Letter To The ICBR: Re: Proud and Patriotic
04/01/2007
From: tom snee
Date: Sun, 1 Apr 2007 17:10:15 +0100
To:
Dear British reparations
I am a 17 year old student and am very interested in politics and history to do at university. I am also intensly patriotic and proud of being British. I have recently heard of Steven Grasse's book, evil empire...101 ways Britain ruined the world and to be quite frank i am extremely offended by it. I think that you are using this book as a racist attack on Britain. I have been listening to your interviews on the BBC and various other ones and everytime you seem to be slammed by all of them.
One of the most horrific and offensive claims i have heard recently was, its Britains fault for WW1 and WW2. In both these wars millions of people died in just a short period of time and you are resting the blame on a country, that is simply discracefull and shocking! WW1 was started from the Austro-Hungarian empire and the French. A Serbian radical called Gavrillo Princip shot the arch duke Ferdinand of Austro-Hungry and this caused outrage in Austro-Hungary and so they attacked Serbia, ofcourse the Germans were allies of this country and so preceded to enter, then they attacked all of our allies including Belgium which brought us into it. So i really can't see how you could say that WW1 was our fault, we had nothing to do with it. I seriously suggest that u read some history before you make shocking and offensive accusations like that.
You say that we invented the concentration camp. Fair enough we had them during the Boar war but that was simply to concentrate the population, the population unfortunatly started dying from diseases which werent because of us, it was never our intention for them to die.
The problem i see with this book is that you have taken half a story and turned it into something quite different. For example, Churchill had beers and went to dinners with Hitler! Im sorry but your joking, right? Churchil never met Hitler once! so i dont see how that is possible, and for you to insult such a great man is discracfull. I think that you need to take a look at your history and talk about that. Have you apologised for Vietnam? Oh no that was our fault aswell wasnt it. You went in there without any thought what so ever, just being the world police yet again and you messed up the whole situation, thousands of your young soldiers died and for what?! I dont understand how you can say that it was our fault we had absolutly nothing to do with it, read some history and you will agree!
You constantly talk about it is our Empires fault and because of our empire..............have you even considered that there were many empires before ours, look at the Spanish and the Portugues, why do you think that the whole of south America speaks Spanish or Portguese. The reason that our empire was so huge was because of trading routes, this is why we were in Africa never to steal from people or to "rape and pilage" how can you say this! That is so offensive! I know a man who used to live in Rodesia and he said that the people were glad of their British connextions.
And Finally you mention the slave trade and that we introduced it. I think you will find that the Africans started trading slaves within their country many years before we got there and it was the Portuguese who were the worst and the biggest slave traders in the world not us! Plus we stopped our slave trade 50 years before you did! So this very bold claim that Queen victoria personally funded the slave trade is ludicrous and obsurd because she wasnt event the Queen whilst it was happening!
This book his highly offensive and i do intend to take this fight further and to get it removed of the shelves for racial reason, because at the end of the day it is racist!
I would like to hear back from you just to show that you can follow up an argument, i am going to refer you to the Campaign for Racial Equality and my Local MP.
Thomas Snee
