Yesterday, right-wing Torygraph reading internet historian Simon Webb over at the History Debunked channel responded to the Queen’s speech, in which Her Maj referred to the ‘profound contribution’ of the Windrush generation. Webb asked what that was. He’s put up another video today repeating the question, and commenting that nobody was able to give him an answer. A number of people told him he was racist for asking it. So he repeated it, giving as an example of a profound contribution made by an immigrant community the Gujarati shopkeepers who kept their shops open up to eight or nine in the evening rather than shutting at five O’clock. This is a benefit, because it’s led to a change in opening hours which means you can buy whatever you want at any time without having to worry about a rush when the shops open a nine.
I’ve left a reply there answering his question. Here it is:
Okay, Simon – it’s a fair question, so I’ll bite. After the War there was a labour shortage which the Black Caribbean immigrants helped to fill. They were particularly needed in nursing and the care sector. Not a spectacular contribution, but a contribution nonetheless. And here in Bristol the St. Paul’s Carnival is a major local event and very popular, despite that part of the city’s poverty and crime. There’s also a statue up in one of the more multicultural parts of Bristol to a Black writer, actor and playwright of that generation.
Okay, the actor and playwright is obscure – he was mentioned a few months ago when racists vandalised the bust to him, probably in reprisal to the toppling of Edward Colston’s statue. And the St. Paul’s carnival is local to Bristol. Nevertheless, it is spectacular and very popular, with White Bristolians coming into to see it and it is one of the major events in the city’s calendar. As for Black Caribbean workers helping to fill the labour shortage, that’s true whether they did so in response to national appeals for workers or if they were simply looking for better wages and opportunities. And I’d also say that Bristol was made morally better by the boycott of the local bus company because it wouldn’t employ Blacks. The bus boycott was given great support by the-then Bristol MP, Wedgie Benn.
I think Webb might be asking the wrong question, or expecting the wrong kind of answer. He clearly wants to hear about a distinctive contribution made by the Windrush generation. Something revolutionary. But even if the Windrush generation’s main contribution was as workers, the same as White Brits and the other New Commonwealth immigrants that arrived at the same time, that’s still an important contribution. And our hospitals and care homes did need their nurses and ancillary staff.
And just before the Windrush arrived, we were assisted during the War with workers and soldiers from the Caribbean. There’s a bit about them in an anthology of articles on Black and Asian British history, Under the Imperial Carpet. There was, I believe, even a Black RAF pilot, who I’m sure deserves to be better known. As for the post-War years, I’d say that the most profound contribution of the Afro-Caribbean community in Britain has been in the performing arts and particularly music. Apart from some great Black musicians, they also introduced into Britain new musical genres like Ska and Reggae, which were also taken up by White performers. Oh yes, and they introduced the steel band to Britain. One of the school’s in Bristol’s St. George’s ward had one.
I’m very much aware that the Black British community has its problems – higher rates of unemployment, low academic achievement, drugs and crime. But nevertheless they’ve also brought benefits and made a genuine contribution to British society, and Her Maj was quite right to talk about it.
I had to blog about this, as it’s another example of the right-wing media only telling you one side of the story. Yesterday or the day before the Lotus Eaters put up a video claiming that the housing crisis was a result of immigrants taking up so much housing, and no doubt looking at the channel migrants in particular as they did so. Because they should all be deported to Rwanda, of course. They argued that immigration was the source of the housing shortage, and thus all the new building work that is threatening to cover our green and pleasant land with concrete, as the British birth rate is 1.24, below that needed to maintain the population. The reason why our population is growing, however, is because of immigration. Now the Lotus Eaters are fervent Brexiteers, hate Woke and are very strong opponents of immigration. But they’re not wrong. I believe the Pears Cyclopedia 1984 edition said the same nearly 40 years ago. It’s solid fact, rather than racist myth. Mind you, I also believe that that the population has grown also because people are living longer and not dying off as young as they did, and so there’s a younger generation growing up at the same time as its grandparents and great-grandparents are still alive. But possibly for not much longer if Johnson and his foul effluvium have their way. In the past decade they’ve been in power, life expectancy has gone into reverse so that the present generation has a shorter life expectancy than we did.
Now for what John, Callum and Sargon aren’t telling you. The welfare state and capitalism need a population that’s stable or growing. Years ago, the Financial Times wrote that the welfare state was maintained by the contributions of the present generation of workers, which were needed to maintain the level of benefits to support the older generation. Fewer people being born means less money being paid into the welfare state,, equals cuts to welfare provision. This presumably is the thinking behind the Tories’ decision back in the ’90s to try and get people paying into private ‘workplace’ pension schemes rather than the state pension, and why the state pension’s been kept low. It’s also no doubt being used to support the cuts to the welfare state in general, following Thatcher’s line that we now can’t afford to support everybody and people should have to look out for themselves. This may not affect the Lotus Eaters, as their smug sneers about ‘socialism’ and ‘leftists’ and general support for unfettered capitalism suggests to me they come from monied backgrounds. But I could be wrong.
