A Defence of the British Empire and Its Benefits

Nigel Biggar: Colonialism: A Moral Reckoning (London: WilliamCollins 2023).

Nigel Biggar is a professor of Moral Theology at Oxford, and this book is his rebuttal of the current attempts to portray the British Empire as a monolithic force for evil, a racist project that resulted in the extermination, enslavement and oppression of millions of the world’s indigenous peoples. A monstrous empire comparable to the Nazis’ Third Reich about White Britons should feel not pride but deep shame. Biggar recognises that the days of empire are over, but considers that the contemporary attacks on British imperialism and legacy are part of a wider attack on White British identity. In this book, he presents the case for the empire as a positive force. He revisits particular incidents and episodes in British imperial history, such as slavery, the Raj and Colonel Dyer and the Amritsar Massacre, the treatment of indigenous Canadians in the mission schools and the mass famine they experienced, British rule in Egypt, the extermination of the Tasmanians, Trevelyan and the Irish Potato Famine, The Anglo-Boer War, the British expedition of 1897 against Benin and the Maoris in New Zealand, and presents a far more positive case. Time after time he shows that damning comments from colonial officials showing them as racist genocides indifferent to the suffering of the colonised have been distorted. In one instance, it was actually made up from parts of three different comments. Trevelyan, the head of the British Civil Service at the time of the Irish Potato Famine, is a case in point. He is rightly admired for his work cleaning out the corruption and modernising the Civil Service, but has been roundly condemned for his supposedly uncaring attitude towards the starving Irish. I’ve forgotten the exact quote, but it runs something like ‘it’s all their fault for not being properly sensible and providing for themselves.’ In fact, this was only half of what Trevelyan said. He carried on to say that he did not believe this was the case, and was fully behind the government giving state relief to the famine victims.

British Governor of Tasmania: A Defender, Not Genocide, of Aboriginal Tasmanians

The same is true of the British governor of Tasmania in the early 19th century, who attempted to round up aboriginal Tasmanians in a vast net in order to deport them from mainland Tasmania to an offshore island well away from White settlement. He is supposed to have said something about indigenous Tasmanians being doomed to extinction by Whites as part of the natural, inevitable process of events and that they should be expelled from the country in order for it to be given to Whites. The governor did say that, but as with Trevelyan, it was only half of what said. He continued by stating that he did not believe this to be the case. Indeed, he was intensely concerned about the maltreatment and murders of the Tasmanians by the White settlers. His attempt to round up the remaining indigenous Tasmanians and relocate them offshore wasn’t done to benefit Whites, but was intended to protect the Tasmanians from White brutalisation and abuse. And so he goes on, throughout the book, going back to the original sources and documents to show how specific incidents and individuals have been misrepresented as part of the attack on British imperialism. There’s even something positive to say about that blackguard Cecil Rhodes. Biggar acknowledges that Rhodes isn’t a poster boy for the British empire. Nevertheless, there are instances where he showed genuine concern for Black Africans. For example, during the 19th century a small Black electorate emerged in South Africa. It was numerically tiny, consisting of about 5,000 people. Nevertheless, it existed. And when there a move by the South African authorities to disenfranchise them, Rhodes stood up to oppose it. In another incident he personally went deep into African tribal territory to settle a dispute over land he had acquired for White settlement with the African nation from whom he had acquired it. His party was small, consisting of himself and a few colleagues. As part of the settlement reached with the indigenous people, he returned several hundred acres to them. And when he founded the Rhodes scholarships to Oxford, he deliberately left it open to students of any colour.

Controversy Over Biggar and His Investigation of Imperialism

Imperialism, and especially British imperialism, is intensely controversial and Biggar has personally suffered for his attempts to investigate and examine it away from the assumption that it is automatically malign. He wanted to teach a course at Oxford on imperialism. This was to be not just about British imperialism, but also that others, such as China. This resulted in a storm of protest and denunciations by hundreds of people, including not just students but also Oxford faculty. These protests in turn led him to write the book. Its publication was troubled. It was originally taken up by Bloomsbury, but they cancelled their contract, but fortunately Biggar found another publisher in WilliamCollins. Since then, he has spoken about the controversies about the British empire and his book on the New Culture Forum and the National Conservative convention. I realise that his attitude towards present-day British and western international diplomacy is very different than mine. He is fully behind the use of military force by the west acting as the world’s policeman, and is scornful of those who oppose it. These people, he believes, want Britain to become something like the minor European countries who remain morally pure by never using their military forces in defence of justice elsewhere in the globe. Having looked at the recent western military campaigns in Afghanistan, Iraq and the toppling of Gaddafy in Libya, I believe that these ventures were not done from any kind of altruistic concern for these countries’ peoples, merely the entirely selfish interests of western multinationals and the oil industry. Despite my disagreement with his views of present-day international politics, I do believe he has done an excellent job of defending the British empire.

British Concern for a Multicultural Egypt

For example, when it comes to the British takeover of Egypt, he quotes British colonial governors and officials telling the Foreign Office that if there was a conflict between orders from Britain and the interests of the Egyptian people, they would back the Egyptians. This was entirely accepted by their superiors back in Britain. When it came to drafting a constitution for the country, they were concerned that Egyptian citizenship should not be restricted to ethnic Egyptians, but should also include the Christian Copts as well as Armenians, Greeks and other resident ethnic groups. Reading this, I wondered if this was the ultimate origin of the same multicultural attitude that has determined that Britain’s ethnic minorities are as equally British as the indigenous Whites. And the British did not intend to rule the country forever. Initially, they expected to be in charge of the country for only a few years until the Egyptians themselves had learned and mastered modern system of government. But as time went on, this process was increasingly difficult and drawn out, and so the time spent governing the country lengthened. But as imperialism wore on, there was the expectation that Britain was only temporarily holding these territories in trust until their peoples were capable of governing themselves.

