THE MEDIA AND US
Usually a resigned shrug followed by a blind eye, if those two metaphors are not mutually exclusive, is one’s reaction to the stream of so-called liberal nonsense mixed with blatant inaccuracies that spouts forth from newspapers, radio and television, but occasionally professional outrage is stoked into writing to the Times, the BBC or whoever.
One of our more eminent TV presenters, Lucy Worsley, in a programme devoted to the debunking of British Anglo-Centric myths, said that the Battle of Waterloo is, and always was, claimed as a purely British victory, in which Wellington gave no credit to the contribution of the Prussians. As my readers well know, no serious historian has ever considered Waterloo as other than an Allied victory against odds that weren’t all that bad. Wellington’s Anglo-Dutch army included Dutch, Belgian and German contingents with the British being in a minority, albeit the largest national contingent. Wellington certainly gave credit to the Prussians, and in his despatch of 19 June 1815 to the King, the Prime Minister and the Commander in Chief, reporting on the campaign, he says in reference to the battle of Ligny on 16 June: ‘The Prussian army maintained their position with their usual gallantry and perseverance against a great disparity of numbers…’, and in the same despatch, reporting on the Battle of Waterloo two days later, he says: ‘I should not do justice to my own feelings, or to Marshal Blucher and the Prussian army, if I did not attribute the successful result of this arduous day to the cordial and timely assistance I received from them.’ It is probably superfluous to say that a letter to Miss Worsley pointing this out went unanswered.
I have long ceased to begin my morning with the ‘Today’ programme on BBC Radio 4, on the grounds that the interviewers are all grievously biased against British history, traditions and culture, and rarely give interviewees the time to answer their increasingly impertinent questions, except of course when those interviewees are of the left wing persuasion. I now listen to Times Radio, a much more balanced station which does give those questioned time to answer, but even here errors creep in. A debate recently focussed on ‘cultural appropriation’ when one thespian said that he could not imagine anyone other than a black actor playing Othello which led to a discussion as to whether Richard III could be played by other than a disabled actor. My quarrel is not with the opinion, ridiculous though it is, for if carried to conclusion it would mean that only members of the British Royal Family could play Kings Lear, Richard II, Henry V, Henry VI or Edward IV, and only members of assorted European royals could play the many Italian, Greek and Danish kings that Shakespeare depicts. No doubt English royals playing Macbeth, Duncan or Malcolm would attract the ire of the Scottish nationalists regardless of the fact that Stuart blood flows in the Windsor veins. Further, science fiction films could not be screened at all, for there are no aliens to play their parts, and no robot is yet, despite AI, capable of playing R2D2 and his little friend in the Star Wars series.
My argument is with the suggestion that Richard III was disabled. It is true that he had scoliosis of the spine which can make one shoulder higher than the other – which may or may not have been visible – but to say that he was disabled by this is nonsense. One only has to look at the Battle of Tewksbury, 4 May 1471, which was a resounding victory for the forces of King Edward IV where the Duke of Gloucester (later Richard III) played a vital part in attacking the Lancastrian forces with a body of heavy cavalry. No cripple could have achieved that! I have no intention of entering into the dispute as to whether or not Richard III was responsible for the demise of Edward V and his brother Richard, except to quote the legal tag Cui Bono and say that Lambert Simnel was not Edward V and Perkin Warbeck was not Richard of York. Richard III is portrayed by Shakespeare as ugly, deformed, repellent to ladies and an utter villain. Shakespeare was, of course, writing during the reign of Elizabeth I and would not, probably could not, show the Queen’s grandfather, Henry VII, in anything but a favourable light. Richard’s claim to the throne (brother of a king) was far stronger than that of Henry Tudor (tenuous out-of-wedlock connection through his mother to John of Gaunt via the latter’s mistress, and eventual third wife, Catherine Swynford) and had shown himself a capable administrator and competent soldier.
More recently an entertaining drama on ITV follows the fortunes of a Metropolitan Police female explosives officer, responsible for dealing with IODs (Improvised Explosive Devices) in the capital. In a recent edition a chief inspector is shown stepping on a sheet of cardboard and activating a pressure pad. As those who have ever been involved in training for or taking part in OBUA (Operations in Built Up Areas) will know the pressure pad is a common method of setting off booby traps. Stepping on it activates it, stepping off it sets off the explosive wired up to it. The SOP (Standard Operating Procedure) when someone steps on one and hears the characteristic ‘click’ is to remain standing on it while someone places a heavy weight – a couple of bricks, or the BBC Guide to Inclusivity and Diversity, will do – and then invite the unfortunate to step away. You then blow the device in situ, or if that is not possible disarm it. What you do not do, as shown in the TV drama, is let the chap stay standing on it while you disarm it there and then. I know little about the Metropolitan Police but I venture to suggest that someone who had risen to rank of chief inspector (roughly equivalent to LE captain) would not go into panic mode in such a situation.
Some years ago I was interviewed by an American company which was making a film about Gurkhas. They kindly sent me a copy of the finished article when I saw to my horror that archive film of Gurkhas in Italy in WW2 was stated to be Gurkhas in Gallipoli in WWI. Gurkhas in Malaya in the 1960s was said to show Gurkhas in Burma in 1944, and there was more. When I remonstrated with the producer he replied that the couch potato in Boise, Idaho, would not know the difference! Fortunately the film was never shown in the UK.
I could go on. Beach obstacles in Shaving Ryan’s Privates pointing the wrong way; actors portraying soldiers unable to wear berets properly; a female civilian detective investigating crime on a ballistic missile submarine and on and on it goes. Why do they not employ a military consultant to put these things right? Because they do not care.
Even John Ford hired military consultants (and usually put them on screen in various ways), but even if they're on salary, the Director and Producer don't have to listen to them. When they were filming the Battle of Fredericksburg scenes in Gods and Generals, my friends among the reenactors told of their repeated efforts to place the the Green Harp flag of the 28th Massachusetts Volunteers in its historical place at the center of the brigade (in front of the 28th which had just joined the Irish Brigade before Fredericksburg and was the largest regiment in the brigade), but the Director kept moving it down to the end of the brigade line because in this sequence his named star was portraying Mulholland, Colonel of the 119th Pennsylvania (which wasn't even an Irish regiment!). They went through this charade several times as the sequence was filmed.
For centuries the English could do no wrong, now you can do no right even it seems in self defense? Of your own children?
Who would have thought the staid English so.... Volatile?
Really, would a Fenian bloodline’s permission help? Let’s try...
DEFEND YOUR CHILDREN
DEFEND YOUR SOIL
DEFEND YOURSELVES
🙏 Amen.
My grandfather hated English, yes he was one of the Fenians, but really this is too much.
PS - I’m Irish American, and this is the Ivy League doing you in.
It’s the result of not taking the shortest way with the Dissenters, here they are... the very Puritans 400 years later doing you in.
But only if you keep letting them...
Fight. This spectacle is too terrible to behold. Fight.
Slancha