Anglophobia has always existed in the UK. Not only do the Scots and Irish profess a dislike for the English but the English upper classes detest poor English people. Unfortunately the Director of Public Prosecutions takes the view that hate crimes against the English are permissible.
One of the most striking examples of anglophobia in the past year was by Helena Kennedy in a program called "The Anatomy of Guilt" in which the English were held to be indelibly scarred with the two hundred year old "guilt" of slavery. There was no mention of the appalling conditions of work experienced by poor English people 200 years ago. The program took the view that all English people must be held to blame in the same way as some racists hold all Jews to be to blame for the death of Christ.
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| Working conditions for English people in 1800 |
Although the ancestors of most of the English had nothing to do with slavery 200 years ago there are some grandchildren of white colonials working in the BBC who feel guilty. These are usually upper class anglophobes who try to blame the English in general for their sense of guilt.
The “Report by the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities” recently produced figures that showed that poor, white British people had some of the worst outcomes on all indicators when the effect of the wealthy white upper classes is removed. The broadcast media condemned the Report.
British drama, commissioned by the white upper class, universally shows poor white men as racists and neo-nazis. Some of this treatment is due to pictures of the British Union of Fascists from the 1930s which show Oswald Mosely inspecting lines of thuggish bodyguards. There is, of course, no understanding of the fact that Mosely had been a labour government minister, the thugs were hired and the British Union of Fascists was a middle class movement. Like in Germany, fascists were students, teachers etc. and not preponderantly working class. None of this affects the dramatists who assume that working class English = racist.
In their work commissioned for broadcasters dramatists seem to ignore the truth about race relations in the UK in the past. They paint relations as monolithically racist in the past and only emerging from this hell as a result of recent efforts by the white upper class and extremist left wing movements. The actual truth is that prior to the 1976 Race Relations Act race relations were little different from today. See Personal Testimonies. What has improved is that employers cannot discriminate so easily except against working class whites. As a black commentator put it, recalling her upbringing in working class London:
"Today, working class white people have nowhere to go, so their poverty and alienation have become even more pronounced. They are dismissed from mainstream society as ‘scum’ and ‘chavs’, in effect, to the white elite, they have become as de-humanised as black people." https://www.opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/patricia-daley/recalling-1970s-london-has-life-improved-since-for-young-poor-and-black
Non-white English people are as English as the rest of the population. The fact that they have been singled out as "oppressed" by the broadcasters suggests that the rest of the population are the oppressors. This is not the case. Most of the rest of the population does not have the means to discriminate and oppress. It can only be the upper classes who are doing the oppressing and discriminating and they are doing this to all races, white and black. "White Supremacy" is upper class supremacy, by definition, because you are not supreme over anyone if you are poor.
The focus on racism against black people is a deliberate distraction from the general anglophobia of the upper classes. The idea that English people, whether black or white, should believe that England is their country is appalling to those who wish to dispose of land and capital freely. They believe that no-one except them owns and controls this land and they should be free to take themselves and their money anywhere they wish. The fact that the English oppose this idea fills the upper class with hatred.
Ironically the BBC is the heart of anglophobia. Something must be done about the BBC. The other problem is that the Labour Party has abandoned the class struggle in favour of anti-racism because its active membership are now middle class students, teachers, academics and public sector workers. Labour is an anglophobic, middle class party.
13/4/2021
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