But capitalism also requires a stable or growing population. It’s all about consumer demand, you see. The more people, the more demand for goods and services, which in turn stimulates production and should produce more profits and less unemployment as workers are taken on to produce the goods. If you have fewer people, you have less demand, declining profits and rising unemployment.
Immigrants help solve these problems, because they tend to put more into the welfare state than they take out in terms of benefits and so on. And by maintaining or expanding the population, they help to create the demand that powers industry.
And I suspect some of the demand for new housing is local to certain parts of the country. A few years ago the ‘Communist’ BBC as the Lotus Eaters no doubt think of the Corporation produced a documentary following a prospective Romanian immigrant as he tried to find accommodation over here. He ended up sleeping rough in one of the London parks. At one point he went north seeking available homes. He found a whole street-load, boarded up and deliberately kept empty. Because some obscure reason of capitalism. He was obviously not impressed, and made the obvious comment that it was stupid to have houses go empty when people needed them.
I think – and this is only my impression – that some of the migration pushing up house prices and creating demand is internal. People from the declining north, or some of them, are moving south in search of work and opportunities. People in the countryside are being priced out of local homes by rich outsiders seeking second homes. And respect to the council the other day that was reported to have banned this! Here in Bristol local people are being priced out of the housing market due to recent migrants, not from Africa, Asia or Jamaica, but from London. As a result, some Bristolians are looking towards places like Wales and the borders for affordable homes, which is going to push the prices up there. And so there’s a knock-on effect.
And last but not least, the Tories and the Heil can take some of the blame. In order to keep the economy afloat, I think it was George Osborne who linked some part of our financial performance to house prices. As a result, house prices have to be kept high. Quite apart from the Daily Heil in the ’90s constantly advising its readers on the ‘money’ pages to invest in brick and mortar as part of the ‘buy to rent’ boom. People have done that, leaving less homes around for people, who actually want to live in them to purchase.
Yes, I think there are a lot of problems surrounding immigration that need proper discussion and solution. There are problems of assimilation and integration, and while I don’t like Kemi Badenoch’s party, I think she is right about growing segregation. That’s been going on for some time, since at least the beginning of this century. The concentration on race is probably a part of it, but only a part. But you can’t blame immigrants solely for the housing shortage and new building work.
Hidden behind this is also an anti-feminist agenda. Sargon and the other Lotus Eaters have the same anti-feminist views as American conservatives. In their view, the population decline is due to modern women choosing not to settle down and marry but concentrate on having careers. They’d like to return to the old traditional family in which mum stayed at home to raise the kids and Dad worked to support them. Now I think that if they were given the choice, more women probably would stay home to look after their children. But they don’t have a choice. Since women entered the workforce, it’s been argued that the economy has responded so that families need the income from both parents to pay off mortgages and buy the family groceries. However, this claim also needs examination as I’ve also read that long before the 70s families needed both parents to work. And back in the 30s and 40s, women didn’t have a choice about not working. Some of the firms in Bristol would not employ married women with children, which was a real problem for women running away from abusive or criminal husbands.
The decline of the existing, traditional populations is also one of the arguments against abortion. If all the kids lost to abortion were allowed to come to term and live, then the population would be growing. This isn’t necessarily a racist argument. Turning Point, an arch-conservative think tank, put up a video of one of its presenters challenging a young woman on the issue. He argued that the reason the Black population has remained at 13% in the Land of the Free is due to abortion. If there was less abortion, the population would expand. She was obviously racist for being in favour of abortion, and hence fewer Blacks, while he wanted more of them. I don’t want to get into the politics of abortion, except to say that it includes major issues of bodily autonomy, female healthcare, the dangers of a return to backstreet abortions and poverty. What happens in the case of women too poor to bring their children up? Conservatives like Thomas Sowell already blame the welfare state for the decline of the Black family, but without it many women would be too poor to have the children Conservatives would like them to. In the 1920s Mussolini got very worried about falling Italian birthrates, and one of the methods he chose to tackle it, apart from getting women out of the workplace, was providing something like the equivalent of family allowance. Perhaps, if the Tories want women to stay at home and raise their families they should consider providing them with a state income for doing so. But I can imagine the screams and horror from the right if someone dared suggesting that. They shouldn’t, not if they’re good classicists. The later Roman emperors were so worried about the declining population of their empire, they passed legislation giving first Italians, and then all Roman citizens throughout the empire, a kind of family allowance. Possibly not something Johnson wants to be reminded of, for all he goes on about how wonder the Romans were.
