Name a government that isn't hand in glove with the rich aka capitalists. Socialist Russia loves its oligarchs. I assume you refuse to be a hypocrite and support the oil industry and, like me, have an EV?
Thanks so much for making this. More people need to hear this. I never made the link between colonialism and poverty in ex-industrial (majority northern) towns/cities
Thanks for doing this. Britain has had the advantage of shaping its migration policy for decades but now with the impact of Brexit and anti-migrant sentiment, the economy is now in recession. This is no longer the 20th century and most western economies need an open policy to remain competitive. I am glad that the UK is finally going to get the kind of economy and living standard it deserves.
but, the ONLY way they'll achieve ANY of that, is that, they must remember being competative now means the majoroity of the work-force MUST be kept in precariously insecure environments so they'll be so desperate they'll do the 18 hour shifts many Asian kids learn before leaving what passes as school (just enough to be a good machine till they replace you.... with a machine). ''the doctrine of scarcity'' yet applies with our current ''lords''. but the geopolitical and local landscape has moved on, and we're still being sold 20th century futures! I don't see a realistic future when I see images of Peking (now erroneously called Beijing to distract from the Tienenmen Square incidents) Capitalism got defeated by what are in effect billionaire anarchist extremists like Bezos, whose REAL ESTATE is actually digital, CLOUD REAL ESTATE. Capitalism needs the services of cloud real esate to distribute and sell it's stuff. And Bezos types are effectively diverting world taxes while their pet medias still tell us they're doing it for the better of the world and takes more than your government would from every amazon sale. (In history, the lords called the trafficking of highlanders ''land improvements'' to justify massive grants based upon lying proposals to the crown) It's like a new digital age take upon feudal baronialism. Cloud barons. Feudal lords for all intents and purposes, if you know your english and european history. But their real real-estate is cloud servers and how they rent and otherwise monetize, and prioritize server/cloud space. They're MASSIVE energy users. Every letter I type here heats up a circuit in one of those servers, which uses a lot of energy, as do the fans and air condition those acres and acres of story upon story of servers are built upon. All Brexit acheived was taking passports from the previously exploited in-comers, and simply handed out to rich Chinese and Indian student and business folk who're TOTALLY in an upper caste bubble.
You've absolutely nailed it. Nor just did this system ruin countless human lives, not just black but the white working class too. It created the environmental catastrophe we have now.
… BECAUSE PUBLIC AND PRIVATE PENSIONS ARE INVESTED IN THE ENERGY CORPORATIONS! If all the biggest corporations disappeared overnight … Then so would ALL the pensions for every single pensioner in Britain! Do you get it now?! 🙄
Great video, densely packed and yet succinct. The message you end on is so important, too. More British workers need to wake up to the fact that our interests are much more closely aligned with the desperate people arriving here in dinghies than with someone like Nigel Farage or Julia Hartley-Brewer.
A refreshingly honest documentary,........~ it is always good to understand the history to comprehend the present times ~ be it in politics or in personal life
This is incredible work, Colonialism and the Empire has made a minority of people unimaginably rich at the expense of everyone else and unless we as the collective address this hierarchy then Britain a will continue to suffer the daily social injustices and decline in living standards we have seen in the last few decades.
… BECAUSE PUBLIC AND PRIVATE PENSIONS ARE INVESTED IN THE ENERGY CORPORATIONS! If all the biggest corporations disappeared overnight … Then so would ALL the pensions for every single pensioner in Britain! Do you get it now?! 🙄
This is a lightbulb moment where everything suddenly makes sense and I can understand the motive behind Bozo and brexit and everything that is happening
Start at the beginning perhaps from 1066 when the Normans invaded the British Isle and have kept its population in metaphorical chains ever since . Even when it's lineage was disrupted, the System prevailed . So the working population had to fight for everything that they fought for. Even at the beginning of the 18th century the landowning classes made it illegal for working people (mostly in agriculture) to form unions to ask for better conditions. Not till 1918, after millions had fought for the Masters, they shamefacedly gave all men a vote while women had to wait till 1928. And it continues to this day.
Remember, Ireland was the first victim of English colonialism. Here is where they learned their evils traits and we still live with the repercussions of it to this day.
Just stumbled on your channel today and I was blown away. It is baffling that people in their dark places still have not come to the realisation that the chord still holding us down is from colonisation. The world, mostly the black leaders should wake up. I have subscribed.
I think in the UK there's also an element of 'medievalism' that is even reflected in the Parliament democracy. Think of Westminster and HMRC as a castle and the rest of us the peasants living around it and a lot of what goes on takes shape. We are still living in a medieval order. Just not with horses and armour or toiling the land
I think we made inroads away from the feudal state you so rightly describe , we devolved some power to the workers .....but things have slid back to the mediaeval. Now we have a surveillance state ( perhaps its not spying on us I dont know but all the mechanics are there in place ) and we have zero hours contracts, a PM who isnt listening to workers and a system that is increasingly less capitalism and more technofeudalism New serfdom here we come !
