by Richard North
http://www.eureferendum.com/blogview.aspx?blogno=83194
Following on from David Cameron’s faux pas on the Magna Carta, the Daily Mail has turned to Cameron’s Oxford tutor, Vernon Bogdanor, “for advice on 15 things that everyone should know”, about history.
Bognador, is a Research Professor at the Institute of Contemporary British History, King’s College London and is writing a history of Britain in the 20th Century, so his offerings are of some interest, and especially his item 9 on the Second World War, of which he says:
From June 1940 to June 1941. Without our heroic resistance, Europe would, Churchill predicted, have entered a new Dark Age. It changed the dynamic between leaders and troops. Field Marshall Montgomery asked a soldier to name his most important possession. The man said: “My rifle”. Montgomery replied: “No. It isn’t. It’s your life and I’m going to save it”. Such humanity by leaders led it to be called The People’s War.
What leaps out of the page is the claim on the “People’s War”, which is complete rubbish – a total re-write of the entire social history of that period.
That particular phrasing emerged to some prominence during the second half of 1940, and was a major theme during the TUC annual congress in Southport of that year. It was then that Labour cabinet ministers were accused by union bosses of not doing enough to make the conflict a people’s war, a “war fought for the people by the people”.
Previously, the term had been given considerable prominence by J B Priestley, in his Sunday “postcript” talks, which had also cemented it in the left-wing iconography, distinguishing it from the Tories’ unpopular “bosses’ war”, made for spivs, capitalists and profiteers.
The reason why it was a people’s war, of course, was because it was at one the first “total war”, which involved civilians as much as the military, and it was also an industrial war, where factory output had as much, if not greater influence on the outcome than military victories.
Because of the left-wing connotations, right wing authors (and Churchill himself) have tended to play down the people’s contribution in their post-war histories, as we saw in the Battle of Britain, where their vital role has largely been airbrushed out of the narrative.
But then to pretend that the term “People’s War” emerged as a reflection of the “humanity” by leaders such as Montgomery is utterly bizarre. If Bognador really believes that, then he has no claim to the title of historian. If he doesn’t, then his description is cynical beyond belief.
Either way, it is so wrong that it is the sort of thing that you could only find in the pages of the Daily Mail, the newspaper which, before the war, was a great fan of Hitler, with its proprietor Lord Rothermere supporting Oswald Mosley and the National Union of Fascists.
One can only reflect though, that if this is the sort of thing that Bognador was teaching Cameron at university, it is not surprising the prime minister has such a poor grasp of history.
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Hi Sean,
Does David Cameron also realise Robert de Vere the 3rd Earl of Oxford was one of the barons present at Runnymeade to force the king to sign the Magna Carta.The De Vere’s were the Conte D’Anjou,the Dukes of Normandy and alternated as Kings of England and France.They originated from Ver a small village in Manche Normandy and fought in the Crusades against Saladin.Their ancestral home is Castle Hedingham in the United Kingdom.
Dave and George obviously need to swat a bit more on history outside of the Chipping Norton set.Apparently there is no need to learn Latin now which was sometimes compulsory in my ancient days if you wanted to go to Uni and be Prime Minister.However Magna Cartal looks self explanatory with a lot of english words having latin roots.
Democracy Dave vetoed the European Union,Yeah do us a favour.
What would Cameron think a “faux pas” is? Something to do with the foxtrot? You’d’ve thought someone in the Bullingdon would know what “magnum” meant, and “charta” isn’t very obscure.
If Bognador really believes that, then he has no claim to the title of historian. If he doesn’t, then his description is cynical beyond belief.
Claims to many titles are not settled nowadays by competence or honesty, but by willingness to serve the Project:
And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed — if all records told the same tale — then the lie passed into history and became truth. ‘Who controls the past,’ ran the Party slogan, ‘controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.’ And yet the past, though of its nature alterable, never had been altered. Whatever was true now was true from everlasting to everlasting. It was quite simple. All that was needed was an unending series of victories over your own memory. ‘Reality control’, they called it: in Newspeak, ‘doublethink’.
