Never trust a white liberal calling for more black bikers
Aseries of recent events and revelations would have you believe that Britain is a deeply racist country. The UN special rapporteur on race, Prof Tendayi Achiume, announces in London that the referendum of 2016 has “hardened racist attitudes towards ethnic minorities”. The Labour MP for Tottenham, David Lammy, explodes at the news that the Home Office has erroneously deported relatives of the Windrush immigrant generation, then explodes again when Oxford University reveals its enrolment of black students is less than the national average.
Author Afua Hirsch’s documentary claims that some of Britain’s heroes — Churchill and Nelson — were white supremacists and suggests their statues be razed. And more: in Birmingham this week, the head of a National Health Service Trust, Sarah-Jane Marsh, demands more black representation in senior staff; and then London’s “cycling czar”, Will Norman, announces “there are not enough black cyclists on London’s roads” (Marsh and Norman are white).
Certain media and political quarters portray these events as consequences of “woke”, delighting at what they perceive as discomfort felt on the part of the middle-aged, white, Brexit supporting Terrys and Micks from Middle England (“gammons”, apparently, on account of their bald heads and pinkish complexions).
But is Britain really racist? If Achiume had excluded the mandatory fantasies the UN demands of its reports, she would in effect have been authorising her own dismissal and would thus be unable to visit London and stay for 11 nights at a £300 per night hotel near Leicester Square again.
Lammy’s constituents vividly recall the Broadwater farm riots; he is mandated, over and above his own considerable ambitions, to agitate against any appearance of prejudice. Hirsch, crafty sort that she is, wants to flog as many copies of her latest book as possible — no different from former Gordon Brown aide Damian McBride releasing his highly contentious memoirs on the eve of the Labour conference in 2013. Good luck to her — unlike McBride, hers is a beautifully written book.
No society boasts perfect social integration, and those with acceptable levels exist in a curious minority. But despite the frustrations in Britain, there is a level of decency that endures beyond faultlines; it was this same decency that absorbed the public reception of the royal wedding, where a woman of colour married into one of the most inaccessible institutions in the world.
There is scant evidence of resistance or discomfort to the revelations, indicating that the public can distinguish between genuine disenchantment and commercial expedience. Complaining, after all, shouldn’t be monopolised; it is an essential feature of British identity. But I think what makes sensible people, black and white, really cross are white liberals who appoint themselves into the franchise. If I were a black person and was told to cycle by some peculiar jobsworth, I’d be pretty mad. Likewise, I’d be mad if the justice secretary, David Gauke, again blames white people for the death of young black gangsters, decreeing (perhaps unconsciously) that blacks are resigned to being casualties of white hedonism.
In 1980, the immortal advice of “never trust a hippy” emerged from The Great Rock ’n Roll Swindle, a film about the Sex Pistols. There is an awful lot behind these four words, and it can be applied to contemporary white liberals, intent on enforcing their thesis of race relations as fact. Never trust people who portray classical liberals and “gammons” as bullies (white liberals are the biggest bullies) or who claim to be attuned to “privilege”. There are few greater abuses of privilege than claiming to know what others want, or prescribing what they should do.