Beeb’s ‘Horrible Histories’ Pushing Myths and Falsehoods as Black History

One of the major aims of the ‘History Debunked’ YouTube channel is attacking the myths and sometimes deliberate lies, which try to present past British society as far more ethnically diverse and multiracial than it really was. This is being done in order to create an image of the past that fits and reflects today’s racially diverse society. Although undoubtedly well meant, it is a fabrication. Simon Webb, the YouTuber behind the channel, is a Telegraph-reading Conservative, but I don’t think he can be fairly accused of racism. He’s a published author, who does know his history and the reality behind the falsehoods he tries to debunk.

On Tuesday he put up a video attacking the latest editions of the Beeb’s Horrible Histories programme. This is a children’s history programme based on a series of best selling books. This is intended to present history in a fun way with much comedy, though Webb, with rather more serious tastes, decries it as slap-dash and inaccurate. A recent edition of the programme was on Black British history, and was simply full of myths and falsehoods presented as solid, historical fact. So much so, that Webb said he couldn’t go through all of them, and described the programme as propaganda aimed at children. So he confined himself with a couple of the more egregious.

The programme began with the Empire Windrush and the statement that its passengers had been invited to England to help with reconstruction after the War. This is a myth that’s been promoted by a number of people, including Diane Abbott. The truth is that Blacks weren’t invited to Britain by anyone and definitely not the British government. They were appalled at the immigrants’ arrival because they didn’t have anywhere to accommodate them. Webb states that some ended up living in air raid shelters because of the lack of proper housing. The truth is that the Empire Windrush was a troop ship that was returning to Britain from South America. There was hardly anyone on board, so the captain decided to open it up to paying passengers to reduce costs. The adverts for places aboard the ship in the Jamaican Daily Gleaner simply gives the prices of the various classes of accommodation. There is no mention of work in Britain. As for the motives of the people, who took passage aboard the ship, the Sheffield Daily News in Britain reported the comments of a Jamaican businessman, Floyd Rainer, who said that the immigrants had come to Britain because they were dissatisfied with pay and conditions in the Caribbean. They were seeking better opportunities for themselves, not to help Britain.

The programme then followed this with an item about Black Roman soldiers at Hadrian’s Wall. These were Moors from the Roman province of Mauretania. However, Mauretania was in North Africa, in what is now Morocco and Algeria. It was a province settled by Carthaginians, who were Phoenicians from what is now Lebanon, and the Berbers. Although comparatively dark-skinned, they had Mediterranean complexions, and were not Blacks from the modern West African country of Mauretania, has an American website claims.

It then went on to St. Adrian of Canterbury, who it was claimed was also Black. But he came from what is now Libya in north Africa, and so wouldn’t have been a Black African. However, the programme stated that he was an African, and left the viewer to imagine that he would therefore have been Black.

Mary Seacole was also shown tending British soldiers in a hospital during the Crimean War, which is also a myth. She set up a bar and restaurant and never did any actual nursing. It also showed Cheddar Man as Black. This is based on a reconstruction that was widely covered in the press at the time. However, Webb has done a previous video about it and similar reconstructions showing how flawed they are. In the case of Cheddar Man, the scientists behind the announcement that he was Black actually retracted this in a piece published in New Scientist. No-one really knows what colour people’s skins were 10,000 years ago.

I think the BBC actually means well with all this, and its presenters and compilers probably don’t think that they’re falsifying history. I’m sure they genuinely believe that they’re uncovering previously hidden aspects of the British past. I think projecting the presence of Black people back into the past is part of an attempt to deal with the continuing racist attitude towards Black and Asian Brits that still sees them as foreign, even though they have now been here for three generations. And a smaller number will have been here for much longer.

But I also think that the Beeb is also prepared to falsify history in this direction as well simply to make a programme. Back around 2003/4 the Beeb screened a series about the way modern artists and musicians were taking inspiration from the Psalms of the Bible. In one edition, feminist icon Germaine Greer went to Jamaica to meet the Rastafarian musicians, who sang the Psalms in the origin Amharic, according to the Radio Times.