Massacres Committed by Indigenous Allies and their Enemies

Elsewhere he shows that British officials themselves were not always racist thugs. Far from it. He quotes travellers to Africa, who observed that the District Commissioners, far from disdainful of the peoples over whom they ruled, were in fact intensely interested in them, keen to show particular items and features of interest to visitors. Some of the atrocities committed by British forces, such as those during the conquest of India and the Mao-Mao rebellion were perpetrated not by White British forces, but by their indigenous allies. In the case of the Mao-Mao, these were generally the result of tribal feuds. And the Mao-Mao were perfectly capable of committing horrendous massacres themselves and atrocities themselves. He quotes one British diplomat or soldier, who entered one African village with Black soldiers after the Mao-Mao had attacked and butchered its people. This was right down to elderly women. Part of the Kikuyu’s motives for rebelling was opposition to British attempts to ban female circumcision. This resulted in a squad of Kikuyu attacking an elderly female missionary known for her opposition to it in her bed. They forcibly circumcised her before murdering her.

Colonel Dyer and the Amritsar Massacre

One of the other atrocities committed by the British army was the notorious Amritsar massacre by Colonel Dyer, in which the British army opened fire on a mass independence demonstration in Amritsar Square. Dyer was afraid that the meeting would result in further disorders and erupt into a rebellion like the Indian mutiny. The massacre has since become a byword for British brutality in India. But the attitude of the British authorities and public at the time was outrage and condemnation, not support. Dyer was recalled to England, there were speeches denouncing his actions in the House, and the Colonel tendered his resignation following notification that the army would not longer employ him. Dyer himself, surprising, appears not to have been racist. He enjoyed mixing with Indian soldiers as much as White British. When he was recalled to Blighty, he found that a squad of Indian NCOs and squaddies had voluntarily drawn up an honour guard to accompany him to the train station. He also demonstrates the hypocrisy of the denunciations of Dyer’s actions, while Indian forces have done exactly the same. There have been 11 massacres of protesters in Amritsar by Indian troops since Dyer. This included one episode where the Indian army forced protesting students to crawl the length of one street just as Dyer had forced his Indian victims.

Annexation of the Transvaal

Biggar also presents an alternative interpretation of the annexation of the Transvaal. This has also become notorious as a British invasion of an independent Afrikaner state. But Biggar goes into some of the issues involved to show that it was rather more than simply a cynical grab for land and imperial dominance by the British. There were concerns about the Afrikaner treatment of the Uitlanders, who formed a sizable minority in the Transvaal. These were frequently White Brits working in the mining industry. And they were especially worried that an independent Transvaal would promote a general Afrikaner rebellion through South Africa resulting in the downfall of British authority. This would not only be bad in itself, but they also feared that it would lead to the enslavement of Black South Africans due to the Afrikaner opposition to the ban on slavery in the British empire.

Benin, ‘City of Blood’

The book also critically examines the literature denouncing the 1897 British expedition against Benin. This has become controversial because the army carried off as spoils of war the famous Bronzes, sculptures of chief’s heads, which formed part of shrines to their vital spirit. It has been seen as yet another attempt by the British to grab land and establish a trade route past Benin to the peoples further north. Benin was an obstacle to trade, true, but another issue was that Benin was actively attacking and raiding other African states for sacrificial victims. This was described by Bacon, the British intelligence officer on the expedition, in his 1909 book, City of Blood. He describes people lying, pegged out on the ground or on sacrificial alters, with cross-shaped cuts in their abdomen by which they were disembowelled. Anti-imperial writers have tried to discredit this account as inventions or exaggerations. One of those who has done so is Dan Hicks, an archaeologist and now museum director who has thrown his weight solidly behind the decolonisation movement. Biggar criticises these attempts, one of which is simply an assertion that it must be an invention.

The expedition was also launched as a reprisal for the murder of a British governor and his party, who had gone to the city lightly armed in order to negotiate some kind of settlement to the dispute. They were subject to an unprovoked attacked, the indigenous bearers shot and butchered, and the governor and his White colleagues murdered and sacrificed.

He also deals with the allegation that the British army’s forcible acquisition of the Bronzes constituted looting under the articles of war. In fact, it was common practice for the British army to seize treasure from defeated enemies, which were then sold to defray the costs of the expedition and provide for the widows of fallen officers. This only became illegal in 1899, two years after the expedition.

Britain and Famine Relief in Ireland

He also considers several instances where the British appeared indifferent to suffering of the colonised peoples, especially from famine. One of these is the notorious Irish Potato Famine. But contrary to the impression given, the British did try to provide famine relief. They opened soup kitchens. However, there were fears that this would lead to welfare dependence, and so the provision of food by the British government was curtailed. It was supposed to be handed over to the Irish relief systems, paid for by the country’s ratepayers. But the British failed to realise that there were far fewer ratepayers in Ireland than in Britain, and as a result the Irish were unable to provide the amount of relief needed. And some parts of the Irish nationalist movement come out of this just as badly. Some nationalists believed that proud, self-respecting Irishmen and women should not demean themselves by accepting British charity.

He also tackles the Easter Rising and the Irish Revolution, showing that initially the mass of ordinary Irish people were against it. By 1919, as the rebels themselves recognised, the causes of popular resentment had been removed. For example, the political disabilities of Roman Catholics had been gradually removed following Catholic Emancipation in the 1830s. One of the rebels’ leaders actually said that the Irish rising was the only rebellion where the majority of the population was against it. What turned Irish public opinion against the British was the brutality of the British forces, and particularly the Black and Tan auxiliaries, charged with putting it down.

British rule in India has also been accused of being responsible for the repeated famines its people suffered. But the book shows that this was due to the country’s climate. There had been repeated famines during the 18^th century and 19^th century due to these conditions, which were well out of the Ray’s control. As for the notorious Bengal famine, this was caused by the Japanese cutting off grain supplies from Burma.

