“No-one gets married in a castle unless they own it. It is brash, celebrity style behavior.” –Carolyn Bourne to future daughter in law Heidi Withers. One bullet-point from a cascade of nuggets which the affluent Britisher meant to be a dressing-down of American would-be princess Withers, who shared it on Facebook.
Turns out that the common knowledge of the past 50+ years was right, the American backed British colonial government was, despite American and British denials, murdering, torturing and “disappearing” people, just like they did in every other nation where they sent in the Royal Marines to take over the local management and “bring civilization to the Wogs”
I’m sure the redcoats would love to see that particular word disappear, but hey, it shows the true nature of Imperialism and Colonialism in all its ugly inglory.
What that means HERE, you know how the TeaBags and other Right Wing Extremists like the Klan and their “unofficial” affiliates the Minutemen like to harp on President Obama’s Dad being a MauMau? And that the term “freedom fighter” is just a Liberal euphemism for barbaric terrorist? Like how the MauMau were supposedly preying on the defenseless and weak Colonial Overlords, the Darkie Horde (the stupid bastards say the same thing about the Nat Turner Rebellion in American Slavery) rising up against their lawful White masters with no reason, because they had been well treated, and given as much Human Rights as one could appropriately give Savages…
I capitalized that last because Michael “Savage” Weiner likes to do that stupid racist bullshit, depicting any “savages” who defy the Natural White Order as brutal, vicious and stupidly bloodthirsty.
The British also depicted his Irgun cousins the same way. Guess there’s an Uncle Tom in every group.
But the notion, for the past more than 50 years, was that the British were a benevolent Master Race and merely “misconstrued” as being The Actual Bloodthirsty Vicious Savages in the equation.
Well, TeaBags and other Racist organizations,
“Eat and smile, byotches!”
Ok so that sounds unnecessarily harsh. No Indeed. It’s Necessary.
“Oh, Jonah with his Whitey Bashing again!” not really. I AM half white myself. I could point out that Indigenous Rebellions including oh, let’s see, every American Indian nation/tribe fighting back against people who came in, took everything and decided to kill up a mess of folks for not getting off “their” land. But that would be yet another episode of overkill. And we’re not supposed to report on things that happened in the past, but since “the past” starts anew at every heartbeat that would conveniently silence people. Also it’s supposed to be bad manners and just plain Tacky to point out when “the past” is still happening.
And enabled by Historical Hysterical Revisionists like Fox News, Heritage Foundation and the TeaTards and MinuteMurderers.
Sure, they like to dress up and re-enact scenes from the Revolution and the Civil War ooo bad me! Naughty Wicked! I didn’t call it “the war between the states”.
Scenes where British Colonialists rebelled over paying taxes which supported the very Colonialist armies which enabled them to remain in America in the first damn place. And killed mostly Other Colonials and British Soldiers, with a few Hessian mercenaries and of course as many American Indians as they could fit into the killing spree.
I mean, that IS what the original Tea Party and Minutemen were all about. So they should know a little bit about the “history” they portray, right?
Of course they don’t, or won’t mention it, sweep it under the ol’ rug. It would be embarrassing for them to admit what exact kind of Bullshit they’re trying to foist off on the rest of us.
And that’s a key point, they’re ashamed or, at least, realize that if they ever told the Truth of their motives people would Not Like Them.
And since they represent a minority opinion, they have to convince as many people as possible to Like Them. Otherwise their bullshit plans fall through.
Like in Kenya. Ireland. Oh, did I forget to remember Ireland? My Bad.
Ireland which they occupied for more than 400 years and did things like force the Natives to speak only the English Language under pain of death, forced them to pay “reparations” to the Crown for “liberating them” in the form of all the Gross National Product, at the height of the Potato Famine the British Admiralty reported X number of tons of wheat and other grains exported from Ireland to pay off “their debt” and on the next page reporting how many Irish children starved to death that day.
Real sweet fellows. And this being done to a people who were the very picture of European Whiteness. Or, as the Uptight WASP yankees in New England put it, when describing other citizens of New England “JNOKDs”
“They’re Just Not Our Kind, Dear” Imagine a group of elitists whose White Supremacism is directed against even their fellow whites.
So the myth of the MauMau being a band of savages bent on hacking apart innocent whites for no reason whatsoever, while popular with the TeaTards and MinutePukes and other Republican’t Racist Groups, is just that, a myth.
And now, the British Crown has acknowledged it.
