Funny old thing, history. Too often it defies the desires of the simple-minded for it to be neat and to conform with stereotypes. We have seen this week that the Guardian, woke rag of the snowflakes and soyboys, was itself founded on the profits of slavery. Those seeking reparations should perhaps look to the Scott Trust as a local port of call. And then there is the whole troubling history of the Labour Party's racist and totalitarian past, pursuing policies of compulsory sterilisation and the state controlled breeding of the British people to prevent race-dilution and mental defectives 'mongrelising' and 'polluting' the racial hygiene of the Isles.
It was Major Archibald Church, Labour MP for Wandsworth, who as late as 1931 tried to get a compulsory sterilisation Bill through parliament, "in advance of public opinion". Hansard reports his speech
Of course, it may be urged that mere sterilisation is not enough. It may be urged that that will not cure the problem of mental disease. We are not suggesting that it would, but we are suggesting that the knowledge which has been obtained and the statistics which have been compiled as to the ancestry of mental defectives in a number of different States and countries, show that anything from 45 to 80 per cent. of the mental defectives in those various States and countries are so because they have inherited defective germ plasm. We are suggesting that it would be advisable to take the risk and sterilise all the defectives in the hope that by a generation or so we shall reduce the mental defectives to measurable quantities.Hyacinth Morgan, opposing the Bill, said
The House has heard a harrowing tale which is mostly moonshine. The Bill is said to be in advance of public opinion, but it is really in advance of common sense and ordinary sanity. With regard to mental defectives there is said to be an increase rising crescendo in geometrical progression to overwhelm the world in an avalanche of mental backwardness, and to lure the progressive world headlong into an abyss of degenerate civilisation.Of course Wandsworth and the mention of 'germ plasm' link Labour's Major Church with another dreadful old racist, the eugenicist Francis Galton, who inspired the founding of the Eugenics Society, which exists today (but perhaps not for much longer) as the Galton Institute, headquartered in Wandsworth.
Last week UCL announced that it was renaming a building named after Francis Galton because of his association with eugenics. What other eponymous buildings, streets, structures, prizes and awards could be at risk?
Well, Labour and the Fabian Society were eugenics fascists in a big way. GB Shaw, of course, who wanted to use a 'humane lethal gas' in a sort of British Auschwitz as a final solution to mental defectives, Virginia Woolf who said of the mentally ill that "They should certainly all be killed", Huxley, Aldous and Julian, the latter wanting a scheme to inseminate (artificially, somewhat priggishly) British housewives with the sperm of superior white oxbridge graduates to improve the race, Harold Laski, Sidney and Beatrice Webb, Beveridge, who spoke at meetings of eugenicists, JBS Haldane, Keynes himself and local south-London Labour MP heroes such as Will Crooks, whose views did not quite chime with those we hold today about the disabled. Crooks described disabled people as “like human vermin” who “crawl about doing absolutely nothing, except polluting and corrupting everything they touch”.
Can we can now expect a bonfire of eponymous monuments and memorials to these sick puppies?
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| How many residents of the Will Crooks Estate in Poplar know his racist and eugenicist views? |
I'm afraid even the Manchester Guardian was not immune. When a parliamentary report in 1934 backed voluntary sterilisation of the unfit, a Guardian editorial offered warm support, endorsing the sterilisation campaign "the eugenists soundly urge". If it's any comfort, the New Statesman was in the same camp.Writes Jonathan Freedland in a partially honest Guardian piece from 2012 - and indeed even the New Stasi has acknowledged some partial fault.
Be careful what you wish for, Comrades.
19 comments:
Yes, what a country eh?
Sweden has some very unpleasant history too, along with others on this topic.
Come on Raedwald, you know finger-pointing and cries of "waycist" and now "slaver" don't apply to the lefties.
A very 1930s phenomenon across both political parties, not only a Labour thing.
Think back a bit, the end of the 19th century exposed idiocy as a common and economy-sapping phenomenon. Largely brought about by limited travel and genetic sourcing opportunities. Didn't matter much in a largely agricultural country but it did matter in an industrial economy with one eye on war. Something must be done.
To a control freak eugenics looks like an answer. Ticks all the boxes, sense of superiority, prurient interest in sex, keep the lower orders in line and of course racism and class. But the real answer was the bicycle, fixed the problem at source.
Find an elderly doctor and ask how idiocy was handled up till the early '60s. Sterilisation was more common than you might think, pretexts for an operation 'down there' were thought up and a nip and tuck, voila.
You can be sure today's problems have their roots 30 or 40 years back and clever people will come up with daft 'solutions' and politicians will buy them, so we go on.
