Genocide is as Genocide does...

Related (and brilliant!): http://curmudgeonjoy.blogspot.com/2009/10/how-to-commit-genocide.html

From part four of Alex Kurtagic’s review essay of Channel 4’s Race and Intelligence: Science’s Last Taboo:

Having heard from Jones and Nisbett, Omaar positions the ball before the goal, “It seems to me race is not a useful scientific category at all. A view shared by neuroscientist Steven Rose.” Steven Rose’s visage then fills the screen. He asserts:

The social definitions of race — black, white, for example — don’t match the biological definitions. I mean, if you look at gene frequencies, for example, there are differences, on average, between North Welsh and Southern Welsh people, but you wouldn’t call the North Welsh a different race from the Southern Welsh people. There are differences between different groups of people in Africa, and yet what racist language does is group all Black Africans as if they are one group. That makes no sense in biological terms, in genetic terms at all.

While it is right and proper to point out that there is a mismatch between social and biological definitions of race, the ensuing analogy is preposterous. Saying that it would be wrong to mislabel two subcategories as categories does not discredit categorization: It discredits the person misapplying the labels.

Rose’s claim that “racist language” lumps all kinds of different groups into one is an exact inversion of the truth: The language of race seeks to differentiate groups. Leftist ideologues like Rose are the ones doing the lumping, by saying, for example, that there is no race but the human race, when humans are, in fact, racially diverse.

***

Funny how it goes sometimes. Immediately after reading these words I picked up a book, What is Genocide? by Martin Shaw, and read the following on the competing definitions of genocide:

The answer to the misuse of classification is not, therefore, to abandon classification. We simply cannot do this: classification is an inescapable part of human cognition and social life. Social scientists’ classifications - like those of genocidists - are particular versions of this general human activity. Classification’s danger is always, as Nigel Eltringham suggested, that ‘we “misplace concreteness” and set out to “prove” that our abstract concepts ... really do correspond to reality, rather than being contingent approximations.’ Genocidists go a big step further in trying to enforce their social classifications, making reality correspond at the cost of lives. [p.12]

Rushton: Race and Racism in History

A useful corrective to the oft-heard ‘racism originated during the enlightenment to justify oppression by Europeans of other races’ canard. From J. Philippe Rushton, Race, Evolution, and Behavior: A Life History Perspective (Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick, 1997), chapter five, ‘Race and Racism in History’:

For millennia, racism was not a word, it was a way of life. Ethnic nepotism and prohibitions against hybridization are a matter of historical record. Downgrading the importance of race not only conflicts with people’s evolved tendency to classify and build histories according to putative descent, but ignores the work of biologists studying other species. In his 1758 work, Linnaeus classified four subspecies of Homo sapiens: europaeus, afer, asiatic, and americanus. Most subsequent classifications recognize at least the three major subdivisions considered in this book: Negroid, Caucasoid, and Mongoloid.

Racism

The most fundamental relationship recognized by tribal man is that of blood, or descent; in many cases anyone not made a relative becomes an enemy. Primitive society often seems to be organized on two major principles: that the only effective bond is a bond of blood, and that the purpose of society is to unite for wars of offense and defense. Sometimes tribes take the name ‘men,’ meaning we alone are men, whereas outsiders are something else, often not defined at all. […]

Identification of racial variation in man based on differences in morphology and pigmentation is as old as recorded history. As referenced by Loehlin et al. (1975), in 1200 RC. the Egyptians of the Nineteenth Dynasty painted polychromatic human figures on the walls of their royal tombs depicting peoples of different skin color and hair form: red (Egyptians), yellow (Asiatic and Semitic), black (sub-Saharan African), and white (western and northern European, also shown with blue eyes and blond beards).

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In the Bible, from a single ancestor, the three sons of Noah are mythically divided into the descendents of Shem (Semites), Ham (non-Semitic Mediterraneans, sometimes said to include Negroids), and Japheth (northern peoples, sometimes said to mean Indo-Europeans, or Aryans). The Jews were descended from Shem and were warned by Jehovah to preserve themselves as ‘a special people unto himself, above all the people that are upon the face of the earth’ (Deut. 7: 6). The patriarch Noah condemned Canaan, one of Ham’s sons and his descendents to be ‘a servant of servants ... unto his brethren’ (Gen. 9: 25-27). This verse was used by the Israelites to sanction their subjugation of the Canaanites when they conquered the Promised Land and later by both Christians and Muslims to justify their slavery of blacks.

In the Bible, from a single ancestor, the three sons of Noah are mythically divided into the descendents of Shem (Semites), Ham (non-Semitic Mediterraneans, sometimes said to include Negroids), and Japheth (northern peoples, sometimes said to mean Indo-Europeans, or Aryans). The Jews were descended from Shem and were warned by Jehovah to preserve themselves as ‘a special people unto himself, above all the people that are upon the face of the earth’ (Deut. 7: 6). The patriarch Noah condemned Canaan, one of Ham’s sons and his descendents to be ‘a servant of servants ... unto his brethren’ (Gen. 9: 25-27). This verse was used by the Israelites to sanction their subjugation of the Canaanites when they conquered the Promised Land and later by both Christians and Muslims to justify their slavery of blacks.

Other groups generated their own religious justifications for separateness. The Aryan or Indo-European people who invaded India 2,500 years ago built up a complex caste system to preserve their original physical type. They began to compose the Rig-Veda, a distillation of their religious beliefs. Eventually these were combined in the Upanishads (composed c. 800 RC., first written c. 1300 A.D.) which, among other things, placed strong social barriers against free hybridization. The caste system may have been the most elaborate and effective barrier against the mixing of contiguous ethnic groups that the world has ever known. It continues to this day despite the attempts of governments to dismantle it. Nonetheless, the once fair complexions of the Brahmans have darkened considerably.

At the Battle of Blood River in Zululand, South Africa, on Sunday, December 16, 1838, the White Boer Voortrekkers entered into a covenant with God. If he would deliver them from the overwhelming numbers of Zulu warriors that surrounded them, they would observe the day as an anniversary every year and conduct their lives in accord with the spirit of the covenant. In the battle, 4,000 Zulu soldiers armed with assegai and shields were killed while one member of the small force of Boer soldiers, armed with rifles and a cannon, suffered a cut hand. The Boer nation had become a theocracy.

Caucasoids, of course, are not the only ethnocentrics. It is impossible to understand modem Africa without comprehending the nature of tribal rivalry. For example, The Times Higher Education Supplement (August 30, 1985: 8) reported that the Kenyan government had warned lecturers and administrators at the University of Nairobi to stop awarding higher marks to students of their own tribe.

The character yi, ‘barbarian,’ has been the normal Chinese word applied to all non-Chinese peoples for over 2,000 years. The Chinese had always felt superior to the rest of the world, long before women of the Roman Empire craved the alluring effects of Chinese silk to the point of alarming the Roman Senate about the drain on its treasury. The European traders, priests, and soldiers who came later gave the Chinese no reason to

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doubt their judgment about themselves. The very name that the Chinese called their country, Chung Kuo, the centrally located ‘Middle Kingdom,’ from whence culture radiated outward, was ethnocentric. Today China is convinced that her communism is the only right and true communism, and that her way out of communism is the only right and true way forward.

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Islamic Ethnology

Hostility and hybridization both characterized ethnic relations among those ancient Middle Eastern groups who affected history -- the Egyptians, the Sumerians, the Akkadians, the Israelites, the Hittites, the Persians, and later, the Greeks and the Romans. The nobility and leadership of the varying factions often urged against hybridization. The Bible provides many examples of the Hebrews being enjoined to avoid it. Tribes and nations thought it natural and legitimate to despise, conquer, enslave, and displace each other. Slavery is attested from the very earliest written records among the Sumerians, the Babylonians, and the Egyptians, as well as the Greeks and the Romans. The wall paintings of ancient Egypt, for example, typically depict the gods and pharaohs as larger than life while Negroes and other outlanders were posed as servants and slaves.

In the seventh century A.D. Islam arose among the Arabs. Under them, and later under the Ottoman Turks, a universal civilization was created from the Atlantic Ocean to China, and from Europe to West Africa. The creation through conquest of far-flung empires into which different races and ethnic groups were pulled, especially through the institution of slavery, led to a considerable body of writing, extending over almost a thousand years, about the characteristics of the various groups. Written in Arabic, Persian, and Turkish, discussion focused on the suitability of various races for different tasks and occupations.

Among Arabs, where intense tribal loyalties spilled over into feuding and warfare, there existed the usual ethnocentrism. In his book Race and Slavery in the Middle East, Lewis (1990) examined the common stereotypes that emerged for various national groups. In early Arabic poetry, many nuances of human coloration are described. The Arabs saw their own olive coloring as generally preferable to either the redder color of the Persians, Greeks, and Europeans or to the black and brown peoples of the Horn of Africa and beyond. As Ibn al-Fagih al-Hamadani, an Iraqi Arab author put it around A.D. 902: ‘The Iraqis are neither half-baked dough nor burned crust but between the two’ (cited in Lewis, 1990: 46). One exception was the preference for blondes as concubines; these typically brought the highest prices.

Sa’id al-Andalusi (d. 1070), writing from the then Muslim city of Toledo in Spain, classified ten nations as having achieved distinction in cultivating civilization: the Indians, Persians, Chaldees, Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, Arabs, Jews, Chinese, and Turks. But the northern as well as the southern barbarians were seen as more like beasts than men. It was thought that the Slavs and Bulgars, because of their distance from the sun, had a frigid temperament and dull intelligence. In the South Sa’id thought that the blacks, because of the hot thin air, lacked ‘self control and steadiness of mind and are overcome by fickleness, foolishness, and ignorance’ (cited in Lewis, 1990: 47-48).

