History Debunked on the National Maritime Museum’s Falsehoods about Francis Drake

Here’s another very interesting video by Simon Webb of History Debunked attacking what he considers to be the semi-literate fake history retailed as fact by the National Maritime Museum at Greenwich. He notes that the museum has changed its emphasis somewhat so that there is less about the British navy’s victories and British sea power, and more about peaceful exploration and, inevitably, the slave trade. But it is its attack on Drake that really draws his ire. Drake’s achievement in fighting off the Armada isn’t mentioned. Instead the museum blithely calls him a pirate, whose circumnavigation of the globe was really a secret mission to raid Spanish shipping and colonies by Queen Elizabeth. It also says that he kept no record of the treasures he acquired in order to avoid paying tax to the Spanish. He is also described as slavery, who began raiding west Africa for slaves with Jack Hawkins as early as 1560.

Webb points out that England was at war with Spain at the time, and so Drake’s attacks on Spanish possessions wouldn’t therefore be what people normally consider piracy. It, and his concealment of the goods seized, were acts of war. As for slaving, Drake apparently released slaves from any Spanish vessels he captured. He quotes John Sugden, an authority on Drake, who says that the Elizabethan seaman was the closest his age came to an abolitionist. He acquired an insight into slavery through a Black man, known only as Diego, and when attacking Spanish ships in the West Indies, captured two. He released their slaves onto Jamaica so that they might gain their liberty.

The ’10 Facts about Francis Drake’ on the museum’s website, which promotes these lies, also seems to have been written by someone with a very dodgy command of English. At one point it says that Drake led an ‘exhibition’ against the Spanish on the pacific coast of America. He concludes the video by saying that other countries celebrate their heroes. We run ours down.

I know very little about Drake beyond the Spanish Armada, the circumnavigation of the globe, and the fact that he was a privateer. They were private sailors commissioned by the crown to fight against the Spanish, with whom we were indeed at war. So, not quite a pirate then. Jack Hawkins certainly was a slaver, but this is the first time I’ve heard that discussed about Drake. He may well have started off as one, I really don’t know. But if he did have a genuine sympathy for enslaved Africans and released them, then that needs to be mentioned as well.

I’m aware that, as a man of the Torygraph-reading right, some of Webb’s views need to be taken with a pinch of salt. However it does seem that there really is a campaign going on to rewrite and falsify British history in the name of anti-racism. If so, then it needs to be challenged, whatever your political views.

History must not be allowed to be rewritten and established facts altered, whether it’s done by the left or the right.

Radio 4 Programme on Friday on the History of British Fascism

Radio 4 on Friday, 19th February 2021 begins a new, three part series on the history of British Fascism, Britain’s Fascist Thread. The blurb for the programme in the Radio Times, which is on at 11 O’clock in the morning, runs

Historian Camilla Schofield explores a century of British fascism, from the formation of the British Fascisti in 1923, arguing that it is a central and ongoing part of the British story. The first programme takes the rally staged by the British Union of Fascists at Olympia in June 1934 as a keyhole through which to look in order to understand fascism in the years before the Second World War.

The additional piece by David Crawford about the series on the facing page, 132, reads

There have been fascist movements in Britain for almost a century now and, with the recent news of young teenagers being arrested for being a part of neo-Nazi groups, it seems as if this stain on our national character is not fading away. Historian Camilla Schofield, who has published a book on Enoch Powell and Britain’s race relations, argues that fascism shouldn’t be seen as something alien imported from abroad but a central and, yes, ongoing part of the British story. This three part survey of British Fascism begins at the rally by Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists at Olympia in 1934 then rewinds to 1923 when the androgynous, upper-middle class Rotha Lintorn-Orman formed the British Fascisti, supposedly after an epiphany while digging her garden. A warning from history not to take our precious democracy for granted.

Martin Pugh also argues that British Fascism wasn’t an import from abroad but a continuation of certain strands in British political history in his book on British Fascism between the Wars. This is based on the British Fascists’ own contention that their movement had its basis in Queen Elizabeth’s enfranchisement of certain towns in the 16th century. This formed a native corporatist tradition like the corporate state Mussolini was creating in Fascist Italy.

