Member’s article: The Untaught Syllabus. 1. In Their Own Words: How Britain Beca

[evolutionnow2003]

The Untaught Syllabus. 1. 
In Their Own Words: How Britain Got Rich. Where The Blood Never Dries (Or Don't Trust The English In The Dark.). 
Quotes For Political, Poverty And Peace Activists: 

By Brian Mitchell. 

(The author's full permission is given for this article to be reproduced and re-distributed in full with editorship acknowledged.  Authorship of individual quotes must be stated in full. )

The material for this compilation is taken from three of the author's books: "1917 And All That: The Untaught History Syllabus. In their Own Words – A Political History Of The Cold War 1917-1983." which has also been partly serialised in British and foreign journals, and which arose out of an unpublished (and at that time unfinished) Ph.D. thesis; and "A Radical Book Of Enlightenment For The Common Man." which is a compilation of over 1,700 radical political quotes in subject and historical categories; and "The Untaught Philoisophy Syllabus: Understanding The Hidden Nature Of Capitalism. – Or Marx For Beginners." including The Untaught Economics Syllabus - Marx's full exposure of the capitalist economic system. A fourth, non political, book is !The Writers', Authors' and Journalists' Computer Guide." - a comprehensive computer guide for writers, authors, journalists, teachers and tutors, who typically work independently, without access to an expensive IT department. 
Why place such a heavy emphasis on quotes? 
Quotes have a veracity of their own, either somebody said something or they didn't. And if enough people, with similar interests and motives and enough power concentrated in their hands, say much the same thing, then it is more likely that their interests will prevail. 
I have found through tutoring, speaking engagements, publishing, debating and general argument that it is more effective and revealing, especially to the incredulous, that quotes, speaking for themselves without polemical intervention from me – other than selection, editing and assembly – have an immediate impact and influence on the credulity of the reader. And yes, it is extremely biased. But when did idealistic academic or journalistic notions of being `balanced' or `unbiased' ever equate with veracity or reality? 
I challenge those who preach a so-called `balanced' view to come up with a negation of what is being said. 
I am happy for this article to be reproduced and distributed in full provided that authorship is acknowledged, or as quotations provided that the full authorship of each quote is stated; and that the work is used for the purpose for which it is obviously intended – to inform and educate those interested in the modern history of wars, peace, anti-racism, poverty, imperialism, global trade and exploitation and the world debt crisis; in other words, most of humanity in this incredibly rich and abundant world. 

Where The Blood Never Dries (Or Don't Trust The English In The Dark.). 