Years ago New Scientist covered this issue with an interview on demographics. A declining birthrate is happening not just in the West, but also in Japan and China. Way back in the 90s one of the leading Japanese newspapers was so worried about it that they published an article that declared that if it carried out, in one thousand years the Japanese would be extinct. They also tried encouraging men to take an extra day off work to improve marital relations with their wives and so make more little Japanese. This got an angry response from a housewife, who said that relations between married couples didn’t improve simply because the husband was at home. China and India are also suffering from a shortage of women because of generations of infanticide. What the New Scientist demographer noted, was that the countries that have the highest birthrate have the less macho cultures and men are prepared to share the childrearing. Thus Scandinavia has a higher birthrate than Italy, and China and Japan, which have the same traditional attitudes to the division of labour, also have a low birthrate. In the case of Japan, there’s also the problem that young Japanese aren’t dating and having sex. Some even say that it revolts them. A decade ago there was a Radio 4 programme reporting this phenomenon and asking why it was so. I honestly don’t know, but I’m sure someone will blame video games.
The birthrate is also falling all over the world, although obviously in developing countries it is still much higher than over here. But Africa loses very many of its infants to appalling rates of infant mortality, so its population is very stable. In fact, there are fears that if the population continues to fall in some of these nations, their population will actually decline.
Which bring me to another point: the same demographer predicts a population crash throughout the globe in the middle of this century. This obviously contradicts the predictions of the various scientists and experts of the ’70s, who were worried about the ‘population bomb’. If this happens, countries will instead compete with each other to attract migrants. P.D. James’ SF film, Children of Men, showed that. It’s a dystopian movie in which the human race has become infertile. As a result, there’s massive political instability, but Britain has managed to keep order by becoming a quasi-Fascist state. But migrants from the rest of the world are invited, as shown by Arab mule trains around London. The hero in the story is charged with protecting an immigrant woman, who’s become the first in a very long time to become pregnant. Its a chilling movie, and one which marks a departure from the detective novels with which she made her name. But it was chilling realistic and had a point.
There are issues with immigration, but it ain’t the sole cause of the housing shortage, nor is the solution the Lotus Eaters want underneath it palatable to today’s women wanting independence. It may not even be one that works. We might instead be better off passing legislation giving greater assistance to manage family and work, like perhaps more maternity leave, and encouraging dad to share some of the housework more. But those aren’t good, Conservative attitudes and involve capitulating to feminism and greater state legislation of industry. But this terrifies the Lotus Eaters, and so they ain’t going to tell you about it. Except to argue against it.
This is an angry attack on the Conservatives as a whole, from a time when Punk in particular voiced working people’s anger against the establishment. It states that they’re the enemy of the working man, responsible for growing unemployment, the closure of hospitals, factories and schools, as is shown across Britain from Toxteth to the Crumlin Road. Evil triumphs when good men do nothing, we have to overthrow them soon or else we’ll all fry. The Tories just abuse their power and both Black and White are being screwed. and it advises that we shouldn’t believe what they say in the press.
This video comes from Frank Knox’s channel on YouTube, the blurb for which gives the lyrics:
‘Let’s kick out the Tories
the rulers of this land
for they are the enemies
of the British working man
and it shows,while that bastard is in unemployment grows
and it shows,in hospitals,factories and the
schools that they’ve closed.
Evil will triumph,if good men say nothing
evil will triumph, if good men do nothing
and it shows, while that bastard is in unemployment grows
and it shows, from Toxteth down to the Crumlin Road.
Lets overthrow them soon
cant you see what they’re trying to do
we’ll all be frying soon
Cant you see what they’re trying to do
lets overthrow them soon
cant you see what they’re trying to do
they just abuse their power
both black and white are being screwed.
Don’t believe every thing that you read in the press,
I’ve also put up one or two videos of left-wing Jewish songs in English and Yiddish, like ‘The March of the Jobless Corps’. That song reflects the reality of unemployment in Britain and America today, as well as recalling the National Union of the Unemployed, set up by the Communists in Britain during the great recession of the ’30s. But these songs are also a challenge to the Blairites in the Labour party. They show that contrary to Starmer’s attitude to Jews and socialists in the party and that of the various Zionist organisations and the Board of Deputies of British Jews and the Chief Rabbinate, Jewish working people formed a strong part of the international working class movement, including anarchism, socialism and Marxism. But their modern left-wing and genuinely socialist counterparts are ‘the wrong kind of Jews’ for the current wretched Labour leadership. And so we’ve had the nasty spectacle of the genuinely anti-racist Jeremy Corbyn smeared as an anti-Semite, and also his Jewish and gentile followers. And part of this is because he was supported by left-wing Jewish organisations and people, critical of Israel and its persecution of the Palestinians. And so there have been attacks on Jewish Voice for Labour and its leader, Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi, while Corbyn was attacked for spending a Passover Seder with Jewdas at their invitation. These people are ‘the wrong kind of Jews’, and as a result, 4/5 of the people smeared and expelled from the party for such ideological deviation are Jewish. Which very clearly shows that all these claims of combating anti-Semitism are pure, malignant nonsense.