As for Rotha Lintorn-Orman, I think this very middle class lady was an alcoholic, who thought that she was in astral contact with the spirit of the Duc d’Orleans, a nobleman from the time of the French Revolution. This aristo’s ghost told her that all revolutions from the French to the Russian were the work of the Jews, who were trying to destroy European, Christian civilisation.

The British Fascisti were really extreme right-wing Tories rather than Fascists proper. They specialised in disrupting socialist meetings and supplying blackleg labour during strikes. In one confrontation with the left, they managed to force a van supplying copies of the Daily Herald, a Labour paper, off the road. I think Oswald Mosley described their leadership as consisting of middle class women and retired colonels. They were in talks to merge their organisation with Mosley’s until Britain’s greatest wannabe dictator asked them about the corporate state. I don’t think they knew what it was. When he explained, they decried it as ‘socialism’ and Mosley decided that they weren’t worth bothering with.

Pugh’s book also argues that the British idea that our nation is intrinsically democratic is very much a product of hindsight. He points out that there was considerable opposition to democracy amongst the upper classes, especially the Indian office. British ideas about the franchise were tied to notions of property and the ability to pay rates. The French notion that the vote was an inalienable right was rejected as too abstract.

British fascism is also shares with its counterparts on the continent an origin in the concerns of the 19th century agricultural elite with the declining health and fitness of their nations. The upper classes were appalled at the poor physiques of men recruited by the army to fight the Boer War from the new, industrial towns. There was an obvious fear that this was going to leave Britain very weak militarily.

It’s also struck me that with her background in race relations, Schofield will also argue that British fascism also has its roots in native British racism and imperialism, citing organisations such as the anti-Semitic British Brothers League, which was formed to stop continental Jewish immigration to Britain.

Oswald Mosley also tried telling the world that British fascism wasn’t an import, but then, he also tried telling everyone that the Fasces – the bundle of rods with an axe – was an ancient British symbol. It wasn’t. It was a Roman symbol, and represented the power of the lictor, a type of magistrate, to beat and execute Roman citizens. It was adopted by Mussolini as the symbol of his movement, Fascism, which actually takes its name from the Italian word fascio, which means a bundle or group. I think that Pugh’s right in that there certainly is a native tradition of racism and extreme nationalism in Britain, and that the British self-image of themselves as an innately democratic nation is a product of Churchill’s propaganda during the Second World War. However, Fascism proper with its black shirts and corporative state is very much an import from Mussolini’s Italy. But then, Mosley also claimed that socialism and liberalism were also imports. It will, however, be interesting to hear what Schofield has to say, especially with the really bonkers parts of British fascism, like Lintorn-Orman and her spiritual conversations with French aristocratic Jew-haters from the Other Side.

Historical Ignorance and Prejudice on Sadiq Khan’s Monuments Panel

Sadiq Khan has been at the centre of more controversy this week. The Tories hate him with a passion because he’s a Labour politico, and they can’t tolerate the idea, let alone the reality, of someone from the left being mayor of London. And so he has joined his predecessor, Ken Livingstone, the head of the GLC when Thatcher was in power, as the target of right-wing hate and venom. They also dislike him because he’s a Muslim, and so in the mayoral elections a few years ago we had the noisome spectacle of Tory candidate Zack Goldsmith implying that Khan was a radical Islamist cosying up to terrorist or terrorist sympathisers to bring down Britain. All rubbish, of course, but there are still people who firmly believe it.

Following the attacks on Colston’s statue in Bristol and the campaign to remove other statues of slavers and other British imperialists elsewhere in Britain, Khan has set up a panel to examine the question of doing the same in the capital, as well as renaming streets and other monuments with dubious historical connections. The panel has fifteen members, but it has already been denounced by its critics as a panel of activists. There have been articles in the Depress, Heil and Torygraph strongly criticising its composition and the selection of its members. The Torygraph’s article complained that it contained no historians, who could set these monuments into their proper contexts or any Conservatives. This is actually a fair point, because the actions of some of the panel’s members strongly indicates that those individuals have zero knowledge of the history of slavery.

One of Khan’s choices for membership of the panel is Toyin Agbetu, who managed to cause outrage in 2007 at a service in Westminster Abbey to commemorate the 300th anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade. Agbetu disrupted the service and tried to approach the queen, shouting that it was all a disgrace and You should be ashamed. We shouldn’t be here. This is an insult to us’. I think that he was outraged that the British were congratulating themselves were ending the slave trade when they should never have been involved in it in the first place.