Eugenics is the formal version of "I wouldn't want my daughter to marry an X", where X can be a man from another race, class, religion, tribe, or whatever.
Its logical conclusion is that she is made to marry a cousin. Or even, as in some royal families, a brother.
Don Cox
"... to prevent race dilution."
It wouldn't be so bad if they (all parties) protected the British way of life instead of allowing other races privileges that give them superiority over 'us' - or allowing unfettered immigration from societies that don't/won't adopt/accept the 'British way'.
We are committing social suicide - many would say, with some justification, genecide.
The issue of 'selective breeding' (and in terms of the potential for genetic engineering this becomes a contentious subject) pales into insignificance.
"You can be sure today's problems have their roots 30 or 40 years back"
I think most have their roots about a million years back, when our ancestors first started hunting in packs.
Or perhaps a few billion years, when DNA first appeared.
Don Cox
@Don Cox - you mean like the Pakistani prevelance for cousin marriage? An issue that causes a lot of expense for the NHS apparent....
jim
"A very 1930s phenomenon across both political parties, not only a Labour thing."
But definitely and demonstrably "of the Left".
"Think back a bit, the end of the 19th century exposed idiocy as a common and economy-sapping phenomenon."
Not idiocy Jim, an idoit was too dumb to even be considered. Morons maybe and imbeciles were worth saving.
Can't go with you on this one, R - the wokists (and probably Starmer) would happily to throw any of those names under the bus in a heartbeat
I fear you may be right, Nick.
For a leftie faction that reckons Lavrenti Beria may have had his faults but was basically sound, trying to shame them by pointing out Nye Bevan's gulag apologism during the Holodomor is not a lethal weapon.
Still, it's an irritant.
We abort babies on the premise of having defects now. Isn't that just another form of eugenics? Either human life is sacred or it's not.
M.
What a can of worms for the Labour Party, ha, ha! Wonder how they'll spin that one!
Funny how these 'mentally ill' asylum seekers are able to distinguish between whom they should, and shouldn't stab in a park full of people? Perhaps the white ones are easier to see, or something.
Steve
Jim
Yes, true that Eugenics had an appeal across the parties, but Labour was the foremost proponent. And the point about the bicycle is well made. Even in the 1970s in Suffolk a girl from a village 4.1/2 miles away was called a 'furriner', the pre-cycle courting radius being villages and hamlets within 3-4 miles (i.e the maximum distance a lad could walk after work, meet his girl and walk home in good condition for work the next day). The bicycle was revolutionary in gene-pool terms in extending this radius.
But I'm forming a theory that this supposed fear of idiocy, prevalent in the progressives, Fabians and Socialists, was perhaps more akin to the views of Remainers that Brexiteers were all uneducated, low IQ knuckle-draggers. In other words, it wasn't actual idiocy that wound them up, but the refusal of the British working classes to go along with their privileged, metropolitan wokeness.
M - Yes, abortion on 'health grounds' is also a form of eugenics
Dave G - yes, arranged marriages often have the effect of reverse eugenics, given that they're made to enhance wealth concentration rather than genetic health, frequently to the detriment of the latter.
But we're not sheep or prize cattle or Nasturtiums, and we've evolved a mechanism that operates, unless it's constrained, that uses mutual attraction to form pair-bonds that produce offspring. I'm a firm believer in allowing nature to take the lead, naturally.
Steve, wonderfully succinct and bullseye on the "mentally ill" stabbers in our midst. Very Catch 22.
Richard Dawkins nailed it perfectly quite recently.
Eugenics would work and you could breed whatever race you required. It would just take time.
But to breed the desired race would require actions which are morally repugnant and horribly restrictive of essentially all hard won freedoms.
And, of course, the advocates of eugenics always assume that they would be directing it.
Six two, blonde, blue eyed with the body of Adonis and the intellect of Newton. You'd be fine.
Unless what was required was a race of black haired dwarf servants.
Object to eugenics for the right reasons, don't get diverted down pointless rabbit holes arguing practicalities or what the desired philosopher kings should look like.
Being a firm believer of nature and allowing it to take its course runs in opposition to supporting natural births that result in major mental or physical impairment that is then supported artificially for as long as it takes for 'nature' to eventually win-out.
It's one or the other....
Eugenics still popular over the pond:
“Some White People May Have to Die for Black Communities to Be Made Whole”
https://www.wsbtv.com/news/local/-some-white-people-may-have-to-die-uga-teaching-assistant-under-fire-for-facebook-post/908340952/
Steve
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