This song celebrates the overthrow of the Tsar, and is from Jack Ross’ channel on YouTube. The description accompanying the piece states that it was attributed to the anarchists, but was also popular in the Bund, the main eastern European Jewish socialist party in the Russian Empire. It’s almost entirely in Yiddish, but there is a chorus in English.
Many of the Bolsheviks and other Russian revolutionaries were Jews, as well as members of other nationalities in the Russian empire. They were oppressed by the tsarist state. Jewish settlement was limited to ‘the pale’ and there were restrictions on what jobs they could do. The tsars also used conscription into the army as a form of forced conversion. Nicholas II was particularly anti-Semitic, and believed firmly in the old, vile myth of the blood libel. He tried, unsuccessfully, to prosecute a young lad, Bielis, for it, which was so bonkers it actually embarrassed the secret police. It’s therefore not remotely surprising that socialist Jews would celebrate the tsar’s fall and give their loud support to the Revolution.
This little piece of musical satire comes from Mitch Benn and his channel on YouTube. It’s an attack on P & O’s sacking of their British maritime staff and replacement with foreign workers on lower wages. Benn states it was too conceal their corporate failures, but points out that it’s a consequence of Brexit. A consequence that the Remainers foresaw, but were ignored. Because people were driven insane by the idea that our passports were the EU’s rather than our own. Now the jobs have fled overseas and Brits can’t get jobs abroad. But ‘this is the Brexit that you voted for’, the song concludes.
You might expect it to be sung to the tune of ‘What Shall We Do With a Drunken Sailor’, but it’s not. The tune is Benn’s own, strummed on a guitar. But it’s right, and although it’s rather old news now, it’s still worth remembering as the right and the Brexiteers try to make our departure from the EU look like some kind of resounding success. Or simply hope that we’ll ignore and forget its spectacular failure.
P&O’s sacking and rehiring of its sailors also worried me because it reminded me of the origins of the anti-Chinese riots that broke out in the first decade or so of the last century. Firms across England had sacked their English staff and replaced them with Chinese workers, resulting in race riots. Nothing like that happened when P&O sacked their British people and replaced them with cheap foreign labour. I am worried, however, that with increased racial tensions over woke ideology and its attack on ‘Whiteness’, coupled with the Tories’ determination to roll back our human rights protections, something similar may break out again the future.
More Jewish music from the left. This comes from the Klezmer group of Daniel Kahn and the Painted Bird, one the Oriente Musik YouTube channel. It bitterly attacks the corporate rich and the culpability for mass unemployment in America. It talks about how the factories have been closed down, ‘there’s no manufacturing in the land’, workers are being made made hungry and homeless, living in tents and subsisting on bread and water while lazy CEOs guzzle fine wine. It also attacks useless unions, for taking the dues from the workers but not standing up for them, so all their work goes in making goods for the rich. This is repeated in Yiddish, and the final verse ends with an optimistic look for a new, just land where everyone has work.
The video shows the band marching and dancing through abandoned factories, meeting solitary workers doing carpentry or working at a sewing machine, before people finally come together for a stately traditional Jewish dance.
It’s an excellent riposte to the racist nonsense that Jews are all rich businessmen, somehow responsible for the evils of modern capitalism. This is the real, murderous anti-Semitic conspiracy theory pushed by Hitler and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Unfortunately, the Blairites in the Labour party didn’t get the message. Remember a few years back when Jezza was leading the party, and one of the female MPs appeared on Radio 4 to blithely declare that socialism was anti-Semitic because it attacked capitalism, which was somehow synonymous with Judaism? That was torn to shreds by the Corbynist left, as it should have been by any decent person who knows their history. Because Hitler and the wretched Protocols also claimed that ‘Marxist socialism’ was also controlled by Jews to enslave Aryans. And Corbyn was supported in the party by a strong Jewish contingent, like Naomi Wimborne-Idrissi and Jewish Voice for Labour, who stood for Jewish working people, who like their gentile comrades were worried about deteriorating working conditions, the destruction of the welfare state, cuts to public services and the privatisation of the NHS. Who wondered how they would pay for the social care their elderly parents and relatives needed, and support their families with the wage freeze.