Lewis (1990) examined Arabic relations with blacks with whom the Muslims had dealt as slave traders for over 1,000 years. Although the Koran stated there were no superior and inferior races and therefore no bar to racial intermarriage, in practice this pious doctrine was disregarded. Arabs did not want their daughters to marry even hybridized blacks. The Ethiopians were the most

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respected, the ‘Zanj’ (Bantu and other Negroid tribes from East and West Africa south of the Sahara) the least respected, with the Nubians occupying an intermediate position.

The negative views of black people are traced by Lewis (p. 52) to Mas’udi (d. 956) who quoted the Greek physician Galen (A.D. c. 130-c. 200) attributing to the black man ‘a long penis and great merriment. Galen says that merriment dominates the Black man because of his defective brain, whence also the weakness of his intelligence.’ This description is later repeated, with variations.

Most Arab geographers speak of the nudity, paganism, cannibalism, and primitive life of the Africans, particularly of the Bantu-speakers of East Africa alongside Zanzibar, which the Arabs had colonized in 925 A.D. Maqdisi depicted blacks as having the nature ‘of wild animals ... most of them go naked ... the child does not know his father, and they eat people’ (cited in Lewis, 1990: 52). A thirteenth-century Persian writer, Nasir al-Din Tusi, remarks that Negroes differ from animals only in that ‘their two hands are lifted above the ground ... the ape is more teachable and more intelligent’ (cited in Lewis, 1990: 53). In the fourteenth century, Ibn Butlan held a musical rhythm stereotype, suggesting that if an African ‘were to fall from heaven to earth he would beat time as he goes down’ (cited in Lewis, p. 94); another stereotype held that black people may be particularly pious because of their simplicity.

Throughout Islamic literature there is also the image of unbridled, sexual potency in blacks, as related, for example, in stories and illustrations from The Thousand and One Nights. Black females, as well as males, are portrayed with greatly endowed genitalia. One Persian manuscript from 1530 A.D. (Lewis, 1990: 97, and color plate no. 23) contains a pictorial illustration accompanying a poem in which a white woman watches while her black maidservant is able to accommodate to copulation with an ass; when the white woman tries do so, there are disastrous consequences.

In the main, black people are considered destined for menial occupations. Whereas slaves and their offspring from other parts of the empire were able to, and did, rise to the highest levels of office, black slaves did so rarely. Black slaves were seen as unintelligent, a view not held of non-African slaves, nor of those on the empires’ borders, including the European Christians, the Indian Hindus, and the Chinese.

Racial characteristics were often attributed to the environment. Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406) whom Lewis describes as the greatest historian and social thinker of the Middle Ages, devoted a chapter to climatic effects. Even the merriment attributed to black people was considered climatic rather than genetic in origin (Lewis, p. 47). One writer, Jahiz of Basra (ca. 776-869) attributed the widely perceived low intelligence of black people to their existing socioeconomic position and asked his readers whether they would have anticipated the existence of the achievements in Indian science, philosophy, and art from their

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experience of Indian slaves. Since the reply was likely to be no, then the same argument might apply to black lands (cited in Lewis, p. 31).


Reference: Bernard Lewis, Race and Slavery in the Middle East (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990)

Lymington: Nature, the Family, and the Nation

This essay first appeared as chapter one of Alternative to Death: The Relationship Between Soil, Family and Community (London: Faber & Faber, Ltd., 1943), pp. 11–31, and was recently republished in the IHS Press essay collection Distributist Perspectives Volume II.

This biography of Lymington appears in the IHS collection:

Gerard Vernon Wallop (1898-1984), the Viscount Lymington, became the 9th Earl of Portsmouth early in 1943, upon the death of his father, Oliver. He was born in Chicago and raised in the United States, where his parents had a farm near Sheridan, Wyoming. He was educated in England at Farnborough, Winchester College, and Balliol College, Oxford. In 1923 he took over a 150-acre farm on a family estate. As a farmer and landowner he was, according to Dr. Philip Conford, “successful and progressive.”

He served as Conservative MP for Basingstoke (1929–34) and was a leading member of the English Mistery, founded in 1931 by William Sanderson, before splitting with him in 1937 to form the back-to-the-land “English Array.” The Array’s journal was the Quarterly Gazette, and the movement was dedicated to, as Lymington put it, the regeneration of the English stock and soil; opposition to alien corruption, internationalism, and usury; craftsmanship and domestic responsibility; and the employment of organic agricultural methods to replenish the soil and produce healthy food. While leading the Array, he founded an additional journal, the New Pioneer, whereupon he collaborated with John Warburton Beckett (an ex-socialist MP), A. K. Chesterton, Anthony Ludovici, Philip Mairet and others; he was also its editor from 1938 to 1940.

In the face of the increasing likelihood of war in Europe, he founded (also in 1938) the British Council Against European Commitments, while Array activities ceased in 1940. He also joined the British People’s Party, and collaborated in the foundation, with Rolf Gardiner, of the Kinship in Husbandry – of which he was, with Gardiner, effectively the heart. It was an informal but influential alliance of ruralists, whose aim was, according to Drs. Richard Moore-Colyer and Conford, to restore the English yeomanry, establish local and regional self-sufficiency, resurrect the craft tradition, and repopulate the English countryside. The group included as members other figures such as H. J. Massingham, Philip Mairet, and Adrian Bell, and it influenced other organicist and ruralist organizations such as the Rural Reconstruction Association of A. J. Penty and Montague Fordham and the well-known Soil Association. He was also a member of the Council for Church and Countryside, founded by David Peck and Reverend Patrick McLaughlin.

His books include Horn, Hoof and Corn, Ich Dien: The Tory Path, Famine in England (at the time a Sunday Times “book of the month”), Alternative to Death, and A Knot of Roots, his 1965 autobiography. He contributed to Massingham’s 1945 anthology The Natural Order and wrote for John Middleton Murry’s paper, The Adelphi. After the war he settled in Kenya, where he was eventually to own about ten thousand acres of land, and where he would remain for about 25 years. He served there as member of the Board of Agriculture, chairman and later president of the Electors’ Union, and member for agriculture of the Legislative Assembly, which latter post he maintained for three and a half years, beginning in 1957. In 1965 he was invited by Jomo Kenyatta to become a special advisor to the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries, and Food. He held the post until 1976, when he suffered a stroke and returned to England. Speaking of the Lymington legacy, Conford notes that he was “crucially important in development of the organic movement.”

Nature, the Family, and the Nation
by Viscount Lymington

When McCarrison discovered that rats fed on the equivalent diet of many of our city dwellers grew diseased, nervous, treacherous, quarrelsome, and cannibalistic, but that similar rats fed on the fresher, whole, simple diet of some Indian hill tribes were fertile, gentle, and healthy, he thumbed a long nose at the last two centuries of “progress.” His experiment diagnosed one root cause rather than the symptom of a sick world. Fresh food from well-tilled land is the basis of physical health, for earth is the matrix and the grave of our physical existence. Body, mind, and spirit in our span on the earth are one whole; thus, if we neglect the matrix, the grave alone remains the “fine and private (final) place.”

History may resound to the tramp of armed men and the liberal historians may put battles down to economics and a lust for freedom: that is, licence to pursue economic gain.

But the fundamental history of civilization is the history of the soil The understanding of this is vital to all peoples who stand at the gateway of death. The whole white civilization stands there today. In any civilization there comes a moment when, if it is to continue, civilization must become ruralization. All its economics, all its amenities, its armies, and its splendour depend on one thing: the reverent use of its soil. The writing on the wall is there; we are being weighed in the balance and found wanting – in ruralization.

The writing is scrawled in erosion across the world. At present it goes almost unheeded; so we must return to history for proof of our present follies. Only in rare and fortunate cases does the jungle triumph and do vines choke the city walls while monkeys chatter in the roofless courts of kings. Mostly the sand and the silence drift across the crumbled splendour of man’s too careless endeavours. In reasons which caused the ruins of Gobi and Sahara and the buried cities of Arabia we have more to learn for human survival than in all the chemistry, plumbing, and germ theories of today. The desert has succeeded to the cities of the past because, being cities, they bred a race which forgot the soil on which it fed. Today there are well-schooled but poorly educated children in English industrial areas who cannot believe that milk comes from the cow, and not the tin. These children had their counterparts in Rome and Nineveh.

The background of human wisdom is the ever present consciousness that the soil nourishes the plant, the plant the animal, and plant and animal the human being. Thus, the city is built from the produce of the soil. When there are too many in the city for the soil, the soil and the city perish together, as a rabbit warren is eaten bare and then poisoned by the rabbits. As soon as the soil is made the servant of the city, and not the master partner in the civilization, the desert begins. Even useless wars and gigantic wastes like the burning forests only serve to underline men’s madness in forgetting their own source of life: Quem deus perdere vult, prius dementat.

Man, insofar as he is an animal, is bound to the soil, however heaven-born he thinks himself. When he enters the city he cuts himself off from one side of his own cosmic nature, and even his fertility fails so that he has to be constantly renewed from the country stock. But the longer he remains urban bred, the more his nature is divorced from the background of human wisdom. As he develops the habits of the parasite, be he lawyer or money-changer, scribe, broker or huckster, he is fastened ever more heavily on the servant of the soil, who sinks beneath his weight. The peasant thus exploited either moves to the city to become a parasite, or else, to live, exploits the soil itself, and so with gradually increasing speed destroys his own and the parasite’s source of livelihood. First the soil is exhausted of its human stock, and then of its own life-giving qualities. For many years the human exhaustion can go on, but once the exhaustion of the soil’s own stores of fertility sets in, the town gives way to desert.

