When he was eight years old, in 1951, Churchill's cabinet debated immigration into the UK.
David Maxwell-Fyfe, the home secretary, reported that the total of "coloured people" in Britain had risen from 7,000 before the second world war to 40,000 at the time of writing, with 3,666 of those unemployed, and 1,870 on national assistance, or benefits.
It's almost impossible for anyone growing up today to imagine what a peaceful and orderly (and staid) place post-war Britain was. The American anthropologist Geoffrey Gorer, in his 1955 "Exploring English Character", compared the post-war English with their early Victorian forebears of 120 years previously* :
If you had told Mr Mannington-Bowes' parents that, sixty years later, their child would be beaten to death, in Ealing, by a mob of strangers bent on looting and arson, they would have thought you were mad.
"One of the most lawless populations in the world has turned into one of the most law-abiding; ...a fiercely and ruthlessly acquisitive society has turned into a mildly distributive society; general corruption in government has been replaced by an extraordinarily high level of honesty... in public life today the English are certainly among the most peaceful, gentle, courteous and orderly populations that the civilized world has ever seen. ... you hardly ever see a fight in a bar (a not uncommon spectacle in most of the rest of Europe or in the U.S.A.)... football crowds are as orderly as church meetings.."
They'd have thought you were mad if you predicted that he'd be fined in the local magistrates court - "for confronting youths for urinating outside his home".
This was England. The law was on the side of the law-abiding, and people were killed in riots in far-away countries, not here.
UPDATE - I would be interested to see a report of his trial and conviction, and who the magistrate was. I trust it wasn't this one. I don't want to come over all Polly Toynbee, and the people who beat him to death ARE savages, but the wholesale criminality (mixed with plenty of assaults just for the fun of it) is a product of an assault on the principles of criminal justice that's been going on for fifty years. Fifty years of mass immigration may arguably have been a necessary condition for his murder, but certainly not a sufficient one - and as I've said many a time and oft, there are plenty of native youth who'll beat a man to death for being a good citizen.
As I argued here and here, something in the water of post-Cultural Revolution UK seems to turn the children and grandchildren of previously law-abiding people into bad boys and girls. What could it be ? This Polly Toynbee column - or a read of the Magistrate's blog - may hold an answer.
* to be fair, the peacefulness of the English puzzled him greatly, John Bull being traditionally a pugnacious sort of chap, always ready to scrap when offended by a foreigner of any description.
13 comments:
"They'd have thought you were mad if you predicted that he'd be fined in the local magistrates court - "for confronting youths for urinating outside his home"."
So that's why that photo of him looks so much like a mugshot! Because it is one...
Well done with the historical contextualising. Shows the completely surreal nature of the change we have witnessed. Dystopia. Imagine if this were made into a 'hate' film showing images of England in the War fighting Nazis and the little boy in 1950, his career and pein ao playing and then him being slaughtered by savages later. Interspersed with 'do-gooders' mouthing off about vibrancy. Show it on prime time TV!
It's almost impossible for anyone growing up today to imagine what a peaceful and orderly (and staid) place post-war Britain was.
And yet, at the time, the papers were full of what was wrong with society. That's quite relative, that aspect.
That's where you get the Stanley Cohen school of Moral Panic coming in. "Look, people have always been worried about the behaviour of the young" - and that's true to some extent. The error in logic that follows is "therefore, those who worry about the behaviour of the young are always wrong".
Laban--Dear God, this post makes me want to weep.
James,
And yet, at the time, the papers were full of what was wrong with society. That's quite relative, that aspect.
Two things:
1, Evidently, in the past, we had much higher standards.
2, We they wrong to worry? If you have watched the tv or spent any time in one of our major cities recently, I think you'll be forced to agree that they were not.
The problem is simple - for the last 50 years whoever was in office the Forces of Progress were in power.
John Bull being traditionally a pugnacious sort of chap, always ready to scrap when offended by a foreigner of any description
One comes across this sort of sentiment often. How the British are tough and stoical and always ready to stand up for themselves.
Not sure I dont actually interpret the readiness of the British to fight somebody as being down to an uncritical acceptance of what authority tells them (usually about how nasty the other guy is) and blindly following the commands of their betters even to the extent of 'going over the top'.
The British have proved themselves excellent cannon-fodder, unthinking and obedient. Rather than stick up for themselves, as individuals they usually go down without a struggle - intellectual or otherwise.
The current unopposed ethnocide of the British is the last and terminal act of self-harm the British are cheerfully undertaking at the behest of their lords and masters (who these days are nt even British for the most part). Why? Because the British have been told by autocue readers, hack journalists and politicians ('so are they all, all honourable men')that any chancer who washes up on these shores is just as British as they are. So not a foreigner and no need for a scrap there then!
Nature has a way of weeding out such stupidity.
"Nature has a way of weeding out such stupidity" -
Yes, it's called comment moderation.
Laban,
FWMOW, Gorer hsi the nail on the head by appearing to link acquisitiveness with aggression. The inpromptu street parties of recent days have certainly been marked by an outburst of collective acquisitiveness.
But of course 'The Spirit Level' is a load of rubbish, and we can somehow improve people's lives, and make everyone wealthier, by promoting inequality.
I've got no problem with promoting equality in that I'd be perfectly happy with a law that related the top salary in an organisation to the bottom salary - and just as importantly, that gave exactly the same pension rights (pro-rata'd) to the cleaner as to the CEO.
This would still allow the true entrepreneur to become stinking rich via shareholdings - although venture capital should be looked at - be interesting to see how much long-term value is added, given the number of VC offerings that turn out not to be worth the amount the purchaser/victim paid.
Absent such laws, the current Tory mutterings about reducing the 50% rate should be stamped on hard.
"David Maxwell-Fyfe, the home secretary, reported that the total of "coloured people" in Britain had risen from 7,000 before the second world war to 40,000 at the time of writing, with 3,666 of those unemployed, and 1,870 on national assistance, or benefits."
In October 54 the Ministry of Labour informed the Tory MP, William Steward, that no statistics were available on the number of immigrants drawing unemployment benefit
From Roberts - Eminent Churchillians
It has been a long and sordid story of lies and equivocation that led to death of RMB
I presume the stark-looking photograph of him was taken after his arrest ten years ago for confronting those louts who were urinating in public.
How sad and telling it is for a police photograph to be the memorial of a gentle and public-spirited Englishman.
Very angry at this.
'In October 54 the Ministry of Labour informed the Tory MP, William Steward, that no statistics were available on the number of immigrants drawing unemployment benefit.'
'It has been a long and sordid story of lies and equivocation that led to death of RMB'
I doubt if the lack of reliable stats on this point in 1954, as compared to 1951, was the result of 'lies & equivocation', Sgt. That only really got going in the early 70s, when DES figures on the number of immigrant children in schools were buried because they didn't tally with the (under) estimates from the Home Office.
The most probable explanation for the existence of data in 1951 and the absence of the same in 1954 was that, in between, rationing had been phased out (and with it some details on the nature, size, & composition of the UK population).
'But of course 'The Spirit Level' is a load of rubbish, and we can somehow improve people's lives, and make everyone wealthier, by promoting inequality.'
'The Spirit Level' isn't a load of old rubbish Martin- but the author is a bit coy about noticing that relatively peaceful, more egalitarian societies (Japan, and, until very recently, all of Scandinavia)are also pretty much monoracial & monocultural. Social cohesion, and a refusal to tolerate huge inequalities, seems to be easier to achieve when the masses all look and think rather like the elite. Where the masses are more variegated, the degree to which the elites indentify with their woes declines sharply.
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