Is it a middle-class thing, or is it a Saint Helenian thing, that I find cousin marriage to be, more than anything, simply baffling? It is both, but for the same reasons in both cases.
Saint Helena is quite possibly the most completely, exuberantly Creole culture on earth where these and so many other things are concerned. Nothing could be more alien to the way of thinking than the idea of preserving the purity of a tribe, a clan or a caste. Huge variations in skin colour and other such features among full siblings and other close relatives are the norm. Saint Helenians who really are getting on a bit now sometimes display the colour prejudice of plantation society, as also happens among West Indians, and their late parents could from time to time be quite serious about it. But even then it was mostly the stuff of humour, or else so utterly inconsistently observed as between one's own family and everyone else as to be entirely amusing to other people even if not always to the person making the remarks.
I have a fairly close relative whose partner is more distantly related to me, but by an entirely different line, so that they are in no way related to each other. That is the nearest thing of which I have ever even heard to this practice that seems to be endemic among Pakistanis. Marriage between blood relatives is unheard of, not least because Saint Helena, though small and remote, has never been isolated, in fact had a very long period as a major British staging post around the Cape of Good Hope to India, and, never having become independent, has never stopped importing a certain number of single men, or more rarely single women, of marriageable age at any given time. My father's case, of marrying into the local population, was not very unusual even in 1976 (although it was in his position, and to an extent at his age) and would be perfectly normal today; it is already about 20 years since there was first a Governor married to a Saint Helenian. (There is a high incidence of diabetes, but that is as much to do with the diet as anything else. Saint Helenian food is wonderful, but it is not always the healthiest.)
By contrast, the British class system, especially at its extremes, is precisely concerned with preserving the purity of the tribe, the clan, the caste. That is why, although marriage between first cousins has long been far less common than it once was both among the upper classes and among the working classes or below, nevertheless if you were to hear of such a thing today, then you could bet that it would be happening in one or other of those contexts. Marriage among people more distantly, but still knowingly and significantly, consanguine is still quite common at the top, and still far more so at the bottom than in the vast middle (which has long included most of the traditional working class), where it is practically unknown.
In the vast middle, we are not concerned to be absolutely certain that we are marrying another Norman or another Saxon. There are heavy doses of Celt in certain areas, but since it is the same type of Celt in each given area, the split between Norman and Saxon is still the one that counts. The tribe, the clan, the caste. However fancifully conceived. A concept as lost on the people in the middle, whether classically middle-class or classically working-class (half of children with an Afro-Caribbean parent have a white parent), as it is lost on the people of Saint Helena.
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Hello Mr Lindsay.
ReplyDeleteWhat is it about St Helenians that makes them an island of racist, race-obsessed, lazy, heavy drinking bigots?
All this inbreeding. Just look at our poor royal family cursed by the marraige of their most very majestic Queen Victoria and Prince Albert - cousins.
Good Save Mrs Queen (who married her cousin - bless him to the heavens).
Lazy? You've clearly never met any. They are astonished at the institutionalised indolence when they come over here, and are never, ever known to participate in it.
ReplyDeleteBut then, they have no concept that work has to be brought to them rather than the other way round. That is how they come to be over here, on the British passports that they fought tooth and nail to get back after Thatcher took them away.
Ah, there's the rub. For, of course, you are New Labour, and cannot cope with anyone who does not regard having been born British as a curse.
Inbreeding is unheard of in Saint Helena, as I have explained. Again, perhaps you are thinking of New Labour, now almost an ethnic group (only one generation away from becoming one), and a thoroughly incestuous ethnic group at that, mostly on account of being quite so tiny, as it always was. It is already, and has always been, a cult.
They are dark-skinned, so they must be lazy. Hadn't you heard?
ReplyDeleteIf it's an inbred island of racist, race-obsessed, lazy, heavy-drinking bigots that Pat wants, then she is living on one and it is not St Helena.
Well, that's 13 years of Pat's type of politics and 31 years of Pat's type of economics for you. And counting, in both cases. No hope of improvement this side of electoral reform. Bring it on.
ReplyDeleteIn the last Parliament, some cross-party group of MPs decided that the new Constitution of Saint Helena, Ascension Island and Tristan da Cunha could not express that British Overseas Territory's desire "to continue as communities of tolerance, with respect for government and the law, Christian and family values and protection of the environment".
According to that same body of MPs, the new Constitution of the Cayman Islands could not say that that British Overseas Territory is a "God-fearing country based on traditional Christian values, tolerant of other religions and beliefs", nor speak of "a country in which religion finds its expression in moral living and social justice". "Moral living and social justice"? We can't be having any of that, can we, Pat? Any more than "family values"?
So how can the Coronation Service continue to contain the words, spoken by the Archbishop of Canterbury as he hands the Sword of State to the monarch, "With this sword do justice, stop the growth of iniquity, protect the holy Church of God, help and defend widows and orphans, restore the things that are gone to decay, maintain the things that are restored, punish and reform what is amiss and confirm what is in good order"?
Of course, it cannot. That is the whole point. If being a British Overseas Territory precludes having a specifically Christian basis for the State, then it could not be more obvious what that says about the United Kingdom herself. Such is the view of Pat from the Yard, who therefore hates both the Queen and the British Overseas Territories, where they still take Britishness seriously in historical and ethical terms.
New Labour, which now controls and even defines all three parties. Roll on electoral reform. Then, right here in the Mother Country, we can reassert ourselves as a community of tolerance, with respect for government and the law, Christian and family values and protection of the environment. As a God-fearing country based on traditional Christian values, tolerant of other religions and beliefs. And as a country in which religion finds its expression in moral living and social justice.
Anywhere else stupid enough to take in Pat from the Yard and such like will then be perfectly free to do so, and of course always has been. They don't want to live here. They want to turn Britain into somewhere else, and they have succeeded only too well. But reversal is possible, and therefore obligatory. They can then cart their racist, race-obsessed, lazy, heavy-drinking, bigoted, and probably inbred carcasses to anywhere else that will have them. And more fools the people of those places for letting them through the door.
Pat from the Yard has definitely never met any. No-one has ever met them and not liked them. Especially, no-one has ever been there and not liked it.
ReplyDeleteLike you say, a remarkably high number of people who go there to do a bit of work or just visit end up marrying into "the Saints". Hostility to marrying out is unknown, unthinkable. The practice has always been routine.
I was struck by what you say about full siblings, even fraternal twins, being different colours. But no-one ever there understood what I meant, that is just the way things are there and always have been. Is there anywhere else in the world where that is completely accepted and no one even thinks about it?