Oh, sure, the British Crown has acknowledged it many times in the past, much like a serial wife-beater will apologize to his ol’ lady as she’s laying in the hospital bed, until she drops first the restraining order and then the charges.
They’re forced into it by their own behavior.
There are many who are repeatedly sucked back into it every time.
John O’Donnell of local fame, who had the Colorado Springs police bust up a peaceful and legitimate entry in an Irish parade 4 years ago, while one of the other entries, the Al Khaly Shrine marching band, were playing the British National Anthem.
Some of the people on the sidelines said that St Patricks day is no place for Politics, while another band was playing “Wearin’ o’ the Green”.
A very non-political song, of course.
Just that the lyrics include
“They’re (the Brits) Hangin’ men,
and hangin’ women
fa’ the wearin’ o’ the green”
Or the British soldiers in the parade celebrating their alliance with the Bu’ush Regime in a war based on Lies against one of their former “possessions” in Iraq and Afghanistan. Nothing political or Pro-British about that either.
A war closely related to the rebellion in Kenya. And the Rebellion in Ireland.
Actually Baroness Ashton and other “diplomats” said they were “disappointed”. Baroness Ashton led a delegation from France, Germany, Russia, the UK, US and China, at the two-day talks. The international team had proposed a new version of a plan to keep Iranian enrichment within civilian-grade levels by having it send uranium abroad to be processed. But Western diplomatic sources have spoken of anger and frustration over Iran’s behavior at the talks. But of course… Arrogantly demanding that one’s own nation be accorded the same Sovereign Rights as any other is a privilege accorded to the Great Powers. “Simply EVERYBODY knows THAT, Dah-link”
So the Baroness is pissed. GOOD.
The Royals got snubbed by Peasants.
GOOD.
Apparently, unilateral demands should only come from the Empire.
Only, since World War One they’ve shied away from being called that.
One of the reasons for the British Crown starting the war was the same with King George V as it was with Elizabeth II, Iranian oil for the Empire. And Iraqi.
Only it was under Turkish control at the time, and had to be taken away from Turkish control by force of arms. Arms carried in the arms of Peasants who had to be conscripted or cajoled into doing Their Masters’ bidding.
So they invented a lie, of course. Happens all the time in Diplomatic Circles, as Wikileaks has recently revealed. Just like Gueen Bess 2 cheerily signing on to the BushBlairCheneyCo. lies about WMDs both in Iraq and Iran, King George V jumped at a chance to pit “his” Imperial Army against those of his cousins in a gigantic game of Risk where the pawns actually scream, bleed and die when gassed, shot or bombed.
By telling the Suckers errr “Loyal Subjects Patriots that they, as subjects and property of an Emperor, were to fight Imperialism.
“That small nations would have the same rights as the the Great Powers.” What a crock of Lying Pig Shit.
The Emperors made out like the murdering bandits they were then and still are today.
The peasants filled millions of graves. Same as always.
I Am Just Sick. Julian Assange arrested, denied bail, confined to a UK jail cell deemed unsuitable for Bush, Blair or their murderous peers. Britain even assured Israel that its war criminals could visit England without fear of politically motivated arrest warrants. So much for the Assange-is-Mossad rumor. Arrested for what? Publishing evidence of governments conspiring against their peoples’ interests, in their own words? Really, what’s next for our pretense of Democracy?
No, it was accusations of sexual impropriety, technically. Rape and molestation being the corporate media’s chosen translation of how Swedes might describe a consensual sexual encounter gone off, according to post-coital television interviewees, turned insufficiently feminist-sensitive. Do I sound flippant? Two women in Sweden, described as groupies, of activist pedigree it’s alleged, one elder cementing the resolve of the younger, shall we call them Lewinsky and Tripp, accusing Assange of disrespecting their gender.
They play right into the stereotype I have of single-issue advocates who can’t get past affronts to their own personal agendas. Whatever Assange’s transgressions, is not the fate of the western world, the awakening of its public participants in the balance? Though Swedish authorities originally dismissed the accusations, the pair is determined to interrupt Wikileaks’ Cablegate to school Assange in his bedside manner?
Whether instigated by intelligence operatives or not, the charges made by the two women have been the only hooks which authorities have been able to get into Assange. Will extradition to Sweden to answer police inquiries lead to US rendition to a secret facility? Should we hope that at the very least the Brits resist US pressure to interrogate Assange, or affect the operation of Wikileaks by coercion and duress?
We must hope the Assange’s colleagues can secure Wikileaks before their sysadmin is tortured for his access codes.
