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Self-Sufficiency in Style

stop the world?

part thirteen

In parts one to twelve we introduced you to Britain's Swine Fever and Foot and Mouth epidemics and made some startling claims about their worldwide significance. 

We explained how the communications and computer systems were deliberately rigged and explained just what they tried to do to us personally; how and why the government broke all the rules.

We will now tell you how animal diseases really came into Britain, how they spread and became epidemics.

We will tell you how the truth was hidden, who hid it, and why. Most importantly, we will tell you how we found the truth.

We will start in an unexpected place: Hong Kong: the Hong Kong of the nineteenth century.

The "Hongs", founded mostly by Scots, were heavily involved in the opium trade and the resulting 19C wars between China and Great Britain.

Later they became pillars of Britain's Imperial presence in the East.

The Managing Director, usually until very recently a descendant of the founding family, was quaintly re-titled the "Taipan" or "Big Boss."

Hong Kong - that strange creation of Scottish and Chinese merchant adventurers.

Then something like this...   

for the writer, later, steam on the Thames.     

All Taipans had to have served as a Ship's Agent, to have boarded incoming vessels, to have fixed cargoes and taken a full part in the colourful and sometimes dangerous waterfront life.

Why were they required to have served this apprenticeship?

Probably to give them a breath of knowledge of man and the sea, and perhaps to test their mettle and integrity.

That very specialist and privileged training was to have dramatic and strange consequences for the writer, not in Hong Kong, but on the Thames and at Felixstowe; the muddy backwater that powered itself into Britain's major seaport.

They reckoned without the thoroughness of the British media, always distrustful of spin and leaks.

The TV took the trouble to check the story with the writer.

He recognised it as a fabrication and took action. He failed to stop broadcast and publication, but the original virulent version was toned down. Eventually two British Cabinet Ministers were forced to issue public apologies to Britain's Chinese community.

It did not stop several attacks on Chinese Restaurants by hooligans and a lot of unpleasantness, but it did take the sting from the story.

The Chinese in Britain are still troubled by the affair. An organisation has been set up to campaign for the rights of the 400,000 people who live in Britain. Its formation was sparked by this incident.

Known as Min Quan, or "civil rights," it campaigned for stronger action against a growing number of racist attacks and incidents in Chinese restaurants and takeaways.

They did obtain a little compensation for the fabrication, but this carried a confidentiality clause. Her Britannic Majesty's Government does not like to be publicly embarrassed..

Blaming the innocent!

People are people, whatever their job and wherever they come from, there are things that they do and things that they don't do.

Foreign seamen are no different.

Thirty years as a Ship's Agent. You get to know what people are likely to do and what is unlikely. It was an obvious falsehood. They got the detail wrong.

Exactly which detail will remain a secret. The British Government did seem to try a second attempt to plant a similar story, but panicked and stopped at the last moment.

Just as well!  It was even more ludicrous than the first attempt.

We do not want them to try for a third time. It might be third time lucky. They might get their story right.

The truth is that he was not in the least courageous, but when evil comes into your home uninvited, any man reacts to protect his home and wife.

When someone seeks your expert opinion, you give it truthfully and honestly. Why not?

There was something else - "Fair Play."

You don't blame people for something they did not do. Each year the writer would lecture young student Ship's Agents and Shipbrokers from all over the world, training in London.

He usually talked about ethics, the difficulties, and the importance of a reputation for integrity and truth.

The world is a small place. Chinese companies that started life in British Hong Kong now own many of Britain's seaports. They too got blamed for letting foot and mouth into Britain and angry farmers picketed some ports.

There is no evidence to support this either. Rather the reverse!

Hardly Fair Play!

Britain did its best to uphold high standards of commercial integrity in shipping up to the very last month.

It is something to be proud of.

The Taipan might be fading into history, but Ship's Agents still learn more in a year about lies and deceit than most will learn in a lifetime.

It is sad when they have to correct governments.

To stop a deception is one thing, but to use those same exotic skills to unravel the massive corruption underlying it, quite another.

