The Light’s on at Signpost

by George MacDonald Fraser

  In the meantime, it might help if the understanding and tolerance expected of the white community towards the non-white were reciprocated. This never seems to crop up in discussions on race, but it is perhaps something for the black community, the young of all races, the politically correct, and those who work in race relations, to bear in mind. We old white crumblies grew up in a virtually all-white Britain, and adjustment to a society which has become about 12 per cent coloured in the past half-century, has not been a simple matter of course. In my childhood a black or brown face was a rarity; practically everyone, policemen, magistrates, politicians, teachers, bus conductors, footballers (excepting Frank Soo, a Chinese who played for Stoke), shopkeepers, soldiers, labourers, peers of the realm, etc., was white. I was about to add doctors, until I remembered that in my native city of Carlisle there were four non-white GPs, referred to, without a suggestion of “racism”, as the Black Doctors, and highly regarded, but for the rest, black and brown people were unusual, distant, and rather exotic (Paul Robeson, Sabu, Joe Louis, Duke Ellington, West Indian cricketers, and all those talented black Hollywood comedians like Willie Best and Rochester who are now frowned on as the depths of political incorrectness).

  It changed with the war, with black GIs and the Ink Spots and Lena Horne and the Rev. Henry (“Homicide Hank”) Armstrong, but the new racial mix in the population, which began with the Empire Windrush, has taken some getting used to, like television and mobile phones and e-mail and pizzas and yellow lines on the streets. We’ve had to get acclimatised, just as the immigrants have had to, as one does to all changes. We had to accept from the first that the old adage “When in Rome do as Rome does” was a dead letter, and that Rome was expected to adapt to suit the newcomers rather than the other way around. Integration was the watchword until it was seen that white resistance, and black reluctance based on a desire to hold on to ethnic cultures, militated against it, and that the best that could be hoped for was acceptance and tolerance by both sides. Perhaps it is happening at long last, and the old resistance and reluctance are fading away. They will vanish all the sooner if the race relations industry stop deliberately fomenting racial strife.

  I conclude with a few points for which there was no convenient place in this piece, but which may be worth a moment’s thought.

  1. The infantry section in which I served in Burma were, by today’s lights, racists to a man, in speech and deed and outlook. It is impossible to explain to the twenty-first century, with all its preconceptions resulting from revisionist propaganda, just what the British soldier’s attitude towards India and the Indians was, fifty—sixty years ago, but looking back I have the impression that it was as much social as racial. For centuries the British had been masters of India, with inevitable consequences; they (we) considered themselves superior to the Indian civilians, but not only because of colour; the British swaddy, looking at the teeming slums of Bombay and Calcutta, at the beggars, at the half-clad natives in their shanties, the swarming crowds of the cities, and the primitive peasants of the countryside, couldn’t help feeling he was superior to that, and in this respect his views were exactly those of every Indian above the level of the Untouchables. And show me the Western liberal of today, faced with the squalor of the lower reaches of the subcontinent, who says he doesn’t feel superior, and I’ll show you a liar. But is his feeling racial or social? Let him work it out for himself.

  But whatever superiority the swaddy may have felt, it stopped abruptly at the level of the Indian military. That, too, was inevitable; no one who had gone into action alongside the Baluch or the Gurkha or the Sikh could feel anything but unalloyed admiration, respect, and gratitude. I know I felt it, and no race relations expert need waste his time trying to find tell-tale traces of “superiority” in me and my comrades, because they aren’t there, mate. And that is why so many of us love the sub-continent and its people still, and feel only disgust and contempt for those who would try to stir up strife between us.

  2. It was announced recently that the state of California no longer had a white majority. The Hispanics, it was said, now outnumbered them—which left me bewildered and asking of no one in particular: when in God’s name did Spaniards and Mexicans cease to be white?

