Rule Britannia? was Re: upheavals in England, 1640 - 1848

[Gary MacLennan <g.maclennan@xxxxxxxxxx>]

At 09:00 AM 6/18/96 +0000, you wrote:
>Gary:
>> I have of course my own quarrels with and criticisms of the various strands
>> of Irish nationalism, but they have been pitted against one of the most
>> brutal of the world's master races- the English.  that is worth recalling.
>>
>

Adam: It's as unreasonable to describe the English as a master race as it is to
>describe the Germans in the same way. Germans ran the concentration camps,
>and Germans were the first people sent to them. This IS anti English
nationalism.
>There are, after all, nearly as many republicans in England as there are in
>Australia
>

What can I say here?  Am I an anti-English nationalist?  Perhaps a plead of
guilty  will get me a light sentence.  It never has before  though.

No I will join Rahul in a counter offensive.

Adam I chose the expression "master-race" with some care.  Let me give you
an example. It is from the "Oxford Annual for Scouts: OUP, 1928.  The
excerpt is from a story entitled "The New Recruit" and it is written by a
Peter Blundell.

"The camp fire was ending.  The bamboos of the jungle fluttered in the
clammy Borneo night breeze, ghostly in the flare of the blazing resin
torches.  These torches were not blazing so fiercely as the bosoms of the
chief members of the Pandaka Scout Troop, now assembled round the fire...

"You call yourselves Scouts, " continued the good-humoured-looking tall
youth in a uniform adorned with many badges. "You tell me you are as good a
corps as any in Britain.  Why don't you prove it by obeying orders instead
of trying to upset things?"

"Who says we are tlying to upset things?" asked  a fat Chinese, also much
badge-decorated.

"I do.  You've been doing it, Ang Hok, ever since I  took over the command
>from you."

"I have not," said the other sulkily.

"You're jealous, I suppose.  Well, you'd better put your jealousy in your
pocket, for it won't do you or anyone else any good.  I've been appointed
leader and I'm going to lead.  Now, then, you chaps, what do you say?" he
asked with a disarming smile.  "Is it to be friends or enemies?"

He held out his left hand, Scout fashion, to Ang Hok.  But the Chinese
glowered and obstinately turned his head away.

Horace Agar smiled a little tight smile, and shrugged his shoulders.  A
terrible lot of chaps to deal with, these.  Had he known what he was in for,
he told himself, he  would never have taken over the command.   It was
crooked work he was up against.  Ang Hok and one or two more of the wealthy
Chinese shopkeepers' sons were poisoning the troop against him.  Well he had
tried kindness and it had not succeeded.  Now he would try the  other thing.

Orientals, so he had heard, usually mistook kindness for weakness.  He'd let
them see that they could not cold shoulder him out of  the command... (57-8)

This is the kind of book that parents bought their children at Xmas.  The
example I have chosen is a blatent piece of  racism produced for  a racist
culture.  It clearly articulates the notion of the racial superiority of the
British.  I would suggest that that is fairly described as a "master-race
sentiment". No?  The point here is that it is not me who describes the
English as a master- race.  It is themselves that do it.

Let me clear.  Adam is of course a good revolutionary and certainly no
racist. But he underestimates the hatred that exists among the citims of
British Colonialism and Imperialism.

BTW , Adam as you are almost certinly aware, the first concentration camps
were run by the British in S. Africa during the Boer War.

regards

Gary



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