… BECAUSE PUBLIC AND PRIVATE PENSIONS ARE INVESTED IN THE ENERGY CORPORATIONS! If all the biggest corporations disappeared overnight … Then so would ALL the pensions for every single pensioner in Britain! Do you get it now?! 🙄
‘Empire coming home’ is a theme being echoed with increasing frequency. All this talk about historical imperialism reminded me of the story of when C. Columbus was shipwrecked on the shores of Jamaica for 6 months and used knowledge of an eclipse to convince the local Arawak peoples to continue to take care of them. After the eclipse, the Arawak people began to feed and house and take care of them. Can you think of anything like that being used on the people today?…Can you think of more than one example?
I can read Radiographs therefore I must get discounted flights to Bali on an 80,000 a year salary. That's one eclipse of logic right there. Another. Women were not working historically so that is now a sword to claim endless retroactive oppression which now seats them in a first class position along with the rich. Sponsorship deals are not classed as "wages" so the gender pay gap can still be claimed on technicality
21:04 why does Nigeria just let them waltz in and take over? A rhetorical question really - it’s that precious money they can’t say no to even if their ppl and country dies
I liked John Barnes perceptiveness of the class issue into this whole multi-layered thing at from soon after 08:00 Remember, the empire builders practiced on the commoner natives here in ''UK'' first. THAT is how they got so good at it by the time they expanded to fill the void created by Rome in scale and function. When the redcoats learned to put bayonets on their muskats? That coincided with a lot of other coming events and the empire going BOOM across the planet quickly. Those regimented bayonetted guns easily tore through the individualist, egoist, berserker style battling of the Scots and Highlanders, Once you can tame THAT lot? And KEEP them endentured? The whole world opened up. Literally. Generally divorcing people from the land, into bad land, or mill/industrial towns, no rights, support, KEEP THEM DEPENDENT AND BLIND, etc or shipping them off in ways beneficial only to the lords themselves in that those shipped off were now blindly in the palms of the boat-sponsoring lord's hands. As good as owned. They'd completely tied-up and endentred (Originally a ''toothmark'' -bite mark- or otherwise bodily branding denoting ownership of the branded party by another. Slavery in a different jacket) most of the common natives here, and controlled everything that went in or out of them (a model Las Vegas, Dubai etc all emulatre in ways, to the point of being built on deserts_ complete control), or as well as could in those times. And veying from that path brought brutal consequences. Many consequences were in turn consequences of the laws put in place to protect only the rich, blue-bloods, the upper classes. Hence, instead of it being against the law to thrive from creating a living environement where folk HAVE to resort to theft due to abject desperation, instead, they made laws hanging folk for stealing bread! YES< STEALING BREAD GOT YOU HUNG here in Edinburgh. ''They put out the people's eyes, then sue them for being blind'' (I can't remember who said that. Ghandi, or Dalia Lama or Arch Bishop Tutu sort of type). As poor, commoner whites, we get portrayed condensed into a stupid, eneducated, juvenile, criminally prone stereotypes. Think Aussie TV soaps! Almost grotesque charicatures. And ''it's only a bit of fun'', oh yeh? American First Nations people will understand this aspect of the generally untold Scottish history, how people were segragated from meaningful natural integration cultures directly related to the land itself, instead of aliens in need of protection from it, because we little people can't do that ourselves, how everything gets commodified, even their own selves. They practiced on us first. So we need a new language to help folk waken up with the support to come through it. It's the common thread throughout history which links most of the planet's trauma together. Our joint trauma and birth pangs. It's like most of the world are in the same state of mass denial as post-war Germans were when the cold reality of it all was laid more bare. They in their shattered ruined cities, us in our ruined social environments, wrapped in our safest cosiest consumer cotton wool womb states. Or else! More trauma anyway, either way. A
But it wasn’t only Africa - look what they did in Ireland closer to home - took the land of the natives and gave it to British planters - let over a million die in Famine - the Empire was a disaster for many all over the world
Interesting that I stumbled upon and watched this video tonight, because a member of my family was speaking an absolute load of rubbish about what she perceives to be her truth. When in reality it is a truth perpetrated by a system finely tuned to do so. I told her she is a bigot and explained just a few reasons why she is wrong, what empire did and who it served. I said I never hear her blaming the real culprits for the state our world and societies are in. The super wealthy families have created a finely tuned system that enriches the elite at the expense of working people everywhere. Their greed knows no bounds, they have no empathy and don't even care they won't have a liveable planet to live on. I truly believe insatiable greed is mad sickness that can not be cured. I am working class, most people I know who are working class refuse outright to see the truth and that is a problem. Their minds have been so indoctrinated that even being shown the truth makes no difference. The response is yes but, no but and then spewing whatever they have read in the Sun, or Daily Mail. This is a tough nut to crack and one the rich and powerful do their best to reinforce!