Canadian First Nations, Famine and the Mission Schools

The book also tackles the maltreatment of indigenous Canadians in the mission schools set up to give them a modern education. These have become notorious for the abuse, starvation and deaths from disease their indigenous inmates suffered. But as with so many things, this is only part of the story. In fact, the British authorities expected indigenous Canadians to become part of wider Canadian society. The western education given in these schools was to prepare them for this. Moreover, the indigenous Canadian nations themselves had appealed to the British to provide them with modern industrial and agricultural training. And just as there were terri8ble schools where the pupils were brutalised and maltreated, so there were others where they were well-cared for with friendly teachers. Former pupils at these schools have written their accounts of their happy schooldays, but these have not been published in the press. Instead, they appear in diocesan and old school magazines. If this is true, then it’s nothing but left-wing censorship and a deliberate distortion of the historical reality.

It then goes on to deal with a terrible famine affecting the north-western Canadian First Nations. This has been denounced as a holocaust, and the British and Canadian authorities accused of deliberately withholding needed aid. But the book demonstrates that such aid was actually beyond the ability of the state to provide it. At the time the north-western territories were governed by only a tiny number of officials and policemen. The number of Mounties in the region number only about 24. And despite the angry denunciations of the famine as a genocide and holocaust, the number of deaths was tiny: 42 or so. I dare say that this could have been proportionately great, given that many First Nations number perhaps a couple of hundred, but this is hardly comparable to the six million Jews murdered by the Nazis in the Holocaust.

In New Zealand, the British governor reserved four seats on the legislative assembly for Maoris, who were given universal manhood suffrage decades before White men, who were still subject to property qualifications.

Economic and Industrial Benefits of British Colonialism

The book also describes some of the benefits that came with imperialism. Free trade has been blamed for much of the ills that beset its indigenous peoples, but the book shows that at the time, people of all classes of British society passionately believed in it. And not just as an economic system. It was believed that through free trade, nations would no longer go to war with each other. Similarly, across the world the British built railways, established irrigation systems and there was the transfer of technology and scientific expertise from Britain to its colonies. For example, a party of Indians journeyed to Britain to study the new techniques of iron founding and went back to set up India’s own iron and steel industry. They also established the former colonies’ universities. The founders of the Raj were also intensely interested in Indian culture and literature, and it was they who revived the study of Sanskrit. The book recognises that racism did exist. Indeed, he quotes Indian nationalists as stating how they learned to hate Britain due to the abuse they received serving with Whites in the armed forces. But this is just one part of the imperial story.

There are, of course, episodes of imperial history that cannot be remotely justified, such as the slave trade. So that first chapter describes how Britain went from slavery to become the world’s policeman in combatting it across the globe.

Moral Principles and Critical Assessment

As a moral theologian, Biggar is careful to lay out the philosophical principles by which a particular action or course of actions should be judged good or bad. While he is a theologian, the principles themselves are rational and so can be accepted by atheists and religious sceptics. And he is very critical of the ideological qualifications of the empire’s critics. They are, he states, not historians but largely literary critics using a very narrow range of texts. This is a good description of the various academics and students of Postcolonial Studies. Like Critical Race Theory, this is a philosophical revision of Marxism. One of its fundamental texts is the writings of Frantz Fanon, a Black Caribbean author and observer of the Algerian rebellion against France. Fanon’s writings are something of a classic, and published as such, but his attitude towards the truth was, ahem, elastic. He wasn’t interested in whether something was factually correct, only if the narrative served the revolution.

Conclusion

This is a hugely fascinating and informative book, which I enjoyed immensely. But I also felt annoyed, even angry while doing so, as time and again it showed the falsehoods I had grown up with or which have since been produced as part of the ideological attack on the Empire. I felt I had been lied to by perfectly decent people for perfectly understandable reasons. I hope this book helps to clear away those lies.

The history of the British Empire is always going to be controversial, and there are horrendous episodes of brutality and exploitation. The book recognises this complex history, and states that the bad cannot be separated from the good. Niall Ferguson appeared on a radio programme a few years ago to give his views on the British empire. When asked whether he thought the empire had been a force for good, he recognised that much evil had been done, but considered the good narrowly outweighed the evil. I believe that any fair assessment of the British Empire should recognise both aspects in order to come to a fair assessment. At the moment there is considerable pressure to present only negative views and accounts of the British Empire. I hope this book adds balance to this debate.

Even so, like all history, people need to read both sides of the debate before coming to their own, independent conclusions. Unfortunately, this does not seem to be the aim of the Critical Social Justice movement, which increasingly demands that only its views should be taught and accepted in schools, universities and business.

BBC Criticised for Anti-White Bias: The Case of Romesh Ranganathan and Sierra Leone

A day or so ago a group of right-wing historians calling themselves History Reclaimed released a report accusing the Beeb of anti-White bias. They gave a list of 20 instances in which the BBC distorted history for apparently political and racial reasons. One example was of a programme that claimed that Robert Peel had a callous disregard for the victims of the Irish potato famine. The truth, they claimed, was that Peel risked his career pushing through legislation abolishing the Corn Laws, so that Irish, and poor British people, could buy cheap foreign grain. The name History Reclaimed to my ears suggests some kind of link with Laurence Fox’s Reclaim party. The group includes the historians Andrew Roberts and Jeremy Black. While I strongly disagree with their Tory views, these are respectable, academic, mainstream historians. Roberts talked rubbish in a video posted on YouTube by PragerU, an American right-wing thinktank, which tries to present itself as some kind of university. He claimed that the British was A Good Thing because it gave the world free trade and property rights. Well, property rights exist in Islam, and I’ve no reason to doubt that they also existed in China and India, so that’s a very dubious claim. As for free trade, well, the privatisation the IMF has forced on some of the African countries that came to it for aid has generally left them worse off, sometimes catastrophically so, as when one of the southern African countries deregulated its sugar industry. But whatever I think of Roberts’ political views, he is in other ways an excellent historian. The same with Jeremy Black, whose Slavery: A New Global History I thoroughly recommend. Black has also published a history of the British Empire that does acknowledge the atrocities and human rights abuses that occurred. We are not, therefore, dealing with people who want to erase history themselves.