Hearing the New York Times assail the character of Julian Assange as having delusions of grandeur, I’m reminded of how a centuries earlier ruling class rid themselves of the populist scourge Napoleon. Defeated once, Napoleon was able to escape banishment and had but to set foot on French soil and with only the force of his personality he was able to reconstitute his campaign to free the European citizenry of their despotic monarchs. Defeated again, Napoleon was too popular to execute and so was banished again. This time, it’s alleged, a heroic loyalist submitted to be contaminated with syphilis and thence to infect and ground the upstart Napoleon for good.
The remaining Wikileaks crew is at greater risk than Julian Assange, lacking his media visibility, they could be disappeared without fanfare. But that’s evidently a fading misconception of mine. Assange’s high profile hasn’t helped him.
Remember when George Bush couldn’t define “sovereignty?” Maybe it wasn’t his fault. How would you describe sovereign lands where US extraction and exploitative industries can operate without regulatory oversight, and tribes can issue identification papers unless they mean to travel somewhere. When the original Indian treaties were signed, US destiny was manifested with promises that the former landholders’ sovereignty would be respected. The Iroquois Lacrosse team have just learned tribal sovereignty means carrying the occupier’s passport.
The US State Department at first refused to grant travel permission to the sovereign Iroquois because they didn’t have the newfangled, traceable, trackable, American passport. When congressmen intervened on behalf of the Iroquois who did not wish to submit to United States stinkin’ papers, the government relented, granting a one-time exemption.
How do suppose they mean to explain that? A just-this-once exception on the sovereignty whatsit.
But the lacrosse team’s destination was England, and British bureaucrats held firm on the original argument that the sovereign Native Americans required non-Native American passports. Post 9/11 days are no time apparently to permit international travelers to pass themselves off with rinky dink documents issued by who knows what maize-republics. The USA may foist whatever charade it wants on its captive vanquished aborigines, that doesn’t mean England has to play dumb too.
Maybe the British are mindful not only that the Iroquois were among the inventors of lacrosse, but that they once used the pretext of a game to successfully storm an English fort. Is that among their worries, Post 9/11?
Post 9/11 is no time for the pretense of sovereignty. Whether schoolchildren can grasp its contradictions or not.
Here’s Bush again, doing his best Miss South Carolina:
“Uh, tribal sovereignty means that. It’s sovereign. You’re a, you’ve been given sovereignty and you’re viewed as a sovereign entity. And therefore the relationship between the federal government and tribes is one between sovereign entities.”
How would it have been played out in the press had the Team America gone on to at least a higher level of victory? We’ve already suffered through an anti-Immigrant slam against major league baseball, with all the appropriate “OUTRAGE! (copyright 1993-2010 Fox News Networks)” about Major League players getting visas and work permits when immigrating from Cuba and (gasp!) Mexico. Not any rage against any favoritism but the fact that people PEOPLE from Cuba and Mexico were given work permits in the first place. How dare they let more of THEM infiltrate America!
Not much crying about the “patriotic” symbolism of some of our best baseball players being from places like Costa Rica.
So how would it play out that a team built on the skills of Immigrants took the U.S. to a World Cup win?
More to the non-point, how will it play out with the loss? Will immigration be blamed or praised? I should remind here, and probably should have much earlier, that somewhere near half, plus or minus a few points, of my own ancestors were immigrants. And that many of the “immigrants” who are taking so much heat from the Racists are actually Native Americans, kicked back and forth even in pre-Columbian times by that old devil Imperialism. Now defined more by arbitrary political boundaries than by any REAL considerations. My sister was born in England, off base and at home, rather than on “U.S. Soil” at the Mendenhall RAFB hospital. U.S. Soil could be and has been defined as ships flying the United States Flag.
The El Paso County (Texas) Hospital District is about a mile and a half north of the Rio Grande, people born there are Citizens of the U.S. regardless of the citizenship of their parents, if an “All American” mother gives birth in a different hospital on the Mexican side of the bridge, the kid is automatically a U.S. citizen because his parents were. The first case scenario scares living Hell out of the Racists, and they complain about it bitterly. The second case scenario is accepted by them as being a matter of Divine Rights possessed by a narrowly defined group of descendants of Immigrants who happen to have English surnames and somewhat lighter skin tones. An “American” citizen couple with the surname Smith would experience less Racist bullcrap getting their kids citizenship determined than an American family whose ancestors were in Texas for thousands of years longer than the Smiths were, but have the surname Gonzalez. But of course, it’s not racist. The Racist Anti-Immigrant Lunatic Fringe insist on that point.