Another appointee is Lynette Nabbossa, a business academic and head of an organisation to provide role models for young Blacks. She has claimed that White supremacy is rooted in British history. In October she wrote that the UK was the common denominator in atrocities across the world, and

‘No matter where you find examples of white supremacy, all roads lead back to my country of birth.

‘It was the UK’s racism that birthed slavery and colonialism. We say it is in the past but our schools, colleges, universities, streets, museums etc have never stopped honouring the enforcers of our oppression.’

These are statements of historical ignorance and racial prejudice which should cast severe doubt on the suitability of these individuals for membership of the panel. 

British imperialism was based on the notion that the White British were superior to the non-White nations they conquered and ruled over, and this country and its ally, America, have been responsible for propping up various horrific dictators and murderous despotic regimes around the world. But neither Agbetu nor Nabbossa seem to know or understand that slavery existed long before the British empire, and that White supremacy wasn’t just a British phenomenon. What about the Spanish, Portuguese, French and Dutch empires? Apartheid has its origin amongst the Afrikaners, who were Dutch colonists. Britain only gained Cape Colony, the founding settlement of what later became South Africa, in 1800, seizing it from the Netherlands during the Napoleonic Wars. And we were hardly responsible for atrocities in Africa committed by some of the newly independent African regimes, like Idi Amin’s Uganda, the Rwandan genocide or Mugabe’s Zimbabwe.

They also don’t seem to realise how near-universal slavery was as a global phenomenon. It was a part of many African societies before the establishment of the Atlantic slave trade. Muslim slavers transported Blacks slaves north to the Arab states of north Africa, while African and Arab traders exported slaves from east Africa across the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean to Arabia, India, and south east Asia. The first Black slaves in Europe were imported, not by White Christians, but by the Arab-Berber states of al-Andalus, Muslim Spain. And the campaign against slavery began in White, European culture. This has been stated repeatedly by western Conservatives and attacked and denounced by their opponents on the left. But it’s true. I haven’t been able to find evidence of any attempt by a non-western society to abolish slavery before the Europeans. The closest I found is a document in one of James Walvin’s books, a complaint from a Muslim Egyptian against the enslavement of the Black Sudanese. This was not an attack on slavery as a whole, however. The Egyptian objected to it in the case of the Sudanese because they were Muslims, and under sharia law Muslims are not supposed to enslave other Muslims. The author of the complaint does not object to the enslavement of non-Muslims.

Part of the rationale behind British imperialism was the campaign to stamp out slavery around the world, particularly in Africa. When Jacob Rees-Mogg made a speech in parliament claiming that BLM had shot itself in the foot and that people were now interested in the careers of imperialists like Gordon of Khartoum, he had a point. Gordon was sent to the Sudan by the Anglo-Egyptian authorities to put down the Mahdi’s rebellion. All very stereotypically imperialist. But the Mahdi wasn’t just rising up against infidel oppression. He and his followers were slavers and slaveowners. Slaving was an integral part of Arab Sudanese society and trade, and they were outraged when the British tried to stamp it out and protect the indigenous Black peoples.

Slavery was also part of the African societies further south, in what became Rhodesia and Malawi. The Kapolo slaves there, apart from other indignities, had to use broken tools when working and eat their food off the floor. And the explorer Richard Burton, writing in the 1840s, says in his book Wanderings in West Africa that the condition of the slaves on that part of the continent was so wretched and the enslaved people so starved that if Black Americans saw them, they’d give up all ideas of freedom and be glad of their lives in the west.

As for slavery being the product of White British racism, the opposite is true. According to scholars of western racism, such as Sir Alan Burns, the last British governor of Ghana and the author of Colour and Colour Prejudice, and books such as Race: The History of an Idea in the West, there was little racism in Europe before the 15th century. White racism and modern ideas of White racial supremacy arose after the establishment of the Atlantic slave trade to justify the enslavement of Black Africans. But this all seems lost on Agbetu and Nabbossa.