Regarding Robert Peel, I’ve no doubt they’re right. Peel was a great reforming Prime Minister. He founded the metropolitan police, hence their nickname of ‘bobbies’ and ‘peelers’. He also reduced the number of capital crimes from well over hundred to three. These included murder and treason. It’s because of him that you can no longer be hanged for impersonating a Chelsea pensioner. There were British officials, who felt that the Irish had brought it on themselves and should be left to starve. The head of the civil service, Trevelyan, is notorious for these views. But I don’t believe that Peel was one of them.

But it’s not Peel, who I shall discuss here, but Sierra Leone. Another example they gave was of Romesh Ranganthan’s presentation of the history of slavery in Sierra Leone in one edition of his The Misadventures of Romesh Ranganathan. In the programme, Ranganathan went to a slave fort on Bunce Island and talked to local people about the country’s history. By their account, this was very one-sided. The slavers were presented as all being White British. In fact, as History Reclaimed states, the African peoples in the area were also slavers. In 1736 or so one of the local chiefs attacked Bunce Island because it was taking trade away from him. And although the programme mentioned raiders, it did not state that the slaves were supplied by Black Africans, and so gave the impression that the trade’s victims were enslaved by White British.

It also neglected to mention that Sierra Leone was founded as a state for free Blacks, and that there is an arch commemorating the emancipation of Black slaves in Freetown which the UN has stated is comparable to the Statue of Liberty in espousing and celebration freedom, democracy and human rights. I have no doubt that this is also correct.

Slavery existed in Africa for millennia before the emergence of the transatlantic slave trade. While Europeans had and occasionally did raid for slaves, they were prevented from penetrating inland through a mixture of the disease-ridden climate and power African kingdoms. Europeans were confined to their own quarters of indigenous towns, like the ghettos into which Jews were forced in the Middle Ages. The slave trade was extremely lucrative, and the slaves were indeed sold to them by Africans, some of the most notorious being Dahomey, Ashanti, Badagry and Whyday. After the ban on the slave trade in 1807, one African nation attacked a British trading post in the 1820s to force us to take it up again. I found this in a copy of the very well respected British history magazine, History Today.

In the late 18th century – I’ve forgotten precisely when – the colony was taken over by one of the abolitionist groups. It was intended to be a new state for free Blacks. Three shiploads of emigrants, who also included some Whites, set sail. The idealists, who planned the colony also changed the laws regulating land tenure. I’ve forgotten the system of land tenure they altered, but from what I remember they believed it had been introduced by the Normans and was part of the framework of feudalism. I think it was also intended to be governed democratically. The new colony immediately fell into difficulties, and the colonists were reinforced with the arrival of Caribbean Maroons and Black Loyalists from America. The latter had been granted their freedom in exchange for fighting for us during the American Revolution. After independence, they were moved to Halifax in Nova Scotia, Canada. Unfortunately, they were prevented from settling down through a mixture of the harsh northern climate and racism. The colony still experienced considerable trouble, and was saved by being taken over by the British government. After Britain outlawed the slave trade, it became the base for the British West India Squadron, which was tasked with patrolling the seas off Africa intercepting slavers. It was also the site of one of the courts of mixed commission, in which suspected slavers were tried by judges from Britain and the accused slavers’ nation. The British navy were assisted in their attacks on slavers by indigenous African tribes, such as the Egba, and their help was appreciated. The admiralty stated that soldiers and sailors from these people should receive the same compensation for wounds suffered battling slavers as British troops, not least because it would reaffirm British good faith and encourage more Africans to join the struggle.

Slaving by the surrounding tribes and even by some of the liberated Africans in the colony itself remained a problem. As a result, British officers from the colony made anti-slavery treaties with the chiefs of the neighbouring Sherbro country, and reported on and took action against the Black colonists stealing young boys to sell to the slave states further south. Freetown became a major centre of education and western civilisation in Africa. Many of the anthropologists, who first described African languages and societies, were Sierra Leonean Blacks. The father of the 19th century Black British composer, Samuel Coleridge Taylor, was a Black citizen of Sierra Leone.

None of this is at all obscure or controversial. African slavers and their complicity in the trade are mentioned in Hugh Thomas’ brilliant book, The Slave Trade, as well as various general histories of Africa. There is even a book specifically on the history of Sierra Leone and the West India Squadron, Sweet Water and Bitter: The Ships That Stopped The Slave Trade by Sian Rees (London: Chatto & Windus 2009). One of the Scottish universities over two decades ago published a book collecting the Black colonists’ letters. I’m afraid I can’t remember the title, but we had a copy at the Empire and Commonwealth Museum. Now a programme could well be made about the Black colonists and their struggles from their own words. One of the problems with history is that the lower strata of society generally remain silent, unless described or remarked upon by the upper classes. This is particularly true when it comes to slaves or former slaves. But somehow mentioning that it was settled by former slaves was considered unimportant or even embarrassing or controversial by the show’s producers.

