No, Mary Seacole is not as important a figure as Florence Nightingale. Who ever said that she was?
But she is interesting in that being three-quarters white still made her black by the law and mores of the time, yet caused her to define herself as white and to pass herself off as such for most of her life; in her native land, there is still a distinct people, the White Jamaicans, with its roots in all of that. It is all very pertinent to Britain in the twenty-first century.
Miss Nightingale rejected Mrs Seacole's overtures on grounds of class, not on grounds of colour. The War Office frustrated her efforts on account of her sex, not on account of her ethnicity. Again, these are issues very well worth exploring, not because Mrs Seacole herself was especially significant, but because she stands as an example of significant phenomena both historically and in the present age.
Moreover, be warned. Michael Gove does not only want rid of Mary Seacole. He also wants rid of Robert Owen, an example of the general writing out of at least the non-Marxist Left from British and wider history, and rid of Elizabeth Fry, who appears on the five pound note. In that case, why bother with the lady who has not appeared on the ten pound note since 1994? After all, she is only getting in the way of Cromwell and Churchill. Ignored as those superheroes of oligarchical Whiggery (not Toryism) currently are, according to Gove.
Gove and his Department are beyond satire. That Department ostentatiously sends out Bibles to schools, Bibles featuring both a preface by the Secretary of State and a reference to his very person on the cover. Why not also a photograph of him? Yet that bastion of Biblical values now has both David Laws and Elizabeth Truss as Ministers. Accompanied by the sleepy-headed shirker Matthew Hancock, who is being given the same fawning treatment that the same media interests previously gave to the then Louise Basgshawe.
And now also by John Nash, who has just bought both Ministerial office and a seat in our very Legislature as a straight commercial transaction, in a direct breach of the criminal law. The police do not like this Government in the way that they liked the last one, and John Yates is no longer in post. Over to them.
Gove and his Department are beyond satire. That Department ostentatiously sends out Bibles to schools, Bibles featuring both a preface by the Secretary of State and a reference to his very person on the cover. Why not also a photograph of him? Yet that bastion of Biblical values now has both David Laws and Elizabeth Truss as Ministers. Accompanied by the sleepy-headed shirker Matthew Hancock, who is being given the same fawning treatment that the same media interests previously gave to the then Louise Basgshawe.
And now also by John Nash, who has just bought both Ministerial office and a seat in our very Legislature as a straight commercial transaction, in a direct breach of the criminal law. The police do not like this Government in the way that they liked the last one, and John Yates is no longer in post. Over to them.
No comments:
Post a Comment