Historically, this is nonsense. The Psalms were originally written, like almost all of the Tanakh, the Christian Old Testament, in Hebrew. Hence its alternative name of Hebrew Bible. It very definitely wasn’t written in Amharic, which is the modern Ethiopian language of the Amhara people. But Rastafarianism is based on the worship of Haile Selassie, the late emperor of Ethiopia, as the Lion of Judah and Black messiah. Hence, presumably, the insistence that the Psalms were written in Amharic. It seems to me that the Beeb obtained the cooperation of the Rastafarian musos for the programme on the understanding that the programme would be presented from their theological point of view. If they contradicted the assertion that the Psalms were written in Amharic, a language that didn’t exist when the Psalms were actually composed, then no programme. And so the Beeb and the Radio Times published this piece of historical nonsense.

I think a similar process may also be working behind the Horrible Histories and similar programmes present long held myths as facts about the Black past. I don’t know, but I think some of them might be made in collaboration with Black groups and individuals, who passionately believe these falsehood. The Beeb wants to make these programmes and include the views of Blacks themselves. These individuals insist on the inclusion of these myths, which the Beeb won’t challenge because its researchers don’t know that their myths, and the organisation is afraid of these organisations denouncing them as racists if they ignore these long-held Black views.

There are some excellent books and materials on Black British history out there. Three I’ve come across are Gretchen Herzen’s Black England – Life Before Emancipation, the collection Under the Imperial Carpet – Essays in Black History, edited by Rainer Lotz and Ian Pegg, and Our Children Free and Happy – Letters from Black Settlers in Africa, edited by Christopher Fyfe and published by Edinburgh University press. But there is an awful lot of myth and falsehoods as well.

However well meant, these need to be rejected as falsehoods, even if they’re told as truth by the Beeb.

Far Right Watch Explain Why Tommy Robinson Is Not a Martyr for Free Speech

Last month, Tommy Robinson, or to give him his real name, Steven Yaxley Lennon, was arrested and jailed for contempt of court. Robinson is the former leader of the Islamophobic EDL, and has also been a member of PEGIDA UK, as well as the BNP. He’d been covering the trial of a group of Pakistani Muslims in Leeds on the internet outside the court. Robinson already had a suspended sentence for doing the same thing about a year ago in Canterbury. The rozzers swooped, Robinson pleaded guilty, and is now enjoying a holiday at her majesty’s pleasure.

His supporters have gone berserk, claiming that he’s been persecuted for his beliefs and that this is a serious breach of free speech by the multicultural establishment to protect Muslims. They’ve also been on the internet claiming that this is all part of the establishment’s campaign to make Whites extinct through immigration and racial mixing. The Islamophobic Dutch politician, Gert Wilders, who is himself no stranger to prosecution for racism, has condemned Robinson’s arrest and imprisonment. As has Pauline Hanson, the head of the minuscule Australian anti-immigration party, the One Nation Party. Hanson runs a fish and chip shop in Western Australia, and she’s made herself president for life of her outfit, so there are definitely no overtones of Fascist dictatorship there.

Last Sunday, 4th June 2018, Robinson’s supporters held a rally in London demanding his release. This has alarmed anti-racist activists and organisations. Hope Not Hate have released a video telling the truth about Robinson and what he really stands for and why he was jailed. As have Kevin Logan, the male feminist and anti-Fascist, and Far Right Watch. RT also covered the demonstration, and their short clip shows some of Robinson’s supporters trying fighting or attempting to fight the police.

Far Right Watch are an unpaid, volunteer group of nine people dedicated to exposing Fascism and the Far Right on the internet. In this video, which is about 28 minutes long, they answer five questions about Robinson and bust seven myths about him.

They start out by making the point that Robinson is a racist, and has been a member of a series of racist organisations, including the BNP. He’s also a criminal, having been convicted 12 times of various offences, including fraud. They go into great detail, including citing the official court document explaining to Robinson why he is being jailed, showing that his arrest is certainly not political censorship but was done as part of the ordinary legislation designed to give defendants a fair trial.

They point out that under English law since the 13th century, a person is innocent until proven guilty. This is unique to English law and the legal systems that are derived from it, and it’s a cornerstone of British justice. Robinson broke that in his coverage of the case, because his commentary on the trial assumed that the men being tried were guilty.

This is serious because it threatened to prejudice their trial, meaning that if the judge considered that the accused couldn’t get a fair trial because of Robinson, the trial would be abandoned or the accused acquitted. And if the accused were guilty of the heinous crimes with which they were charged, it would be a serious miscarriage of justice. Hence the mass of legislation surrounding the reporting of criminal cases which bind real journalists.

