Disgraceful attempts to tarnish Captain Tom’s memory have already taken place from a Church of England clergyman
Erecting a statue to honour Captain Sir Tom Moore might be tempting fate. I’d give it no more than a week before it would be attacked by Black Lives Matter headbangers.
As millions of people turned out on their doorsteps to give this inspirational Covid hero a heartfelt round of applause, there has already been a disgraceful attempt to tarnish his memory — from a Church of England clergyman, of all people.
The Reverend Jarel Robinson-Brown, a curate at the oldest church in the City of London, said commemorating Captain Sir Tom was fuelling the ‘cult of white British nationalism’.
Nurse!
Although Robinson-Brown has subsequently apologised, his remarks are consistent with the craven ‘woke’ attitudes infesting swathes of the British Establishment.
Sadly, as I wrote a couple of weeks ago, big business, academia, most politicians and our civic institutions are rushing to appease the politically motivated zealots determined to erase any lingering connection with colonialism in general, and slavery in particular.
No memorial to any prominent son of Empire is safe from the Left-wing mob inspired by last summer’s BLM mayhem. Cecil Rhodes, Edward Colston and now Lord Curzon and Captain Cook are among the distinguished historical figures targeted by revisionists.
The National Trust has embarked on a widespread ‘re-evaluation’ of the links between its properties and slavery — including Churchill’s former home, Chartwell in Kent.
A biographical essay on its website talked about Curzon’s ‘racist ideology’. But as Richard Kay explains on pages 28 and 29 today, the essay was riddled with fundamental errors.
Whoever wrote this report clearly set out with the intention of trashing Curzon’s reputation and legacy, and the Trust was more than happy to accept the verdict, since it confirmed the fashionable prejudices of those who now run this once august organisation.
Across the country, statues are being toppled and history rewritten after dubious ‘consultations’ and politically motivated ‘re-evalutions’ conducted by partisan academics and mysterious ‘stakeholders’.
For instance, last year BLM protesters draped a ‘Wanted For War Crimes’ banner on a statue of General Sir Redvers Buller, which has stood in Exeter for 115 years. Buller won a Victoria Cross for gallantry, fighting Zulus in South Africa.
The Reverend Jarel Robinson-Brown, a prominent black gay clergyman, has since deleted his offensive tweet dismissing the work of the hero 100-year-old Covid fund-raiser Captain Tom
Following the protests, Exeter council commissioned an ‘equality impact report’ which concluded: ‘The General Buller Statue represents the patriarchal structures of empire and colonialism which impact negatively on women and anyone who does not define themselves in binary gender terms.
‘The consultation will need to ensure that the views of women, transgender and non-binary people are captured and given due weight.’
Eh?
You couldn’t make it up. It sounds as if it was written by Dave Spart, Private Eye’s resident agitprop Trot. Its findings were a foregone conclusion.
Needless to say, the council agreed to move the statue — a decision only now reversed following the intervention of the Communities Secretary Robert Jenrick and a petition signed by 9,000 local residents.
But how did a debate about a monument to a Victorian war hero end up encompassing modern obsessions about women and transgender issues?
Then again, what have 115-year-old equestrian statues in Britain got to do with a protest movement which sprang out of the death of a black man in police custody in Minnesota?
Ask a silly question. You might also inquire what Donald Trump has got to do with a pub in Middlesbrough.
Pictured: Graffiti is seen on the statue of Winston Churchill, in London, in September last year
Activists — them, again — have drawn up a list of 125 landmarks commemorating Captain Cook, including two museums, a hospital, assorted streets and squares, the obligatory statues in London and Whitby, and the pub called after his flagship, The Resolution, in Middlesbrough — all of which they want renamed.
Cook, one of this country’s most celebrated explorers, stands accused of genocide against Australian aborigines and other indigenous peoples.
The list, titled ‘Topple The Racists’, has been compiled by something called the Stop Trump Coalition.
You couldn’t, etc . . .
We’re talking Wolfie Smith and the Tooting Popular Front here.
Their demands, however, have been given widespread publicity and will probably be taken seriously by councillors, museum trustees and hospital administrators.
Look at the leaders of Black Lives Matter UK, a quasi-Marxist rabble. No one really knows who they are, or how many there are. There might only be half a dozen of them, meeting above a kebab shop in Hackney.
Yet they have been successful beyond their wildest dreams, as everyone from the leader of Her Majesty’s Official Opposition to broadcasters and football’s Premier League have queued up to take the knee.
Schools and colleges are ‘decolonising’ the curriculum and civil servants, coppers and other public employees are being sent on ‘critical race theory’ training courses at taxpayers’ expense. And all without any sizeable public support or proper consultation.
I suppose I’m equally guilty even by mentioning BLM and its loose affiliates. But I simply can’t understand why anyone is taking any notice of these tinpot pressure groups, who speak for nobody but themselves.
We’re now having public policy influenced by the likes of the Stop Trump Coalition. It would be funny, were it not so serious . . .
Good evening, comrades, and welcome to the February steering committee meeting of the Stop Trump Coalition, Middlesbrough branch.
Would you all please take the knee in solidarity with our brothers, sisters and non-binary colleagues in BLM.
Since our last meeting, I am delighted to announce that our primary aim has been achieved and Donald Trump has been stopped.
That is, he has left the White House and now faces impeachment, thanks in no small part to the efforts made by our own coalition. Give yourselves a big hand.
I am thinking in particular of the die-in staged by members outside the KFC, in Coal Lane, which succeeded in drawing attention to Trump’s genocidal policies against the Palestines.
Or were it the Irans? One of them Arab lot anyway. Now we have achieved our objective in driving this hated tyrant from office, we must redouble our efforts to combat colonialism and fascism closer to home.
To that end, I’ve drawn up a list of buildings, streets, hospitals, museums and the like, named after the evil racist Captain James Cook, who was born in these parts and whose continued association with Boro brings shame to the Teesside region as a whole.
Comrade Higginbottom has agreed to daub red paint on the front of the Captain Cook Museum and Comrade Roz, of our LGBTQI+ wing, will chain herself to the gates of the James Cook University Hospital.
We’ve had a word with Newsnight and they’re sending along the Emily Wossname woman, who stitched up that royal patriarch Prince Andrew good’n’proper.
Sadly, this will be our last meeting at The Resolution, since it has just come to my attention that this pub is named after Captain Cook’s flagship — which I always thought was called The Endeavour, or The Bounty, or summat, but apparently not.
Next month we shall convene in a function room at The Obama Arms, formerly the Black Boy & Trumpet.
Finally, I would like to remind members that the bus to London, to join the demonstration against the outrageous proposals by the Johnson junta to erect a statue to the white colonialist Captain Sir Tom Moore, leaves from the car park at the Riverside Stadium, 8am sharp Sunday. Parmos and vegan alternatives will be available . . .
Ministers are urging people living in areas struck by the new South African variant to avoid shopping, stay at home and live off what they have in the pantry.
Younger people may struggle, but members of Britain’s Greatest Generation would have no problem.
Like most folk who lived through World War II, my 91-year-old mum’s pantry is always well stocked.
She’s got tins of soup and vegetables she bought donkey’s years ago, with the price stickers in old money.
Some of them have moved house with her half a dozen times without being opened.
And there must be older people out there who never bothered battling the Bog Roll Bandits during the first lockdown.
They’re still using cut-up pages from the Sunday Pictorial. Old habits die hard.