenship, despite what this would cost her in visiting the country she grew up in and with her family. She says she’s taken two decades thinking about the decision, and finally took this step because of Gaza. Now she doesn’t know why she didn’t do it before. She talks about the impact that the thousands of bodies has had on her and her disgust at the IDF troopers making mocking Tiktok videos on top of destroyed Palestinian homes. She says that this is all part of history they weren’t taught or aware of when she was growing up in Israel. She also states that she doesn’t think Israel cares about its own citizens, the Israelis, by the way they used to practice running to the bomb shelters while putting a brave face on it, never mind the state’s persecution of the Palestinians. She also calls Israel what it is – an apartheid state. Oh, Jake Wallis Simon and his malign rag, the Jewish Chronicle, will be upset.
This woman deserves our immense respect for taking a decision that will almost certainly divide her from her family. She talks about the way the Israeli state does this to its citizens as well. The British Jewish journalist, Miri bar Hillel, said a few years ago that Jewish critics of Israel were living in fear because of the smears and persecution by the country and its propagandists over here. Benivolski hopes for a future in which Jew and Arab live together equally in peace. That day can’t come to soon.
Jews across the world are showing their opposition to Israeli attacks on Gaza. There are a number of similar videos on YouTube. Jimmy Dore has a clip on his show of the Canadian Jewish broadcaster Gabor Mate stating very clearly he does not support Israel. Countries have a right to defend themselves, but this goes beyond defence. Benivolski states that the Israelis have apparently said they’ll keep the bombing up for another two months. I’ve also caught a glance of a news report that one night a few days ago a group of Israeli protesters surrounded Netanyahu’s house and told him to leave office. As Lady MacBeth says in The Scottish Play, ‘Stand not upon the order of your going, but go!’
Of course, they’re all going to be smeared as self-hating anti-Semites and the Wrong Kind of Jews. And the mass, largely Muslim marches against the war on Gaza are being presented to Mr and Mrs Ordinary Brit as Muslim attacks on western society preparatory to some kind of takeover. Yes, I’m sure there are militants prats making anti-Semitic speeches and chants. But there are also an awful lot who aren’t.
Bravo to Ms Benivolski, and peace, shalom and salaam to everyone demanding an end to the fighting and genuine equality for both Jews and Palestinians in a better Israel.
This folksong is rather more local to me, though it’s actually based on a Canadian ditty, The Last Saskatchewan Pirate by the Arrogant Worms. Bristol has a strong association with pirates. It was in Bristol that several pirates were hanged for their crimes, and the Llandoger Trow is supposed to have been Defoe’s model for the Spyglass Inn in Treasure Island. This video’s from Alicja Kalinowska’s channel on YouTube of a performance in 2018 at the Three Tuns in Bristol. The song’s about a farmer, who finds he can’t make a living because the bank’s eating up all his money and so turns to robbery and adventure on the high seas. Or in this case, the Severn’s mighty shores. But there are also buccaneers in Yorkshire, and at the end of the song he heads off to pillage the Isle of Wight. The Canadian origins of the song are shown by lines like the one about having to protect the grain coming from the plains. Britain doesn’t really have plains, except in Norfolk and the Fen country, which Jonathan Meades compared in one of his visual essays in his series ‘Further Abroad’, are like the American prairie and explain why line dancing is so popular there. ‘Redneck shall speak unto redneck’, he concluded. Regardless of the restaurant critic’s sneers to the good folk of those counties, The Last Bristolian Pirate is a jolly tale about a man pushed too far and forced to raise the Jolly Roger.
I read a while ago that every port had its own sea shanties at one time. I’m keen to find some from Bristol. So far I’ve only discovered this one, so it’ll have to do for now.
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