Simon Webb of History Debunked has noted the various instances where the account of the slave trade has been selectively retold and omits any mention of Black African complicity. As far right as Webb is, I believe he has a point. But this attitude is not only anti-White, it also does Blacks an injustice by assuming that they are emotionally unable to handle this aspect of the slave trade. One Black historian with whom I worked at the Museum stated quite clearly that in the Caribbean they were told by their mammies that it was the Africans who sold their ancestors into slavery. And no, he didn’t hate Africans either. Channel 4 even presented a show about African involvement in the slave trade twenty or so years ago. This is the channel that the Tories hated for being too left-wing and having Michael Grade, ‘Britain’s pornographer in chief’ as they called him, as its controller. I am not blaming Ranganathan himself for the bias. The right hate him because he is very outspoken in his anti-Brexit views. But I doubt he knew much about Sierra Leon and its history. The fault lies with the producer and director, if not further up BBC management who may have laid down rules regarding the presentation of slavery and the British empire generally.

Black complicity in the slave trade doesn’t excuse White European involvement, but it does need to be taught so that people get a balanced view of the historical reality. And I wonder why the Beeb didn’t.

Counterpunch on Theresa May’s Plans to Celebrate the Balfour Declaration

Yesterday Counterpunch published a powerful piece by Robert Fisk, ‘Who Could Ever Feel Pride in the Balfour Declaration?’ attacking Theresa May’s plans to celebrate the centenary of the British Prime Minister’s declaration during the First World War to support the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine. Fisk is a journalist with the Independent, where the piece was originally published, and a veteran critic of Israel and its ethnic cleansing of the country’s indigenous, Arab population. He begins the article

Theresa May told us that Britain will celebrate the centenary of the Balfour Declaration this summer with “pride”. This was predictable. A British prime minister who would fawn to the head-chopping Arab autocrats of the Gulf in the hope of selling them more missiles – and then hold the hand of the insane new anti-Muslim president of the United States – was bound, I suppose, to feel “pride” in the most mendacious, deceitful and hypocritical document in modern British history.

As a woman who has set her heart against immigrants, it was also inevitable that May would display her most venal characteristics to foreigners – to wealthy Arab potentates, and to an American president whose momentary love of Britain might produce a life-saving post-Brexit trade agreement. It was to an audience of British lobbyists for Israel a couple of months ago that she expressed her “pride” in a century-old declaration which created millions of refugees. But to burnish the 1917 document which promised Britain’s support for a Jewish homeland in Palestine but which would ultimately create that very refugee population – refugees being the target of her own anti-immigration policies – is little short of iniquitous.

The Balfour Declaration’s intrinsic lie – that while Britain supported a Jewish homeland, nothing would be done “which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine” – is matched today by the equally dishonest response of Balfour’s lamentable successor at the Foreign Office. Boris Johnson wrote quite accurately two years ago that the Balfour Declaration was “bizarre”, a “tragicomically incoherent” document, “an exquisite piece of Foreign Office fudgerama”. But in a subsequent visit to Israel, the profit-hunting Mayor of London suddenly discovered that the Balfour Declaration was “a great thing” that “reflected a great tide of history”. No doubt we shall hear more of this same nonsense from Boris Johnson later this year.

He states that Balfour issued the Declaration in order to convince American and Russian Jews to continue to press for continuing the war against Germany, after Russia was forced to sue for peace the same year in 1917. He points out that Britain should, by rights, apologise to the millions of Arab refugees created by the Declaration, as Britain has done for the Slave Trade and the Irish Potato Famine. But he predicts that Britain won’t, because Theresa May needs Israel far more than she needs the support of the Arabs. Much of the article is really a discussion of David Cronin’s book Balfour’s Shadow: A Century of British Support for Zionism and Israel. Cronin’s an Irish journalist living Brussels, who very definitely despises anti-Semitism and Holocaust-deniers, and who faces up to the issue of the support of Mufti of Jerusalem for the Nazis and the Holocaust. The book details the British use of violence and repression against the Arabs, including the use of ‘extra-judicial execution’. Fisk also shows in his article how British prime ministers since Balfour, of both the Left and Right, have supported Israel at the expense of its Arab population. PMs who have supported Israel and its ethnic cleansing include Clement Atlee, Harold Wilson, Margaret Thatcher and, of course, Tony Blair. Fisk also details British complicity in supplying arms to the Israelis and that they gave no protection to Arab civilians when they were being massacred, such as at Haifa. Fisk states

Cronin’s investigation of Colonial Office files show that the British military lied about the “cleansing” of Haifa, offering no protection to the Arabs, a policy largely followed across Palestine save for the courage of Major Derek Cooper and his soldiers, whose defence of Arab civilians in Jaffa won him the Military Cross (although David Cronin does not mention this). Cooper, whom I got to know when he was caring for wounded Palestinians in Beirut in 1982, never forgave his own government for its dishonesty at the end of the Palestine Mandate.

But Britain’s support for Israel hasn’t always been reciprocated. When the PLO opposed the Falkland’s War, they were told very clearly by the British ambassador that it was no concern of theirs. At the same time the Israelis were selling Skyhawk jets to the Argentinians to shoot down our flyboys.

Fisk concludes the article

From the day that Herbert Samuel, deputy leader of the Liberal Party and former (Jewish) High Commissioner for Palestine, said in the House of Commons in 1930 that Arabs “do migrate easily”, it seems that Britain has faithfully followed Balfour’s policies. More than 750,000 Palestinians were uprooted in their catastrophe, Cronin writes. Generations of dispossessed would grow up in the camps. Today, there are around five million registered Palestinian refugees. Britain was the midwife of that expulsion.

And this summer, we shall again be exhorted by Theresa May to remember the Balfour Declaration with “pride”.

See: http://www.counterpunch.org/2017/03/06/who-could-ever-feel-pride-in-the-balfour-declaration/

Vox Political: Amazon Boss to Get DWP Directorship

Mike over at Vox Political today posted this piece from the Guardian, commenting on Margaret Hodge’s disgust at Amazon’s boss of Chinese operations getting a directorship at the DWP: http://voxpoliticalonline.com/2016/02/04/amazon-bosss-dwp-appointment-is-disgusting-but-when-did-government-departments-start-having-directors/ In his comment, he asks a very pertinent question: since when did the DWP, or the Civil Service as a whole, start having directorships? Traditionally, the heads of the civil service were secretaries over various descriptions, undersecretaries, private secretaries, personal private secretaries, etc. Secretaries by the bushel, secretaries by the bucketful. But no directors. So, he asks, is this indication that the Gentleman Ranker, Ian ‘Snollygaster’ Duncan Smith, wants to privatise another section of the DWP, or indeed the whole government department?

