{"id":7117,"date":"2019-02-04T11:11:33","date_gmt":"2019-02-04T11:11:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dannydorling.org\/?p=7117"},"modified":"2022-09-11T21:31:09","modified_gmt":"2022-09-11T21:31:09","slug":"a-very-british-legacy-attitude-and-brexit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dannydorling.org\/?p=7117","title":{"rendered":"A Very British Legacy: Attitude and Brexit"},"content":{"rendered":"

Brexit may be key to the future of inequality in the UK, and inequality may have been key to making Brexit possible.<\/p>\n

The rise of inequality had repercussions that ranged from creating tax-evader-funders to fuelling mass-discontent. But behind inequality rising was a legacy of Empire thinking. Sally Tomlinson and Danny Dorling document much of this in the book “Rule Britannia<\/a>” (1st edition published in January 2019). One point not made in that book follows:<\/p>\n

In 1856 Lord Palmerston<\/a> complained of what he called:”an anti-English feeling, an abnegation of all those ties which bind men to their country and to their fellow-countrymen, which I should hardly have expected from the lips of any member of this House. Everything that was English was wrong, and everything that was hostile to England was right<\/em>“. Palmerston described the Chinese people, upon whom he was forcing free trade to allow the sale of British opium, as a “set of barbarians \u2013 a set of kidnapping, murdering, poisoning barbarians<\/em>“. He is credited with the invention of gun-boat diplomacy.<\/p>\n

Below is the audio recording of a talk given to school children on February 2nd 2019 in a room in St John’s College Cambridge, named after this particular British Lord. In many of his portraits Lord Palmerston appeared to be dead behind the eyes. He had a soulless look about him.<\/p>\n