Robinson also violated accepted journalistic procedures by broadcasting live. When the professional broadcasters cover cases from outside a courthouse, it’s always recorded, and the report is then examined by legal experts to make sure that it complies with the law. Robinson did not none of that. He had no control over what was occurring, and was simply filming events as they happened. Furthermore, there were other people also coming to court for their trials, and his cavalier contempt for the law could have placed their cases in jeopardy.

His followers have also claimed that Robinson was all right to present his commentary on the case, as it was over. This video reveals that it wasn’t. The case Robinson was covering was only one of a number of trial, which were ongoing. They have also claimed that the ruling of contempt of court doesn’t apply to him, because he was outside the courtroom. That isn’t the case. The documents state that Robinson was still subject to the laws about contempt of court because he was still in the precincts of the court. Mike, who is a professional journalist, and who knows the law, told me that the precincts of the court are wherever the judge decides they are. So that excuse for him doesn’t hold up.

As for Robinson’s swift arrest, it’s so fast because he was given a 13 month suspended sentence for doing the same thing in Canterbury last year, which he didn’t contest. This sentence would immediately have started the moment Robinson broke the law again, regardless of any additional sentence he would be given for this offence. And while the speed of his arrest is unusual, it’s not unknown. Plus the fact that Robinson actually pleaded guilty to contempt when he was tried for it, so there’s absolutely no reason for the whole process to be prolonged with a lengthy trial and prosecution.

The video also makes the point that Robinson’s own interest in the trial was cynically racist. He wasn’t interested so much in the welfare of the children these people are accused of violating and exploiting. He was only interested in it as a way of generating further hatred against Muslims. He hadn’t covered a string of similar trials up and down England and Wales, for the simple reason that the paedophile gangs being tried in these cases were all White. Just like he also wasn’t interested in talking about Jimmy Savile or the allegations against the former Tory leader, Edward Heath.

As for Wilders and Pauline ‘President for Life’ Hanson fulminating against his arrest and sentencing as a travesty of British justice, or words to that effect, the same laws against contempt of court are in force everywhere, including the Netherlands and Australia. So if Robinson had broken the law in those countries, as he has here, he’d still have been jailed.

In short, Robinson is in no way a martyr for free speech, as the document outlining the reasons why he has been jailed states very clearly. This wasn’t about politics. It was about justice, giving the accused a fair trial, under laws which go all the way back to the Middle Ages. It was definitely not about protecting Muslim paedophiles, or the elites advancing the cause of ‘White genocide’ or any of the stupid and vile conspiracy theories that the Far Right may choose to believe or make up about it. And Robinson himself is hardly a high-minded, principled political activist. He’s a convicted criminal and a racist, who knowingly violated the law in order to generate more anti-Muslim hatred.

Kevin Logan on Tommy Robinson’s Arrest

Mike put up this morning a piece about Tommy Robinson’s arrest and sentencing for contempt of court. Robinson is the former leader of the EDL, and was arrested last week for filming outside a courtroom, where a group of Muslims were being tried on charges of paedophilia. This is illegal, and Robinson has just been given a 13 month sentence for contempt.

https://voxpoliticalonline.com/2018/05/26/far-right-politician-is-jailed-with-hilarious-consequences/

In this video, male feminist and scourge of Fascists and manospherian misogynists Kevin Logan, explains the circumstances behind Robinson’s arrest, and why it’s important that he is jailed. Robinson was videoing and commenting on a trial in a court in York, where a group of Muslims were being tried for paedophilia. Logan states that it’s quite likely that the accused men are actually guilty, and he certainly isn’t defending them. But they have a right to a fair trial. However, there are cases where, because of the biased reporting or comments about a trial, the accused have been released despite their probably guilt, because they were unable to get a fair trial. Logan states that something similar happened to Jayda Fransen and one of the other far right storm troopers, who were jailed on charges of racially aggravated harassment, although he then admits that this was a slightly different issue.

Robinson’s supporters claim that this is a free speech issue, and that he’s a journalist. But Robinson isn’t a journalist. He wasn’t reporting any of the facts of the case, and is actually so incompetent that even the far right Canadian outfit, Rebel Media, won’t have him. Logan points out that he used to be the head of the English Defence League, and before then was a member of the BNP, so he’s simply a Fascist. And he just wants to spread Islamophobia and fear of Brown people. He also states that Robinson has already got a suspended sentence for doing the same thing outside a court in Canterbury last year, down the other end of the country. He describes him as an ambulance-chaser, running around behind court cases of Muslims. So when Robinson got himself arrested for breach of the peace, it was his own fault.