Now they are only two of Khan’s panel. There are 13 others, and it’s probably that the Tory press seized on them to make mischief. The others may well be more moderate and informed. I’ve certainly no objection to the inclusion of a Star Wars actor, who outraged Tory sensibilities by describing Boris Johnson as a ‘c***’. It’s not the word I would use, and it is obscene, but Johnson is a thoroughly nasty piece of work, as is the party he leads. I’d therefore say that, barring the language used to express it, it’s an accurate assessment of the vile buffoon. Tom Harwood, chief catamite at Guido Fawkes, has also been stirring with the claim that the panel was considering the removal of a 16th century statue of Queen Elizabeth. This is something he seems to have pulled out of his rear. The panel has not said anything about Good Queen Bess’s statue, and it’s just Harwood trying to cause trouble by lying. Which is standard Guido Fawkes’ practise.

But the inclusion of Agbetu and Nabbossa does cast severe doubt on the panel’s expertise as a whole and the suitability of its other members to make informed judgements on controversial historical monuments. But the ignorance and racial prejudice of the two also shows that we really need to have the global aspects of slavery taught. The deeds of the past should not be covered up, but they should be placed in context. It needs to be made very clear that slavery is a global phenomenon, that it was not invented by White Europeans preying on Black Africans and that it was also deeply ingrained in many African societies and practised by the Islamic states and empires as well as Hindu India. Such knowledge might be a shock to people like Agbetu, who seem to labour under the illusion that Africa was somehow free of it before the European invasions, but that is no reason why it should not be taught.

Otherwise you get bad history and the politically correct anti-White racism these two promote and demand.

Backlash against the Queen for Allowing Johnson Dictatorship

Mike’s also put up today a piece about the rising resentment towards the Queen for agreeing to Johnson’s demand to prorogue parliament. The Queen, as our hereditary monarch, is unelected. Boris Johnson is unelected: he was installed by a clique, that happened to form a majority in the Tory party at the time. The Tories are a minuscule part of the British people, and aren’t even the largest political party anymore. They’ve been massively eclipsed by Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour party. The only people in this sordid affair, who did have a democratic mandate were our MPs. They have been elected by us, and it is to prevent them continuing to represent the will of their constituents and block Johnson’s no deal Brexit, that the Blonde Beast sought the Queen’s permission to rule without parliament for a set period. He has thus demonstrated his contempt for parliament. And arguably, so has the Queen.

Mike states that the monarchy is now desperately trying to backpeddle from this mess. Nicholas Witchell, the Beeb’s royal correspondent, has said that she has never refused to accept the advice of her ministers, and always follows precedent. Mike also quotes the oleaginous hominid stick insect, Jacob Rees-Mogg, who asked the Queen to do this on BoJob’s behalf, as saying that the Queen now feels ‘Boxed in’. Rees-Mogg said

“She and her advisors, I have little doubt, will be frankly resentful of the way this has been done and will be concerned at the headlines which say ‘Queen suspends Parliament.”

Mike comments

Rightly so – because, as current slang has it, the optics are terrible.

People are saying democracy has been denied by an unelected monarch acting on the wish of an unelected prime minister.

And they know she could have stopped him.

He then follows this with a selection of comments from twitter. These are by the QC Chris Daw, the comedian Nish Kumar, the Labour and Co-op MP for Edmonton, Kate Osamor, and ordinary people like Isobel and Lin#CorbynOutrider.

Chris Daw in his tweet states that the first thing they teach at law school is that it is the Queen in parliament, who is sovereign.

Not the Government, not the Prime Minister, and no, not the public via a referendum.

What has happened today rips up centuries of stable government.

It’s an outrage.

This relationship between crown and parliament has been at the heart of the British constitution since at least the days of Queen Elizabeth. It was set down in the 17th century in the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, although this codifies the constitutional view of earlier generations. It is this relationship which has prevented Britain from becoming an absolute, autocratic monarchy, as happened in France.

Isobel’s tweets express the anger and bewilderment of no doubt all too many other Brits, who wonder why the Queen has allowed this to happen. They now see her as rich, remote and isolated from the poverty the Tories have inflicted, content to see the country reduced to a mess. She tweeted

If she is resentful why did she allow it to happen? she knew it would cause a constitutional crisis whilst she carries on with her holiday in Balmoral the country is falling apart because SHE said YES.. she has lost any credibility she hAD she is happy to see UK in a mess.

perhaps the Queen+her family would like to go and live in a Tory Container for the Homeless, shall we demand the Royal Gravy train is cut off – when Boris gives Buck house to Trump.. he will do anything for the fool will she be happy in a Container like the homeless have to be?

