The Politically Incorrect Guide to the British Empire (3 page)

But before we do that, let's imagine what life would be like today if the Empire were still largely intact; let's think of the way things could have been.

T
ransport yourself to the flat of Algernon Braithwaite-Burke Potter in Knightsbridge SW3 London. Still dressed in his pajamas (another Hindi word), he has enjoyed a rather long night on the town. He has put the kettle on for tea and is stooping to pick up the post and the papers scattered on the floor just beneath the mail slot.

At his home in the country he has help, but here in his London flat he is the consummate self-sufficient bachelor. He is used to making sacrifices and saying to himself: “There's a war on, after all.” He isn't quite sure where, but there is always a small war on somewhere—the price one pays for the benefits of the greater Pax Anglicana.

Mr. Potter tosses the post aside on the breakfast table and unfolds the papers—
The Times
and
The Telegraph
, and out of noblesse oblige, to know what the lower orders are thinking or, more accurately, to know what page three girl they're ogling,
The Sun
(which he does not receive in the country; he doesn't want to scandalize the servants). He prefers his papers ironed to crisp folds in the morning, but without help he has to make do.

The Telegraph
holds pride of place. Let's see: on the front page, British Palestine. How tiresome. It must have seemed awfully clever, no doubt, in 1945, when Winston came up with the wheeze of offering guaranteed jobs and free housing allotments for skilled laborers in uniform—who were
promised early release from the service—if they agreed to emigrate to “the New Jerusalem,” Palestine, which Churchill reorganized as a self-governing dominion. The offer was extended to coal miners in Wales, longshoremen in Liverpool, and low-wage workers in Scotland who were promised settlements on the sunny Mediterranean coast of Palestine (“live in the Holy Land while holidaying at the seaside”). In short order, there was an amazing exodus of some three million likely Labour voters—demobbed soldiers, colliery workers, and Glaswegian slum dwellers—who came off the voting rolls in Britain and put a Labour government in power in Jerusalem, a government pledged to nationalizing industries that Palestine did not yet have.

By that bit of electoral legerdemain, wily Winston ensured a skin-of-the-teeth Conservative victory in 1945, foiled Labour's plans to grant India independence, and stifled the development of socialism at home. But oh at what a cost! An endless parade of newspaper stories about Palestine grinding to a halt, with national strikes by Arab taxi drivers; or about skinheads refusing to attend the World Cup (to be played in Jerusalem) unless the authorities lifted the ban on alcohol and pork pies (“Let them eat falafel,” said Mordecai Gizzo, the chairman of the Palestinian Football Association); or about Zionists trying to annex the Gaza Strip out of the hands of admittedly frightful retirees from Birmingham, Manchester, and Leeds. Who was it that said the British Empire was a vast system of outdoor relief for the upper classes? He certainly got that wrong! Dreadful.

Oh dear, what else is going on? Let's see, in Iraq, the Anglo-American authorities had arrested one Saddam Hussein, mob boss of the Baathist syndicate involved in narcotics, prostitution, and pornography. Fed up with his recidivism, they had turned him over to a local tribal council . . . and apparently the less said about that the better.

In Anglo-American Iran, the shah was hosting the latest French fashion designers (well, since we had the oil, we had to allow the French something) for “Catwalk Tehran.” The shah was promoting Tehran as something like a
Paris
sur la
Caspian (Tehran, of course, was not actually
on
the Caspian, but one had to make allowances). The theme of Catwalk Tehran, at which famous British models were appearing, was “Lifting the Veil of Eastern Mystery.” It appeared from
The Telegraph
's photographs that veils were not all they were lifting. My goodness....

Turn the page. Ah Rhodesia, the farmland of Africa, bursting with produce, sponsoring an Imperial Agricultural Exhibition, with farmers, ranchers, and tea planters from all over British Africa and the world... which reminded Mr. Potter that he needed to pop over to Harrods for some Kenyan beef that he planned to wash down with that new Cape Pinotage he had bought. Always something new out of Africa.