  3. Why should any trace of black ancestry automatically render a person black in the eyes of the world, even if most of his ancestors are white? Why should Muhammad Ali, who is obviously of European as well as African extraction, be considered black rather than white? I know it’s an elementary question, perhaps even a childish one; I’d just like to hear it answered honestly. Which reminds me that when I was asked to write a piece for a national daily paper on Arthur Hailey’s celebrated account of his family’s transition from Africa to America, Roots, and I wondered why he had dealt only with his black ancestors, and neglected his white ones, that part of my article was carefully cut out. I still don’t know why; it seemed to me to be a not unimportant point.

  4. I have made clear what I think of offensive racial epithets, and note the double standard under which I can be called a Scotch bastard, or some other choice noun (as has happened on occasion), without any outcry from the racially sensitive, who would run screaming in circles if a similar insult was offered to a coloured person. But this it seems is an acceptable inconsistency nowadays: a young journalist of my acquaintance actually told me that he felt it would be worse in him to call a black man a black bastard, than it would be for a black man to call him a white (or honky) bastard. I found this appalling and patronising, no doubt for the same reason that I think positive discrimination is abominable, and a sure recipe for race hatred.

  5. I simply do not know what to make of the successful black American (I think he was an academic) who said he thanked God for the Atlantic slave trade, because without it he would still have been in the jungle instead of enjoying an affluent lifestyle in the US.

  6. But I know exactly what to think when I see black athletes at the Olympic Games, draped in Union Jacks on the medal podium and fairly bursting with pride. They’re not the only ones—and I don’t expect the politically correct to understand this, but I thank God for the British Empire.

  7. Anyone who wants to get an insight into the dramatic change that has taken place in American racial attitudes should hunt down a clip of film made for the instruction of GIs in war-time Britain. The presenter is that distinguished actor, the late Burgess Meredith, wearing US uniform, and addressing the camera from a railway platform somewhere in England. He is drawing the audience’s attention to an elderly British woman who is bidding farewell to a black GI; she has had him to tea, and remarks that she comes from Birmingham, England, while he comes from Birmingham, Alabama.

  Meredith turns back to the camera with a concerned expression, and the purport of his comment is that while Americans know that such black-white socialising is unacceptable, GIs must realise that this is Britain, where there is no such colour bar. I wish I could remember the actual words, or that the BBC would screen the clip as a historic document. I have no doubt that in later years poor Burgess Meredith broke into a cold sweat whenever he remembered it.

  Which reminds me, for no good reason, of my father’s experience in a war-time train, when he, a douce Scots doctor, found himself in a compartment with exuberant black American soldiers who taught him to sing “Pistol-packin’ Momma”, to his great delight. Knowing him, I’ll bet he tried his Swahili on them.

  7. Finally, I recall a conversation from half a century ago, at the Officers Training School, Bangalore, in which I took part with a couple of British cadets, a Pathan, a Sikh nobleman, and a worldly Bengali. (I remark in passing that until you have seen racial and social discrimination by Indians, you haven’t lived.)* It was a fairly alcoholic discussion, in which we put the world thoroughly to rights, dealing among other things with the race question. We did it with a freedom and lack of inhibition and embarrassment which I doubt would be possible for today’s hung-up generation, and at the conclusion, while a quartet consis
ting of the two Britons (Scots Presbyterians), the Sikh, and the Pathan, were singing “The Sash My Father Wore” for the benefit of two Liverpool Irishmen across the corridor (it’s true, so help me), the Bengali put an arm round my neck and sobbed drunkenly:

  “Oh, Jock, you are white and I am brown, and that is okay absolutely. It’s these chee-chee bastards I cannot stand.”

  A chee-chee is an Anglo-Indian half-caste. I thought then, and I think now, this is too big a problem for you, George.

  You note, by the way, that he said “brown”, not “black”, which he would have regarded as offensive. I’m reminded of this every time I hear a race relations pundit lumping all coloured people under the “black” heading. Some Indian and Pakistani community leaders may pretend to go along with this, for political reasons, but (unless I learned absolutely nothing during my time in India) they don’t believe it for a moment. Asians regard themselves as different from Africans, and vice versa, and they’re both right.