It’s a good question. IDS – just one vowel away from ‘AIDS’, and nearly as poisonous – and the rest of the Tories really do seem to think that privatising everything is the solution. They took this idea over from the Libertarians in America, who want just about everything privatised, even the courts. All in the name of small government. I don’t think even IDS is so stupid that he wants to go as far as completely privatising the justice system, but he and they do seem to follow the libertarian line about privatising the police force. This policy is based on the idea that private corporations are automatically more efficient and more effective than state operated enterprises or organisations. Even when it’s been proved again and yet again that they aren’t. The Civil Service was originally considered unsuitable for privatisation, so they did the next best thing. They quasi-privatised part of it, but separating the Department of Health from the Department of Social Security, and turned the latter into the Benefits Agency. Now it seems that they want to privatise it completely, at least piecemeal.

As for the title of ‘director’, there’s an element of vanity in there. IDS, Cameron and the others have all entered public service from business, and therefore don’t seem to be satisfied with simply having the title and job description as ‘public servants’. No, they want to be seen as hot-shot directors, not secretaries. So directors they must be, even if it’s completely inappropriate. Way back in the 1990s, a similar rebranding occurred in the Department of Trade and Industry. This wasn’t good enough for the responsible minister at the time, who insisted on calling it, ‘The Department of Enterprise’, in line with Thatcherite Yuppie ideology. Well, yuppies have come and gone. A lot of them finally gave up the game when the steam ran out of the part of the Thatcher Revolution, and New Labour came to power, only to carry on her legacy in a slightly less noxious form. But as the idea of directorships in the DWP shows, it’s still there. And it’s entirely inappropriate.

Directors are the heads of private companies, which are driven by the profit motive. The aim of private enterprise is primarily to make money, not to provide a service. The role of the civil service, on the contrary, is to provide a service in spheres which are outside the applicability of the profit motive. It’s why there are just so many regulations prescribing the correct conduct of civil servants and what constitutes corruption. They aren’t there to enrich themselves at the expense of the state or its citizens. They are there to serve the public. This latter point is important. It was imported into the Civil Service ethos by the Trevelyan in the 19th century. His idea of moral, responsible service by state officials was largely based on the old Stoic ideal of service to the state. Trevelyan himself was an utter b*stard in some respects. He had absolutely zero sympathy for the victims of the Irish Potato Famine, and did not want them to be given any relief in their most dire need. It’s an episode which has cast a terrible shadow over subsequent relations between Britain and Ireland ever since. But Trevelyan’s reform of the Civil Service did create an ethos of efficient, responsible public service. IDS’ creation of directorships threatens to undermine this, and throw the whole institution back to the corruption of the 18th century and previously, when officeholders believed that they had an absolute right to exploit their position to the full to enrich themselves.

And in that case, ideology will have come full circle, and the Tories will have gone back to their roots. Modern Neoliberalism has much of its ideological roots in 19th century radicalism. 19th century radicals generally wanted small, cheap, efficient government, free of the webs of patronage and corruption that stifled the economy and prevented individuals from developing their own talents and being rewarded by the fruits of their energy and enterprise. Thatcher and her Yuppy crew largely took power by muttering a lot of nonsense about ‘meritocracy’. It informs the very title of Norman Tebbit’s autobiography, ‘Upwardly Mobile’.

But for all that they mouth Neoliberal clichés about enterprise, efficiency, meritocracy and self-reliance, the Tories aren’t motivated by a desire to increase social mobility, or limit the stifling power of an hereditary ruling class, like the 19th century Liberals. Cameron, Osbo, IDS and their cabinet are toffs. They are the stifling hereditary ruling class. Social mobility under New Labour had all but ceased. Under Cameron it’s stopped completely. And they’re determined to hold on to power, and oppress everyone else. Hugh Montgomery-Massingberd gave the game away in the Times in the 1980s when he loudly hailed Maggie Thatcher as bringing about a ‘social restoration’ of the old country house elite. The only difference now is that the ruling elite are corporations and their managers, rather than an agricultural aristocracy. But the ethos remains of a ruling class, which regards the state and its institutions as their instruments with which to govern and plunder, rather than to serve the greater national good.

Tory Councillor Told To Resign after Criticising David Attenborough – But Attenborough Does Believe in Doing Nothing for the Starving

Late yesterday evening there was a story on the MSN News about Phil Taylor, a Conservative councillor in Ealing, who had been told to resign for his comments on Twitter about David Attenborough. According to the article, Taylor had been angered by a statement by Attenborough on the need to curb the growth of the world’s population. He tweeted ‘I do wish this silly old fart would practice what he preached and take a one-way trip to Switzerland’. The leader of the Labour Party in Ealing Council, Julian Bell, condemned Taylor’s comments, and demanded that he should either apologise or resign. Taylor was also criticised by Scott Freeman, from the anti-bullying charity, Cybersmile, for setting a bad example and encouraging cyberbullying.

In reply to these criticisms, Taylor said in an email “My tweet reflected my frustration with Attenborough repeatedly using his ‘national treasure’ status to promote a set of views that see people as being a problem. His prescriptions seem always to apply to other people.

“My view of the world is that we have to work out how to make sure that the 9 billion people who will populate the world by 2050 all have a good life. They all have hopes and dreams and don’t need to be told what to do by Attenborough.”

The article concludes with the simple statement that ‘Sir David said in a radio interview this morning that he recognised that population controls were a controversial area and emphasised that he felt more strongly towards a human baby than any animal.

