Wednesday 10 June 2020

Do we need to address 'Not Counting Niggers'?

AS I write statues are being toppled and historical figures are being denounced for alleged 'racism' and trading in slavery.  Dare I say it, it is as if a retrospective 'blacklist' is being drawn up by energetic individuals all over the world.

Back in July 1939, George Orwell wrote a telling essay for Adelphi entitled 'Not Counting Niggers' in which he questions what he calls the humbug of left wing politics generally towards what were then described as 'the dependencies'.  The long list of British dependencies as they were then called in the 1930s, were really the off-shore British proletariat.

Or as Orwell had it in 1939:
'What we always forget is that the overwhelming bulk of the British proletariat does not live in Britain, but in Asia and Africa.  It is not in Hitler's power, for instance, to make a penny an hour a normal industrial wage; it is perfectly normal in India, and we are at great pains to keep it so... It is quite common for an Indian coolie's leg to be thinner than the average Englishman's arm.  And there is nothing racial in this, for well-fed members of the same races are of normal physique; it is due to starvation.  This is a system which we live on and which we denounce when there seems to be no danger of it being altered.'

The fact is that over the last few centuries the people of these islands have all benefited from imperialism including the working classes. 

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1 comment:

Mandy said...

Is it wise 2 use the N word. In your title??? Luv Mandyxxx