If a person wants to be superior, then others will have to be seen as inferior. This is how the tories justify their making us all poorer at the expense of the rich. I'd describe it as a conspiracy of contempt.
“… This flow of wealth fuelled industrialisation…” [4:50) My understanding is that the generality of opinion among economic historians is that this is not the case. Rather than slavery and colonialism fuelling industrialisation in Britain, it was industrialisation that enable Britain to become a world power and acquire a large empire. I thought this video might provide a challenging counter argument to this position, but it didn’t. The proposition that the Empire made Britain rich was asserted, rather than argued for. The idea that the NHS is the product of Empire seems bonkers to me. If that’s the case, how do those European countries which have never had extensive overseas empires manage to provide universal medical care to their citizens?
Some interesting topics, it's a shame they get bogged down with terms that only make the waters more murky. For instance the fact that Tories have been ruining the UK since 2008 with the complacent non opposition of Labour only speaks of short term political gain, the rise of populism and sheer incompetence; not capitalism, neoliberalism or globalization. The roots of empire do indeed seem to be still there, as seen through the eyes of a society used to seeing itself as much more progressive.
The incompetence is a product of empire. Schools like Eaton and Harrow encourage the 'elites' to network education is secondary. I mean Dominic Rabb????
Sorry to disagree with most commenters but I found this to be superficial and unconvincing to anyone not already reasonably familiar with and sympathetic to its arguments. A missed opportunity, especcially not exploring , anaytically and in depth and at length the lived experiences and views of John Barnes, whose views I had not known before. The academic and the politician who contributed sounded like robots.
so basically what they are saying here is colonialism was the process of an empire taking over new lands and getting the people in these new lands to saddle all of the sore ends of economies (economic troubles, food shortages, bad work conditions) all such in order to protect the central empire power from hardship and allow them to reap all the resources and benefits of the other nations and that racism fits in with that because its the only possible way to stop the colonies from uprising by beating them down into submission. basically also highlighting that the system of the uk and other places has not learnt a thing and is doing it to everyone still from the poor to the ethnic to the gendered to the sexualities just so the system can work for the few because the many can be beaten into submission and almost indoctronated to hate others for any reason? does this also explain why some countries are now so full of conflict from all sides because the victims learnt from the villians on how things are done? like you see in africa black vs white conflicts and in some places its almost like the reverse of what its like in the uk for racism, is that then because the indoctronation of hate for any reason bled into the people it was used against and down the generations started to breed situations that martin luther king warned about and was worried about?
It is soooooooo good to see and specifically to hear that there is some kind of intelligence on this Island. I am very glad you Brothers are brave enough to speak out about this stupid and arrogant Naturally Nurtured Nazis! The only time I have seen this country happy in modern days was with Brexit and just wait a bit longer and you will have the new proudest slaves who voted for it Themselves. Massive respect to you guys!!!
India's economy has now surpassed Britain's. The British stole all of the jewels in the Taj Mahal's wall. The Queen's crown has jewels from India. When will Britain return what they stole? Not just from India, but the world where its Empire took hold.
Will you ask modern-day Turkey to pay reparations to the Balkans too? Perhaps Libya has to pay reparations for hosting the Barbary states. Is the issue one of continuity or are you simply just treating Britain’s success at colonization/conquest as unique for reasons separate from its scale?
This video deals with important issues like colonialism, slavery, neoliberalism, racism and Islamophobia, but makes no attempt to differentiate among them or determine their various causes. The outcome is confusion.
They ransacked the planet and to this day they prance around flaunting their stolen property. “We will not blame him for the crimes of his ancestors if he relinquishes the royal rights of his ancestors; but as long as he claims their rights, by virtue of descent, then, by virtue of descent, he must shoulder the responsibility for their crimes.” -James Connolly on George V
… BECAUSE PUBLIC AND PRIVATE PENSIONS ARE INVESTED IN THE ENERGY CORPORATIONS! If all the biggest corporations disappeared overnight … Then so would ALL the pensions for every single pensioner in Britain! Do you get it now?! 🙄
What pensions did the poor get beforthe 20th century? And what does the financial services industry get out looking after those pension funds, and investing. None of that is done for free. So, who needs who?
I sincerely hope this is sarcastic. This makes no mention of the Romans, Greeks or Vikings, none of which participated in colonialism as we know it. Learn some classical history - you evidently know none.
@@davidjones500 No… But nearly every country on this planet has stolen from other countries at some time or other in history. Every country on earth has blood in its hands (just that some have more fresh blood stains than others). End.
![BOOMERANG: Empire and Britain's economy [FULL FILM] ft. John Barnes | openDemocracy](/img/logo.svg){kind=logo}
