This is one of the most fascinating books I’ve ever read. The main reason being is that it gives weight to my less well-informed opinions on the matter by backing up something I wanted to believe was true to actually be true. The main thrust of Winder’s argument, backed up by ample evidence, is that each wave of immigration into this country has benefited Britain both economically and culturally, usually at the expense of the various countries that either expelled them or made life so difficult they wanted to leave. While not without problems, and the occasional repulsive incident, immigrant groups have been accepted usually with a grudging tolerance by British society at all levels –and if that sounds like damning with faint praise, it’s more than any other country, European or otherwise, did.
Winder also exposes a number of historical myths along way. The Celts, for example, far from being a unified race were simply a bunch of northern European tribes and the name wasn’t even used until 1704. Neither were they the original inhabitants of what (to keep it simple) we’ll call Britain. They moved in and took over from tribes who’d originally come up from Iberia (and that’s ignoring the people who were there before that –the ones who turned round, saw the English Channel and said, “Damn, coulda sworn there was a land bridge there yesterday. Looks like we’re stuck here.”) The Celts (or whoever they were) were driven to the margins by the Romans who were followed by the Angles, Saxons, Brigantes, Danes, Old Uncle Tom Cobleigh’s tribe and all, until the mixed-blood descendants of two lots of Vikings had a punch-up at Hastings.
Not much happened for the next three or four hundred years apart from the traumatic adjustment of the Norman Conquest and the thirteenth century expulsion of the Jews, the one and only time a group of people has been expelled from this country. It took Cromwell to readmit them.
From the period of the Reformation the dominant pattern of immigration took shape. England profited economically and culturally from the intolerance of its European neighbours by usually, but not always, grudgingly taking in refugees. Without the Huguenots, for example, Britain wouldn’t have gotten the head start in the Industrial Revolution which ultimately led to the British Empire. For five hundred years this country was enriched by the stupidity of other governments and the reluctant tolerance of its own –Russian Jews, Germans (often Jews), Italians (not Jews), Poles (some of them Jews). Of course it helped that they were white.
Blacks and Asians, as usual, didn’t get quite so good a deal but it was still better than the deal they usually got elsewhere. It was Britain that played a major role in ending the slave trade. In Victorian Britain, Jews became an accepted part of the establishment when they were usually being persecuted elsewhere, and there were even Asian Members of Parliament (well, two of them, at different times). Also in the Victorian era, there was a noticeable black population. One American writer visiting Liverpool in the 1860’s saw a black man walking leisurely with his white wife to no great concern, something that would have got him severely beaten, if not lynched, in New York.
Jumping ahead to the Second World War, one farmer was quoted as saying that he loved the American soldiers but he wasn’t so keen on the white ones they’d brought with them. Similarly any white soldiers attempting to enforce a colour bar on public transport were told where to get off. After the war, with Britain economically exhausted, it was another story and blacks didn’t get the same welcome. The Windrush, the boat which brought a few hundred Jamaicans who were looking for work to England, became both a symbol and a source of notoriety out of all proportion to the numbers involved.
This, conveniently, happened around the time I was born so I grew up and lived through the post-war waves of immigration, albeit somewhat isolated from most of it up in Sunderland until, that is, relatively recently. This post-war period reveals that nothing has been learned and nothing really changes. The same old patterns occurred. Knee-jerk reactions against, grudging acceptance, economic and social benefits as one group leaves the bottom of the pile to be replaced by another, shameful and noble actions at both government and individual level. The recent wave of asylum seekers (now receding as the economy takes a downturn) is a typical case. At a national level the usual prejudices surface and racist groups try to make gains out of it (and always, if any, of a temporary nature), followed by acceptance on an individual level such as support from individuals (and usually working class individuals who are frequently and unfairly associated with racist attitudes) supporting families who want to stay against the government which wants to deport them.
Trauma, reaction, upheaval, acceptance. History marches on and ultimately, in the UK at least, leaves behind the racists and the Little Englanders. This country has the highest proportion of inter-racial marriages in Europe, by far.
Winder charts the successes and the shame with detail, perception, and humour as he recounts an alternative and usually ignored history of this country.
In my last few years at the City Library I encountered and, I hope, helped a large number of immigrants, asylum seekers, and foreign students. I ordered stock, arranged, and displayed a section within the library on English as a Foreign Language and, next to it, a basic skills section (as the two are quite similar in terms of needs). Through Winder I can see that what I’ve been doing, in its own small way, is part of an historical process of helping the stranger, the immigrant, and in the best traditions of this country.
