Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

Emmeline Pankhurst, probably the most venerated in the mainstream British media, defended the presence and reach of the British Empire:  Some talk about the Empire and Imperialism as if it were something to decry and something to be ashamed of. [I]t is a great thing to be the inheritors of an Empire like ours ... great in territory, great in potential wealth. ... If we can only realise and use that potential wealth we can destroy thereby poverty, we can remove and destroy ignorance. For years she travelled around England and North America, rallying support for the British Empire and warning audiences about the dangers of Bolshevism. —Quoted in Purvis, June, Emmeline Pankhurst: A Biography , London 2002, p. 312 Why is a London School of Economics’s building named after her?   There is a Memorial of her in Victoria Tower Gardens, south of Victoria Tower at the southwest corner of the Palace of Westminster

 Excerpts According to Will Lloyd , The director is a mass entertainer with an elitist disdain for the masses. In his films, order and hierarchy reign supreme. Nola went to Haileybury College…  A prison… though with better hymns, and one where the prisoners eventually graduate as prison guards.” “Survive your first two years at Haileybury,” claimed RAF group captain Peter Townsend, “and you could survive anything.” Haileybury was a finishing school for a dead Empire. Nolan never slept well there. This was the early Eighties; he believed the world would soon end in a nuclear holocaust. In the dormitory each evening he would lie in his bed after lights out listening to the scores for  Star Wars , Stanley Kubrick’s  2001 , or Vangelis’s score for  Chariots of Fire  on his walkman.” Nolan’s fastidious character hints at a pre-21st century moral seriousness… Nolan believes in deadlines and careful resource allocation. He considers efficiency “a form of cont...

Tariq Ali and Priyamvada Gopal join Eleanor Penny to discuss the life and legacy of Winston Churchill

The British colonisers caused the Bengal famine Related The trouble with the Engenglish is that their hiss hiss history happened overseas, so they dodo don’t know what it means. —Whisky Sisodia, in Salman Rushdie,  The Satanic Verses

Imperial Encore  a text that should be on the reading list of anyone interested in colonialism, material culture as a tool of empire and attempts to extend imperialism through the use of soft power. Review of  Imperial Encore: The Cultural Project of the Late British Empire

Artist Samson Kambalu

Man must assert his native rights, must say ;  We take from Monarchs’ hand the granted sway;  — Shelley, an English poet     Separating the “human” from the institution, and the “family” from the “monarchy” has long been a successful tactic in preventing searching scrutiny of the institution. She faithfully served the British imperial project Related Insurgent Empire

A very short introduction Related British atrocities in Kenya

Sharing via google drive

“ The apogee of the secret state in purposefully hiding information from the public in the postwar period was necessary for sculpting an official narrative about British imperialism and its war efforts divorced from the truth of its brutality. Imperialists were often all too aware that if the true nature of their mission was exposed it would also undermine the image of liberal democracy that was deployed to distinguish the West from authoritarian regimes.” State secrecy and destruction of historical records

 An act of British state violence

A good production. “The English have treated this country shamefully. And the rich—my father included have treated the poor worse. The worst slums in Europe, they say.” —Frances O’Flaherty - Frances: “My father says that socialism is the work of the devil.” - Elisabeth: “Sounds like mine. But if poverty is the work of God, I’m with the devil.” Rebellion  

 The history remembered, the history forgotten

Related The Bengal famine

‘These foreigners! They come to our country, they find a safe haven, we give them shelter and jobs, they enjoy our freedoms and democracy ... And now they want to rewrite out history, the history of Great Britain ’ Rule, Britannia!

Citizenship Test ‘misleading’ and ‘false’ on slavery I suggest the following question be added to the Test: The following is an account that took place in a British colony. When and where did it happen?  1. India between 1870-1876 2. Iraq between 1920-1922 3. Kenya between 1952-1956 "Interrogation under torture was widespread. Many of the men were anally raped, using knives, broken bottles, rifle barrels, snakes and scorpions. A favourite technique was to hold a man upside down, his head in a bucket of water, while sand was rammed into his rectum with a stick. Women were gang-raped by the guards. People were mauled by dogs and electrocuted. The British devised a special tool which they used for first crushing and then ripping off testicles. They used pliers to mutilate women’s breasts. They cut off inmates’ ears and fingers and gouged out their eyes. They dragged people behind Land Rovers until their bodies disintegrated. Men were rolled up in barbed wire and kicked aroun...