The second part of Paxo’s Empire travelog was called “Making Ourselves At Home”. It began well, charting the easy integration of the first British in India, the way they adapted to and adopted the indigenous living styles. Again there was the passage of unattributed and unidentified images across the screen to relieve us of the tedium of watching the sweaty Paxo mooch around, flat-footed and apparently wearing the same shirt from India to Canada and beyond. But then he suddenly launched himself into a polemic against the women of Empire, the Victorian memsahibs, castigating them for the mores of the day, apparently labouring under an indignant disbelief that they should bring with them to India the same lofty attitudes to domestic servants that prevailed in Britain at the time.
Apparently it was the women of Empire that brought with them the Victorian puritanism that put an end to the joy of Anglo-Indian integration. Cue painting of stuffy Victorians sitting in Church looking po-faced. This was a fine irony that I enjoyed very much, laughing out loud at the screen, that the new puritans of the BBC Left should take such issue with their co-spiritual predecessors in disapproval.
Of course we had a day excursion to Ooty hill station to marvel at that little bit of Surrey in India (pure cliché this) and to tut tut at the indulgences of those arrogant Victorians who churlishly wanted to escape the worst of the summer heat and remind themselves of Britain. It was an age of no air-conditioning, of no concessions in formal dress and a six month voyage home but Paxo cut them no slack. And there was no retrospective forgiveness when he explored the pathos of the British cemetery and discovered that life in India for a Victorian expat was not all chota pegs and bullying the servants.
Paxo’s peering into Victorian Indian domestic life seemed to share that same class obsession and resentment that prevails in Britain. The focus was uniquely middle-class. In making ourselves at home in India with the BBC no thought seemed to be given to how the ordinary soldiers, the railway engineers, the shop and service class, the merchant seamen and the criminal classes settled themselves on the continent. It was all Upstairs without the Downstairs.
In the snow of Canada Paxo was back to sneering, this time at a town of expat Scots and their links to the home country. He was rude to the nice lady who ran the Scots souvenir shop and snorted in derision at the continued survival of the Camp coffee she had on sale, without drawing attention to the link to India or the political correctness that had changed its famous label. It was a coffee snobbery moment rather than a PC moment. A missed opportunity. I bet Paxo is one of those corporate drones who turns up at work clutching an oversized styrofoam cup filled with some trendy and overpriced beverage in order to demonstrate his workaholic, bien pensant credentials. As the Empire was castigated for driving out the native Canadians we were puzzled with a photograph of Australian aborigines in Victorian European dress. No mention of the fact that the native tribes fared infinitely better in British Canada than they did further south. We learned very little about the early settlement of Canada or the life of the settlers and nothing about our competitors the French.
And then we were off to Africa and Singapore for some more sneering. In Kenya I thought we might get the whole Mau Mau revisionist thing but not quite this time.This time Paxo sneered at a white settler “staying on” in Kenya and then at a couple of elderly expat “lads” in the Singapore Club. All of whom deflected Paxo’s accusatorial questions with an expat lightness of touch and good-humoured affability that made it absolutely clear they had been a long time out of the grey, outrage and offence shrouded doom of po-faced, puritan, EU-whipped socialist Britain, if they had ever been here. After his licence-fee paid world tour Paxo finished up in Leicester for Diwali with a charming Indian lady, a Labour councillor, and her equally charming family, who had been hounded out of newly independent Kenya and had sought refuge in the homeland of their former colonial masters.