"The sun never sets on the British Empire."
(British Colonial saying.)
"The sun never sets but the blood never dries on the British Empire."
(Ernest Jones.)
"The sun never sets on the British Empire because the Lord doesn't trust the English in the dark."
(Indian saying.)
"That England that was wont to conquer others   Hath made a shameful conquest of itself."
(Shakespeare.)
"What land has not seen Britain's crimson flying, the meteor of murder, but justice the plea?"
(British folk song, 1820.)
"England has no permanent friends; she only has permanent interests."
(Lord Palmerston.)
"If there be a God, I think he would like me to paint Africa British Red."
(Cecil Rhodes.)
"THEREFORE when I consider and weigh in my mind all these commenwealths, which now a days any where do florish, so God help me, I can perceive nothing but a certein conspiracy of riche men procuringe theire owne commodities under the name and title of the commenwealth."
(Saint Thomas Moore, Lord Chancellor of England, 1516.)
"Thousands of our fellow subjects... are at this moment existing in a state of slavery more horrid than are the victims of that hellish system, colonial slavery... Thousands of little children... are daily compelled to labour from 6 o'clock in the morning to 7 o'clock in the evening with only – British, blush while you read it – with only 30 minutes allowed for eating and recreation."
(Slavery in Yorkshire, Leeds Mercury, 1830.)
"As the lot of a slave depends upon the character of its master, so the convict depends upon the temper and disposition of the settler to whom he is assigned."
(British House of Commons Select Committee on Transportation, 1838.)
"Imperialism is... the endeavour of the great controllers of industry to broaden the channel for the flow of their surplus wealth by seeking foreign markets and foreign investments to take off the goods and capital they cannot use at home."
(English economist J.A.Hobson (1858-1940) "Imperialism.")
"Oh, where are you going to all you Big Steamers?  'We are going to fetch you your bread and your butter,   Your beef, pork and mutton, eggs, apples and cheese...   We fetch it from Melbourne, Quebec and Vancouver -   Address us at Hobart, Hong Kong and Bombay.'...  'Then what can I do for you, all you Big Steamers,   Oh, what can I do for your comfort and good?'  'Send out your big warships to watch your big waters,   That no one may stop us from bringing you food'."
(Rudyard Kipling.)
"The earth is a place on which England is found,  And you find it however you twirl the globe round;  For the spots are all red and the rest is all grey,  And that is the meaning of Empire Day."
(G.K.Chesterton.)
"Look how the whole capitalist world is stretching out long arms towards the barbarous world and grabbing and clutching in eager competition at countries whose inhabitants don't want them... It is for the opening of fresh markets to take in all the fresh profit-producing wealth which is growing greater and greater every day.. and I say this is an irresistable instinct on the part of the capitalists, an impulse like hunger, and I believe that it can only be met by another hunger, the hunger for freedom and fair play for all... Anything less than that the capitalist power will brush aside."
(William Morris, May Day, 1896.)
"England has been made a pensioner of other lands for daily bread; we can command it still, but the hour of weakness may come: then, when we ask the nations for a loaf, they may remember that we gave them cannon balls, and pay us back in kind."
(Chartist Ernest Jones, 1851.)
"I was in the East End of London yesterday and attended a meeting of the unemployed. I listened to the wild speeches which were just a cry for "bread, bread, bread", and on my way home I pondered over the scene and I became more than ever convinced of the importance of imperialism... My cherished idea is a solution for the social problem. i.e: in order to save the 40,000,000 inhabitants of the UK from a bloody civil war, we colonial statesmen must aquire new lands to settle the surplus population, to provide new markets for the goods produced by them in the factories and mines. The Empire, as I have always said, is a bread and butter problem. If you want to avoid civil war, you must become imperialists."
(Millionaire financier Cecil Rhodes, 1895.)
"In carrying out this work of civilisation we are fulfilling what I believe to be our national mission, and we are finding scope for the exercise of those faculties and qualities which have made of us a great governing race... No doubt, in the first instance, when these conquests have been made, there has been loss of life among the native populations, loss of still more precious lives of those who have been sent out to bring those countries into some kind of disciplined order, but it must be remembered that this is the condition of the mission we have to fulfil."
(Joseph Chamberlain, Colonial Secretary, speech at a Royal Colonial Institute dinner, March 31 1897.)
"The whole future of the stirling group and its ability to survive depend, in my view, upon a quick and extensive development of our African resources."
(Chancellor of the Exchequer Sir Stafford Cripps, House of Parliament, Nov 12 1947.)
"Western Europe cannot live by itself as an economic unit. Hence the desire for wider integration with Africa and other overseas territories."
(British Labour Prime Minister Attlee, Houses of Parliament, Jan 23 1948.)
"The only way to save our empires from the encroachment of the people is to engage in war, and thus substitute national passions for social aspirations."
(Empress Catherine of Russia, 1729-1796.)
"The principle of acquiring new territory, on which the surplus population could be settled, has many advantages to recommend it, especially if we take the future as well as the present into account."
(Adolf Hitler, in Mein Kampf.)
"This war is not a war for a throne or an altar, this is a war for grain and bread, a war for a well-laden breakfast, dinner and supper table... a war for raw materials, for rubber, iron and ore."
(Joseph Goebbels. Munich 1943.)