But there also was in Britain are real ‘Jobless Corps’ – the National Union of the Unemployed, which I think was set up by the Communist Party. As part of their protest, they staged a kind of invasion of the Ritz hotel in London. They went in and ordered a meal. Of course, as working people they weren’t welcome in such an exclusive establishment. They replied by pointing out that plenty of the rich also went down and had their meals in cafes in the working class parts of the capital. They called this ‘slumming it’, but the protesters said they were perfectly welcome there, just as they should be in the Ritz.
We’re supposed to have the lowest unemployment rate for years, but I don’t trust official figures. They’ve been fiddle too often. One of the problems is that they only count people receiving benefit. This obviously doesn’t include the masses who’ve been thrown off thanks to the sanctions system. And it doesn’t count the underemployed, like the poor souls on zero hours contracts, who are effectively unemployed when their employers don’t need ’em.
Perhaps we need a revival of the idea of unemployed workers’ unions, that will attack current neoliberal capitalism and the Thatcherites and Reaganites who are doing their best to prop it up to deprive ordinary people of properly paying work for their own profits.
As a proud Bristolian, I felt I had to post something about this. A day or so ago History Debunked posted a short video arguing that the left in Bristol had no knowledge of the slavery in the city before or after the transatlantic slave trade. Instead, they were solely concerned with historic Black slavery. They were not aware that Anglo-Saxon Bristol exported enslaved children and seemed unconcerned with the conviction a few days previously of two Slovakians for holding smuggled migrants in effective slavery. Such exploitation isn’t called slavery, but ‘people trafficking’. The thumbnail to his video shows the toppling of the statue to Edward Colston by the BLM mob last year.
Now I have put up some of Simon Webb’s material when it has been about fake history presented as factual Black history. But he does have some deeply troubling opinions. He seems to believe the Bell Curve nonsense, that Asians are more intelligent than Whites who in turn are brighter than Blacks. He feels Enoch Powell has been smeared and misrepresented and put up a video about 1968 as the year everyone was talking about repatriation. This is apart from videos attacking what he describes as ‘the disability scam’. He’s also made some mistakes when talking about African history. He’s said before now that when Europeans reached Africa, they found its people in the Bronze Age. Not so: iron working in West Africa began about a thousand years before it emerged in Europe because of the presence of easily worked bloom near the surface. I can only assume he believes they were in the Bronze Age because of the Benin bronzes, the bronze sculptures made as shrines to the king’s lifeforce. I got the distinct impression that all of Africa’s peoples were using iron before European contact, with the possibly exception of one of the Khoi-San hunter-gatherer peoples in South Africa. So, like many YouTubers across the political spectrum, it’s worth checking his content for yourself.
He’s right about Bristol being a centre of the slave trade in the Anglo-Saxon period. In the 11th century the Anglo-Saxon cleric, Bishop Wulfstan, preached a sermon in the city against it that put an end to it. This is established historical fact, and is included with the display of Colston’s statue at the M Shed museum in the City. In the city continued to be a centre of the slave trade into the 12th century, when a part of visiting clergy hoping to raise money for one of the French cathedrals were warned not to have dinner aboard the Irish ships then in dock. These had a habit of luring the unwary aboard and then slipping off to sale them in the Emerald Isle. David Harris Sacks in his book, The Widening Gate: Bristol and the Atlantic Economy 1450-1700 (Berkeley: University of California Press 1991) also notes that in the 17th century White children in Bristol were also kidnapped by ‘spirits’ for sale as indentured servants in the Caribbean colonies. I got my copy of the book when I visited the ‘Respectable Trade Exhibition’ then on display at the City Museum about the city’s historic involvement in the slave trade.
As for the contemporary enslavement of Whites, the local news for the city and the surrounding region has called it what it is: slavery. A few years ago a farmer in Gloucestershire was found guilty of enslaving migrant workers, and there have been other instances of this, including cases where the victims have been people with learning difficulties. In all those cases they’ve been rightly described, at least on the news reports, as slavery.
What is now called ‘people trafficking’, at least as it involved forcing migrant European women into prostitution, was referred to as ‘White slavery’ in the late 19th and early 20th century. Looking through the government reports held in the archives of the former Empire and Commonwealth Museum in Bristol, I found one government document from the first years of the 20th on an international police conference held in London about the issue. It was interesting because it contains many parallels to contemporary people smuggling and sex slavery. Many of the young women smuggled into Britain and then forced to work in brothels today are from eastern Europe. Back in 1904 or thereabouts, the parliamentary report noted that the victims were ‘German’ girls – really Slav women from the territories then ruled by Germany and Austria. There were differences with today as well. These women were mostly smuggled to service migrants to the Latin American nations, which were then experiencing an economic boom. Today Britain seems to be the destination of the women trafficked here, rather than further afield. Also it would be incorrect to describe all of today’s enslaved women as White, as many seem to come from outside Europe, such as Asia.