  Which brings me to a related subject, the flood of refugees into Britain which has lately risen to unimagined proportions, and excited passions on all sides. The Right wishes to restrict immigration, and polls have indicated that two-thirds of the public agree. I dare say that the majority is even greater, and includes many of the old guard of the Labour Party, but that they know better, much better, than to say so.* But there is a liberal element which seems hell-bent on swamping the country with foreign fugitives, heaven knows why. Whether their motives are altruistic, or simply spring from hatred of the Right, or they want to repopulate Britain for some mysterious reason of their own, is not clear. What is manifest, however, is their doctrine, which is based on the curious notion that any foreigner wishing to settle in Britain should be welcomed with open arms, given money, clothing, accommodation, and protection, and absorbed into the community with all possible speed. Anyone who questions this is a xenophobe, a racist, probably a fascist, and certainly an unmitigated swine. This is the current wisdom, and the result is that we are besieged by hordes of alien scroungers, bums, criminals, layabouts, and riff-raff—and I refer to the majority of “asylum seekers”; no doubt there are a few worthy and persecuted souls who find it best to flee their own countries—although exactly how they made those countries too hot to hold them is seldom reliably revealed, nor is it explained why this should entitle them to sanctuary in Britain.

  Much is made of the British tradition of welcoming refugees, and where these are genuine, like the Jews escaping from Germany and the Nazi-occupied countries in the thirties and forties, it is a tradition to be proud of.* But that is a long way from the Afghans who arrived in a hi-jacked aircraft with no claim whatever to asylum, and who should have been deported immediately, since no assessment of their cases was necessary. The same applies to the Balkan and Asian moochers and loafers who, it seems, must be kept at the public charges and treated as honoured guests until their cases have been examined, at vast expense to the British taxpayer, while the bleeding-heart lobby demand that they be given asylum, the refugees themselves complain and even demonstrate if they are not housed in a style far exceeding anything they knew at home, and the cry of “Human rights!” is used as an indiscriminate bludgeon on the long-suffering citizenry.

  It is undoubtedly true that some refugees will become decent, if largely unwanted, members of the community, and equally true that others will remain mere burdens on the public weal.

  At the moment we are ridiculously lax. No foreign refugee, asylum seeker, or would-be immigrant should be allowed into Britain unless (a) they are entitled to British citizenship as natives of the Commonwealth, or (b) it can be shown beyond doubt that their admission will be of benefit to Britain, or (c) in exceptional circumstances only, it can be shown that they are decent folk in real danger of serious and undeserved persecution in the lands from which they have fled. We should not be in the business of giving sanctuary to criminals or revolutionaries simply because the penalties they may incur in their own countries are more severe than would be applied in Britain, nor should we automatically accept anyone fleeing a country whose government is deemed politically incorrect by the chattering classes.

  Anyone caught entering the country illegally should be deported without ado or appeal, and anyone resident in Britain who is not a British citizen, and is convicted of a felony, should be deported either at once or on completion of a prison sentence if one is imposed.

  Do I seem extreme? Possibly, to liberals, but not to the sensible majority; and certainly no more extreme than those who were so unscrupulous and dishonest as to accuse William Hague of “playing the race card” simply because he questioned the wisdom of government policy. There is something far wrong with a country in which the needs and welfare of deserving Britons can be neglected while illegal immigrants receive sympathy and assistance beyond the bounds of sanity, and can even be compensated with five-figure sums after being jailed for entering the country on fake passports; a country in which citizenship was granted with indecent haste to Indians whose characters have been questioned but who just happened to have contributed lavishly to the Labour government’s great white elephant, the Dome—while a Rhodesian with four British grandparents was refused a passport, as were Gurkhas whose loyal service to Britain is unmatched. Hardly a country to be proud of.

