As I am sure my regular readers will remember, I have a short fuse when it comes to racism especially when those who advocate these views reinforce their arguments by talking about being racially pure English. Anyone who has studied the history of our islands knows that this is pure nonsense. We all have wonderfully mixed heritage mostly from Northern European invaders who have intermarried over the millennia. Even the Romans left their mark and remember that very few of them came from Rome, they were recruited from all over the Roman Empire and were a mixed lot themselves in the first place! My own case proves this point, I am the illegitimate son of an English woman and an Australian who, in addition to being a deserter from the Anzacs (In 1919 so it doesn't really count as treachery) had Scots, Irish, German, Neapolitan and, if my grandfather is to be believed, a bit of Aborigine blood in his ancestry. When I was a young lad he once told me that if anyone called me an 'ill bred b*****d' I shouldn't argue. I was 40 years old before I realised what he meant!
All this came to mind when I watched Billy Connolly pursuing his ancestry on the TV programme, 'Who Do You Think You Are?'. I think that if any of us Sassenachs had been asked to name a quintessential Scotsman, the Big Yin would have been very high on the list. He found out that in fact he had Indian blood in his veins and he thought it was hilarious that for years he had been trading on being 'pure bred' Scots in his stage career when he was not. Good on you Billy! How many of us would find the same sort of thing if we investigated our heritage? I suspect rather a lot.
There is more, can you remember me citing the case of 'Cheddar Gorge Man' whose remains were found in Gough Cave and dated to around 7,150BC? Research into mitochondrial DNA proved that Mr Targett, a local schoolteacher was a direct descendant of Gough Cave man through the maternal line. A pure bred Englishman? Unfortunately no as Gough Cave Man was himself an immigrant, one of the 'Celts' from Europe who colonised the Isles as the ice sheets retreated after about 10,000BC. These 'Celts' were a mixture of races themselves so I'm afraid that pure bred is once more a nonsense.
So, my message this week is to beware of any racial stereotypes, you may be walking into a minefield! Further, as my story about Stanislaw Bajkowski proves, even if we can definitely prove that someone is of a different race, they may have a very good claim to British citizenship because of services rendered. There is a local variation of course, I have only lived in Barlick for sixty years and have never fallen in Clogger's Beck so I am quite obviously an off-comed un. I shall not go into a decline but learn to live with it!
A crowd of Barlickers on Jepp Hill in the 1920s?
