Our Wankers this Week are an outfit who call themselves "the Citizens Electoral Council of Australia". They sent us a press release this week, announcing the publication of a book not just written, but researched and written by Allen Douglas, Gabrielle Peut and Robert Butler. Imagine that - doing some research before writing a book. Now, why didn't we think of that?
The book is called “The True History of the Founding of Australia”. Now, we have no problem with Australians. We think they do a great job, actually. It can't be easy, being a member of a nation that thinks highly of sporting prowess but isn't really much good at most sports. Yes, it was a bit unlucky for them to lose the Ashes, but they shouldn't let it get them down too much. I mean, they're ever so much better at cricket than they are at most other games.
We realise it must be very galling for them, given the size of the chip on their shoulder about the British: it must enrage them no end to see us in the top seven soccer nations, or in the top two rugby union nations, or holding undisputed mastery of the world of Formula One, or winning a substantial haul of Olympic medals ... while their own most consistent successes have been in ... women's surfing. We'd like to remind them that all such success is transitory. True, we're on a bit of a roll at the moment, but it won't last. In a year or two we'll be just as mediocre as you are, blue.
Besides, sport isn't everything. There are other, more important fields of human endeavour. Take music, for instance. Wikipedia lists no fewer than 162 Australian composers, and one of them, Malcolm Williamson, has actually had some music played in this country. I didn't recognise any of the other names, to be honest, but I'm sure they're jolly good. There's Rolf Harris, of course. There's always Rolf Harris. Not quite in the same class as Benjamin Britten or Ralph Vaughan Williams, of course, but bloody persistent so be fair.
And what about Australian successes in, say, literature? Who has not heard of Glenda Adams, for instance? No? What about "Banjo" Paterson or Dal Stivens? Still no? Er ... Nicholas Hasluck? Carmel Bird? Mem Fox? No? Well, everyone knows Russell Braddon, surely? We have heard of Thomas Kineally, naturally. Haven't read him, but we know his name all right.
Still, the three authors of "The True History of the Founding of Australia" will no doubt carve their names on the dusty old rock of Australian literature. Or at least, they would do, were it not for the aforementioned chip on the collective shoulder. To show you what I mean, here are some extracts from the press release ...
"For generations now, Australians have been spoon-fed the crock that the European settlement of Australia was caused by the need to “relieve prison overcrowding” back in good ol’ England, and that therefore our ancestors were mainly “convicts”—“bad stock” as the eugenicist Winston Churchill once put it. The CEC’s latest, hot-off-the press New Citizen demonstrates that “standard history” to be utter, lying hogwash."
Oh dear. That's a bit sad, really. I mean, leaving aside the plethora of contemporary evidence about transportation that does tend to suggest that there may be some truth in this version of history, does it actually matter? To anyone without a mammoth chip on their shoulder, anyway? One of my ancestors was a lunatic, and another was locked up in the Tower of London for several weeks, but personally I carry no grudge about it. Still, let's be generous. Let's assume that to some people all this may actually be important, that Winston Churchill was a eugenicist instead of a politician, and that none of the founders of Australia were convicts, but were fine upstanding pillars of the community. Let's read on ...
"Throw out the date-based, boring chronologies you remember from school, and read the true history, including the 17th and 18th century takeover of Britain by the “Venetian Party”, in which London replaced Venice as the center of worldwide monetarist imperialism. Read of Lord Shelburne, the grey eminence behind every aspect of the planning and execution of the new Australian colony" ...
Well, yes, God, I remember those date-based boring chronologies ... actually, no I don't. The history of Australia played a very minor part in the curriculum when I was at school, and these days no one learns proper history at all - it's all women's studies and getting in touch with your emotions in British schools these days (pointless, really. I've never needed anyone to help me get in touch with my emotions - most of the time I'm f*cking furious). It may be hard for these Australian researchers to swallow, but in reality no one cares how Australia came to be founded - not even most Australians. It was, and they're here, and that's all they care about. We care even less. What's more, there are a few facts about more recent Australian history that most Australians would prefer to forget.
Something else I don't remember is the other two "facts" in that paragraph. If the "Venetian Party" really did take over Britain in the 17th and 18th Centuries, it's a bit odd that here in Britain its name isn't a little more widely known, isn't it? Or that it seems to have escaped our good friend Mr.Google completely. On the other hand there certainly was a politician in the 18th Century called Shelburne, though he is more commonly known by his proper title of Lord Lansdowne. And he does seem to have been a bit of a shit, too. But then he was a politician. What else do you expect?
The press release ends "This true history will make British-trained professors, with their boring, lying chronologies spit with rage, but open ordinary Australians’ eyes to the true nature of the British Empire whose monetarist imperialism (“globalisation”, “free trade”), still dominates the globe".
Yep, on the way to work this morning the streets were filled with professors spitting with rage. You could hardly walk without treading in great puddles of spittle. I'm pretty steamed up about it myself, and I'm just a humble Bachelor of Arts, not a professor. This is just the kind of thing that us British academics spend all our time thinking about - after all, it's vitally important in the grand scheme of things, isn't it, how Australia started? The very balance of world power, the immense cohorts of the Chinese oligarchy poised against the wealth and might of America, the vicious old-world spite of the Russians, the oil-fed ignorance of the Arabs, the teeming millions of indigent, diseased Africa, all hang upon this one simple question: were the early Australians genuine convicts, or just a bunch of tramps and malcontents the British upper-classes wanted rid of? And what's the difference? And who the hell cares?
Grow up, Citizens Electoral Council of Australia. Do you really think anyone is gojng to be impressed by your revelation that "the true nature of the British Empire" was "monetarist imperialism"? What the hell else was it going to be? Do you seriously think that anyone carves out a global empire in the interests of preserving insect life or exploring the wonderful world of macramé? Can you name any political or trade empire in the entire course of world history that was not for the purpose of "monetarist imperialism" - in other words, profit? Deplore it you may, rail against it you certainly will, but deny it you cannot.
I don't imagine for a moment that you, the Citizens' Electoral Council (did you notice the apostrophe? Don't you have them in Australia?), will take a shred of notice of what I have to say - but if you did, my advice would be: get rid of the chip on your shoulder, realise that neither you nor the British are now or were in the past nearly as important as we'd all like to think, and that there are loads and loads of things about Australian politics and society that you could more fruitfully address instead of mooning about imagined indignities two hundred years ago.
Oh, one more thing. Don't send us any more press releases. Or if you do, leave out expressions like "spoon-fed crock", "utter, lying hogwash" and "spit with rage" which do tend to sound like slight exaggerations and not likely to invoke instant sympathy in the mind of any reader who is not an ignorant antipodean bigot consumed with bitter envy because he isn't British.
And, trust me, if you're consumed with bitter envy about not being British you really must be ignorant. Most British people would probably rather be Australian, if they had the choice. How bizarre is that?
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