Tuesday 12 April 2011

Deeper Than The Marianas Trench...

...is the self-loathing of some English people.

Take, for instance, Liz Jones, who notes the recent controversy over the government's refusal to apologise for the events of the Kenya Uprising:
A contemporary radio interview was replayed on Radio 4, in which a woman with the clipped tones of Celia Johnson was describing how several ‘boys’ attacked her in her home, her dog then set about one of them, and unfortunately (her word) she shot her dog by mistake. It was the sort of recording that makes you ashamed to be British.
Steady on, love! We can't all be good shots, you know...

But of course, that's not what she means. To a certain type of progressive, the idea that a woman - or man - might defend themselves with deadly force when attacked and, what's more, not be sorry to do so is anathema.
My father was deployed to fight the Mau Mau and so, rather than just being ashamed to belong to a particular nation, more pertinently I had to ask myself this question: Was he a racist, part of a rotten regime?
You just know the answer she's seeking is going to be 'Yes' no matter what, don't you?
My father died more than a decade ago. I went to see my mum on the day of that replayed radio broadcast, last Thursday. She is suffering from dementia, which means she has no idea whether she has had lunch that day or not. I rummaged around for the box of family photos, and tipped them out in a pile.
Just savour that image. Mother gaga, dutiful daughter visits to...rummage through old photos for a newspaper column. That's cold.
My mum’s most vivid memory was the night the military police turned up and arrested Josephine, who had taken the Mau Mau oath. What happened to her, no one knows. The family never saw or heard from her again.

Now, my mum is looked after in her own home by a succession of full-time nurses. They are nearly always African.
It never crosses her mind to wonder why, does it? And readers of a nervous disposition might want to avoid too much Googling of just what that oath actually meant.
My mum has to sit on a hoist to be moved from chair to bed, and Rita’s routine is to place a hot water bottle on the seat so that my mum is warm as she is dangled across the room. I think there are moments when my mum thinks Rita is Josephine, and she smiles at her, and asks whether my dad’s uniform has been pressed. Rita smiles back. She is all about forgiveness.

But I cannot help but wonder how little has changed. Rita, like Josephine, doesn’t live with her children. Africans are still serving us, one way or another.
Rita may be all about forgiveness. It seems it's an alien concept to Liz.

Also alien is the concept that there's evil in the world that isn't the responsibility of the first world. After all, the biggest percentage of Mau Mau victims were their fellow African villagers, not white British settlers. Those were a concern of her father, and the men who served with this, too.

The violence and depravity is not quite as one-sided as 'journalists' like Liz and her fellow travellers would have you believe. Not is it all in the past.

Why, it's almost as if a mutilated African child's corpse wasn't discovered in the river of our capital city a few years ago, isn't it?

13 comments:

Anonymouslemming said...

Ok, so let's stop the African serving us. Let's tell them that they all have to go back to their war torn, poverty stricken hellholes because Liz Jones suffers from chronic white guilt.

Then let's give them her name and address and this problem will sort itself out.

There's a reason so many people from Africa end up in places like England, America and Australia (me included) - the life I can make for myself here enables me not just to have a better life for myself and my immediate family here, but to support my extended family at home.

Macheath said...

It's a depressing but by no means isolated example of framing the story to fit a pre-existing narative; post-colonial guilt is the order of the day, providing Jones and her ilk with an orthodox line to toe.

I'm intriged by her guiltier-than-thou approach - not only is she 'ashamed to belong to a particular nation', she can even wheel out a father who was actually involved and the disappearance of a family servant.

Now that is surely a winning hand in self-abasement poker.

Robert Edwards said...

Hey, guess what? It's all about her...

FFS, when will these people learn? I grew up in a war zone (Malaya, late 50s) and, surprise, all the people who worked for us/looked after us were either Malay or Chinese. Do I feel guilty? No.

Were many terrorists killed? Yes. Do I regret seeing that? No. Does this make me a Fascist/Racist (according to BBC/Guardian guidleines)? Probably...

Lynne said...

I wonder if Dizzy Lizzie would be so keen to condemn self defence with deadly force if a bunch of Mau Maus or their like broke into her home with intent to rape, mutilate and murder her?

Thought not...

English Viking said...

Lynne,

Some of these nutters are so far gone, they would probably think they deserved it.

Briefest Encounter said...

"a woman with the clipped tones of Celia Johnson"

Very clipped. She died in 1982.

Ranter said...

I've often wondered what the point of 'Liz Jones' actually is! Utter shite.....ALL the time.

Captain Haddock said...

Liz Jones is the Daily Mail's answer to "Yaz the spaz" ..

Both suffering from Mad Cow disease ...

Greencoat said...

Celia Johnson may have died in 1982but she's still a better person than Jones the Moans.

DJ said...

Never mind anything else, we're being asked to admire Rita's saintly forbearance in not bearing a grudge because she's African and so were the Mau-Mau.

Huh?

I'm pretty sure Christiano Ronaldo and Sven Goran Erikson don't hold a grudge over Dresden either.

It's two examples of liberal bigotry in one: the belief Africans are all some undifferentiated mass and the soft bigotry of low expectations that suggests Africans will naturally side with 'their people' even if 'their people' are howling mad psychos.

blueknight said...

50 years is a long time ago and what we did then was probably right for the time.
In another 50 years some liberal leftie will be wringing his/her hands together over how we imprisoned Al Qaeda members for doing nothing more than plotting terrorist attacks....

JuliaM said...

"Then let's give them her name and address and this problem will sort itself out."

Capital idea!

"Now that is surely a winning hand in self-abasement poker."

Indeed. Unless, like a lot of other journalists, she simply embellishes the facts to fit her own narrative?

"I wonder if Dizzy Lizzie would be so keen to condemn self defence with deadly force if a bunch of Mau Maus or their like broke into her home with intent to rape, mutilate and murder her?"

As EV points out, she may well do..

"Never mind anything else, we're being asked to admire Rita's saintly forbearance in not bearing a grudge because she's African and so were the Mau-Mau. "

Yup. These darkies all look/behave alike, but it's the right that are the racists, or so we are asked to believe...

JuliaM said...

"In another 50 years some liberal leftie will be wringing his/her hands together over how we imprisoned Al Qaeda members for doing nothing more than plotting terrorist attacks...."

Pretty sure if I looked, I could find some that weren't prepared to wait 50 years!