Am I a nationalist? Hell, no: screw them -the BNP, UKIP, and all those miserable right-wing Little Englanders.
But am I proud to be British? Damn right, I am, but proud in the true spirit of what it means to be British.
Winder also exposes a number of historical myths along way. The Celts, for example, far from being a unified race were simply a bunch of northern European tribes and the name wasn’t even used until 1704. Neither were they the original inhabitants of what (to keep it simple) we’ll call Britain. They moved in and took over from tribes who’d originally come up from Iberia (and that’s ignoring the people who were there before that –the ones who turned round, saw the English Channel and said, “Damn, coulda sworn there was a land bridge there yesterday. Looks like we’re stuck here.”) The Celts (or whoever they were) were driven to the margins by the Romans who were followed by the Angles, Saxons, Brigantes, Danes, Old Uncle Tom Cobleigh’s tribe and all, until the mixed-blood descendants of two lots of Vikings had a punch-up at Hastings.
Not much happened for the next three or four hundred years apart from the traumatic adjustment of the Norman Conquest and the thirteenth century expulsion of the Jews, the one and only time a group of people has been expelled from this country. It took Cromwell to readmit them.
From the period of the Reformation the dominant pattern of immigration took shape. England profited economically and culturally from the intolerance of its European neighbours by usually, but not always, grudgingly taking in refugees. Without the Huguenots, for example, Britain wouldn’t have gotten the head start in the Industrial Revolution which ultimately led to the British Empire. For five hundred years this country was enriched by the stupidity of other governments and the reluctant tolerance of its own –Russian Jews, Germans (often Jews), Italians (not Jews), Poles (some of them Jews). Of course it helped that they were white.
Blacks and Asians, as usual, didn’t get quite so good a deal but it was still better than the deal they usually got elsewhere. It was Britain that played a major role in ending the slave trade. In Victorian Britain, Jews became an accepted part of the establishment when they were usually being persecuted elsewhere, and there were even Asian Members of Parliament (well, two of them, at different times). Also in the Victorian era, there was a noticeable black population. One American writer visiting Liverpool in the 1860’s saw a black man walking leisurely with his white wife to no great concern, something that would have got him severely beaten, if not lynched, in New York.
Jumping ahead to the Second World War, one farmer was quoted as saying that he loved the American soldiers but he wasn’t so keen on the white ones they’d brought with them. Similarly any white soldiers attempting to enforce a colour bar on public transport were told where to get off. After the war, with Britain economically exhausted, it was another story and blacks didn’t get the same welcome. The Windrush, the boat which brought a few hundred Jamaicans who were looking for work to England, became both a symbol and a source of notoriety out of all proportion to the numbers involved.
This, conveniently, happened around the time I was born so I grew up and lived through the post-war waves of immigration, albeit somewhat isolated from most of it up in Sunderland until, that is, relatively recently. This post-war period reveals that nothing has been learned and nothing really changes. The same old patterns occurred. Knee-jerk reactions against, grudging acceptance, economic and social benefits as one group leaves the bottom of the pile to be replaced by another, shameful and noble actions at both government and individual level. The recent wave of asylum seekers (now receding as the economy takes a downturn) is a typical case. At a national level the usual prejudices surface and racist groups try to make gains out of it (and always, if any, of a temporary nature), followed by acceptance on an individual level such as support from individuals (and usually working class individuals who are frequently and unfairly associated with racist attitudes) supporting families who want to stay against the government which wants to deport them.
Trauma, reaction, upheaval, acceptance. History marches on and ultimately, in the UK at least, leaves behind the racists and the Little Englanders. This country has the highest proportion of inter-racial marriages in Europe, by far.
Winder charts the successes and the shame with detail, perception, and humour as he recounts an alternative and usually ignored history of this country.
In my last few years at the City Library I encountered and, I hope, helped a large number of immigrants, asylum seekers, and foreign students. I ordered stock, arranged, and displayed a section within the library on English as a Foreign Language and, next to it, a basic skills section (as the two are quite similar in terms of needs). Through Winder I can see that what I’ve been doing, in its own small way, is part of an historical process of helping the stranger, the immigrant, and in the best traditions of this country.
Am I a nationalist? Hell, no: screw them -the BNP, UKIP, and all those miserable right-wing Little Englanders.
But am I proud to be British? Damn right, I am, but proud in the true spirit of what it means to be British.
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