The fate of the Roman Empire should be our lesson. It is so curiously paralleled today: A hardy peasant stock subdues a fertile peninsula. It is a stock full of the sturdy characteristics of those who live for the soil. War kills off some of the best of that stock. War also brings opportunities to the natural parasites who congregate in the city while the battle rages outside. Already the seeds of decay are sown. Being a peninsula the sea is a natural highway leading to Empire, and above all, to trade. Trade leads to usury, and usury is to demand that money grows at the expense of living growth.

Trade for its own sake means more urban population, and successful war means an abundance of slaves. The slaves lower the market value of the free peasant’s hard-won fruits of his labour. The peasant is displaced, drifting workless to the town. The latifundia, the large-scaled slave-worked farm, is made possible by the huge fortunes annexed through war or trade. The city population grows as the material wealth increases; conquests of corn-growing land in Africa and elsewhere are exploited by money-lenders to bring food to the city’s workless, who must have bread and circuses; for if they are not drugged by uncreative amusement they are just as likely to turn against their Emperors as if they are not fed. The latifundia in Italy must be worked harder and harder to compete with the grain ships. All that is best in the old Empire goes to the edges where there is still a man’s work to be done, and the shame of corruption at the heart is deadened by distance. Food and amusements are imported and the best go out to the perimeters to prop up a worm-ridden empire. Throughout the corruption gets worse because of the foreign customs and foreign purveyors of vices and titillating innovations which pour in to keep the capital amused, or in the form of foreign slaves to keep the now crossbred parasites in idleness. The Barbarian sweeps over the old barriers and the dark ages succeed. But it is not the barbarian who has broken Rome, it is the neglect of the soil and its servants. The once fertile granary of Africa from the Atlas to Cyrene is a desert, and Italy is stripped bare.

Transpose this lesson to our own times: for latifundia and slaves read “international capitalism and mass production,” for Africa read “the dust-bowl of America,” for bread and circuses read “the dole, Hollywood, and the headline press.” The parallel in the waste of land and the degradation of a fine yeoman stock is complete.

Reports and commissions, invention and finance will not help us if we do not remember this lesson and seek a salvation which can make integrate men; that is beings integrated within themselves and living in harmony with the whole of their environment.

I cannot believe that the Golden Age is a mere myth of superstitious ancients, or the Utopian figment of self-deceived idealists. I believe it to be a race memory, well-nigh universal of times when peoples in differing places had achieved a way of living in partnership and harmony with Nature. They possessed the secret, almost perfect, of adaptation to their environment, so that health, gentleness, beauty and strength were the rule and not the exception. That is the adaptation expressed in the Book of Job “when the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy” – man conscious of his relationship to God and his unity with creation. The memory was nearer to the most ancient Egyptians and the earlier Greeks, even to the Aztecs, than to ourselves. Sometimes we may believe that there is more than a trace surviving still, when we read of the Hunzas of northern India living among the eaves of the world, or remember what Tahiti must have been before it was despoiled.

Even the story of Eden is a race memory of natural harmony and adaptation broken into by adding knowledge which could not be assimilated into wisdom. So far in this century, if we are honest with ourselves, we see that we have scientific knowledge but not the wisdom to use the knowledge to save us from shattered bodies and empty souls. We calculate our children with contraceptives but omit to make the wholeness of environment and love which is home. We are full of medical knowledge without health; scientific exploitation of the soil without the love and care, experience, and foresight to know that what we take we must return. The philosopher and the seer are at a discount, when they are most needed.

Self-knowledge must drive us to ask in humility: how may we regain a harmony with Nature* – with the ordering of life unspoiled by man’s quick-tempered and unmeditative arrogance; with a pattern of life that is essentially religious, sometimes in despite of religions? Even a cursory review of legends of the Golden Age, and observation of extant survivals or historic records of healthier, fuller, and calmer ways of living, show that care for the soil and ordering of life have been fused in an almost unconscious radiance of love. Happiness born of exuberant health, nurtured by patient adherence to the common purposes are its hallmarks.

[* This does not mean returning to a state of Nature. Man has altered Nature for too many thousands of years for this to be possible, were it even desirable. But it does mean that we should reach a conscious understanding of our nature, instincts, and biological make-up in relation to the soil, plant, and animal life with which, and by means of which, we have to live, and that we may yet have to learn the relationship of all these matters with the solar system.]

Again and again we find the story of descent from some human being transcendent in wisdom and health, transmitting his qualities to family or tribe, by whom order and tradition were established. It would be fair to say that in nearly every case one gets evidence of intense respect for the soil and its conservation, based upon the continuing close-bred life of the family. There is evidence also that in physical matters these happier human beings had not lost their instinct of physical adaptation to the order of Nature which may be found from the newts to the felidi.

On the reverse picture one gets evidence that civilization broke down because it disregarded the right use of the soil, and disintegrated because it had too much knowledge, but had lost its wisdom. We know that half the deserts of the world are monuments to human folly. The popular study of anthropology, collated with a biological knowledge of medicine and modes of agriculture, leaves us grounds for supposing that the debased savage and the cannibal were not simply laggards in the supposed race of evolution, but the relics of peoples who have taken the wrong turning earlier than ourselves. It is not difficult now to doubt the turning which our technocratic material civilization has taken in the last three hundred years. We can begin to understand how living has been divided from life, and body from spirit. When man is fragmentary and no longer integrated, it is no wonder in the endless crisis of our own disordering that men snatch at tendered panaceas – vitamin pills for the body and quack religions for the soul. We are so used to a readymade world that many ask for a ready-made mass religion to salve their souls and even to comfort their bodies. It is only the over-weening materialist who salve their souls and even to comfort their bodies. It is only the over-weening materialist who could flatly deny that by their approach to God the great mystics have left the human race in their debt. It is perhaps true that we need the influence of these seekers today, and that the world is parched for lack of striving after the ultimate wholeness which is assimilation into Being beyond our diurnal comprehension. But, although we may acknowledge, we cannot fulfil the need for such persons as we would apply an engineering technique to a new invention.

However, hunger for unfulfilled spiritual leadership and authority, for what we fondly believe is a short cut, should not leave us without either the energy or the faith to see that workaday solutions can be achieved, with the strength of purpose to work for these ends, and discipline to adhere to the values which shape them. Perhaps then, and only then, will the revived spiritual authority come to men of our day.

If we are sufficiently humble we should understand that the instinct of right living has been overlaid just as we have cast away the traditions which those instincts made.

On the other hand, however disordered our knowledge, however superficial our intellectual pride, we can still, with the power of reason and co-ordination of knowledge reproduce wisdom, and again give the best of our instinct the chance to assert itself for enduring ends. Reason, which does not apply its power for achieving harmony with Nature, or ally itself to liberating and guiding human instinct, can only plan Utopias and achieve Genevas.

The chapters which follow in this book are a tentative effort to use knowledge and experience in trying to point out on practical lines some, but by no means all, of the methods which could first restore to no inconsiderable number of the English, integrity of health for body and mind, in alliance with, rather than in opposition to, Nature. My hope and belief is that these methods might make such a nucleus of sound men and women that the example and influence would grow until it embraced the whole. Therefore, before proceeding to indicate solutions, I shall have to establish the principles upon which they are to be based, and incidentally at times to refute established errors, the virtues of which are taken for granted.

I have based this book primarily on the soil; on the family; on responsibility; and the development of instinctive excellence of craft and leadership. To believe that it is possible to found and maintain a great civilization without first using, maintaining, and even enriching its soil is to court disaster – disaster due to insecurity, subnormal health, and repressed instinct. The soil is the limiting factor. It is the liberator or inhibiter of inheritance according to its quality. Breed counts, but it cannot function properly on bad or ill-used soil; only when we cherish the sources of life can sound blood fulfil its potent destiny.

If, for instance, one were to feed a well-bred race-horse on the diet of a Neapolitan cab-horse, it is unlikely that one would even get a superior cab-horse; rather an ill-tempered, illadapted misfit in the shafts. The nature of the soil means more than the quality of food: it affects the water we drink, the air we breathe, and the quality of the sunshine. Ill-used soil can mean bad water and unhealthy air. Science might alleviate, but could not cure these fundamental effects.

The soil constitutes our environment in the truest sense; it courses through our blood, moulds our muscle and builds our bones. It even influences our thought and characterizes our actions. I believe that we should have the humility to acknowledge that character of the soil, rather than our own convenient predilections, should determine the nature of our customs and institutions. Therefore, it should determine even the size of the population which it carries. It is an error to consider that if we could guarantee the permanent security of imports and food for all from overseas, it would bring us either health or spiritual fulfilment.

God who ordered Nature must have clearly intended that the food we eat should be as fresh as possible; just as it was intended that the wastes from that food should go back to the soil whence it comes. These are the two most obvious biological reasons why the nature of the soil should determine our institutions. There are, however, spiritual reasons as well. When men cannot see cause and effect, they forget the relationship between the two. Reverence for the soil of far countries can never be the same as reverence for the particular plot which a man may cultivate himself. Therefore, men will not care until it is too late, if the soil is abused, when they eat imported foodstuffs. This is also a most cogent argument against great cities, since the metropolitan townsman forgets that the countryside is the source of life, rather than his playground.

The soil itself is the source of responsibility in craftsmanship. It is easier to escape the consequences of bad material and scamped workmanship in mass production than in dealing with Nature. Crop and animal alike will give the lie to the scrimshanker or the second-rate, but fine workmanship and generous care receive their accolade from life. Nor can the husbandman tolerate faulty tools, however simple they may be, and so he spreads the craftsman’s instinct far wider than himself. The craftsman’s instinct is the foundation of culture, since it satisfies needs which must otherwise explode in barbarism. Head-hunter and gangster are substitutes for true culture. To deny the creative instinct is to enlarge the restless forces of destruction.