  * An example of the kind of case that causes justified white anger and demonstrates how lunatic the race relations “system” can be, was that of the Asian who, having sued successfully for racial discrimination, sued again several years later after he had been promoted, his complaint being that he had apparently been given preferential treatment, and this had damaged his standing and caused him to lose the respect of his colleagues.

  * At the time when Greg Dyke, the Director General, made his notorious remark about the BBC being “hideously white”, the actual fact was that the proportion of non-whites employed by the Corporation was greater than the proportion of non-whites in the population as a whole. I also note, before anyone points it out to me, that the imposition of a realistic quota system in Parliament would entail the reduction of the number of Scottish M.P.s and, possibly, although I haven’t counted, the number of Jewish ones. It would be interesting to see if the proportion of white English M.P.s is at present a fair one.

  * It is called the caste system, which I’m reliably informed shows no signs of decay, and which truly can be called “institutionalised”.

  * If they did, they would be reviled as racists, like the Tory M.P. who spoke of the “destruction” of “our homogeneous Anglo-Saxon society by massive immigration”; he was rebuked even by his own party leader. It mattered not that he was telling a plain, obvious truth; it had sinister implications in liberal eyes, and therefore must never be mentioned. Poor Alexander Pope, when he wrote that “to speak his thought is every freeman’s right”, could not foresee Cool Britannia.

  * Liberals invariably cite the Jews, Flemings, and Huguenots as proof of the benefits to Britain of immigration, but omit to mention that none of these groups expected to be given free money, clothing, food, and accommodation, like the Balkan refugees, nor did they demand that British society change its ways to suit them, like the post-war immigrant activists.

  INTERLUDE

  Not According to Lady Bracknell

  I KNEW Marks and Spencer were in trouble when I bought a salmon and cucumber sandwich and discovered that the cucumber had been added in small chunks with the rind still on. Aunt Augusta would have gone berserk, assuming that Lane had been depraved (or drunk) enough to serve up such abominations. Mind you, even the best places can err: the Peninsula Hotel in Hong Kong once presented me with smoked salmon sandwiches garnished with raw onion rings. No wonder the place fell into the hands of the Communists.

  Which reminds me, the modern craze for garlic and peppers is symptomatic of Britain’s decline. Time was when both were unknown here, and the atmosphere was not rendered hideous by a stench reminiscent of an inferior Para
guayan bordello. (I have never been in Paraguay; I merely surmise.)

  SHOOTING SCRIPT 8

  “You Want to put Bond in a Gorilla Suit?”

  THERE MAY HAVE BEEN nicer people in Hollywood than Albert “Cubby” Broccoli, but I never met them. As his nickname implies, he was plump and cuddly and gentle; he was also generous and considerate, and his staff and colleagues regarded him with an affection which I suspect was unique towards a movie tycoon. He had a modesty and an innocence and an air of vulnerability which seemed to inspire a protective feeling in those around him. They showed him a respect that had nothing to do with fear of a man who controlled the most successful series of films in the history of the cinema; it was simply that they liked him, and Cubby knew it, and was touchingly grateful for it.

  I remember when he received a special award at an Oscar ceremony (presented appropriately by Roger Moore) and I doubt if there was a more nervous man in California that night. But he made a gracious, careful acceptance speech, and because he was Cubby, and for no other reason, I made a point of congratulating him in his office next morning. His response astonished me by its earnestness, almost as though he were relieved.

  “Was it all right? Really, I mean, was it okay? Well, thank you, George, thank you very much. I’m glad you thought it was all right. It was kind of a…you know…Roger was great, wasn’t he? Thanks, George, I appreciate it…God bless.”

  If I’d been an old friend or close relative I might not have been surprised at such evident sincerity, but I was merely his screenwriter of the moment, whose opinion didn’t matter zilch, and of no importance in his scheme of things—but that was Cubby all over. He was a man of deep feeling, and where another might have nodded acknowledgement, Cubby felt real gratitude and showed it. I was impressed, and went straight to my typewriter to record his words while they were still fresh. The foregoing paragraph is Cubby Broccoli verbatim.