A sort of boot sale kicked off last Thursday in a setting akin to a Safeway carpark, and the first item was given away for free – to Mauritius, Africa’s third-richest country.
The Chagos archipelago in the Indian Ocean is home to a joint US/UK military base, Diego Garcia, and considered a strategic imperative, so you can imagine just how thrilled sensible Americans are with Britain’s latest spectacle to try convince people it isn’t racist.
Next up will be the Falklands, then Gibraltar, St. Helena and the Pitcairn Islands, where only 35 people live – all of whom are related to each other. (In 2004, the British government alleged a whole lot of paedophilia – noncing – happening on Pitcairn which they turned into a trial, quite possibly to distract from claims of noncing going on at the BBC).
I know some reasonably talented negotiators but – my God – how about these Mauritians?! Not only was the joint wrangled for free, but British taxpayers will now fork out for rent. Rent! And not just normal rent – military rent, the kind that lands Lockheed Martin C5-M Super Galaxy and services nuclear submarines. If the latest convicted BBC nonce, Huw Edwards, had these guys defending him from sharing and, erm, “making” offensive imagery, he’d be Nonce Emeritus at Oxfam by now.
Of course, there were the defenders – the North London lawyers and media, artists and other Labour flunkies who emerged from bi-weekly self-loathing binges involving twelve hours with their fingers down their throats to remark, “well, no, actually, there is a strategic plan here…that will reveal itself in one, possibly two generations time”.
Argos security guard
Keep an eye out on that one – the way things are going, the Gambia will have colonised England by then. Its leader, Mr. Adama Barrow, knows his way around here having worked as a security guard at his local Argos once. Also, many middle-aged English women visit the country every year for a bit of exotic trade – something which may solve logistical items, such as where the colonising soldiers rest their heads at night.
But if you’re a radical progressive studying (or teaching) at London’s School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), and committed to ‘decolonisation’ and the thrill of ‘first peoples’ theory, then well done you and all that, but I’m afraid this will depress you into never dyeing your hair electric blue again. Not only do the Mauritians think the Chagossians are inchoate – they’re not afraid to go on record saying it: (“half-civilised savages”, chuckled one of the charmers there).
If you’re an “environmentalist” intersecting with the same identities parametric, you’re not going to like it either: the returning Chagossians will probably be stuffed into a coal-fired township, the rest of the once tropical island will be turned into a massive cash ‘n carry for buccaneering Chinese trawlers, who will then destroy all the reef architecture – so it’s goodbye giant trevally, spotted eagle ray, sharks – even the little fishy who turned his life around having miraculously swum to Wakanda after being raised on Michael Gove’s urine in the Thames.
Incensed right-leaning columnists are miffing their way around the latest example of Britain’s controlled demolition, lamenting the decline of influence and voluntary surrender, stammering “over-correction”! They’re correct only in the sense that their country will one day be the world capital of feet washing, where processions from the Sudan and the Yemen will march through customs toward vast tents erected on the fringes of the capital by the Church of England. But mostly they’re arse-about-face: this isn’t about atoning for historical injustice – it’s a new kind of colonialism altogether.
Because there are no longer places in the world where a bunch of moustached colonels can refer a group of tribespeople chanting around a skull to the St. James Bible, Britain’s new power centres are aiming their ambition – which never declined in the way its land mass did – inward.
Campus stuff
With what? Portland, Oregon campus stuff. Thursday night North London art gallery stuff – stuff that comes out of the mouths of “climate justice” groups on the make. Thanks to events at UCT in 2015, Britain got a taste of what happens when you start throwing shit around, then May 2020 came along and the country, already suffering advanced boredom, was given the opportunity to answer a question: are you a racist? “M…m…maybe,” it stuttered, “let me check”. So it checked, everywhere – cricket, wallpaper, medicine, hiking trails, theatres, traffic lights, dry cleaning, soap, tequila, smoke detectors – you name it, there was checking, and when checking turned up nothing, they turned to inquiries.
The most awesome inquiry during this era was an internal one at the Wellcome Trust, one of the largest charitable institutions in the world. Six months later, its director, a lockdown enthusiast and ‘covid’ neurotic called Jeremy Farrar, cleared his throat – and declared his own organisation “racist”. Presumably Mr. Farrar hadn’t considered the organisation’s donors who’d probably baulk at the thought of funding racism – which also happens to be a crime in the UK, and it isn’t clear why he still hasn’t self-reported at his local nick yet.
Finding nature racist – as another ‘inquiry’ did – was even more troubling: what remedial actions must be recommended in such circumstances? Do you sit down with trees and explain that sniggering at burkas is just not on?
Identity obsession
This new identity obsession has energised Britain again, but it’s fraught with inconsistencies and self-mutilation, where casualties include a role in dismantling the Atlantic slave trade and all the lives lost doing so – almost as if that never happened, right? Its pursuit is relentless, well-funded, paranoid, and illogical; perhaps the English aspire to behave like the Australians – but the application of welcome-to-country theatrics wouldn’t really work here.
Can you imagine: it’s Friday night and a Rugby League fixture is taking place in the north. A corpsing aristocrat is led out onto the field to address the working-class spectators before the game kicks off. “Now look here,” he croaks, “I am a first peoples, this is my land, you are just maplotters and at any moment I could confiscate your wives and children”.
Chagossians are most unhappy. Some are claiming that the Foreign Secretary lied in Parliament this week and while I sympathise, I caution them against any kind of “inquiry”. I would instead suggest that they pray for the day Mr. Barrow in the Gambia wakes up, reads the newspaper and puts his foot down, “nope, not having it anymore, these English have gone mad and need to be set right”.
Can’t be long now.
[Image: https://www.flickr.com/photos/nasa2explore/9357117365]
The views of the writer are not necessarily the views of the Daily Friend or the IRR.
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