Exposing the Lies Being Taught About Historical Immigration Into Britain

Kasredin
Western Spring
December 8, 2014

Pupils in British schools are to be taught the history of multiracial Britain.  It is reported that the OCR GCSE History syllabus will include a module on immigration.

There has of course been a lot of immigration to the British Isles over the last two millennia.  The Romans came, built their temples and sewers, and then returned to sunny Italy.  Various Germanic people – Angles, Saxons, Jutes, and maybe some Franks – came, and colonised almost the whole of England.  Their language survives, with some modification, as the English we speak today.  Then the Scandinavians came.  They raped and pillaged and introduced the word law to the English language.  They were followed by their cousins the Normans, who formed a ruling elite, but failed miserably in their attempt to get us all speaking French.

Over the following centuries, Britain sometimes attracted refugees, notably the Huguenots (French protestants) who came here around three hundred years ago and established colonies in such places as Canterbury and London.  For many years they maintained an independent identity, for example having their own churches, but over time they blended into the landscape.

Something almost all of these people have in common is that they were white.  Non-white people do have a history in this country, but it is easily exaggerated.  Apparently the OCR examiners believe that there may have been as many as fifteen thousand black people living in London in the year 1750.

Really?  How many black people are depicted in the paintings of Hogarth?  I can think of one (the little boy in the fourth painting in the Marriage A La Mode series).  Are there any black characters in the novels of Jane Austen?

I will accept the word of academic Miranda Kaufmann that there were more than three hundred Africans living in the British isles between the years 1500 and 1640

There would doubtless have been more Africans in Britain in the eighteenth century because of slavery, and we know the names of several freed slaves, such as Jonathan Strong, James Somersett, and Olaudah Equiano.  Nevertheless there is no reason to think that there were many non-whites living in Britain prior to the arrival of the MV Empire Windrush in 1948.  Fewer than five hundred black people came to England on that ship.  If it were still in existence, then there would be a case to be made for renaming it the MV Thin End of the Wedge.

In short, while it is not wrong in principle to teach school pupils about the history of multi-racial Britain, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that it will amount to making a proverbial mountain out of a molehill.  I also wonder whether or not the OCR wants pupils to be taught about the negative impact of immigration.  I will leave you with a quote from the Magna Carta (from the year 1215):

We will dismiss out of our kingdom all foreign soldiers, bowmen, serving men, and mercenaries, who come with horses and arms to the nuisance thereof.