In the recent election cycle, Barack Obama was and still is questioned about his citizenship. Someway, somehow, an American who would have been an American citizen no matter what simply because his mother was a citizen, was involved in an elaborate plot to make it appear as though he had been born in Hawaii.
A point of citizenship that would only make a rat’s ass worth of difference if the child is going to run for President or Vice President of the United States. His principal opponent, John McCain, WAS born offshore only in a (non-colonialist, of course!) narrow strip of land called The Canal Zone which is technically, by treaty, in he nation of Panama. A nation forged like most of the modern Geo-Political definitions of Sovereign nations, by the Corporate Government of the United States and taken away from the Not-As-Equal-In-Sovereignty-to-Britain-and-America nation of Colombia, by a contrived revolution led by U.S. paid mercenaries. Much like Iraq today. Much like the equally contrived U.S. corporate led Revolution against the kingdom of Hawaii at roughly the same time. Or the War Against Imperialism (as practiced by the Spanish) led by the United Imperial States. Which gave us “possessions” such as Puerto Rico.
The day after tomorrow is the final day that current Puerto Rican birth certificates will be recognized.
The challenge to the Citizenship of the Puerto Rican UNITED STATES CITIZENS is of course, not Racism. The Klan-affiliated Anti-Immigrant groups have told us so, and we’re not allowed to challenge their explanation, lest we be accused of equating them with the Klan, even though they have such strong ties with the Klan.
The doctrine of “looks like a duck, walks like a duck, quacks like a duck” is only permitted to be used to describe people on the Left as being Bolshevik, Marxist etc… Not the other way round.
Is the State of Hawaii next on the Racist Hit Parade? Already Arizona has instituted a policy that encourages Racist Profiling wherein anybody with darker brown skin is a “suspect” of violations of Immigration so-called “law”.
Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, Nevada, California and even the former Indian Territory (Oklahoma) are considering enacting similar RACIST compacts.
The Arizona Ku Klux Kops are insisting that they would never ever no not once use such a blatantly Racist Law to harass Americans with Spanish Surnames. So do the Texas and Colorado Pigs.
They are, of course, lying through their teeth, but we’re not supposed to say that so I won’t.
I guess, though, that the Racist Decision on Puerto Rican birth certificate challenges will answer the question, Why not give the newly conquered “sovereign” Puppet States of Iraq and Afghanistan the same kind of citizenship that Puerto Ricans got when the Non-Empire conquered their nation.
It also has some extra-ugly connotations for ANYBODY of American citizenship. I was born in KANSAS, man, the so-called Heartland, not far from the geographic center of the “lower 48” United States.
I was informed two years ago that a Kansas birth certificate wasn’t considered a legitimate Citizenship Document by the State of Colorado, for the same “reason” the Puerto Rican birth certificates aren’t.
Colorado, you remember, is one of those states who are contemplating enacting the RACIST racial profiling laws mirroring the Klan-sponsored law in Arizona.
I’ve got my I.D. card ready…
iGOL!
To the U.S. all-immigrant Soccer Team, condolences on losing to a bankrupt third world country with about the smallest percentage of self-defined ethnic Whites in the world. Whatever heat you take from the Fool Brigade, at least you play Futbol better than I do.
American World Cup viewers tuning in to watch their team face England on Saturday might be excused confusion about their adversary’s flag. Instead of the British Union Jack, English fans waved a red and white standard usually only glimpsed in movies where knights fight dragons, crusades, or Braveheart.
That’s the red cross of Saint George, dragon-slayer, minus the diagonal white-on-blue X of Scotland’s Saint Andrew and the red X of Ireland’s Saint Patrick. Where British dominion is concerned, natural resources and labor are commonwealth, assertion of athletic dominance is forever England.
But the England team crest, with the three lions passant-guardant, dates to lionhearted King Richard, the early realm’s warrior expansionist. Technically the heraldic cats are léopards, because the royal houses ruled in the language of the French, and these three show the empire’s spots: Team England’s badge invokes the era when “England” included the conquered Scotland, Ireland and Wales.
As far as world onlookers cared, the first round pairing of USA versus England was an intramural match among conspiratorial members of the Coalition of the Willing. At best one could only root for the good cop colonizer. Early enough in the game, a score fumbled past England’s goalie portended the Gods’ ambivalence over the outcome. Like Olympic teams, the FIFA contenders are groupings of soccer all-stars whose day jobs mean playing side by side, for either Man United or Real Madrid apparently. It’s hard to expect that team allegiances would defer to nationalism any more than to the federation’s television revenues. The achievement of a tie for match USA – England guaranteed to string along the barely interested American TV audience.