Oh well done! The Australians were whacking holy hell out of India in the test match—and served them right too. He didn't like the behavior of some of these new Indian cricketers; lying down on the pitch, Gandhi-style, to protest decisions from the umpires. Disgraceful. If they can't behave like gentlemen, well then....

Let's see, Asian news: Hong Kong's borders had expanded yet again; having annexed all of Guangdong, Guangxi, Fujian, Jiangxi, Hunan, and Hainan, it had now grabbed Zhejiang and Jiangsu, the provinces bordering Shanghai. The Dalai Lama in British Tibet was hosting a rock concert, of all things—trendy vicars apparently weren't just an Anglican phenomenon. And the governor of British Singapore, in a friendly bit of rivalry, pledged that Singapore would displace Hong Kong as the chief entrepôt of the Far East. Well, it looked as though he had his work cut out for him.

In the Americas, Britain and the United States were conducting joint naval operations in the Caribbean and South Atlantic. Jamaica was debating whether its police force should be armed given the slight uptick in crime, caused largely it seemed by a small group of drug-addled ghetto dwellers who worshipped as a divinity an obscure American radio show host named Rusty Humphries—these of course were the Rustyfarians, and
they had gone on sprees of burglary to buy radios with which to tune in to their god, who kept them abreast of American political news. The Falkland Islanders, meanwhile, were hosting an International Southern Hemisphere Highland Games competition, which included the rarely performed event of speed-castrating sheep—a competition dominated by the Australians, who weren't called “diggers” for nothing.

And then, of course, there was Ireland. Ireland, it had to be confessed, remained in the Empire largely by force. It was essentially self-governing, but foreign policy belonged to Westminster, which retained an inveterate suspicion of the Emerald Isle (too many Irish politicians had taken a shine to the kaiser in 1914, Hitler in 1939, and later the egregious Yasser Arafat of the Palestinian Republican Army—who had worn a green-checked keffiyeh “in solidarity with the oppressed masses of Ireland”). Britain's role was to restrain Irish excesses (save for those related to drink) and encourage the sport of hurling (mandatory in all Irish schools) so that running around the green fields of Ireland bashing each other's brains out would be the favored recreation of most Irishmen, keeping them well out of trouble. Ireland remained a wonderful recruiting ground for the Army. In fact, the latest news from Ireland was that the Army was expanding to create a new Irish Regiment, Prince Charles's Own Tipperary Armored Cavalry (or Tipplers in Tanks).

And speaking of tipplers, he had tickets to tonight's NFL Europe game at Wembley: the London Monarchs versus the Amsterdam Admirals. The game was sponsored by Morgan's Rum, and every adult patron was entitled to one shot of rum, which to Mr. Potter's mildly hungover taste buds sounded like just the ticket. He had done a stint of his own in the Royal Navy and was absolutely certain that every Briton had a bit of the pirate in him. Well-intentioned pirates, needless to say, like Gilbert and Sullivan's pirate king: loyal to the Crown and the house of peers, and ever ready to liberate wealth, territory, and the occasional future page three girl from the unworthy. It
had been mostly Spaniards in the old days, though it could just as easily be Frogs, or lesser breeds without the law. That was how it all began, after all, with a nation of sea dogs taking to their ships to pillage and plunder—and yes, plant, patrol, and persevere—for King and Country, God and glory, gold and gammon.

T
hey were in Mexican waters, the harbor of San Juan Ulúa, when they spotted a dangerous Spanish flotilla—thirteen ships laden with guns and men. The Englishmen, led by John Hawkins and Francis Drake, were trapped; and they had reason to expect trouble. Hawkins had captured slaves in West Africa and sold them and other goods to Spanish colonists in the New World, enforcing free trade in the Spanish Caribbean at the barrel of a gun, burning and pillaging when local Spanish officials tried to follow Spanish law and not trade with foreigners. Now it looked as though the Spaniards might seek vengeance.