As far as I am aware, the mainstream left haven’t ignored the plight of such enslaved women. I can’t remember the details, but I have the strong impression that many of the female MPs in the Labour party were very much concerned with the sexual exploitation of smuggled women, at least when it became a national issue a few years ago.
Black Lives Matter, it is true, has an exclusive focus on historic Black slavery. This is because the organisation, along with many anti-racists,, believes that the modern poverty, poor educational performance, marginalisation and racism experienced by western Blacks is due to the transatlantic slave trade. Hence the call for reparations. How far this is true is open to question. The Black American Conservative Thomas Sowell has argued that slavery did not result in the breakdown of the Black family. Indeed, according to him, marriage rates among Blacks following emancipation were slightly above those of Whites as families separated by the slavery masters sought to find each other and solemnise their relationships through the formal marriage. Other Black conservatives have cited statistics to argue that, despite segregation and Jim Crow, the years from emancipation to the 1960s were a time of professional and economic expansion for Black America. They were moving into more jobs, establishing businesses and were catching up on Whites in the years spent in school. Of course, this is part of an ideological assault on affirmative action and state aid, which they believe has acted instead to reverse these gains. The point, however, is that BLM are not interested in slavery as an issue in itself, but only as far as it is responsible for the current problems of western Blacks.
Now I doubt that Black Lives Matter and movements like them are aware of the broader history of the slave trade outside of the enslavement of Black Africans. They’re also not concerned when it’s done by Black Africans to other Africans. Barbara Barnaby, the head of the British branch of Black Lives Matter, condemned the new slave markets opened in Libya. But she did so as part of a general attack on the new western imperialism,, and didn’t mention the other slave markets that have opened in Uganda. The impression I have is that BLM is strongly based on Critical Race and Postcolonial Theory, which are solely concerned with White racism and ignore it and as well as other oppressive practices in non-western societies.
Black Lives Matter does enjoy widespread support among parts of the left, although I think its popularity is waning as time wears on. It’s been hit in America by a series of scandals, must notably surrounding the disappearance of donated money to the tune of millions and the use of some of it by its former president to buy herself five upmarket homes. Several of the protests were in fact riots, in which Black-owned businesses were also attacked and looted.
Black Lives Matter, although highly visible now, is only part of the broad left. And while I believe its members and supporters should be far more aware of slavery as an issue, and that it also involved the enslavement of Whites, BLM does not represent the whole of the left.
I believe very strongly that many on the left in Bristol are aware of its history as centre of the slave trade before it moved into transatlantic, Black slavery, and are definitely still active campaigning against contemporary forms of enslavement, such as people trafficking. Even if it is no longer called ‘White slavery’.
This is a response to a video posted up today on YouTube by Simon Webb of History Debunked. I’ve posted up a number of his videos because I think he does have a point when it comes to some of the bad history, if not plain myths and fabrications that are being retailed as sound, authoritative Black History. I’ve been criticised for some of this by some of great commenters on this channel, who take issue with some of his views and believe he had an agenda. And they’re right. Webb is a right-wing, Telegraph-reading Tory, some of whose views are deeply suspect if not actually abhorrent. He believes in the ‘Bell Curve’ nonsense that says that Blacks are intellectually inferior to Whites, who are in turn inferior to Asians. Interestingly, the American Conservative Thomas Sowell, who is no supporter of affirmative action programmes, consigns that one to the bin in a video about the myths surround Black education. This states that the fall in Black scholastic achievement has been so sudden that even the writer of the Bell Curve said it could not be explained by genetic factors. He also put up a video stating he didn’t want a wave of eastern European refugees coming to this country, and has posted pieces about the deportation of immigrants and defending Enoch Powell. Today he posted a video discussing Milton Friedman’s pronouncement that you couldn’t have unlimited immigration and a welfare state.
Yeah, that Milton Friedman. The Chicago economist who believed in absolute free markets and wanted to privatise everything and end the welfare state. The man who supported General Pinochet, the former dictator of Chile, because the Fascist butcher was a follower of his wretched economic doctrines. The man who supported Fascist coups, because the masses were so much in favour of the welfare state that they would never vote into power politicians who would destroy them. The Milton Friedman who cursed the world with Monetarism before that spectacularly showed itself to be a colossal failure in the late 1980s-early ’90s. I see absolutely no reason why any sensible or decent person should take Friedman and his views at all seriously.
Webb seems to believe that the welfare state is under pressure because of continued mass immigration. This brings to this country waves of the global poor, who must be fed, clothed and housed with the resources of the welfare state. But people cannot afford to pay the additional taxes required to fund this, hence the welfare state and the NHS are under considerable pressure and near collapse.