England, Scotland and Ireland were grandfathered into FIFA because, despite not being standalone sovereign nations, they originated the competition. Indeed Britain invented football, whose spread across the world is owed to European colonialism.
Sovereignty is no small distinction when it comes to legitimizing sports teams. Taiwan and Tibet are not recognized by China for example, as the Korean halves reject each other, as the US might object to Puerto Rican or Hawaiian bids for succession.
Today a pretense of sovereignty is enough to field a national soccer team. Take Iraq, Afghanistan and Israel, for example, and I needn’t stop there. By what standard are they independent entities versus US client states? They have their own flags, for all the US cares, and I daresay American pride would be sacrificed for the political gain of either of these puppets excelling their master in sport. A success in sporting circles would only bolster the facade of their indigenous national sovereignty.
Does it say something about the difference between contemporary empires and past, that the US doesn’t need to stamp the red, white and blue unto its colonial projects? Nor dominate them in the arena?
We can contrast America’s far-flung possessions and occupations with the British Commonwealth, whose flags closely mimicked mother Britain’s theme. But I’d like to clarify Ireland’s representation on the British flag. The cross of St. Patrick whose outline informs the Union Jack, represents Ireland before her independence. Still occupied Northern Ireland has a flag which duplicates England’s but for the addition of a loyalist co-opted red hand at its center.
While England holds fast to Scotland’s oil and Ireland’s loyalists, when it comes to sport, she wants all the credit.
Prince Harry was ordered home to England after his cover was blown playing soldier in Afghanistan. Unmasked, it was decided the prince would be a bullet magnet for enemy fire. Here he is returning to a hero’s welcome, wearing a flak-jacket he might have done better to leave with the compatriots he left behind. Although -wot’s this- Harry Homebound appears to be accompanied by his compatriots! Were they all recalled too? Special forces assigned to bodyguard the prince would have been redeployed elsewhere. Was Heroic Harry soldiering with a royal retinue of school chums? Other spoiled upper-crust kids spoiling for hands-on Half Life blood?
Harry did serve his country’s propaganda machine by perpetuating the normalcy of Britain’s traditional militaristic adventurer. Said the prince of his soldiering:
“At the end of the day I like to sort of be a normal person, and for once I think this is about as normal as I’m ever going to get.”
The Queen is the first film to be made about the woman who has presided over England for half a century. The story deals with the days following Princess Di’s fatal crash in 1997 and the personal challenge her death might have posed for the monarchy’s public relations. The same period saw Prime Minister Tony Blair’s ascendancy to power. The story gives Blair credit, where the queen appeared to faulter, for recognizing Diana as being the “People’s Princess.” And then some.
Asked about his fawning depiction of Tony Blair as man of the hour, director Stephen Frears thought it “a mark of my incredible maturity” to cast Blair in the light of his glory days, this at a time when Blair and his government have fallen irrecoverably, adding that “it’s preposterous that he’s not in jail.” In the interview Frears also makes light of whether Queen Elizabeth II is possibly really as bright as her character portrayed by Hellen Mirren. The Queen celebrates the resolve of royal blood facing a crisis. Elizabeth is both humanized and lionized, by sticking to the stiff upper lip “the world expects of us.” Frears interweaves real news footage of celebrities and the flowers flooding the Buckingham Palace gates, counting the days from Lady Di’s death to the climax when the queen finally makes her long delayed statement.
That’s when Frears lies. He lays the behind the scenes personal anguish which might have explained the dishonor the royals paid to Diana, leading to the Queen’s famous address, but then rewrites the ending. As if Mighty Casey, his vainglorious ambitions thwarted in the minor leagues, stays true to his character that day in Mudville, and now because we can all feel a little sympathy for the self-centered fella, he swings and DOES NOT strike out!!
We all were there when Queen Elizabeth took to the microphone, and no close-ups of a fictional Tony Blair’s tearing eyes, proud of his stalwart sovereign, are going to recast the disgraceful blue-blooded reaction for what it was.
And what of lingering accusations of the royal family being behind Diana’s death? What of the rape tape which Diana posited with a servant for safe-keeping which tells, it’s conjectured because the British press are forbidden to tell us, of Prince Charles interrupted sodomizing a valet. What of Lady Diana being, not even arguably, by the power of her personality, the most powerful woman in the world? But unlike Oprah or Martha Stewart, Diana was a loose cannon championing the cause of AIDs in Africa, and the fight to ban land mines, both subjects the powers that be, certainly in America, did/do not want highlighted.