While the soil provides our environment, internal as well as external, it forces us to use and not abuse the instinct which makes life continue. The soil decrees the unit of the family; since, except for the infant, each member fits into his or her place for livelihood. Even the children find work which is at the same time play and school for future responsibility in the household and the field. Later, as eyes grow dim, or muscles slacken, a niche of usefulness remains. If the family is the natural unit for the organization of the husbandman, his work should teach him the importance of his function as a procreator. It is hardly an accident that with tremendous urban growth the denial of breeding values is always present.

Those reared only on bread and circuses may claim the more unreal responsibility of a vote, but they can and do lose the tradition of trusteeship and the instinct of sound perpetuation. The instinct to choose a lifelong partner and home-maker with health and stamina, both physical and spiritual, is warped into attraction which mistakes a spurious sex appeal for true vitality, and the mutual capacity to enjoy tinsel amusements with the character to share life. They become the mob rushing to destruction. Only half-conscious that they have lost the status of life, they clamour against the truth which whispers that “the fault lies not in our stars, but in ourselves.” Uncertain of themselves they both deny and hate inherent superiority.

The farmer knows full well the importance of environment, and he does not belittle it. But he knows that without sound stock and type he will not flourish. He will not willingly or wittingly sow bad seed or use bad sires. When people are in true harmony with Nature there is least often unsound mating among human beings. Men and women learn instinctively to choose a good type for each other. This is of supreme importance among ourselves in Great Britain where the Industrial Revolution has gone far to smother such sound instinct, and where the scientist and priest have been too prone to gratify the delusions of the mob with half-truths.

The results of our false values in suicidal economics has meant that the sound in every walk of life have had an increasing burden thrust upon them to support the wreckage of the system. The State has dealt meanly with its servants in Army, Navy, or Imperial Civil Services. The devoted men who brought order and justice to, and fought famine and disease in India and elsewhere have not been able to perpetuate their kind. They had to choose between serving a great purpose or bringing up a family large enough to carry on their blood. We have forgotten that taxation for social services, or repayment of the usurer must ultimately fall upon the shoulders of the primary producer. Taxation has fallen more hardly upon the responsible individual than the exploiter and speculator. Social maintenance has supported in far too many cases the incompetent at the expense of the better workman who tries to succour his family with his efforts, unaided by the State. The unwholesome and the feckless have been helped to flourish. This does not mean that we should leave the hindmost to the devil, but that our social efforts should have been based on values which should first aim at the survival of the best in mind and body.

Pierre L. van den Berghe: Does race matter?

From Pierre L. van den Berghe, ‘Does race matter?’ : Nations and Nationalism, I: 3 (1995), 359-68

Abstract: This essay contends that behaviour can only be understood within an evolutionary framework that gives equal weight to genes and environment. Our cultural environment itself evolved, in part through natural selection of genes and in part through other mechanisms. Racism, however, involves association of genetically caused differences in physical appearance with characteristics to which they are wholly unrelated. Yet this association has a biological cause: fitness maximisation through nepotism. This association, therefore, has an effect upon the life chances and reproductive success of genetically different groups and, therefore, upon the process of human evolution.

Do social races have any biological underpinning?

At a trivial level, the answer to that question is an obvious 'yes'. A social race is defined as a group sharing physical (as distinguished from cultural) attri­butes. But must there be such a linkage? Do physical differences between groups always lead to social differences? More generally, do physical pheno­types always matter socially? And, if so, why?

My theory, first stated a decade-and-a-half-ago, is very simple. All social organisms are biologically programmed to be nepotistic, i.e. to behave favourably (or 'altruistically') to others in proportion to their real or perceived degree of common ancestry. Social organisms evolved to be nepotistic because altruistic investment in unrelated organisms is biologically wasted and therefore could not evolve, as Darwin clearly saw well over a century ago. The evidence, both human and non-human, for rampant nepotism is over­whelming. The bibliography on humans alone now runs into several hundred titles. Favouring kin among humans is sometimes conscious, sometimes unconscious, and biologically, it does not matter which. But, consciously or unconsciously, we must be able to discriminate according to degree of biological relationship to ourselves, if our beneficence to others is to increase our inclusive fitness.

For the most fundamental mammalian social tie, the mother-infant one, a simple mechanism is typically present: identification and imprinting shortly after birth by sight, sound, olfaction or a combination of these. Experimental switching of neonates has demonstrated these simple recognition mechan­isms in many mammalian species. But often, and certainly for humans, the situation is much more complex. More than most (perhaps all) other organ­isms, humans recognise and make fine gradations of kinship, and dispense their largesse or their nastiness accordingly.

Being intelligent and opportunistic animals, humans use all possible clues of relatedness, with a preference for the ones that are reliable, quick and cheap. Since it pays, in fitness maximisation terms, to be a fine-tuned dis­criminator of kinship in a wide range of situations involving hundreds or even thousands of relationships, any readily identifiable, unfalsifiable marker of probable common ancestry will be used. Specification of a few simple proper­ties of the marker itself, of the social circumstances of the individual, and of the ecological conditions of the social encounter can lead one to good behavioural predictions. For example, it can be predicted that, among social mammals with heavy biparental investment in offspring, parenthood will be 'tested' by males more than by females, because paternity is exposed to much more uncertainty than maternity. Mothers know their babies are theirs; fathers cannot be so sure, and therefore will look much more for physical resemblance, especially for signature-like rare characteristics such as a mole on the nose. Women concerned with paternal investment in their offspring, on the other hand, can be expected to stress the physical resemblance of their babies to their mates more than to themselves. 'Isn't he his father's spitting image?'

Let us now widen the focus from kinship in the narrow sense, to that form of extended kinship we call race or ethnicity. Both racial and ethnic groups are socially defined by real or putative common descent, and the distinction between the two types of groups is merely in the relative salience of biolo­gical or cultural markers of membership. My contention is that, in both cases, the social concern is with common biological descent, even when the markers are primarily cultural.

There are three main objections to my formulation of ethnocentrism and racism as extended forms of biologically rooted nepotism.

(1) The common descent of ethnic groups is often a myth, not a biological reality. Therefore, my argument is invalid. To which I reply: A myth, to be effective, has to be believed, and a myth of ethnicity will only be believed if members of an ethnic group are sufficiently alike in physical appearance and culture, and have lived together and intermarried for a sufficient period (at a minimum three or four generations) for the myth to have developed a substantial measure of biological truth. The Emperor ofjapan can effectively claim to be the father of the Japanese nation in a way that Queen Victoria could never validate her claim as mother ofIndia. Ethnicity or race cannot be invented or imagined out of nothing. It can be manipulated, used, exploited, stressed, fused or subdivided, but it must correlate With a pre-existing popula­tion bound by preferential endogamy and a common historical experience. Ethnicity is both primordial and instrumental.

(2) If ethnicity and race are both rooted in the biology of nepotism, why is it that most ethnic groups stress cultural markers of membership rather than heritable physical ones? The answer here is quite simple: because most ethnic groups seek to differentiate themselves from their immediate neighbours in situations where some short-distance migration and intermarriage take place. Therefore, most ethnic groups look so much like their neighbours that they must rely on cultural markers of distinction. The proof of the biological pudding is that, where physical, genetic markers do a reliable job of differ­entiating between groups, they are used. In fact, the conditions under which racial groups do emerge are quite predictable: they appear after long-distance migration of sizeable groups across visible genetic clines: slavery, colonialism, indenture, voluntary migration, military conquest are so many examples, especially across large geographical barriers such as oceans or deserts. And racial groups can only survive as long as interbreeding remains relatively infrequent. Three or four generations of 25 per cent or more exogamy typically erode both racial and ethnic boundaries, and lead to the formation of new ethnic groups. Both race and ethnicity are not immutable, but their mutability is a function of exogamy over several generations.

(3) If biological nepotism is extended to large groups, which, under modern conditions, often comprise millions of individuals, has not the con­cept been diluted to the point of meaninglessness, and reduced to a mere analogy?

Of course, the more distant the biological relationship between two individuals, the more diluted the benefits of nepotism become. Indeed, the biological model predicts that the preference is proportional to the degree of relationship. Relatedness is relative. Ego is at the core of a set of concentric circles defining declining degrees of relationship: nuclear family, extended family, lineage, clan, dialect group, sub ethnicity, nation. These levels of relatedness are imbedded into one another. Circumstances and interests will determine the level of solidarity which is activated at any given place and time, in a classical fission-and-fusion scheme such as British anthropologists have described for African segmentary lineage societies. But the principle of nepotism, however diluted, suffuses all levels, and there is no a priori reason why nepotistic discrimination should stop at any particular point, unless it can be displaced by a superior strategy of fitness maximisation. Brothers do murder each other, but not gratuitously and not as easily as strangers. When they do, there is usually a big payoff, such as a throne, an inheritance or a harem. To affirm the operation of nepotism, even in large groups, is not to deny the operation of other principles of cooperative behaviour (such as class solidarity), or fitness maximisation (such as deceit and treachery). The size of the group dilutes the effectiveness of solidary behaviour whatever the base of solidarity, but not more so for ethnic groups than for other social groups such as classes, corporations, clubs or army units, and perhaps even less. Ethnic and racial groups can be politically mobilised, even on a huge scale, with greater ease and rapidity, than other social groups, especially under external threat from an enemy who is himself defined in ethnic or racial terms.

Does the biology of social race explain the etiology of racism in contemporary societies?