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Nineteen_Eighty-Four
Inside the Cold, Calculating Libertarian Mind
An individual’s personality shapes his or her political ideology at least as much as circumstances, background and influences. That is the gist of a recent strand of psychological research identified especially with the work of Jonathan Haidt. The baffling (to liberals) fact that a large minority of working-class white people vote for conservative candidates is explained by psychological dispositions that override their narrow economic interests.
http://tinyurl.com/9vxgu5a
“Hi Sean”? I thought that Richard North wrote this post?
Anyway – it is a good post, whoever write it.
On Will W.s point.
Well “working class” people (of whatver skin colour) are human beings – at least I hope so as I have worked in “low jobs” almost my whole life (so I hope I am human).
Being human we are capable (if we use that bit of stuff between our ears) of working that “class interest” (“rich verus poor”) arguments are a load of dingo’s kidneys.
So it is not the case that ……. override “narrow economic interests” , it is that we have the intelligence to understand that our long term economic interests are not (repeat not) in conflict with “the rich”. Quite the contrary.
Vernon Bog.
I have often heard him on the radio – and he always strikes me as being as ignorant as sin (poor old “call me Dave” did not stand much of a chance of a proper grounding in history with this fool as a tutor) so I am not surprised he fell for this “People’s War = fluffy humanity” crap.
As for J.P. Priestley – a liar, indeed on an absurd scale.
For example, he helped make a wartime film (set in 1940) entitled “The Foreman Goes to France”.
All about how a foreman from a British factory goes to France (as it is being over run by the Germans) to get out vital stuff.
The plot of the film is demented – but that is not my point. The foreman finds noble Red workers help him – whilst the evil boss man helps the Germans.
In reality the situation was almost the exact opposite.
Those allied with the Communists in France (both rich and poor) helped the Germans in 1940 – there was sabotage and strikes in vital areas of France, and the Communist Party (and other far left groups) put out endless propaganda to try and undermine the will of French soldiers to fight.
All this is to be expected – after all Hitler was an ally of Stalin and the time, and the French left were part of the international left (the mainstream of which was loyal to Stalin).
But one would not know about this by watching “The Foreman Went To France”.
By the way the American Communists (not that they openly use the word “Communist” – they are too gutless to be open about what they are) tried the class-war “economic interests” stuff a few years back – unfortunatly for them the name of the book they put out was “What Is wrong with Kansas?” – complaining that poor people in Kansas tended to vote Republican, supposedly “against their interests”.
The title of the book invited the reply “that it is not more like South Dakota [just a bit further north] – lower taxes, less government spending and (therefore) more prosperity for everyone”.
However, locals sometimes tended to favour a shorter reply when confronted with the Communist effort to win their hearts and minds with “What is wrong with Kansas”.
“Nothing – now fuck off”.
Sorry for three in a row – but I should point out the major sociolgical study that showed “working class” people voting the “wrong” way and haveing “wrong” attitudes”.
This was the famous “Middletown” study of the interwar years (the 1930s as well as the towns), where the American “working class” people in “Middletown” were shown to not think in “class” terms at all (much to the horror of the sociologists doing the study).
Mamy years later “Middletown” was revealed to be Munsie Indiana (Indiana, like Kansas, is normally Republican). Union thugs arrived in Munsie only a few years ago trying to forceably unionise employees (the Right to Work law forbidding compulsory unionism was repealed in Indiana in 1965 – a repeal that led to the deaths of places like the city of Gary).
However, the spirit of “Middletown” was not dead and the union thugs from outside were defeated and driven away (just as both the Communists and the KKK had been driven out of “Middletown” when they arrived from outside and tried to make inroads in the 1930s – racial hatred and class hated, both rejected).
And now the Right to Work law has been restored in Indiana – so Middletown remains Middletown.
Well at least till Comrade Barack wins on November 6th – then the world changes.
I would have liked to have told a story of British people (of all backgrounds) banding together to defeat the class-war (“rich versus poor”) union thugs and drive them out of town.
However, sadly, I do not know any such stories.
I take exception to another point made in the Daily Mail article, written by this Oxford tutor: We have not been, by any stretch of the imagination, what could be classified as a ‘nation of immigrants’ in the way he is implying.