The Queen‘s smartest character, Tony Blair’s advisor who supposedly coins the term People’s Princess is let to murmur early on, “It wasn’t the press that killed her.” But the subject is dropped there. Instead Blair and his crew seize upon Diana’s death like Mayor Giuliani to 9/11, being seen offering bedside comfort to a traumatized populace, and reaping the accolades. Except director Frears offers nothing behind such scenes. Blair is shown as the earnest surrogate, standing in for his monarch until she can regrasp the helm.
With the ensuing years having shown us Blair’s true colors, what do you think was the more likely scenario? A self-effacing Danny Kaye Pauper Prince or a Rudy Giuliani? I find Frears’ characterization of Blair even more disingenuous, showing Tony living in a modest flat strewn with children’s messes, taking the dinner plates to do the “washing up,” and keeping watch on world events on a television with a Nintendo game atop it. This coming from a “labor” minister who was leading the conservative counter-revolution to restructure the British economy for the elites. Perhaps Frears’ adopted class.
The Queen owes its entire first act to Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 911, the music, the build, the black out of the familiar awful moment, and the protracted montage we needed to absorb the tragedy and understand how it’s changed us.
The great disservice that Stephen Frears does to history, and to all of us because we are still living it, is amplified by the fact that he did get Diana’s death right. Princess Di’s sudden death did change the world, perhaps more than did 9/11. The World Trade Center on September 11, 2001 was a comeuppance. If the American people did not see it coming, the world did. That such a terrorist act was bound to happen was attested to the fact that the same people had already tried it and at the very same location.
But Diana’s death marked the end of civility, and people felt it. The third world may have been fit to burst under the weight of its post-colonial oppressors, but a great English civility had prevailed since the days of Ghandi. This was a sense that disagreement could be visceral, but apart from the brutality of the unwashed French or the uncouth Americans, a British sense of decency would rule out. Britain, not long ago the Empire, was where we got the rule of law, our rights, and everyone’s concept of a representational parliament.
The circumstances around Diana’s death would present an incredibly interesting lesson in power usurped from the people; Tony Blair’s arrangement with Rupert Murdoch for starters, instead of showing Blair reacting to the newspapers and coaxing his old queen along. The Queen is a marvelous story of two people facing adversity introspectively. Fine, except those personages were at the center of the unification of global corporate power and could not have been idle participants. As if Frears had made a film about the Titanic and chose to focus on the captain’s preoccupation with feng shui.
The 1990s saw a decline in every aspect of benevolent leadership, and I believe the premature death of Lady Diana was the curtain. It was hard those days after her death to imagine a world without her, and indeed events have proved that we were to face the worst. The turn of the century marked the ascendency of the Neocons, the political face of the globalization overlords. It meant corporate overseers with gloves off, Zionist zealotry unabashed, banks with no limits on their usury, and the world media watchdogs in the hands of the wolves.
The ruling few have their hands bloody in genocides the world over, endless wars, massacres, slavery, epidemics, poverty, famine and reckless abandonment. Before Diana’s death at least I believe they would have been concerned to wash the blood off.
This photograph by John Thomson appeared in a monthly magazine Street Life in London in 1877. Journalist Adolphe Smith added this caption: “Huddled together on the workhouse steps in Short’s Gardens, those wrecks of humanity, the Crawlers of St. Giles’s, may be seen both day and night seeking mutual warmth and mutual consolation in their extreme misery.”
Crawler was the rather pragmatic description of street people whose subsistence provided them not enough energy to walk. They crawled about city sidewalks “lacking even the energy to beg.” They were not unique to England during the industrial revolution. Historians record the same term applied to prone indigents in Boston and New York.
I had quite a time finding references to Crawlers online. The once pervasive term is now to be found only in specialized history texts about poverty. Do you think this disregard for fellow human beings cannot happen again?
In many undeveloped countries there is such untreated poverty. But the Crawler phenomenon describes less the abject poverty than the indifference shown by those who had health and food and stepped over them. Today we count on social welfare programs to prevent such misery, but are we not steadily dismantling the safety net? Every time I see a report of someone being rejected from a hospital for not having health insurance coverage, when I see people being left to get by on the street, when I see the indifference of philanthropists to the hardship of the have-nots, I think about the Crawlers.