Now he’s right in that very many immigrants to this country are extremely poor, especially those from outside Europe. Hence the demands for specific policies and welfare expenditure for Blacks and ethnic minorities. But his video seems to assume that extra-European immigrants really come here to sponge off the welfare state. That’s certainly the impression you get from the Tory propaganda regurgitated by the right-wing press. But is it true?
I honestly don’t think so. In fact the reality may be the complete opposite. I don’t believe that all of the immigrants arriving here are simply refugees seeking asylum. But I don’t think they’re here to sponge off the welfare state either. I think many come here seeking better opportunities and jobs. Years ago I tried doing a postgraduate degree on Islam in Britain. I had to give it up, but not before I’d done some reading about Islam, history and immigration. One of the books I bought was a series of potted biographies of people from the Middle East from the early 19th century to the present day, their lives illustrating the wider history, conflicts and issues affecting the region and its peoples. One of these was of a Moroccan immigrant to the Netherlands. This man had immigrated to Europe simply looking for work. There wasn’t any available in his native country. The immensely profitable fig groves were all owned by wealthy and powerful landowners, who kept outsiders out. There were also little jobs in manufacturing, as Moroccans preferred to buy foreign goods from countries like Italy. And so it was left to him and others like him to come to Europe searching work. He was scathing about European attempts to limit immigration, as when he had first arrived in the 1970s employers, such as the one he worked for in Germany, were so desperate for labour that they gave out the necessary forms there and then.
I’ve also read that it’s immigrant labour which also contributes disproportionately to the tax burden. They tend to work in poorly paid jobs that we wouldn’t normally take, and don’t take as much time off or rely so much on the welfare state, contrary to what the Tories allege. But claiming that they do serves the purpose of whipping up hatred against them and allowing the Tories a pretext for cutting welfare benefits. Because you don’t want all that money spent on foreign scroungers. But as Tony Benn said, how the government treats immigrants shows how it would also like to treat native Brits. And this has been born out by the expansion of food banks. These were set up after Tony Blair stopped illegal immigrants from being eligible for state benefits. Then the Tories under Cameron and Iain Duncan Smith decided that they would be whizzo for keeping native Brits from starvation – just – if they took their benefits away through sanctions and increased legislation designed to restrict eligibility. Because the poor are also scroungers, at least to the editors of papers like the Meil, Depress and Torygraph.
As for problems funding the NHS and the welfare state, these exist not because of asylum seekers, but because the Tories have massively cut expenditure in order to give massive tax cuts to the rich. While shifting the tax burden to the poor. And in the case of the NHS, it’s also being done to prepare for its privatisation. It has zip to do with the burden of caring for extra people through immigration.
I think there are problems with mass immigration, not least that of separate, parallel communities. But I don’t believe that people are coming to this country because of the welfare state.
If they are not coming here seeking refuge and sanctuary from persecution, it seems to me that they are coming here to work. Anything else is just right-wing propaganda.
As you’ll know from the news, P&O have caused outrage by their mass sacking of 800 employees over Zoom. The sacked workers are to be replaced by agency staff. The ferry company claims that this is the only way they can keep afloat, pun intended. I honestly don’t see how. Yes, agency staff have the advantage to employers of being recruited and dismissed as needed without all that inconvenient stuff about sick and maternity pay and leave and other awkward worker’s rights. But it’s also something of a false economy, as in addition to the worker they also have to pay the agency. It can, therefore, be much more expensive to hire an agency worker instead of recruiting an ordinary employee. But it’s another attack on workers’ rights, all for the benefit of capital.
The unions, RMT and Nautilus, are naturally up in arms and protesting. As are many others. I got this message today from Megaphone, a left-wing organisation, urging me to sign their petition against it. I have done so, and urge anyone else who feels strongly about this issue to do so as well. If nothing else, I think it’s an utter disgrace and an insult to tell people they don’t have a job over Zoom.
Yesterday, 800 workers at P&O Ferries were sacked via Zoom call. This shameful act is devastating for these workers, their families, and communities.
We cannot let this happen
The government can stop this, but they will not act unless thousands of us speak up. If callous acts like this are allowed, no one’s livelihood is safe.Â
You can support these workers by adding your name and sharing this petition right now. There is already mounting pressure on the government to intervene, but we must show how many of us are outraged.Â
This video from Novara Media aims to set the record straight about the far right in Ukraine, refuting Putin’s lie that he is liberating the country from Fascism. Hosts Michael Walker and Aaron Bastani talk about the Maidan, or Orange Revolution, that saw the pro-Russian Ukrainian president ousted in favour of a pro-western, pro-EU candidate. The pair state that the revolution was completely democratic. Umm, possibly. In fact the revolution was overseen by Victoria Nuland for Hillary Clinton’s state department and the National Endowment for Democracy, which is the quango to which the American state delegated the job of regime change when they took it away from the CIA. Not that this means that Zelensky is an American puppet or that Putin’s invasion is at all justified. They make the point that it was a popular revolution, but that far right groups were also involved and talk about the attack on a trade union building. This was set alight, several trade unionists were shot and killed, and Nazi graffiti was scrawled on the building. However, the identity of the attackers is unknown.
