A note on Mother England

Lest all the blame fall on the United States for failures here in the Caribean, I would like to take my spyglass and pen to another of the  imperial power here in the basin, Great Britian. While I was great friends with the last British Ambassador here, Ian Worthington, I was appalled that the Foreign Office would send an Ambassador to a foreign country with a woman who was not his wife 

What has happened to one's standards?

In another incident, a British company, Biwater, had to leave the country after bribery allegations.

Standards, again, Gentlemen.

After my service in the Fastnet race, Lord Mountbattan was executed by the IRA and I heard the Seaman's Hymn for the second time in my life. I was tucked in safely with friends in Scotland but sorely distressed in body and soul. I went to Findhorn for a long scheduled two week sojourn. Then bought an old car and went out to search for the peace community.

On the way I stopped to load up on books on the what one title amusingly called "Ireland's English Question". At the St Andrew's bookshop, I was unable to find one single copy of the United States Constitution, despite finding shelves full of Marx and Engels. I told my sales clerk, who quite ressembled the White Rabbit, that he ought to be ashamed. He acknowledged that he was.

I then repaired to Brighton to the America's Cup trials, where my friends were sailing on Lionheart. I occupied the press tent with an ever growing table, discussing not the America's Cup, although I did do that, but rather The War in Ireland.

The Marina tried to have me expelled, tried to have my visa pulled. We Yanks did not need a visa for the UK then.

In the end, they were successful and I ended up in Holloway Prison, then, after sentancing to deportation, was transfered to Cookham Wood which was a facility long term prisoners. After the governor told me that they did not take deportees.. I really became scared. Finally I was visited by a representative of the US Embassy.

And even better, by the wife of my godfather, the Lord Bishop of Lincoln, who worked on reducing my sentance to an escorted departure, so that I might be able to return to the land of my foremothers should I ever wish to.

But, my mother land, much as I respect your sense of law and justice, you are racist.

You have produced the harshest form of racism in the world in the apartheid states of South Africa and America.

You are monolingual and unimginative. You are running a slave camp up there in the Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos, putting the natives in service to the white folks of the one percent with their fancy yachts.

When I chose to emigrate, I decided not to be in an English colony, because I wished not be within your form of racism again. The Catholics, at least, converted and married them.

Ah, we all have our shadows. No one is perfect.
least of all me

We are just works in progress.

l