I’ll give the Queen the benefit of the doubt here. I really don’t think that she thought that she did have a choice, as Johnson is the leader of the government. But she could have withheld her consent. This reminds me of the time the Australian Tories petitioned he in the ’70s to get rid of the-then Aussie Prime Minister, Gough ‘Wocker’ Whitlam. Because Whitlam was a Labour MP, and was doing too much to empower the working men and women, who have built that great Pacific nation. One of the priests at my local church is rather left-wing, and spent several years out in Oz, working with the poor, homeless and marginalised, including the indigenous people. He said to me one day that he wondered how long it would be, if Corbyn got in, before the Tories petitioned her to do to him what they did to Whitlam. By this example, not long. Not long at all.

Lin#CorbynOutrider tweeted that the Queen didn’t care less until she saw #abolishthe monarchy trending.

Mike concludes

That’s the nub of the matter, isn’t it?

And when this crisis is all over, with Dictator Johnson and his cronies banished to the waste-bin of history, it seems likely the people will want to seek assurances that this can never happen again.

We will need checks and balances to ensure that no unelected head of state can ever again deny us our right to representation.

It seems that, with a few penstrokes, the Queen may have put an end to the British Royalty.

See: https://voxpoliticalonline.com/2019/08/29/abolishthemonarchy-backlash-against-queen-for-meekly-rubber-stamping-johnsons-parliamentary-shutdown/

Mike’s article was based on a piece in the garden. But the I also published a similar piece about how there was now a backlash against the monarchy. Not just from this, but also from Andrew’s relationship with convicted paedophile Epstein.

The Tories under Cameron and Johnson are wrecking this country. They are actively causing the break up of the UK and riding roughshod over the British unwritten constitution, for their own selfish, personal and party interest. And they and their Yellow enablers in the Lib Dems dare to claim that Corbyn is a threat!

Shock! Horror! Northern Mosque Gives Money to Somerset Church

And now a bit of good news. Last Sunday’s Songs of Praise contained a little bit on Muchelney, one of the villages in Somerset. It’s on the Somerset levels, and so suffered from the flooding last year. Much of that part of the county is reclaimed land, and until it was drained from the Middle Ages onwards, the area around Glastonbury was marshland. Several of the villages in the area, like Muchelney, have place names ending in ‘ey’. This is derived from the Anglo-Saxon word ieg, meaning an island. Muchelney and other villages like it got their names from the fact that they were originally islands of firm land amongst the bogs and marshes.

Muchelney is one of the most historic villages in Somerset. It has the remains of an abbey, and the church itself contains a beautiful painted ceiling from the 17th century. It shows angels in the ruffs worn during the reigns of Queen Elizabeth and James I, with speech bubbles urging the onlooker to ‘fly hither’ and ‘com to Jesus’. It ain’t the Sistine Chapel, but it is a fine example of the kind of art that adorned British churches before the Reformation. I recommend anyone with an interest in medieval, ecclesiastical or folk art to have a look at it if they’re in that part of Somerset, whether they’re religious or not.

Muchelney was one of the villages affected by the floods. According to Songs of Praise, however, they received £16,000 from one of the mosques ‘oop north’ to help them repair the damage. It was the largest single donation they’ve ever had, and was obviously very gratefully received by the church.

I mention this because it shows two things. Firstly, it clearly demonstrates that not every Muslim organisation in this country is a hotbed of terrorism, no matter what Farage and Murdoch may say. Actually, not by a very long chalk. One of the newsletters of one of the organisations devoted Christian-Muslim interfaith dialogue pointed to a community of nuns that continued to live and worship together after their premises had been taken over by a mosque. It also makes a more general point that people of faith generally in this country aren’t out to slit each other’s throats, despite the attacks on mosques carried by the stormtroopers of Britain First in the name of Christianity. As regards them, Hope Not Hate has made the point that despite their boast that they are protecting Christians and Christianity from Islam, none of their members seems to have put their foot in a church.