It is quite extraordinary that once we began to wonder why we had seen such evil in the countryside around us, the training shared with the Taipans clicked into play a second time.

For the writer it was fascinating and exciting.

He was to lunch with former U-boat commanders and dine with Stalinist spies, to have Libyan students in his office and Israelis in his car.

He had to deal with suicide and attempted murder, suspected abduction, illegal immigration and, on one occasion the arrest of Master and Chief Officer.

Smuggling, drugs, prostitution and porn. Drink and firearms, wreck and mutiny.

The whole business was one of defusing incidents, solving problems and smoothing the path of international relations.

Controversial dinner guests.

The canny Scots that founded Hong Kong took more than tartan around the world: once they got past opium smuggling, they insisted on high mercantile standards.

It wasn't just a case of toughening the young man, there was something much more important to be learned.

You learn it quickly. You learn tolerance of difference.

You realise that the man who served Hitler so firmly and devastatingly was also a polite man who loved his family. You learned that the dedicated Communist did have a basis for his beliefs and was uncommonly honest.

The Arab who prayed to Mecca so inconveniently was a good friend and a capable businessman. The sabra fresh from his military service actually hated violence.

You begin to see both good and evil in all men.

You accept that the Moslem does not like drink coming into his country, and the Jew genuinely abhors bacon.

The Moslem not so different than the now strange-seeming New York prohibitionist, the Jew sharing a distaste with the vegetarian Buddhist.

You learn to accept difference as normal, merely a colour on the face of humanity.

Neither better nor worse, just different.

The Scottish Taipan could look across the table to the Chinese merchant and see an equal; the Armenian can deal with the Turk and the Serb dicker with the Croat.

All this exposure to foreign ideas and pious internationalism could begin to cloy and irritate, if it were not for the fact that in the ship's agent's job, it is a reality and fact of life, just as the swing of the seasons and the weather are to the farmer.

You could not do the job with contempt in your heart. Your loyalty to your own country and liking for your own people do not diminish, you just see them in a broader clearer light.

You also see and hear foreign opinions of your country. This could rock you. You were not talking to bigots and isolationists from central Europe, the shattered Middle East or an African village.

You were hearing the opinions of educated highly sophisticated world travellers - Captains and Kings of Commerce.

Not internationalism, just commonsense.

It is easy to see Britain, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand as islands.

Canada and the US might just as well be: just the shared border and Mexico to the south.

Very different from the huge Eurasian landmass with its hundred states and borders.

"Of course, you are an island people..."

This Ship's Agent heard it a hundred times, from right wingers and reds. From Germans and Russians, said in slightly different words and with different accents and emphasis.

It was said with an air of resignation; an air of acceptance. It wasn't aggressive or complaining; merely an acknowledgment of an established fact.

"Of course, you are an island people..."

It was the educated opinion of the huge Euro-Asian continent, with its hundreds of nationalities, of their western neighbours.

And before Australian, New Zealand, US or Canadian readers creep away, it seems fairly obvious that you are included.

It wasn't hard to detect what sparked the comment. It always came in the same set of circumstances:  when border controls were encountered or discussed..

Customs, Immigration or similar restrictions and formalities were the trigger.

Whether Captain or Clerk, the foreigners regarded British controls as excessive, bizarre and illogical; an eccentricity of an unsophisticated and isolated people.

Typically patriotic and keen, as we Brits all were, to keep disease and disaster out of the country, it was many years before the writer began to see the point and justice of the comments...

"Of course, you are an island people..."

How our preoccupations caused us to all miss what was under our noses will come next.

The obvious face of border control.

The  next edition of Stop the World, events not intervening, we will continue to delve back into the past and take us into island ways.

We will tell you how animal diseases really came into Britain, how they spread and became epidemics.

We will tell you how the truth was hidden, who hid it, and why.

Most importantly, we will tell you how we found the truth.

Britain has methodically lied to the world over a sustained period.

It has lied to itself, its farmers and its people.

Denton, Norfolk, 3 March 2004

exposing the crooks

from

 the appropriately  named Hangman's Cottage, just to the south of Misery Corner.