James Delingpole
supposed to be for uplifting comments, not for celebrating colonialism, so I’m glad you’re wiping it off.” Lily Allen shared the clip with the message “too right” – and later used her Twitter account to engage with people who disagreed. She said she found celebrating Britain’s colonial past “disgusting” and mocked one critic as someone who based his history on having “watched Zulu once”.
Before we go into why Lily Allen is so disgusted, let’s first concede the tiny area where she’s right. Judged by modern values the Anglo-Zulu Wars are probably not the finest hour of British history. Essentially they were a land grab by the British, whose administrator Sir Henry Bartle Frere pretty much started the war by exaggerating the Zulu threat.
Nor was Britain’s conduct of the campaign very impressive. The defeat at Isandlwana – which pitched trained men with rifles against natives with spears – was one of the most humiliating in our history. And this was probably the real reason why so many VCs were given for Rorke’s Drift: as a way of distracting the British public from what an awful cock-up the war had been.
That said, you’d need a heart of stone, the imagination of a goldfish and the patriotism of a Corbynista not to feel moved and inspired by what those 150 men did that day.
They weren’t even top-class troops: they were wounded, reserves and passed over officers, supposedly destined never to achieve greatness. Lieutenant Chard (Stanley Baker in the movie) was a Royal Engineers officer who’d done nothing more exciting in his career than constructing naval fortifications in Bermuda and Malta. Lieutenant Bromhead (Michael Caine) had been described by his commanding officer as “hopeless”.
Yet they stood and fought, knowing almost for certain that they would end up being disembowelled by the assegais of their vastly more numerous opposition. At one point they discussed whether to make a run for it – as various small units which could have stayed ignominiously did – but decided against because that would have meant abandoning their wounded.
The film painted a stirring picture of courage and fortitude as the many Welsh soldiers stiffened their sinews with a rousing chorus of Men Of Harlech. However, Private Hook – the VC-winning, hard-drinking reprobate accurately shown in the movie defending the wounded in the hospital – was in fact a clean-living teetotaller. But most of the film is pretty accurate.
LILY Allen – who once wrote the excruciating couplet “You’re just so racist/You can’t tie my laces” – would probably be appalled by the political incorrectness. But let’s not forget that the black cast of that 1964 Zulu movie were mostly descendants of the original Zulu warriors who’d fought at Isandlwana and Rorke’s Drift. And they were proud of their involvement, not ashamed.
Most people in Britain would surely agree that Rorke’s Drift deserves to live on in our collective memory. It’s a shame that attention-seeking Lefties such as Allen get taken seriously by organisations such as Transport for London. They’re a shrill and annoying minority. But they’re not representative of our country – nor of the values that have made us great.
‘Transport for London swiftly caved in’