Quite the opposite is true – we have until recent times been one of the most racially homogeneous nations on Earth, and if anything, we were in fact a nation of emigrants.
When we did have immigration and conquests, the numbers were fractional, at hardly a couple of percent of the total population over hundreds of years. Eg. As few as 10,000 to 25,000 Anglo-Saxons settled in Britain during the fifth and seventh centuries.
Some did not even stay around (such as the Normans, where around 120,000 had arrived but only around 5,000 stayed) – and those that did stay were from culturally and racially similar heritage, originating in the north of Europe, like Denmark and Sweden.
No individual invasion or event contributed even a tenth of our modern genetic mix. Of course, some influences over the way society was shaped and how our language developed were disproportional to the numbers of people involved. Even some of those cultures and languages were not too dissimilar, in some instances it has even been noted that translators were not required to do trade.
To my understanding, even the Huguenots originally came from northern Europe before they settled in France – and when they did come here to Britain they only numbered around 40,000 to 50,000 in a population that was in the many multiple millions.
Whilst the population of the British Isles climbed from 5,000 to 50 millions in the 8,000 years since the thawing of the Ice Age- the total number of immigrants during that whole period was less than 2 million.
The greatest number of these people were Irish – who shared near identical genetic and cultural inheritance and who merely moved from one part of the Kingdom to another.
Immigration from mainland Europe (and from further outside of our immediate geographic locality) was only about 665,000 in eight thousand years.
In contrast, the last Labour government alone, over a ten year period, has allowed somewhere around 4 to 5 million immigrants (net) into Britain.
We were never a ‘nation of immigrants’ and were certainly not a ‘mongrel race’ in the way that many other far flung nations became after various conquests and admixtures.
The way these kinds of authors cite the “waves of Saxons, Normans, Huguenots”…..and then run it quickly through to the situation today, as though it is a mere continuation, are talking absolute nonsense – and in my opinion they are apologists for the eradication of what until very recently was without question recognised as an indigenous British population.
When it comes to the second world war, in recent years I have been much more objective to the whole ‘we won the war’ narrative. It is certainly not as it is painted to be, even though I think we should be proud of the courage and valour of those who laid down their lives.
Looking at ‘modern Britain’ my personal opinion is that many of those people would be outraged at what it has become, and that we did not ‘win’ in the end.
We lost our empire, became financially and otherwise indebted to the United States, lost hundreds of thousands of our patriotic brightest and best, reduced the Caucasian demographic via the aftermath slide down to the current 8%, burdened ourselves with problems we never needed to burden ourselves with – and allowed ourselves to be guilt-tripped by the liberal-left (via their endless associations with Hitler) towards anybody who did not fall into line with their new world vision.
When it comes to Hitler, he still seems to be in the newspapers every day somewhere, especially the Daily Mail, but you do not tend to see daily doses of the horrors of Lenin, Marx, Stalin in the newspapers or wall to wall on free-view history channels.
Until very recently, because of things like this, I had little exposure to a different narrative to this man and the war, and our role in it.
This is why I found the following documentary (which has been doing the rounds) an interesting one, which labours the point of how much Hitler tried to avoid war with anybody, particularly this country.
As for the David Letterman show playing “Rule Britannia” – it sounded to be a cruel joke to me. Our army and Navy have been purposefully run into the ground to the point it has been reported that we would struggle to maintain the Falkland Islands as British territory.
Rule the waves? Not be slaves? (never mind being bound to the EU)….. hardly. We are beyond living on borrowed time.
To be fair to Vernon Bog he is a politics man (David Cameron studied PPE – not history), so perhaps he should be given a pass for not knowning much about history.
As for the “nation of immigrants” thing – oh this a can of worms.
It all depends where you are talking about….
For example if someone is a local of the Chedder Gorge area (where I have visited recently) most likely your people have been around there for many thousands of years (the body of a person who died nine thousand years ago proving to have very similar DNA to the locals).
On the other hand, if you are a local of Suffolk (and other places) it is most like that you are Anglo Saxon.
If there only were 25 000 of them – they made a jolly good job of wiping out (or driving out) everyone else, in certain parts of the country.