Better put, does my theory of the biological genesis of social race predict and explain contemporary racism better than competing theories? The answer, I think, is yes, not because it supplants other theories, but because it comple­ments them at a higher level of theoretical generality. It provides a predictive scheme of when, where and why racism can be expected to wax and wane, on a world-wide basis, without having to invoke any special cultural, psycholo­gical or historical causes.

Racism, defined as discriminatory behaviour based on inherited physical appearance, can be expected to arise whenever variance in inherited physical appearance is greater between groups than within groups. This is a relatively rare event, except when two or more hitherto isolated populations migrate across large geographical obstacles. It is even rarer for intergroup variance to remain greater than intragroup variance for long, because contact generally brings about interbreeding. So, racism will appear after long-distance migra­tion, but will only persist as long as social barriers to exogamy prevent intermixture, and thus the recreation of a more typical situation where intragroup genetic diversity exceeds intergroup differences. Racism cannot be sustained long if racial membership cuts across the microkinship of the family. Precisely because social race is an extension of the principle of nepot­ism, it cannot long survive interbreeding. Even the rare exceptions, such as relations between white and brown Afrikaners in South Africa, confirm the rule: the 'races' only survived the interbreeding of slavery because of the reimposition of an endogamous caste system after slavery.

Having specified the objective conditions which lead to the rise and the decline of racism, does it follow that racism will inevitably accompany these conditions? Unfortunately, I think the answer is, again, affirmative. Why? Because we are not only selfish maximisers, but intelligently opportunistic ones. Sociality is synonymous with discrimination. Only a fool behaves indiscriminately towards all. We must constantly decide when to be nice or nasty, trusting or suspicious. In the last analysis, we have only two bases for doing so: reciprocity and nepotism. Reciprocity is tricky, unstable, open to cheating, and often dependent on costly information or past experience. It only works between individuals who know one another well and who expect to continue interacting in a mutually beneficial way without deceit or coer­cion. For nepotism to yield its genetic reward, the only requirement is correct assessment of relatedness. It works best if the cost of that assessment is minimised, that is, if the assessment is reliable, easy and fast.

These simple principles enable us to predict which markers of group membership will be used under what conditions. Where neighbouring groups look alike physically, cultural markers do a better job of assessing group membership than genetic traits. Not all cultural markers are equally good. The beret may be a symbol of Basque ethnicity, but it is not reliable. Indeed, it has been usurped by millions of Frenchmen, Spaniards and others. Military uniforms are used for ready recognition of friend and foe from a distance, but they too are open to cheating. That is why costume is frequently a symbol of ethnicity, but never a test of it. Facial scarification is much more reliable than dress because it cannot easily be undone. Cultural markers of ethnicity which permanently change physical appearance are common: cir­cumcision, tooth filing, tattoos and so on. Language is also a common marker. Even though it is strictly cultural, it is learned early in life and difficult to 'fake' in adulthood, because few people retain the ability to mimic the phonetics of a language learned after puberty. Until recent migrations, some­one who spoke your dialect without a foreign accent was most likely to be a native fellow ethnic. But the drawback of language as a marker is that, though reliable, it is fairly slow. You have to ask questions before you shoot, and sometimes you cannot afford the delay.

Let us turn to biological markers. They only work between groups that look quite different. Between Zulus and Boers in South Africa, they worked with complete efficacy: you could shoot at 500 metres and never make a mistake. Norwegians and Swedes, on the other hand, could never be racists towards one another, even if they wanted to. They have to listen to one another before they can tell who is who. The Nazis tried to be racists with Jews but their biological markers worked with perhaps 10 to 15 per cent reliability. In practice, they used mostly cultural markers: circumcision, syna­gogue attendance, the Star of David, denunciations, surnames, etc. Nazi racial theory ludicrously outstripped the reality of genetic differences. They actually had a very difficult time picking out Jews from their Gentile neigh­bours, especially in the assimilated Jewry of Western Europe.

Physical markers, in short, only 'work' under the limiting and rare condi­tion of genetic heterozygosity being greater between groups than within. If such a condition is present, however, does it follow that racism is inevitable? Not by a long shot, because most genotypic differences are phenotypically hidden by recessivity or are so cryptic as to be useless for purposes of quick and easy group membership ascription. Blood types, for instance, must be tested by antigens from a blood sample, and the test is slow and costly enough that soldiers in combat are culturally tagged (or, in the case of the SS in Nazi Germany, even tattooed) for their genotype.

In practice, then, only a few inherited phenotypes are culturally utilised to form social races, and they are chosen, not for their behavioural significance, but simply for their visibility. Skin pigmentation is the most widespread because it is the most visible from the greatest distance and subject to only a limited range of environmental variation. (The genetics of skin colour are still poorly understood and are probably under the control of four to six different loci.) Facial features (notably eye, lip and nose shape), hair texture and physical stature are also used where they are diacritic. For example, in Rwanda and Burundi where the Hutu- Tutsi- Twa distinction is marked by large group differences in height, stature is widely used as a criterion. It works better in Rwanda where a rigid caste system hindered interbreeding, than in the more fluid social structure of Burundi, but, in both cases, the physical distinction was used as a quick and dirty basis for sweeping genocidal action (against the Tutsi in Rwanda, against the Hutu in Burundi). A particularly gruesome atrocity against the Tutsi in Rwanda was to amputate them at the knee to cut them down to size.

This double condition of greater inter- than intragroup heterozygosity and high phenotypic visibility predicts when, where and why physical phenotypes get transmuted into social races. The reason why racism became the great pandemic of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries was simply the sudden acceleration of large-scale, long-distance migration across wide genetic clines. The social consequences were enormous and noxious because racial distinc­tions are peculiarly invidious and immutable, well beyond cultural distinc­tions. All group distinctions between in-group and out-group are designed to exclude potential competitors from competition for scarce resources, but racial distinctions are especially nasty because they are almost totally beyond individual control. You can learn a language, convert to a religion, get circumcised or scarified, adopt a dress style, but you cannot become tall or white.

In practice, social race is always a social stigma for the subordinate group, and all attempts to pretend otherwise have been singularly unsuccessful. Pragmatically, in terms of policy, it means that institutionalisation of racial categories, however innocuous or even benevolent it may appear, is fre­quently noxious in its consequences. I am thinking of such measures as racial questions on censuses, race-based affirmative action and similar measures, which have generally had the effect of reinforcing stigmatised racial distinc­tions.

Conclusion

Let us now close the circle on the relationship between genes and behaviour. I have repeatedly stressed that behaviour, human and non-human alike, can only be understood within an evolutionary framework that gives equal weight to genes and environment acting in concert. For humans, culture is, of course, a large part of the social environment of our species. A genetic effect on behaviour can be direct and result from natural selection, even when it leads to a reduction in fitness (e.g. overeating when food is available, leading to obesity in affluent societies, but providing valuable caloric storage in unstable hunting and gathering economies characterised by cycles of feast and famine; or the craving for drugs which mimic the pleasurable sensations of natural enzymes).

The case of racism, however, is different. The linkage between genes and behaviour is clear, but it did not evolve by natural selection. Racism is conceivably a case of culture 'highjacking' genes which were selected for different ends (e.g. skin pigmentation regulating exposure to sun radiation in different latitudes), and making them serve a totally different social agenda. Yet, that social agenda itself had an underlying biological programme: fitness maximisation through nepotism. Finally, but not less importantly, that social agenda itself had an enormous feedback effect on the life chances of different groups, on their reproductive success, and therefore, in the final analysis, on the course of human evolution itself. We are only in the infancy of understanding the co-evolution of genes and culture, but understand it we must if we are to make sense of our behaviour, especially behaviour, such as racism, which does not seem to make sense.

MSM perspectives

I do my best to avoid the mainstream media but occasionally check in to see what they’re up to.

In the middle of last night’s Newsnight was an extended feature on a Black African immigrant in Russia running for mayor in the small country town he now lives in. The reporter began by describing the town, ‘conservative, rural, dull’ (and this was said with real venom - do view the link), before introducing the watermelon salesman (I kid you not) who was bringing some much needed vibrancy to this awful place. It was never explained why, if the place is so miserable, this African chose to go and live there in the first place. This became especially puzzling when the remainder of the report was given to describing how much hostility Africans and other immigrants in Russia endure, the would-be mayor even finding it necessary to hire a full-time bodyguard. Predictable comparisons with America and Obama followed, the theme being that as regards race Russia has a long way to go to catch up with its old ‘Cold War’ foe. So a silver lining, then.

Later I caught the last few minutes of a ‘Hardtalk’ interview with filmmaker Tom Hooper discussing a movie he has in the can about Nelson Mandela. Interviewer Stephen Sackur wondered how Hooper had approached the material given that, quote: ‘Mandela is the closest thing we have to a living saint.’ I didn’t hear the answer for laughing.

Maybe the MSM isn’t so bad after all.

The Joy of Reading

One of the pleasures of my life is browsing in bookshops, especially second-hand bookshops where the chance of surprise delights is highest. There is an extra anticipation and pleasure in the exercise since I became a political rebel: in older books you often find perspectives and language forbidden to today’s authors. On Saturday I found a book whose title and jacket-blurb provide an example (see below), it was published in 1978, the same year this statement appeared in The Times:

We, as library workers, agree that it is a major function of librarianship actively to combat racism and fascism and we advocate the following: that stock selection for libraries should be guided by anti-racist and anti-fascist principles. That staff recruitment should reflect a similar policy. That local authority buildings should not be used for racist or fascist organisations.

-- ‘Librarians against Racism and Fascism’ quoted in The Times, 30 May 1978.

