Dogwash

That paragon of balanced reporting, The Voice, put up a short piece about the "street defenders" of Eltham during the recent festival of arson and informal shopping.

Predictable sort of stuff, best précised as "Drunken EDL thugs intent on orgy of unprovoked nigger-bashing stopped from marching on Lewisham, says opportunistic local MP".

Well, ye pays yer money and ye takes yer choice. (Or, as we used to say during the 1970s oil crisis, "Yer pays Yermani and the Sheikhs rejoice", but that's another story.)

The comments below-the-line are, to be fair, more varied and literate than is usual beneath a Voice article, but it is this one I think is worth quoting in full,

Go and read the blogs and see BBC, ITV, Sky news and Channel 4. The ratio of caucasian, europeans, asians, (excluding blacks) is greater % in the riots than blacks. But the racial fixation with capturing blacks only shows the UK will not change. See how they treated Darcus Howe during a BBC TV interview yesterday morning.

They psychically mug us, they rape our ancestors, our mothers, us mentally have tortured us for over 400 years even using the bible and religion; and endeavouring to strip us our morals and dignity.

Who are the rioters? Are they those who stole slaves, resources and their lands; placed indentured asians in Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda; Trinidad, St. Lucia, Guyana and Guadeloupe, smidgens in Grenada. All this done by the so-called British!

They have built Britain on psycho and physical slavery and colonialism-it is a fact!!!

But this time we have to be prepared for war. We must control our youth and destiny.

They say a siege of the cities, what about their siege of races and people under guise of civilising them

We Black men have to responsible and ready for the call of duty to support our women, children and youth. As this now a war!!!

They have killed over 10 million+ blacks in the triangular slave trade; and hitherto Duggan and Smiley Culture etc...the list goes on

We have to reclaim our youth nurtured, inspire them and ultimately leave these shores; and kicked the caucasians, asians (from East India) out of Africa and the Caribbean. As you will see that English Defence League, BNP, the Tory party and most whites want to kick us out of Britain and they ramp this up, to drive home this at football matches with season starting.

There is unerringly feeling that a racial war is brooding. See the English defence league activities in Eltham (the same area that they murdered Stephen Lawrence); the Clapham Junction brigade; and the Sikhs in Southall last night. To them the enemy are the blacks. It is all of pretence of 'sweeping and cleaning the streets of rioters.

This incitement was done yesterday by Cameron and Boris Johnson (who has already called black people picannies, watermelon smilers and nappy heads); and the weak hanging on their coat tails Ed Milliband.

Finally, this is a spiritual revolution go and listen to Bob Marley's Redemption song, Buffalo Soldier and War!!!

Wed, 2011-08-10 16:27

It's worth quoting not because of what it says about the recent rioting, but because of the general attitude towards the White host community that it displays in an unusually explicit way. As I say, the comments as a whole are quite varied and reasonably balanced but the attitude exhibited above is by no means rare. I have encountered it, usually but not always in milder forms, throughout the 37 years I have lived in London.

At least he doesn't like wogs either. Now there's a turn-up for the books (as one tailor said to the other). In the old days it used to be Black and Brown united against the White oppressor. Now it's White and Brown united against the Black savage, or so it would appear. Good stuff this race war, innit.

One can only hope the writer realizes his threat to return to Africa. I'm sure we'll all be much happier all round.

Nor is this all-justifying sense of grievance a uniquely Black phenomenon. Try sampling Pickled Politics. A relatively civilized and heavily commented blog, mostly patronized by British Indians, predominantly Sikhs and secular Punjabis. The posters and commenters are articulate, seemingly well integrated 2nd and 3rd generation immigrants. (Yes I am going to use that form of words because it's the most vividly effective way of expressing it in the present context: UK-born people with a strong cultural and emotional link to their ancestors' country of recent origin.)

And yet the undercurrent of anti-British sentiment bubbles continually under. Strange historical grievances from the time of the Raj are trotted out. We are reminded, for example, of our apparent responsibility in perpetuity for the millions of deaths that occurred during Partition.

Dunno. Not my field. Maybe we should have postponed independence until Jinna snuffed it, in the hope that religious separatism would fade without him as a focus. Maybe it would. Maybe that strategy would have brought other problems. You can't win in a lose-lose situation, but that doesn't stop you getting the blame.

Whatever, the point is that this is not some academic Ferguson v Schama bout on telly, of passing and abstract interest. This sort of stuff is a real generalized resentment which is projected onto White British people as a whole. Often subconsciously, but it's there. And subconsciously it will be used to justify all manner of discriminatory behaviour.

OK, let's go the whole alarmist hog, shall we? How far are we from

— Why is that White man being sent to the labour camps?
— Because his ancestors were responsible for the death of my great-great uncle during Partition.
— No, becasue they were responsible for my ancestors being transported across the Atlantic as slaves.

And these are the people that the Righteous liberal elite tell us are as British as we are? They tell us that we shouldn't worry about becoming a minority in our own country, 'cos we're all the same colour under the skin, innit?

Up to a point, Lord Copper, up to a point. Personally, I'm less sanguine.


Anyway, a cheerful note to end on. One of the replies to the angry Black gentleman's rant quoted above reads,

Bob Marley's father was a white man!

Wed, 2011-08-10 17:42

Ha! I'll bet that went down well. So was Mary Seacole's, as it happens.