But the most fascinating aspect of the programme was Paxo’s attempt at every opportunity to elicit po-faced British leftist disapproval of Empire from those he interviewed. The Anglo-Indians in India, the Indian railwayman in Kenya – all had a better and more pragmatic grasp of history than Paxo and the BBC. There was no resentment, no smouldering indignation or offence taking at the overbearing British – the “hideously white” colonisers. No, if anything there was just a dignified and calmly stated gratitude for their heritage and the part the British Empire had played in that. But the best, the most salutory rebuff was from the lady Labour councillor who believed that the British Empire had represented good government, fair government and well-maintained order, that at independence had often been replaced by corruption and bad practice. Seeing her pragmatism and common sense I wondered what she was doing associating with the Labour Party. I hope the Cleggite Lords of Reform took notice of her words and that perhaps it might make them pause for a little circumspection and perhaps humility in their arrogant destruction of our centuries proven constitutional system. I’m not going to hold my breath though.
Poor old Paxo, those descendants of Empire just won’t play the game!
I enjoyed the Anglo-Indians and their obvious pleasure in having a bit of Brit ancestry. “You’re a visible reminder of the fact that this country was a colony,” said Paxo accusingly, to a genial chap who was clearly neglecting his duty of resentment.
And I did enjoy the Anglo-Indian children’s dance routine to the tune of that Slade Christmas hit.
Last week we had the “Arab Beduin” who spoke fluent Ivrit with a Tel Aviv accent, and this week we had American Indians who were really Australian Aborigines. All that was missing was Obama’s dear old granny in the scenes from Kenya.
Wonderful review Nicholas; echoed my own thoughts almost entirely, just wish I could express them in such pithy prose. You got the ‘same shirt’ shtick too – all you failed to mention was his bandy legs; but then you are a much nicer person than me.
I loved the line “After his licence-fee paid world tour Paxo finished up in Leicester for Diwali …”
Yerrss! (As Paxo himself would snort).
Wonder what his fee was for writing the script? If it was more than a fiver, then we wuz robbed!
I only saw a bit of this, all I could bear. The bit with the Anglo Indians. I thought that Paxo’s obvious incredulity at the fact that they didn’t see themselves as victims as actually quite insulting to them. I almost took 3rd party white liberal offence on their part. But the sight of this pseudo intellectual buffoon putting his foot in it minute by minute, as it became obvious to him that life outside the bubble does not conform to the New Marxist utopia that he and the BBC hold as Godhead – That was priceless. More sweaty Paxo please
“It was all Upstairs without the Downstairs.” Outstanding summing up, Nicholas.
I remember reading that the experience of the American War of Independence decided the British government on its policy to reverse the integration of British and Indians which had characterised the early days of the East India Company’s administration in India. The inter-marrying between bachelor officials sent out to govern the American colonies and the settlers who had been there in some cases for more than a hundred years had led to a reinforcement of a sense of local identity which tended to set them against overbearing governors and speed them on the road to their own elected government.
The solution to this threat in India was whenever possible to ensure that the officials sent out to govern the country were first equipped with wives (the memsahibs), thus in large measure insulating them from the charms of the local women and reinforcing a sense of division between governed and the governers.
I wonder whether something similar, in reverse, is going on in England today where the government might be seen to encourage division (“diversity”, “multi-culturalism”, enclaves of Somalis or Romanians, etc.) so as to subvert and unman the old English tradition of being agin the government?
What is noteworthy in Nicholas’s article is the focus of Paxman on the middle-class to the exclusion of any other, in particular the working class broadly defined, and what comes through as the unrelieved sneering tone of Paxman’s approach.
It is in fact a matter for comment the extent to which the “working class” or just working people tout court (think Mrs. Duffy) are left out of the perspective of our political class as a whole, even as they imply that they are heirs of the now watered-down,discredited or abandoned ideology of 1945-1997. “What about the workers!”. The searchlight which Delingpole throws on this in his most recent blog is what makes it so telling.