I daresay the purchasing and repository power of libraries contributed little to the survival of the book I picked up on Saturday. Still, it did survive for me to buy it and I had to buy it just to have proof of the author’s bibliography - it’s hard to believe books with such titles were published in the 1970s. From the jacket:

The Return: Homecoming of a Negro from Eton by Dillibe Onyeama

This is a gripping account of a cultural shock. The author had the rare privilege of being one of the first Africans to be educated at Britain’s exclusive public school Eton College, the result being his resoundingly successful Nigger at Eton.

After eighteen years of ‘Anglicisation’ since he first came to Britain in 1959 aged eight, he visits his home Nigeria, reputed to be Black Africa’s most progressive nation and, by virtue of its oil, a potential super-power and one of the world’s wealthiest countries.

But Onyeama is shocked to discover that the glamorous pictures painted of his country by the Western media are totally false and merely subtle attempts to protect Western investments in the vast nation. He is horrified to find his home in a state of chaos and retrogression.

Here, in this brief but comprehensive story of his experiences, he paints a vivid and concise picture of poverty, deprivation, callousness, corruption, primitive existence, slavery, fear, suspicion and jealousy on a scale witnessed in very few countries in the world.

In his attempts to explain this tragic state of affairs, he offers remedies to thwart the very real threat of communism facing the country.

He reveals, too, that he is one of ‘thousands’ of relations descended from a Chief said to have had fifty wives and seventy-eight children. He tells how he coped with the widespread jealousy of his privileged circumstances, the intrusive curiosity of many of his folks, the impossible expectations they imposed on him.

He explains, also, what prompted him to take a white wife in the face of widespread opposition from his relatives, he tells what occurs when he took his wife home and how she adapted to the many primitive habits and customs of his underprivileged countrymen.

This is the fascinating story of one educated African’s cultural dilemma in a major African nation of today.

By the same author

Nigger at Eton

John Bull’s Nigger

Sex is a Nigger’s Game

The Book of Black Man’s Humour

I’m the Greatest: The Wit and Humour of Muhammad Ali

Juju

and

The Secret Society

****

Innocent days.

Media rejoice as White people lose out to ‘vibrant’ import…

In a post about British Telecom’s anti-White recruitment policies I commented on the familiar ritual of ‘progress’ being measured by the extent to which White people have been removed from power and generally displaced by non-Whites. The rather surprising victory of Rachel Christie in the Miss England beauty contest offered an excuse for media rejoicing about just such White displacement: Christie is Black.

I won Miss England to prove being black is NEVER an excuse for failure
First Black Miss England crowned
Victory for Linford Christie's niece as she becomes first black Miss England
100m star Christie's niece crowned first black Miss England
Linford Christie's niece is first black Miss England

ITN news reported the story like all others with the new Miss England’s race being the primary issue and the factor which made this an especially positive news story. Its reporter claimed that Christie’s non-Whiteness made her a ‘thoroughly modern beauty queen’ - non-Whiteness as contemporary value-in-itself, rarely is it stated so openly. The not-so subtle implication being that the White phenotype is passé and that Whites who would have the beautiful kids of the future should breed out.

[On a side note, the other prominent element in the coverage was Christie’s famous uncle, retired sprinter Linford Christie. Even though the retired sprinter is a disgraced drug cheat the media continue to speak of him respectfully and I take this to be related to race also. So few Blacks prove worthy of role-model status, and their ‘community’ is apparently so in need of the few positive role-models that exist that Christie manages to avoid the negative media treatment a White drugs cheat would deservedly receive.]

****

Update: Hints of political motives behind Miss Christie’s otherwise baffling victory:

Organisers defend Miss England vote
(UKPA)

The organisers of the Miss England contest have defended the competition after it emerged that the winner, the niece of Olympic gold medal-winning sprinter Linford Christie, won with only nine votes from the public.

Angie Beasley, director of Miss England, said the public played only a part in the contest, choosing one of the 15 top finalists with this vote amounting effectively to a seventh judge in the final selection.

She said Rachel Christie, 20, a heptathlete from London, was awarded first place by four of the six judges on the night - including the model Caprice - who assessed candidates on factors such as posture and confidence.

She said: "When it gets to the top 15, they are judged on their confidence and their posture on stage and they are judged on their beauty and their personality. When it gets to the top 15 you cannot have the public vote judging that, it has to be a professional panel."

The vote for Ms Christie comes after Zoiey Smale, Miss Oxfordshire, won the public vote with 2,013 votes. Ms Christie finished 49th out of the 54 original finalists.

Under the rules, eight of the final 15 are winners of categories such as Miss Public Vote - won by Ms Smale - with seven selected by contest judges.

Ms Christie, who hopes to compete in the 2012 Olympics, won the Helen E Cosmetic award to reach the final.

One contestant, quoted anonymously in The Sun newspaper, questioned the "odd" judges' decision. She said: "It seems very odd that the overall winner, chosen by the judges, won so few public votes. The competition is far more than just a beauty contest, but it looks like the judges were totally out of touch with the public."

Racial cringe

‘Edward Gibbon’ at the Original Dissent forum discovered this terrifying example of racial cringe in Freeman Dyson, The Scientist as Rebel, p.100:

British Prime Ministers, soon after they come into office, customarily visit Washington and Moscow to get acquainted with American and Russian leaders. When Prime Minister James Callahan made his state visit to Moscow he had two amicable meetings with Chairman Leonid Brezhnev. At the end of the second day he remarked that he was happy to discover that there were no urgent problems threatening to bring the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union into conflict. Brezhnev then replied with some emphatic words in Russian. Callahan’s interpreter hesitated , and instead of translating Brezhnev’s remark asked him to repeat it. Brezhnev repeated it and the interpreter translated: “Mr. Prime Minister, there is only one important question facing us, and that is the question whether the white race will survive.” Callahan was so taken aback that he did not venture either to agree or disagree with this sentiment. He made his exit without further comment. What he had heard was a distant echo of the Mongol hoofbeat still reverberating in Russian memory.

And the rest. Presumably this meeting took place in 1976 or 1977. Brezhnev will surely have had contemporary British and American racial strife in mind at least as much as historic Mongol invasions of Russia. In avoiding such an obvious explanation for Brezhnev’s comments Dyson shows that he’s just as uncomfortable with racial issues as the pathetic fool Callaghan.

Wacko Morley, Uncle Tom Sawyer

Every time I caught a few seconds of TV ‘news’ yesterday they were discussing the death of a former pop star so I thought it highly amusing that the first words I heard on the Newsnight special devoted to the story were bemoaning the fact that many people would focus on the ‘celebrity’ part of the singer’s life rather than the ‘important stuff.’

Before I had stopped laughing the same contributor, drawing us back to the important stuff, said that what had saddened him most about the life of the singer was his cosmetic journey from looking African to looking Caucasian (this talking head was Black). He went on to say that he had liked the early artist for specifically representing Blackness and was disappointed when the mature artist sought to represent all humanity. Miranda Sawyer and Paul Morley, two impeccably liberal Whites sympathised with the gentleman about the singer having ‘betrayed his race’ (these were Sawyer’s - or perhaps Morley’s - exact words).

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a more rapid deployment of the MSM’s culture war for race-replacement arsenal. In a few short minutes it was all there. Avoid serious news and analysis; load us up on celeb gossip and other trivial diversions; present a never-ending stream of non-Whites making extreme race-based claims; and for balance present a never-ending stream of role-model raceless-Whites eager to agree to those claims (and who will, when called upon, turn savagely on any White who dares make ANY claim on behalf of his race).

(Click on the link and ffw to the last five minutes to see what I mean).

A Great day in Belfast!

In most of the coverage of the Belfast uprising the word ‘racist’ crops up several times, but however the Romanians were treated they were not subjected to racism. The evictions were not racist because men can not be racist in their own country. Whatever a man thinks of foreigners is fine and dandy as long as he thinks it on his turf not the foreigners’. In fact the attempt to make a thought crime of a native group’s attitude to foreigners (which clearly is hostile and oppressive), because by definition it is ethnically focused, is itself racist.

When Alexander Solzhenitsyn was in exile in Switzerland, the editor of a Zurich newspaper took him to a local election meeting to observe ‘Western democracy’ in action. When some of the speakers argued against granting voting rights to guest-workers the editor was horrified and apologised to Solzhenitsyn for the ‘intolerance’ of the speakers. But Solzhenitsyn saw nothing wrong. If those people wanted to keep their country for themselves who could object? It was their country, wasn’t it? It was the editor who was intolerant; intolerant of a people’s wish to remain distinct from others. Now that’s racism, and no greater racism exists, surely?

The zero-tolerance policy of the rebels of Belfast toward that form of racism should be emulated by all peoples.

Race does not exist?

The work done by John Goodrum, the Majority Rights team, and Steve Sailer to disprove this bizarre idea may appear to be wholly outside the mainstream of scientific thought - if you rely on the unfree press for your information. Nice to know then that the ‘World’s most trusted reference books’ (the Oxford University Press Reference collection) agrees with these guys.

Race: 1. (in biology) A category used in the classification of organisms that consists of a group of individuals within a species that are geographically, ecologically, physiologically, or chromosomally distinct from other members of the species. The term is frequently used in the same sense as subspecies. Physiological races, for example, are identical in appearance but differ in function. They include strains of fungi adapted to infect different varieties of the same crop species. 2. (in anthropology) A distinct human type possessing several characteristics that are genetically inherited. The major races are Mongoloid, Caucasian, Negroid, and Australoid.
"race" A Dictionary of Biology. Oxford University Press, 2004. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press.