However, it is important to have a debate over what we do about the rising pressures on natural resources, he said.’

The full article can be read at:
http://news.uk.msn.com/uk/david-attenborough-should-kill-himself-says-tory-councillor.

Right-Wing Opposition to Green Politics

Now the Right does not like Green politics. In America Green politics are criticised as a Left-wing strategy for increasing taxation, regulation and enforcing income redistribution. The last means Republicans don’t like it because the Greens want to take money from the rich and give to the poor. Conservatives in America and Britain believe that Big Business has an absolute right to exploit, pollute and destroy the environment and its flora and fauna. In response to pressure from Green politicians and environmental groups, they have set up astroturf organisations, like ‘Wise Use’ to counter such criticism and present Conservatives as advocating instead a responsible approach to the environment in line with a policy promoting the proper exploitation of the natural world.

Attenborough: UN Should Not Give Food to Famine Victims

Now the suggestion that Attenborough should go and end his life in a Dignitas clinic is extreme, and it does set a bad example when so many children have ended their lives through abuse on the Internet. Taylor’s comment is not, however, quite as bad when you read what Attenborough himself had said. This is truly monstrous. According to the Daily Telegraph, Attenborough told their interviewer about his fears about overpopulation and appeared to suggest that the starving of the developing world should be left to die. The great broadcaster apparently said:
“What are all these famines in Ethiopia, what are they about? They’re about too many people for too little land. That’s what it’s about. And we are blinding ourselves. We say, get the United Nations to send them bags of flour. That’s barmy.” According to the article, he stated that overpopulation was a problem, and that if we didn’t tackle it, nature itself would, as it had done for a long time in the past. He also believed that the major obstacles to managing the world’s population was the attitude that having children was a human right, and the Roman Catholic Church’s prohibition on contraception. He also acknowledge that his statement about Ethiopia and its starving could be ‘misconstrued as an attack on poor people as the issues of major concern were in Africa and Asia.

The article about his comments can be read here:http://news.uk.msn.com/articles?cp-documentid=257478670.

The victims of a famine in India. David Attenborough doesn’t want the UN to give food to people like these.

Attenborough and Atheist Attacks on Religion and Christianity

Now Attenborough has shown himself with these comments to be monstrously ignorant and callously indifferent to global suffering. I have been extremely unimpressed with Attenborough for several years now, ever since he added his voice to that of Richard Dawkins in sneering at religion. That’s a different issue, but I found his remarks then ignorant and uninformed, as countless people of faith, and particularly Western Christians, did contribute to the rise of science. For a more complete discussion of how Christianity laid the basis for modern science, see R. Hooykaas, Religion and the Rise of Modern Science (Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press 1971). I was also not impressed by his attitude, which suggested that Darwin’s Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection had somehow disproven the existence of God. I’ve blogged several times on this issue. For a proper discussion of this issue, see Own Chadwick, ‘Evolution and the Churches’ in G.A. Russell, ed., Science and Religious Belief: A Selection of Recent Historical Studies (London: The Open University/ University of London Press 1973)282-93. These are separate issues. Attenborough’s comments here also seem woefully ignorant and misinformed.

Traditional Attitudes towards Large Families in Western History and Modern Developing World

Let’s take his comment about the Roman Catholic church’s stance on contraception being part of the problem. In actual fact, many cultures and religion advocate large families. In tradition Moroccan society, a family with fewer than 12 children was described as ‘unfinished’. The pagan religions in Africa also lay great stress of large families and the fertility of their flocks and herds. As for attitudes to the environment and animal life, Nigel Barley in his account of his fieldwork amongst the Dowayo people of Cameroun, The Innocent Anthropologist, noted that they had very little knowledge of the animal life around them, and were quite prepared to exterminate any creature they disliked, such as lions. He states that family planning is so unpopular that there is a joke that the only thing that will not be opened and misappropriated when you send it through the post in West Africa is a packed of condoms.

He also does not seem to know, or understand the reasons why the developing world, and indeed Britain and the West before the twentieth century, had large families. These were massive infant mortality rates and to provide support for the parents in their old age. Barley himself says that one of the most moving demonstrations of the tragically high rate of death in childhood in Africa is a question in the Nigerian census form. This asks you how many children you have. After this is the question ‘How many are still living?’ In traditional societies, such as Britain before the establishment of the welfare state in 1948, there is no or little state provision for citizens in their old age. People therefore have large families in order to support them when they have become too elderly to manage for themselves.

Women in Pakistan receiving contraceptive advice.

Fall in Birth Rate throughout the World

Attenborough also seems to have ignored the fact that globally, birth rates are dropping. Governments throughout the developing world have launched campaigns to control their populations through family planning and contraception. This includes the developing world. The French anthropologist, Richard Tod, has pointed to the fact that, although families in the developing world may be much larger than in the West, there has been a dramatic decline. In some Middle Eastern nations, such as those of the former Soviet central Asian republics like Azerbaijan, for example, the birth rates are comparable to those of Western Europe. In Britain and much of the developed world, including Germany, Italy, Russia and Japan, the birth rate is actually below replacement levels. The population in Britain has grown only because of immigration. The Japanese are so concerned about their demographic decline that Japanese newspapers have run stories predicting that in a thousand years’ time, the Japanese people will be extinct. One of the reasons why the Land of the Rising Sun is putting so much resources into developing robots is to create a suitable workforce. The Japanese are unwilling to permit mass immigration to provide the country with labour, and so have turned to cybernetics and robots instead. In fact the global decline in the birth rate has alarmed some demographers, anthropologists and economic planner. In mid-1990s New Scientist carried an interview with a scientist, who believed that population growth had peaked or was peaking. He believed that by the middle of this century there would be a population crash. The result would be increased strain on the welfare state due to the cost of caring for an aging population. The economy would also contract, and countries would have to compete with each other to attract migrants to join their nations’ workforce. He also believed that the high mortality rates in some African nations coupled with a low birth rate would cause their populations to shrink. He believed that the first nation that could be so affected would be Ethiopia. We are here looking very much at the kind of dystopian future predicted by the film Children of Men. This portrayed a Fascistic future Britain, in which no children had been born for 18 years.