To whom I wonder therefore is Paxman presenting his angle of view in “Empire”? I remember Paxman in his early days, following in the footsteps of one or two pathbreakers, bringing fresh air to the uncritical respect in which public figures were still largely held.Who was that former MP for instance who did such polite but remorseless work in pinning politicians to the consequences of their positions like dead moths to a board – Walden..? Although I have been unable to watch the full trajectory of Paxman’s career, the criticism seems to have hardened into the sneer, as Nicholas underlines, and the sneer then come to be expected of him as part of his “act” – with attempts at objectivity or fairness generally left behind; but may be I am unfair. I do have the sense from what Nicholas has written though that Paxman allowed his journalism to be distorted by the audience for his programme which he had in mind – a narrow coterie of London luvvies, perhaps? I don’t know; I’m too out of touch with London life. But the sneer is the fertilizer of political correctness. Is THAT the effect of empire on the British?
Anti Empire stuff never talks about numbers. The impact of the Brits on India was significant – they seem pretty keen to come here – but the number of Brits in India was tiny as a proportion of the population.
I looked it up a while back and, while I can’t remember the exact figures, I believe the numbers (Anglo-Indian) peaked at about 1.6 million when the population of India was about 250 million.
Its an unfortuate fact of life that power and influence goes to those who can’t do sums. Those that can are far too useful to be promoted to management and far too interested in what they’re doing to have the time to join the saddoes that infest the grass roots of politics.
I posted the following on the thread to Nicholas’s first piece on Paxman’s programme; but I would like to re-post it here in anticipation of his comment on the third episode which is likely to treat of China:
The Chinese revolutionary, Dr. Sun Yat Sen made, some remarks to the University of Hong Kong’s Students Union in 1923 which are very much worth bearing in mind when contemplating the British Empire at most times during its history:
“”Where and how did I get my revolutionary and modern ideas?” The answer was, “I got my idea in this very place; in the Colony of Hong Kong.” – (Laughter and applause.) “I am going to tell you,” continued Dr Sun, “how I got these ideas. More than thirty years ago I was studying in Hong Kong and spent a great deal of spare time in walking the streets of the Colony. Hong Kong impressed me a great deal, because there was orderly calm and because there was artistic work being done without interruption. I went to my home in Heungshan twice a year and immediately noticed the great difference. There was disorder instead of order, insecurity instead of security.
When I arrived home I had to be my own policeman and my own protector. The first matter for my care was to see my rifle was in order and to make sure plenty of ammunition was still left. I had to prepare for action for the night. Each time it was like this, year after year. I compared Heungshan with Hong Kong and, although they are only 50 miles apart, the difference of the Governments impressed me very much. Afterwards, I saw the outside world and I began to wonder how, it was that foreigners, that Englishmen could do such things as they had done, for example, with the barren rock of Hong Kong, within 70 or 80 years, while China, in 4,000 years, had no places like Hong Kong…”
The article from which I am quoting continues in reported speech:
“He returned to Hong Kong and began to study the government. He found that among the [Hong Kong] government officials corruption was the exception and purity the rule. – (Applause.) It was quite the contrary in China, where corruption among officials was the rule. – (Laughter.) He thought the Provisional Government would be better and went to Canton. He found that the higher the government the more corrupt it was. – (Laughter.) Finally he went to Peking, but he found things there one hundred times more corrupt and rotten than areas in Canton, and he was forced to the opinion that, after all, village government was the purest government in China. – (Applause.) He was told that the good governments in England and in Europe were not at first natural to those places, but that … years ago there was just the same corruption, just the same forgeries in the Courts, and the same cruelty. But, he was told, Englishmen loved liberty and that Englishmen had said: “We shall no longer stand these things, we shall change them.” Then the idea came into his head. “Why can we not change it in China?” – (Applause.) We must imitate the same thing; we must change the government first, before we can start anything. Without good government a people could do nothing and in China “we had no government” and were miserable for many centuries. “Immediately after I graduated I saw” added Dr Sun “that it was necessary to give up my profession of healing men and take up my part to cure the country. – (Loud applause.) That is the answer to the question, where did I get my revolutionary ideas: it is entirely in Hong Kong. – (Laughter.)”
Well, Mr. Paxman?