Subspecies: A group of individuals within a species that breed more freely among themselves than with other members of the species and resemble each other in more characteristics. Reproductive isolation of a subspecies may become so extreme that a new species is formed (see speciation). Subspecies are sometimes given a third Latin name, e.g. the mountain gorilla, Gorilla gorilla beringei (see also binomial nomenclature).
"subspecies" A Dictionary of Biology. Oxford University Press, 2004. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press

Variety: A category used in the classification of plants and animals below the species level. A variety consists of a group of individuals that differ distinctly from but can interbreed with other varieties of the same species. The characteristics of a variety are genetically inherited. Examples of varieties include breeds of domestic animals and human races. See also cultivar. Compare subspecies.
"variety" A Dictionary of Biology. Oxford University Press, 2004. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press.

Race: An interbreeding group of individuals all of whom are genetically distinct from the members of other such groups of the same species. Usually these groups are geographically isolated from one another, so there are barriers to gene flow. Examples are island races of birds and mammals, such as the Skomer vole and the St Kilda wren. See SUBSPECIES.
"race" A Dictionary of Zoology. Ed. Michael Allaby. Oxford University Press, 1999. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press.

Subspecies: Technically, a race of a species that is allocated a Latin name. The number of races recognized within a species and the allocation of names to them is somewhat arbitrary. Systematic and phenotypic variations do occur within species, but there are no clear rules for identifying them as races or subspecies except that they must be: (a) geographically distinct; (b) populations, not merely morphospecies; and (c) different to some degree from other geographic populations .
"subspecies" A Dictionary of Zoology. Ed. Michael Allaby. Oxford University Press, 1999. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press.

Race: a phenotypically and/or geographically distinctive subspecific group, composed of individuals inhabiting a defined geographical and/or ecological region, and possessing characteristic phenotypic and gene frequencies that distinguish it from other such groups. The number of racial groups that one wishes to recognize within a species is usually arbitrary but suitable for the purposes under investigation. See ecotype, subspecies.
"race" A Dictionary of Genetics. Robert C. King, William D. Stansfield and Pamela K. Mulligan. Oxford University Press, 2007. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press.

Subspecies:1. a taxonomically recognized subdivision of a species.
2. geographically and/or ecologically defined subdivisions of a species with distinctive characteristics. See race.
"subspecies" A Dictionary of Genetics. Robert C. King, William D. Stansfield and Pamela K. Mulligan. Oxford University Press, 2007. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press.

Variety n. The quality or condition of being diversified, or a collection of unlike things. In biology, a taxonomic group into which a species is divided, containing organisms that are genetically differentiable from other members of the same species by the relative frequencies of their polymorphic genes. Also called a microspecies, race, or subspecies. [From Latin varietas variety, from varius various]
"variety n." A Dictionary of Psychology. Andrew M. Colman. Oxford University Press, 2006. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press.

Subspecies n. In biology, a taxonomic group into which a species is divided, containing organisms that are genetically differentiable from other members of the same species by the relative frequencies of their polymorphic genes. Also called a microspecies, race, or variety.
"subspecies n." A Dictionary of Psychology. Andrew M. Colman. Oxford University Press, 2006. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press.

Microspecies n. A taxonomic category below the level of a species, hence a race, subspecies, or variety. [From Greek mikros small + Latin species appearance or kind, from specere to look]
"microspecies n." A Dictionary of Psychology. Andrew M. Colman. Oxford University Press, 2006. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press

David Lamb on Zimbabwe

Another short history of Rhodesia’s becoming Zimbabwe (read Roland Oliver's here). David Lamb wrote his brilliant African travelogue in the early nineteen eighties so we must forgive the naïveté. After all, no-one could have predicted that the Blacks would destroy what the White man had built. [sarc.]

All that follows is from David Lamb, The Africans: Encounters from the Sudan to the Cape (Methuen Books, London 1985) pp 332-336

I first arrived in Rhodesia (as it was then called) on Pioneers Day in 1978, a national holiday that celebrated the hoisting of the Union Jack over Salisbury eighty-eight years earlier. At that time the flag was raised by 180 pioneers who had traveled in ox carts from South Africa, moving through country unknown except to a handful of traders and missionaries. Most were “British” South Africans, not “Dutch” South Africans, and they came, like frontiersmen settling the Old West, in search of land and a better life. Their trek, led by Frederick Selous and organized by Cecil Rhodes, a Briton who had made a fortune in South African gold and diamonds, was made under the auspices of the British South Africa Company.

Now the whites, including six surviving daughters of the founding pioneers, gathered in Cecil Square on that September morning in 1978. The women wore broad-brimmed hats, spring dresses and white gloves. In the parks of Salisbury there was a profusion of purple jacaranda in bloom, and the broad boulevards - designed by Rhodes to be wide enough for an eight-team ox wagon to make a U-turn - ran along rows of low white shops with overhanging steel awnings that shaded the spotlessly clean sidewalks. Whereas Johannesburg is a real city, Salisbury (now called Harare in honor of a Shona Chief) is really a large country town. It feels very British, reminding me of what York would look like if it were stuck in the middle of the Montana plains. The soft spring sun beat down on the whites in Cecil Square and on a small group of blacks, watching impassively from across the street. There was a roll of drums and a bugle call as the great-grandson of a founding pioneer raised the Union Jack - a ceremony that would be repeated in 1979 but never again. White heads bowed. The words were brave, even defiant, but everyone knew the end was near. The whites had overcome great odds and built an amazing country. Now the lessons of Africa had caught up with them, and Rhodesia, racked by a liberation war that would claim 27,000 lives between 1972 and 1979, was in the throes of transition.

“Our hearts are heavy,” said the Reverend C. W. A. Blakeley, “for there is sadness and pain and fear and war in our land, and a terrible desire for destruction has been thrust upon us. God, give us all the courage to be part of the solution to our problems and not part of the problem itself.”

Prime Minister Ian Smith - accused by the liberal whites of attempting to maintain white supremacy and by the conservatives of trying to turn Rhodesia over to “Marxist thugs” - moved among the descendants of the pioneers. “How nice to have you here, to see you looking so well,” he said, and ninety-eight-year-old Maria Mooman smiled back and patted his hand. Then Smith, a farmer-turned-politician, walked to his limousine, one hand clutching his hat, the other on the shoulder of his wife, Janet, and sped away without looking back.

Rhodesia had done well under the early settler farmers; there was at the time only one country in sub-Sahara Africa more prosperous than Rhodesia - South Africa. In 1923, when the charter of the British South Africa Company was abrogated, the whites in Rhodesia were given the choice of being incorporated into the Union of South Africa or becoming a self-governing entity within the British Empire. They chose the latter. The whites never institutionalized racism the way the South Africans did, but the blacks in Rhodesia didn’t fare much better than their counterparts in the country next door. The best farmland was reserved for whites. All the top jobs and every seat in parliament were held by whites. The whites’ per capita income in 1975 was $7,800, the blacks’ was $716. The whites’ literacy rate was 100 percent, the blacks’ 30 percent.

“These Africans in Salisbury don’t have anything to do with the terrorists in the rest of the country,” a white housewife told me. “To my mind, they’re terribly lazy and inefficient - much too inefficient to be terrorists - and sometimes difficult to handle, but they’re good people. They’re part of our family, even when they’re working as servants. We tend to their aches and pains and we treat them like we do our own children.”

After World War II, thousands of immigrants from England moved to Rhodesia, attracted by one of the world’s most pleasant life styles, and in 1963 Rhodesia began negotiating with London for its independence. In 1964 the United Kingdom granted independence to Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia) and Nyasaland (Malawi) but demanded that the whites in Southern Rhodesia first demonstrate their intention to move toward eventual majority rule. They refused, and on November 11, 1965, Ian Smith and his Rhodesian Front Party unilaterally declared independence. In March 1970 Smith proclaimed a State of Rhodesia.

The world responded by isolating Rhodesia with political and trade boycotts. But Rhodesia, with the help of South Africa and some Western oil companies willing to ignore sanctions, continued to prosper. Its 6,000 white farmers - who produced 80 percent of the country's food - were as industrious and ingenious as any in America’s Corn Belt. They fed the California-sized country and had plenty of food left over to export. Agriculture became a $500 million industry as the farmers moved away from their one-crop economy (tobacco) and diversified. By the late 1970s Rhodesia ranked first in the world in per-hectare yield of groundnuts, second in maize and soybeans, and fourth in wheat. Denied legal trade with the developed world, Rhodesia started making its own wine (not bad) and whiskey (terrible, but the Rhodesians drank it with pride) and producing everything from air conditioners to radios. Despite the international sanctions, a young married couple setting up a home could meet 85 percent of its needs with Rhodesian-made products. (There was even a locally produced version of Monopoly, but since that name was patented, the Rhodesians called their game Around The Boardwalk.) The Rhodesian economy was further buoyed by important supplies of chrome, coal, copper and nickel.

Nevertheless, Rhodesia reverted to the status of a British colony in 1979 and became the independent, black-ruled nation of Zimbabwe in April 1980. What forced the whites to reluctantly surrender power was not sanctions but a guerrilla war that ended up costing the country thirty lives and $1.5 million - or 40 percent of the national budget - each day. The black nationalist forces of the Patriotic Front just wore the country down, economically and spiritually. One faction of the front was headquartered in Zambia, armed by the Soviet Union and led by Joshua Nkomo, a 300-pound former railway worker whose high living raised some eyebrows; the other was in Mozambique, equipped to a large extent by China and led by Robert Mugabe, a Marxist who once said, “Genuine independence can only come out of the barrel of a gun.”