Racist Fears over Campaigns to Limit Population

Attenborough’s comments here also threaten to increase racial tension and spur on the rise of the racist Right. IN Britain and America the Fascist and Nationalist Right see demands by the ruling elite that we should limit the size of our families as part of a policy of racial extermination directed at the indigenous White population. They believe that there is a deliberate policy by the liberal elite of wiping out Whites, and replacing them with Black and Asian immigrants. Attenborough’s comments will be seen by them as another example of this policy. Black Nationalists may also see it as a racially motivated attempt to exterminate them. Private Eye a few years ago reported the outrageous comments by a Black leader in South Africa, telling people not to use contraception to stop AIDS as this was really another racist attempts by Whites to limit the Black population. Such statements have some verisimilitude due to the fact that BOSS, the South African secret service, had at one time been active trying to develop diseases that would specifically target Blacks. Attenborough might fear that his comments may be ‘misconstrued’ as an attack on the poor of Africa and Asia, but given the highly mixed legacy of European colonial administrations, one cannot reasonable blame them for doing so. About ten or so years ago a history book came out. It was entitled ‘Third World Holocausts’, or something like that. I can’t remember the exact title. I do, however, remember what it was about. The book described the way European colonialists had committed terrible atrocities in their African and Asian possessions from the political and economic ideologies of the time. In the 19th century, for example, there was a terrible famine in one of the Indian states. I believe it was Bengal, during which millions starved to death. The Raj refused to import and distribute food to its victims from the belief that this would undermine the principle of free trade they were trying to adopt across the Empire.

Attenborough’s Comments and the Irish Potato Famine

Irish victims of the Potato Famine queuing to emigrate.

Much closer to home, Attenborough’s comments recall the attitude of British politicians and civil servants during the Irish Potato Famine. The head of the British civil service, Trevelyan, stated that the victims of the famine should be left to starve. It was, he stated, their fault due to their improvident and irresponsible lifestyle. The result was the legacy of bitterness and hatred which further fuelled Nationalist demands for home rule under Charles Stuart Parnell and violent revolution from the Fenian Brotherhood and later Irish Republican groups. Attitudes like Attenborough’s have partly contributed, however, remotely, to the rise and persistence of terror groups like the IRA.

Fascism and the Green Movement

Attenborough’s views are also similar to some other, viciously misanthropic, extreme Right-wing views found in certain sections of the Green movement. In the 1990s one of the anarchist groups became alarmed at the Fascist tendencies then entering the Green movement. Murray Bookchin, a leading anarchist intellectual, who advocates Green, post-scarcity Anarchism, walked out of a Green conference in Germany when one of the speakers, a former East German dissident, declared that they needed a ‘Green Adolf’. Private Eye, in ‘Ape Sh*t’, its May 1988 review of Brian Masters biography of John Aspinall, The Passion of John Aspinall, remarked on the thuggishness of Aspinall’s political opinions. Aspinall has stated that humans are ‘vermin’, and stated that he favours a policy of ‘beneficial genocide’. He believes Britain’s population should be reduced from 54 to 18 million. He also has explicitly Fascist political sympathies. He supports ‘a right-wing counter-revolution, Franco-esque in spirit and determination’. See Francis Wheen, ed., Lord Gnome’s Literary Companion (London: Verso 1994) 226-7 (p,. 226).

Now I don’t think Attenborough is a Nazi. He has not advocated a Fascist dictatorship nor has any racist views. Indeed, quite the opposite. His programme, Man Alive, in the 1970s brought anthropology to British television and he was always polite and courteous to the primal peoples he spoke to and whose lives he explored. It’s a pity that this respect has not been extended to their children or grandchildren forty years later. Attenborough himself has been responsible for some of the very best of British television. He has delighted and educated the British public with his programmes on animals and wildlife for about sixty years. The BBC’s Natural History Unit in Bristol has brought from fame and honour to the city for its achievements in wildlife broadcasting. When he was controller of BBC 2, he was responsible for bringing some of the most innovative ideas to British television. Who now remembers Brass Tacks, a programme which allowed members of the public to talk about their political views? Unfortunately, Attenborough’s views in this instance less resemble those of an enlightened, genuinely liberal educator, but that of a loudmouthed bigot.

Attenborough’s Comments and the Macc Lads

Attenborough’s view in this instance resemble those of the Macc Lads. This was a northern punk band, which specialised in deliberately offensive lyrics. These could reasonably be described as misogynist, homophobic, and racist. I don’t know if the band themselves actually were. One of their songs describes them listening to the Band Aid global fundraising concert to help the famine victims of Ethiopia and Africa. The song ends with the lines

‘But I didn’t send money
t’ starving n*ggers
Because I’m a fookin’ Nazi’

I’ve been told that the Macc Lad’s songs were not meant seriously. Sadly, Attenborough here appears to have joined them, and this time meant it.

I would hope that Attenborough reconsiders his position in this matter, and issue the apology for his comments that they demand.

Overpopulation in SF Cinema

Apart from this, problems of a vastly overpopulated world has been portrayed in two films, Soylent Green, starring Charlton Heston, and ZPG (Zero Population Growth), starring Oliver Reed. The future in ZPG is one in which, due to population pressure, even domestic animals, such as dogs and cats, have become extinct. The plot involves the attempts by the hero and his wife to preserve their child after the government outlaws having children.

Here’s the trailer for Soylent Green.

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And this is the movie trailer for ZPG.

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