Lies and Double-Talk by Atos and the DWP

The nation-wide protests against Atos on Wednesday were covered ITV Meridian. They reported on demonstrations at Brighton and Canterbury, interviewing Caroline Lucas, the Green MP for Brighton Paviliion, and Wayne Humphries, a leukaemia sufferer, whose assessment has been repeatedly delayed by the company. They also went to Atos and the DWP for their comments on the protests. Inevitably they got the usual lies and double talk.

The news report by ITV Meridian can be found at http://www.itv.com/news/meridian/update/2014-02-19/anger-at-atos/.

Atos’ statement is at 1 minute 44 seconds. They claimed

It’s not, nor has it ever been, the role of Atos to make decisions on who can or cannot receive benefits. We carry out assessment following strict guidelines and criteria written by the government.

And so Atos attempted to wash their hands of their involvement in the persecution of the disabled. We wuz only following orders!

This is unacceptable. Atos perform their assessments in the full knowledge that those they fail will be thrown off benefits and forced either to find work or starve. And all too many have been victims of the latter. Furthermore, they have in very many cases deliberately falsified the results of the assessments to have the claimant thrown off their benefit. They complicit in the government’s cruel treatment of the disabled and cannot disavow their responsibility.

Atos was right, however, in that they don’t set government policy, so there was some small truth in what they said. The DWP’s response, however, was even more mendacious. It’s on the report at 2 minutes 2 seconds. They said

It’s right to see what work people can do with the right support, rather than write people off on out-of-work sickness benefits as sometimes happened in the past.

Well yes, absolutely. It’s a statement with which no-one can reasonably disagree. Unfortunately, it has absolutely nothing to do with DWP policy.

The statement implies that the Department of Work and Pensions supplies needed support for those disabled people able to find work. This is, frankly, a lie. There are some benefits available to allow the disabled to live independently. This was, after all, the whole purpose of the Disability Living Allowance. There were grants available for disabled people and their families to adapt their homes so that the disabled could continue to live in them. These grants and benefits were, however, set up by previous governments. The current administration is re-organising them and introducing cuts so that fewer people qualify. All in the interest of making savings, as commanded by Osborne. This has been accompanied by a lot of bluster about concentrating resources on where it’s most needed, but the reality is that it’s done with the deliberate intention of throwing as many people off benefit as possible, regardless of whether they can actually work.

The simple fact is that the government gives absolutely no support for those workers they and Atos declare fit for work. The assessment is based simply on physical ability, and is designed to ensure that all but the extremely disabled – the virtually bed-bound – are ineligible. The DWP’s statement about helping people into work with the right support implies that the support is there. Frankly, it isn’t. I haven’t heard of the DWP providing any service advising people on what jobs might be suitable for people with particular disabilities, or providing any support for those keen to enter employment. I used to work twenty years ago in the Inland Revenue. One of the other members of staff had a severe back complaint. They were therefore given an orthopaedic chair in which to work. At one time the government also supported businesses that employed a certain proportion of disabled people. I have seen no evidence of similar policies under the Coalition, and in fact, if I recall correctly, the legislation encouraging the employment of disabled people has been under attack. I’ve got a feeling it’s been criticised for not being cost-effective or some such rubbish.

I have also not heard of any kind of comprehensive government policy provide advice for individual disabled people on what work might be suitable for them, nor of them being awarded grants to support themselves learning new skills or acquiring the specialist equipment they might need in order to function in the workplace. There are programmes to teach the disabled and the unemployed in general IT skills. I was on one about a decade or so ago. The course also included a scheme in which the blind were also taught to use a computer using special speaking machines. Unfortunately, the reality is also frequently the opposite of the what the government has claimed. The Coalition has closed down the Remploy workshops that employed disabled workers. The teaching of IT skills seems to be the catch-all solution to getting the unemployed and the disabled back into work, rather than providing any comprehensive and coherent programme to provide the disabled with the proper, individual skills and support they need. There is some help and support provided by various charities, but you do need considerable help simply finding it.

The DWP’s statements about ‘help’ and ‘support’ are simply more of the double-talk and perversion of language Orwell described in 1984, where ‘war’ equals ‘peace’ and so forth. Some of this came in with Thatcher. When she announced she was cutting services, she described it as ‘more self-help’. Well, Samuel Smiles, the working-class radical, who wrote the original book of that title later stated he regretted having done so. Unfortunately, right-wing governments have been banging on about self-help ever since. And as this government’s policies have shown, self-help in the majority of cases means no help at all.