"Believe me, the loss of our domination would weigh first of all on the working classes of this country. We should see chronic misery let loose. England would no longer be able to feed her enormous population."
(Joseph Chamberlain, British Colonial Secretary, 1895.)
"The day may come when public opinion will awake to the fact that our race has been leavened with colour to such an extent that it calls for action. Parliament may be urged to consider the desirability of bringing into existence in this country legislation similar to that which has been found necessary in the Union of South Africa."
(James Wilson, Chief Constable of South Wales, 1928.)
"The income which we derive each year from commissions and services rendered to foreign countries is over £65 million. In addition, we have a steady revenue from foreign investments of close on £300 million a year... That is the explanation of the source from which we are able to defray social services at a level incomparably higher than that of any European country or any country."
(Winston Churchill, Budget speech, April 15 1929.)
"Those who could not look beyond their personal interests should remember that their employment and standard of living depended mainly on the existence of the Empire."
(Daily Telegraph Oct 23 1943.)
"We are great friends with the jolly old Empire and we are going to stick to it."
(Labour Foreign Secretary Herbert Morrison, January 1946.)
"I am not prepared to sacrifice the British Empire because I know that if the British Empire fell... it would mean that the standard of life of our constituents would fall considerably."
(Labour Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin, House of Commons, Feb 21 1946.)
"His Majesty's Government must maintain a continuing interest in that area if only because our economic and financial interests in Middle East were of vast importance to us... If these interests were lost to us, the effect on the life of this country would be a considerable reduction in the standard of living... British interests in the Middle East contributed substantially not only to the interests of the people there, but to the wage packets of the workpeople of this country."
(Labour Foreign Secretary Bevin, House of Parliament, May 16 1947.)
"The development of primary production of all sorts in the colonial territories and dependent areas in the Commonwealth and throughout the world is a life and death matter for the economy of this country."
(Food Minister Mr. Strachey, House of Parliament, Jan 20 1948.)
"His Majesty's Government views with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which shall prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by the Jews in any other country."
(Arthur Balfour, to Lord Rothschild, 1917. (The Balfour Declaration.))
"When Arthur Balfour launched his scheme for peopling Palestine with Jewish immigrants, I am credibly informed that he did not know there were Arabs in the country."
(Dean William Inge.)
"I am alarmed at the fact that with five Arab labourers, none of my family will mow the lawn or drive a tractor, on the grounds that `Mohammed will do it'. Our treatment of the Arabs, right down to our personal dealings with workmen and others, sends shivers up my spine
 because it reminds me of our past."
(Israeli woman in a letter to Moshe Dayan, in a British television documentary, July 1974.)
"They [white men BM] buried our babies with only their heads above the ground
 Then they had a test to see who could kick the babies' heads off the furthest. One man clubbed a baby's head off from horseback. They then spent most of the day raping the women; most of them were tortured to death by sticking sharp things like spears up their vaginas until they died. They tied the men's hands behind their backs, then cut off their penis and testicles and watched them run around screaming until they died. I lived because I was young and pretty and one of the men kept me for himself, but I was always tied up until I escaped into another land to the west."
(Tasmanian woman's evidence in Jan Roberts "Massacre to Mining: The Colonisation of Aboriginal Australia.")
Not a single pure blooded native Tasmanian survives today. The British wiped them out completely. 
"I do not believe that anybody who has not seen with his own eyes, can begin to imagine the poverty in which so many of our fellow citizens of the Commonwealth are condemned to live."
(James Griffiths, former British Colonial Secretary, Oct 1951.)
"The fact that you and your team have made it possible for Britain to make and store atom bombs has made the country a world power once again
 American scientists who worked with you believe that a world of wealth, luxury and leisure beyond human dreams will be possible when atom power is properly harnessed for our welfare."
(Australian newspaper Daily Graphic open letter to Lord William Penney, in charge of British nuclear testing in Australia, October 14 1952.)
"Extensive areas of Australia have been contaminated."
(Dr. Hedley Marston, investigating contamination from British nuclear bomb testing in Australia.)
"During the two and a half years I was there I would have seen 400 to 500 Aborigines in contaminated areas. Occasionally we would bring them in for decontamination. Other times we just shooed them off like rabbits."
(Patrick Connolly, RAF officer during British nuclear bomb testing in Australia; after which he was threatened by the British Special Branch. )
"There was this bang, really loud
 black smoke came rolling through the trees and above the trees and passed right over us. I don't know how many days after that, but most of the people became sick
 some people died
 I got sick
 I could see the tracks and could still track animals, but it wasn't any good
 I went blind then
 that's a mystery to ordinary people. I think only the government people know. They wanted to make a weapon
 they worried about some other countries; so they come over to Australia
 they just wanted to make something big and powerful and blow somebody up."
(Yami Lester, Australian Aborigine, British television documentary, May 21 1985.)
