UK, Ireland /
TRUTH AND DELUSION ABOUT POLES IN UK [65]
Took me a long time to realise that the British media are free to demonize other predominantly white European countries at will. The Irish, French, Germans, Spanish have all been victims of this at some time. Once you're caucasian/European the British media feels (wrongly) that a "racial" slur cannot be implied. The Polish are the latest...newbies..fair game in their eyes. The Portugese recently fell foul of the British media when it covered the Madeline McCann disappearance. Elements of the British media wanted only to paint a picture of a lazy, swarthy, red-wine fuelled, unprofessional police force concerned more with taking a siesta than solving anything...it became for a time a sort of - this could never happen in UK - story. Of course it could happen in the UK..even innocent Brazilians can get shot by British police for nothing (a case in point)..but this media approach is neccessary in a sense because, being better than JOHNNY FOREIGNER is part of what makes Britain GREAT...and it sells newspapers!! I personally, believe
Norman Davies in
the islands when he suggests that Britishness is a flawed/artificial concept. An imperialist excuse for England's subjugation of it's Celtic neighbours..Ireland, Scotland, Wales. Under the banner of Britishness the idea of an Empire could be excused/encouraged/justified. Unfortunately, today..with the Empire gone and with the Scots, Irish & Welsh retaining some semblance of national identity..there is a crisis in the English identity...English people wonder why St.Patrick's/St.David's/St.Andrew's day is a bigger deal in ENGLAND than St. George's day. Why Notting Hill Carnival is so big? The English football team is one of the one last true expressions of Englishness...and it attracts everything from passion/fanaticism to hooliganism. But when drinking heavily in broad daylight prior to running battles with the local (foreign) police these England "fans" - the only fans btw who i've heard from "Britain" ever to sing.."rule Britannia", a lamentable dirge about how great Britain is...never Scots/Welsh
Summarizing, it's my belief, that the English alone bought into Britishness...the Welsh & Scottish are joined by land to an historically aggressive neighbour...and always, whilst massively outnumbered (must be 55million-ish in England (?) to 10 million Scots/Welsh - don't know the figures (sorry, i'm Irish/Polish...not from UK??) & overpowered, somehow held higher their own sense of nationhood than their place in the British family of nations. The Irish lived on a seperate island but it's continued Britishness was assured by taking lands/rights from the Irish and giving it to the "British" royalists/loyalists. DIVIDE AND CONQUER!!
Anyway, the newspapers/media to which puzzler alludes sell very well because they promote/prolong the idea of "us" & "them". The idea..often repeated by IDIOTS on this forum, that Britain holds a sacred place among nations...this is the lie the English people have been told & earnestly repeat to the Scots/Welsh..worse still, the message itself goes back to a time when rich people in England needed to give poor people in England a reason to serve them, a greater good so to speak...English people i must add are NOT intrinsically anti-foreign at all, there are
plenty on this forum who prove this time and again. It's just that a lot of blood has been spilt by ordinary English people for supposedly high ideals & concepts, so... some young English guy goes to visit his Grandad in his council flat, they talk about the war, the local people that died, the sacrifice etc..and he comes away thinking.. my grandad didn't fight so a Ghanain family could move next door, he didn't fight so there would be a SUPERSAM at the end of the street, no, it was for the glory and the blah blah..English people have done their share for the good of the world as much as anyone else..now they look around.. for the world their forefathers spoke of... guess what...just when it was looking promising (according to the press) Millions(?) of Polish workers turned up...oh, my God, call the press, something must be done...blah blah blah. This is the reality of life in Britain...beware Polish people...you are new and therfore fair game...sadly, young open minded Brits love you for the differences that you bring & welcome you heartily.
In Ireland I have no recollection of my mum receiving anti-polish sentiments from Irish people..she came here in 1969...& though my parents met in England in 1953, my dad being Irish was a far bigger social problem in the UK (of course i mean England..and the south of England at that, where the newspapers are written) at that time, anyway as a family we've been in Ireland since 1969 & I remember from 1974 (5yrs old) to now..and i've yet to hear a genuinely bad word from the Irish re: Polish people..JPII visited Ireland and raised the Irish perception of Poland, so Martial law & Lech Walesa were watched with a brotherly/sisterly eye from Ireland & throughout the average Irish person's lifetime there are, at the very least stories of needing to emigrate for work, stories of being subjugated politically/ecomomically by more powerful neighbours..as a result Ireland receives somewhere between 7-10 times (per capita) the amount of Polish people the UK has received..with 7-10 times less crying/whingeing (per capita) about it.
