THINGS THAT MATTER - Letter from Britain
A holiday in Britain (to see the grandchildren) has a great deal of added value, and is well worth the high cost of flying, accommodation, transportation and many other services and basic needs. Surprisingly, food and eating out is generally affordable, and the British supermarkets provide elegant meals at very reasonable cost. British cuisine has made huge strides since my student days of a sliver of roast beef, Yorkshire pudding and boiled cabbage.
Britain is a complex country and is going through a period of introspection, anxious debate and a wide spectrum of opinion on many controversial issues. One of the things I enjoy is the range of newspapers – right wing, left wing and centre, objective and sensational, conservative rags and populist rags. And most of the many columnists in The Times, The Guardian and The Independent are eminently readable, but even within the better papers opposite views will appear side by side, with great diversity of opinion and remarkable frankness of expression. Some of what I read would be grounds for libel in Barbados!
The news is dominated by the fallout from the totally unexpected results of Brexit, and the narrow vote to leave the European Union. If there was a second referendum tomorrow I’m sure the vote would go the other way, because the implications, the huge cost of the divorce, the twisted stories put out by the “Leavers”, and the total confusion in addressing the divorce proceedings which will be drawn out for years, bedevilled by uncertainty and few apparent advantages appear to have the country in a state of bewilderment and unhappiness. The Prime Minister, who took over with an air of omnipotence, being compared with Maggie Thatcher “The Iron Lady”, is now under siege. And the unlikely Marxist inspired Labour leader, Jeremy Corbin, having decided to start wearing long pants and a tie, is looking more and more likely to win the next election …
The other big theme dominating the news is the American political circus. The British have a continuing, passionate interest in the shenanigans in Washington, with daily reports, and a plethora of magnificent cartoons. While the Americans are the masters of the four-picture comic strip, British cartoonists can capture an epic story in a single dramatic picture.
Here are some of the political headlines of the last couple of weeks: “May faces backlash over rushed Brexit plans.” “All of our politicians are stuck in the past – Churchill, Thatcher and Blair won because they were visionary but in 2017 the left and right are ignoring the future.” “Corbin’s pledge on student fees were pure fantasy.” “Judge Corbyn by his basket-case foreign friends.” “Attention deficit disorder.” This last headline is from The Times, on the British budget deficit: “The budget deficit in June amounted to £6.9 billion, more than 40 % higher than in the same month last year … a depreciation of sterling is feeding through into higher consumer prices, which are outstripping wages … The best that the government can do is give clarity to business about a plan… it should also stress that the deficit would become a risk if a government took office that presided over a large increase in borrowing without a plan for bringing the deficit down.” Does any of this sound familiar?
Another issue that dominated the news but only for a few days, was the scandal of sexual exploitation of children by Pakistani gangs. This has been going on for almost two decades in many towns across the North of England – just google Rotherham and Rochdale for the gory details. Here’s just a sample of the latest reports: “The Rotherham child sexual exploitation scandal has been described as the “biggest child protection scandal in UK history”. From the late 1980s until the 2010s, organised child sexual abuse continued almost unchallenged in the northern English town of Rotherham, South Yorkshire. It was first documented in the early 1990s, when care-home managers investigated reports that children in their care were being picked up by taxi drivers. From at least 2001, multiple reports passed names of alleged perpetrators, several from one family, to the police and Rotherham Council. The first group conviction took place in 2010, when five British-Pakistani men were convicted of sexual offences against girls aged 12–16, but the ringleaders remained at large. Other major convictions regarding child sexual exploitation included one in 2007 of a lone male offender who “abused over 80 boys and young men”. From January 2011 Andrew Norfolk of The Times pressed the issue, reporting in 2012 that the abuse in the town was widespread, and that the police and council had known about it for over ten years.
The Times articles, along with the trial in 2012 of the Rochdale child sex abuse ring, prompted the House of Commons Home Affairs Committee to hold hearings. In August 2014 the Jay report concluded that at least 1,400 children, most of them white girls aged 11–15, had been sexually abused in Rotherham between 1997 and 2013 by predominantly British-Pakistani men. The abuse included gang rape, forcing children to watch rape, dousing them with petrol and threatening to set them on fire, threatening to rape their mothers and younger sisters, and trafficking them to other towns. There were pregnancies—at least one at age 12—terminations, miscarriages, babies raised by their mothers, and babies removed, causing further trauma.”
The gang of 16 Pakistani men were finally brought to trial. What these several scandals revealed was the strength of the fear of being accused of racism by authorities … a fear ironically justified by the firing by Jeremy Corbin of a female Labour MP who spoke out about it!
There are many highlights for me of a holiday in Britain: the splendid art exhibitions, the excellent material on television, and of course the sporting highlights – Wimbledon and the World Athletic Championships. The incredible brilliance of Roger Federer, winning Wimbledon again, the heroic victory of Mo Farah, and the men’s 100 metres final, when the unbeatable, much loved, all time sprinting hero Usain Bolt was narrowly beaten into second place by the controversial Gatlin.
And speaking of art, the many exciting art exhibitions of CARIFESTA in Barbados end today – tragically, because the inadequate marketing meant that many people have not been sufficiently aware. Whatever else you do today, please, please, please head to Queen’s Park House to see Stanley Greaves’s magnificent paintings.
Professor Fraser is Past Dean of Medical Sciences, UWI and Professor Emeritus of Medicine and Clinical Pharmacology. Website: profhenryfraser.com