"At the white man's school, what are the children taught?   Are they told of the battles our people fought?   Are they told how our people died?   Are they told how our people cried?   Australia's true history is never read,   But the black man keeps it in his head."
(Australian Aborigine newspaper Bunji, 1971.)
"...90 per cent of the workforce are now dependent on the sugar industry for their survival. But with world sugar prices at an all-time low the industry has become devastated... The problem began 100 years ago when the British arrived
 Self sufficiency farming and a thriving fishing industry were replaced with endless fields of sugar cane, exported as a cash crop... Under British rule, food and goods the islanders had once produced for themselves were imported at great expense from other countries. As a result the islanders became dependent on the success of their single crop. 
the sugar workers and their families still depend on the planters for their every need. If the crop is poor they starve; when there is no planting or picking there are no wages... But all that can be spared is one handful of rice per child - about 150 calories. "They would be better off throwing it in the sea," says a health expert. Children expend more food energy than that just feeding themselves, he said. A healthy child needs 1,800 calories a day to grow... More than 60 per cent of the islanders have TB - "the disease of poverty" - and 66 per cent of the children have malnutrition. 
there is no room at the hospital and they are turned away to die. Desperation could boil over into revolution. "We are sitting on a social volcano which could erupt at any time," warned the Bishop of Negros earlier this year."
(News on Sunday Sept 13 1987.)
Postscript: 
British school and college history syllabus teaching and books do not contain this information. 
All the material and information I have presented here is readily available to historians, writers, journalists, teachers, educators and syllabus publishers. Although I have spent many hundreds of hours gathering it all together, I did not have to look very far to find any of it. 
Most people think British education is among the best in the world. It isn't. It never has been. From before and right through the industrial revolution, the British ruling class has always feared an educated working class. When it was proposed to build free libraries for working people a century ago, Lord Salisbury said: "Libraries! They don't want libraries; give them a circus." 
Now we have an education circus. 
"The object of education is to prepare the young to educate themselves throughout their lives
 It sometimes seems as though we were trying to combine the ideal of no schools at all with the democratic ideal of schools for everybody by having schools without education."
(Robert Maynard Hutchins.)
"We are in a period of considerable social change
 There may be social unrest, but we can cope with the Toxteths [Liverpool riots BM.)
 but if we have a highly educated and idle population we may possibly anticipate more serious social conflict. People must be educated to know their place."
(Secret report of British Department of Education on rationalising school curricula, 1984.)
It means that as a teacher you can get away with teaching about the Nazis or Apartheid on a superficial level, because these historical eras are too well known. But if you ventured seriously and treated them with any depth, revealing the whole story, including British complicity and support for Nazism and Apartheid, and seriously investigated British complicity in most other such events in history, you soon learned that you would be progressively marginalized, criticised, then ostracised, left out of career improvements or promotion, and get a sense of the unspoken threat of not being able to pay the mortgage and bills supporting a teacher's lifestyle. 
When as a trainee history lecturer, it was suggested I take the class on a trip to the Tower of London and then set them an essay on what life was like for a soldier in King Charles' Army centuries ago. Very useful knowledge that! A sociology of the past perhaps? But certainly not history in its most important sense; unless history is to mean simply anything old or `interesting' that you might do in evening classes, like antiques, flower arranging or basket weaving. When instead, in my teaching practice in a Further Education college in Slough, I taught real history – learning from the past in order to change the future – the collective life-experience of humanity, I was got rid of. The head of the history department complained that the students had remarked that I made them think; which the head of history had probably never done in a lifetime of teaching. I ended up washing and cleaning and emptying surgical and clinical waste in a hospital in Slough, the stress of the boredom of which made me physically and mentally ill for a few years, and later the only employment that would take me was serving customers in a large local DIY store, in livery that wouldn't look out of place on American prisoners at Guantanamo. 
Unless teachers learn to be brave and intellectually honest (difficult when they have a mortgage and bills to pay), future historical, social and economic education and popular `knowledge' will also not refer to the US or British history and capitalism's continuing complicity in global plunder, exploitation, domination and control, wars of aggrandisement and acquisition, causing the deaths and devastation of the homes and lands of millions of people – the 40, or is it now 50 thousand children under the age of two who will die tonight through simple lack of food, clean water, medicine and education – things that we take from them every day without even thinking about it – the untold millions of unnecessary deaths among the overwhelming majority of humanity on this incredibly rich and abundant and ultimately sustainable earth – a world which we, the 15 percent rich, have taken from humanity and still own and control. The only viable solution to which is socialism spreading across the world. 

Quotes from Brian Mitchell. Evolution. .

Responses and criticisms welcomed. Reply to my personal e-mail if you prefer. My replies to criticisms will be posted.