Mugabe, a disciplined scholar and non-practicing Catholic, spent ten years in detention or under restriction until 1974 in Rhodesia, and the whites’ greatest fear was that he would persecute his former tormentors, turn Zimbabwe into a Communist state aligned with Moscow and preside over the disintegration of another African economy. None of those things have happened, and Mugabe has shown far more respect for the due process of law than Ian Smith ever did. As the elected prime minister, Mugabe deftly juggled black hopes and white fears, and in the process proved himself to be perhaps the most capable leader in black Africa. His brand of Marxism thus far has been no more radical than social democracy in Europe and appears no more revolutionary than the demand that the exploitation of blacks must end. He has taken a page from Jomo Kenyatta’s scenario in Kenya and attempted to accommodate the whites, knowing that their presence is essential if Zimbabwe is to prosper. He has remained aloof from the Soviet Union, not even allowing Moscow to set up an embassy in Salisbury until more than a year after independence. In short, this former teacher whom the West called a Marxist terrorist is no more than a socialist and nationalist trying to serve the entire country on a basis of equality.

One of his early moves, after relegating Nkomo to a minor cabinet post, was to convene a conference of thirty-six nations in Zimbabwe to raise money. The scene was similar to a TV telethon in the United States in which viewers make pledges to combat various diseases or to finance political parties. But this one was a bonanza and Mugabe netted $1.4 billion for Zimbabwe. The United States, recognizing that a successful multiracial Zimbabwe could influence the future of South Africa and diminish Soviet pressure in all of southern Africa, pledged $225 million over three years. Even the impoverished West African nation of Sierra Leone kicked in $90,000. No Communist countries were invited, although a Soviet delegation flew into Salisbury and cooled its heels for two days at a local hotel, waiting for an invitation that never came.

The creation of Zimbabwe was in itself a rare achievement and the government’s accomplishments have not been insignificant. It has paid fair-market prices to whites who sold their farms and left the country, unable to tolerate a place where black cabinet ministers called each other “comrade.” Majority rule has seen the school enrollment more than double, from 800,000 to 1,760,000, and the reopening of 2,000 schools closed by the war. The minimum wage has risen 50 percent, and health care is now free for anyone earning less than $235 a month, which covers the majority of the 6.8 million blacks. The government has subsidized food prices by $385 million to make staples cheaper for the poor. Black employment has increased by 100,000.

Under the constitution, whites are guaranteed twenty of the hundred seats in parliament until 1987. No other African colony has entered independence with similar assurances for the minority race. About half of the original 270,000 whites chose to stay in Zimbabwe, but by the summer of 1983 events had taken a decided turn for the worse in Africa’s youngest country, and Mugabe’s dream for a prosperous, multi-racial society had been derailed by tribalism and was in jeopardy.

Joshua Nkomo, the father of independence who had been cheered by thousands when he made a triumphal return to Rhodesia in January, 1980, had been thrown out of the cabinet and had slipped across the border to Botswana one night, making his way back to London - and another home in exile. What he left behind was an army from the Ndebele-speaking minority, which represents 17 percent of Zimbabwe’s people.

Nkomo had fallen from favor after arms caches were discovered in his tribal district of Matabeleland, where there had been much banditry and terrorism, including the killing of white farmers. Mugabe dispatched the government’s North-Korean-trained elite unit, known as the Fifth Brigade, there with vague instructions to restore order and apprehend deserters who had fought in Nkomo’s liberation army. The Fifth Brigade undertook its assignment with enthusiasm, killing several hundred unarmed civilians in a matter of weeks.

The fragile fiber of society seemed to be unraveling around Mugabe, a member of the Shona-speaking majority that comprises about 80 percent of all Zimbabweans. The economy had been scorched by drought and the world recession, and the departure of whites had reduced productivity. South Africa appeared intent on doing what it could to ensure that there would be no black success stories in next-door Zimbabwe. Mugabe, however, did not overreact as most African presidents do in time of crisis and personal challenge. He continued to preach that blacks and whites, if they worked together, could still create the Zimbabwe that was promised during the war of liberation.

Zimbabwe’s future is far from settled, but a nation of great economic potential has emerged from the ashes of war and racial inequality - a feat that seemed impossible just a few years ago. I would like to think that South Africans will learn from the lessons of what Mugabe has tried to do in Zimbabwe - and what other leaders have done in Kenya, the Ivory Coast and a handful of former colonies. The Afrikaner has only to look across his borders to see the advance of history’s tide.

Zimbabwe is 30 today! Why no fanfare in the press?

2nd June 1974
Rhodesia’s Black leaders rejected concessions which rebel Prime Minister Ian Smith had hoped might lead to Britain’s agreement to independence. Smith’s proposal was to increase from 16 to 22 the number of seats in parliament set aside for Blacks at the upcoming election. The offer was rebuffed by Bishop Muzorewa of the African National Council who complained that it would take decades at such a rate of increase to attain parity of racial representation in the House of Assembly.

In the election a few weeks later Smith’s Rhodesian Front won 75% of the White vote and all 50 White-reserved seats, the moderate Rhodesia party took 19% of the White vote, and a group of hard-line independents who claimed that Smith was selling out White interests took 6%. Bishop Muzorewa criticised the sweeping victory: “The White electorate is possessed of a demon of fear. They have voted for speeding up a confrontation of races. They have voted for more years of sanctions, isolation and pseudo-independence.”

2nd June 1979
Rhodesia formally declared an end to White rule and changed its name to Zimbabwe.

2nd June 2009
Robert Mugabe’s thugs chant: ‘We will eat your children’ (via Sarah, Maid of Albion)

Well, whaddayaknow, the race-realists excoriated by Bishop Muzorewa were proved right. I’m amazed.


From Africa scholar Ronald Oliver’s classic history ‘Africa Since 1800’:

From about 1974, guerrilla activities were conducted by armies which were distinct from the political parties which formally controlled them – ZAPU’s Zimbabwe Independence People’s Army (ZIPRA) and ZANU’s Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army (ZANLA). In 1975, Robert Mugabe left Rhodesia for Mozambique, where he played an important part in directing the war, working closely with President Machel. By 1976, guerrilla activities had escalated into outright war fought on a number of fronts and, by 1979, the nationalist forces had succeeded in penetrating deep into Rhodesia, almost as far as Salisbury itself. South Africa became increasingly concerned by the scale of the conflict and changed its policy from one of support for the white government into one designed to promote the emergence of a ‘friendly’ black government installed in an independent Zimbabwe. As early as 1974, the South African prime minister, Vorster, tried without success to negotiate with the nationalist leaders, and the next year he even joined forces with President Kaunda of Zambia to put pressure on the Rhodesians. In 1976, Ian Smith made one attempt to achieve an ‘internal settlement’ by holding talks with Joshua Nkomo: when they failed, Nkomo left Rhodesia for Zambia. Later that year, the American secretary of state, Henry Kissinger, visited southern Africa and, as part of a wider mission, met all the main actors in the Rhodesian drama. Astonishingly, he obtained Smith’s agreement in principle to settle for African majority rule within two years, but the only response of Nkomo and Mugabe was to escalate the fighting and to form a Patriotic Front to unite the efforts of ZAPU and ZANU. At length, in 1978, Smith concluded an internal settlement with the ‘moderate’ African element, led by Bishop Muzorewa, Sithole, and Chief Chirau, with whom he agreed to share power, pending one-man/one-vote elections in April 1979. By this time, the strains of the mounting struggle were clearly beginning to tell upon the European population. Whites were emigrating in significant numbers, even though compelled to leave most of their property behind them when they did so. Of those who remained, many were by now conscripted at least for part-time service in the defence forces. Despite strenuous attempts to Africanise the army, it became increasingly doubtful how wholeheartedly such forces would fight against their fellow countrymen in the guerrilla movements. And the Rhodesian economy showed signs of disintegrating under the burden of war.

Thus, when Bishop Muzorewa emerged victorious from the election of April 1979, it was apparent that, even though Rhodesia had taken the momentous step to a mainly black government, there would be no lasting peace and no international recognition until the nationalists in exile had been accommodated. Lord Carrington, who became British foreign secretary in May 1979, at once addressed himself to this problem. Essentially, it was a matter of persuading Muzorewa and his colleagues to submit themselves to a fresh election, to be held after a brief period of resumed British rule, during which the exiles would be permitted to return to the country and join fully in the election campaign. Equally, it was necessary to persuade the exiles to drop their military activities in favour of political action and to trust in the fair conduct of the election. Carrington’s initiative received much support at the routine meeting of Commonwealth prime ministers at Lusaka in August. Leaders of the front-line states joined in putting pressure on the various parties to attend a constitutional conference in London, which in the event dragged on from September until December. Just before Christmas, it was judged that sufficient mutual trust had been achieved for Lord Soames to be sent as governor, with wide powers but no force other than a contingent of military ‘monitors’ 1,400 strong, to supervise the reabsorption of some 25,000 guerrilla fighters and the conduct of the election which followed only two months later.

The result of the election of February 1980 was probably a surprise to all who took part in it. Of 100 seats in the new parliament, Muzorewa’s party won three and Sithole’s party none. Of the exiles, Joshua Nkomo’s party, which had enjoyed the hospitality of Zambia and the material support of the Soviet Union, won twenty seats, all in Matabeleland. The overwhelming victory, with fifty-seven seats, went to Robert Mugabe’s ZANU/PF, the party with a reputation for uncompromising Marxism, which had been hosted in exile by Machel of Mozambique. The remaining twenty seats were reserved for whites, and all went to the Rhodesian Front. If there was momentary dismay felt in western countries, this was certainly reciprocated in those of the Soviet bloc, whose satellites were not even invited to the independence celebrations which followed on 18 April. Meanwhile, Mugabe’s early speeches and public statements had been reminiscent of those of Jomo Kenyatta when he assumed power in the Kenya of 1963. Reconciliation was the keynote. Pragmatism rather than dogma was to be the guiding light. Black and white would walk into the future arm-in-arm and with full confidence.

Roland Oliver and Anthony Atmore, Africa Since 1800 (Cambridge University Press, 2005) pp 280-282.