The Fascist groups active in Ukraine include the followers of Stepan Bandera, who fought for the Nazis as an SS auxiliary during World War II before turning against the Nazis. The Ukrainian authorities caused outrage a few years ago when they honoured him as a national hero. His followers today also wear SS auxiliary uniforms. Then there’s the infamous Azov Battalion, whose uniform includes the SS ‘wolfsangel’ badge and who have been active fighting the Russian separatists in the east. Walker and Bastani state that they try to recruit western Fascists, and the film includes a brief interview with a Swedish Nazi who joined them. They’ve also turned up in this country to try and gather the bigoted and stupid here. They rocked up at one of the neo-Nazi demonstrations a few years ago along with a group of Italian Fascisti. The Azov Battalion run a Fascist summer camp for children, shots of which show school age kids doing exercises and learning to shoot. They also have a very slick recruitment video. This shows them marching about, ready to defend the fatherland with a voiceover boasting about their patriotic values and ending with ‘Join us’. Also in this toxic stew is the Right Sector. There are interviews with various members of these horrendous groups, who say, among other things, how attractive the idea of ‘one nation’, but deny that everyone in these organisations is a Fascist. One high-ranking member successfully sued a journalist for calling him a Nazi, despite the fact that Nazi ideology is very much what their wretched rants sound like. The video includes a clip of one of their leaders at rally ranting from a stage about homosexuality. It’s unnatural, and being promoted by a certain racial group. Gosh! I wonder who he could mean? Yeah, it’s the old Fascist anti-Semitism. Years ago The Young Turks discussed these bonkers Nazi conspiracy theories. Ben Mankiewicz, one of their guests, responded to them by saying that if there is a Jewish conspiracy, nobody told him. I’ve seen other videos attacking various anti-Semitic conspiracy theories in which other Jews and people of Jewish descent have said the same thing. And if the Jews were so keen to promote it, why does Miriam Margolyes need to work with an organisation for gay Jews dedicated to challenging prejudice in the Jewish community? I’m not saying that Jews are any more prejudiced against gays than anyone else. I merely mention it to show how stupid and wrong the accusation that they’re pushing homosexuality is.
Bastani and Walker state that Zelensky himself is a political moderate and Jewish. As for these Nazis, the most they got at an election was 10 per cent of the vote. That’s a lot, but not the same as Jobbik in Hungary, which got 20 per cent. From this high point their share of the vote has declined to 2 per cent. This is roughly the normal proportion of votes gained by Fascist groups across Europe, including the BNP and NF in this country. Under normal circumstances, Fascists aren’t popular. The problem in Ukraine is that these scumbags have been taken up and formed links with members of the political elite, including a judge. The Azov Battalion has also been merged with the Ukrainian army, which has led its apologists to claim that it’s no longer a Fascist organisation. Fuelling support for the far right is the decline in living standards. Over the last 30 years the Ukrainian population has shrunk by 8 – 10 million, and the life expectancy is now what it was in the 1960s. I have a feeling that’s another consequence of the collapse of communism. My guess is that the dismantlement of the Communist economy and its replacement with capitalism has led to the same kind of poverty, unemployment and the closure of businesses and factories that has occurred elsewhere in the former Communist bloc. Just as Yeltsin’s wholesale privatisations in Russia resulted in the complete meltdown of the Russian economy. Putin’s popularity among ordinary Russians is partly based on his restoration of economic stability after the chaos the old drunk caused. And I understand that depopulation has also been a factor in the rise of the Nazi right in Germany. According to an online conversation with a German anti-fascist posted by left vlogger Kevin Logan, the former east Germany has been hit particularly hard with the transition to capitalism. Many of the former country’s industries and businesses have been unable to compete, and so have closed down. As a result, whole towns and villages have been abandoned as their people have moved away to seek employment elsewhere. When you have an economic crisis like that, people start looking around for a scapegoat, and Fascism provides it in the shape of immigrants and Jews.
I also think that whatever popularity Fascism has is also partly due to its claim to be a third political alternative against socialism and capitalism. Communism failed, capitalism isn’t living up to its promise and so some may turn to Fascism as an alternative.
Walker and Bastani also point out that there are other political groups fighting the Russians, including anarchists, so it isn’t true that the Fascists are the only people defending the country apart from the regular army. They also make it clear that they feel that the regular Ukrainian deserves its support from the West. It’s just that this should not be given to the Azov Battalion and the rest of the Fascists.
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