It may be that he is primarily thinking of the presence of Caribbean blacks, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, Panjabis and perhaps also Poles. Greeks, and Russians in London, but that doesn’t mean he really mean to include non-English British people. Scots and Welch and Northern Irish still aren’t being included in his concept of English.
It seems a common thing nowadays for the brexit to say one thing, and mean something else. Here are usual examples:
What they say = What they mean = Rebuttal
“London isn’t english anymore!” - “All the black and polish people weren’t there when I was young” - “Yes they were. The foreigners were there, it was a massive tourist city when I first visited London in 1987, Italian, Spanish, French commonly spoken on the street, and there was plenty of black and indian people there”.
“We need to trade with the rest of the world” - “We need to get rid of the foreigners in the usual order(*)” - “Just another trade excuse for racism, the EU doesn’t stop us trading with the rest of the world, indeed it encourages it.”
“There are too many EU people here” - “We need to get rid of the foreigners in brexit adjusted usual order (**)” - “And yet the brits in Spain should stay”
“Look at all the muslim paedophiles! Lets’ leave the EU” - “Muslim adjusted usual order (***)” - “Again, some sort of weird claim that the EU is responsible for the amount of muslims in the UK”
- The usual order is Gypsies, blacks and the jews, maybe the black and the jews are switched, but its always Gypsies first. Blacks means any non whites.
** Gypsies, Romanians (almost gypsies), black and the jews as usual, then good old fashioned reich slav cleanout.
*** Gypsies, Muslims, then blacks and the jews as usual.
Sounds to me like he’s waxing nostalgic, but not in a bad way, though a tone-deaf to the implications of how he phrased it. After all, Dopers love the Ray Davies’/Kinks’ album …Village Green Preservation Society (lyrics to the summary song here), which expresses much the same sentiment. (We choose not to condemn Ray for any implied anti-immigrant message, and rightly so, I think. And, yes, there was anti-immigrant nastiness in the UK in the late 60s, mainly directed against Pakistanis).
I don’t read his comments as anti-immigrant or anti-London at all.
My paraphrase would be something like “London used to be culturally English, but now is a far more globalized city.” That, depending on your perspective, could be an extremely positive thing. I didn’t get a sense of that from his comments and am not familiar enough with Cleese to speculate.
In his defence, I believe that earlier on the day that he posted that he had been hit on the head by a moose.
He didn’t grow up in London. He’s from Weston super mare. I’m sure there aren’t any London type people around there even today.
I thought drive-by postings were frowned upon.
While Cleese has said said some questionable things at times, being a grumpy old bloke, I see no reason to attribute that comment to racism without a mention of race or diversity; it’s a common meme in England that London is something by itself, not really quite a part of the country. Partly due to its sheer size- over 10% of the population of the UK live in Greater London- it’s the perception that many of its residents (especially politicians) appear to forget the rest of the country exists, and things like the ‘Living Wage’ which has two levels- ‘London’ and ‘the rest of the UK’.
People don’t say the same things about the other ethnically diverse cities like Manchester or Birmingham. It’s a London thing. There’s been running jokes about Londoners needing to buy a phrasebook or hire a native guide if they cross the M25 for decades at least.
Did he ever elaborate on what he meant? Because if that’s all he said, I think the anti-immigrant interpretation is really the only logical one. That statement by itself is in the language of racists. If he didn’t mean it to be racist, he should explain.
Exactly. This idea that cities don’t change (“it was always full of immigrants”) or that even mentioning the change is wrong, I think it’s stupid.
I have the full right to express my opinion about how I feel about my city and how it’s changed. If he thinks it has changed from “clearly English” to “not quite English”, he’s right, it has. There is also nothing morally wrong, or “old fart” about saying you liked your city how it was in the past more than how it is today. Or even to say that immigration has made it less like you like it.
Connie Booth gets credit for writing the show too .
This gives an idea of Cleese’s attitude towards Scottish people, and people who didn’t go to private school or Oxbridge. He’s not a nazi, he’s a twat.
It’s almost quaint for an Englishman to be racist against Scots in this day and age. But it’s unquestionably racist. Cleese isn’t just a twat. He’s a bigot.
What Cleese means by “English” isn’t clear but is obviously very dependent on his subjective judgement, as is the question of, whatever it means, whether London has become more or less so over time.
One thing that isn’t subjective is his claim that London was the city with that voted most strongly to remain. And it’s a false claim: Bristol, Manchester, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen all had Remain vote shares higher than London’s 59.9%.
It’s almost certain that London’s character and culture have changed since Cleese was young (how could they not) and if he wants to describe this change as a decline in some nebulous idea of Englishness, good luck to him I guess. It would be astonishing if that real change (call it what you will) has nothing to do with the changes of London’s ethnic make up over the same time frame and I will be equally be astonished if Cleese were to say otherwise. And we can debate whether disliking changes brought about in part by foreigners moving in indicates some degree of xenophobia.
But what seems pretty clear, and pretty objectionable, is Cleese’s implicit claim here that voting Remain is un-English. He doesn’t explicitly make that link, of course. He merely “notes” the Remain vote after claiming that London isn’t really English and leaves any suggestion that he thinks there might be a link in the mind of the reader. I note that this is a coward’s trick. But it’s kind of a surprise to see someone as clearly intelligent as Cleese indulging in this “No True Englishman” citizens of nowhere bullshit.
I mentioned it once, but I think I got away with it alright.
This little kerfuffle has also reminded me of something Cleese said (I thought in jest) a few years ago about Terry Jones, who is from Wales. Something like, “What Terry can’t accept is that the Welsh are a servile race, put here to do menial work for the English.”
His sense of humor (or maybe I should spell it humour), if that’s what it is, has always been laced with a sense of his own superiority.
London was English in 1939. Not afterwards. I wonder if that’s what he means. Brexit supporters are obsessed with the second world war, and speak in its terms constantly.
Stuck in the past which never existed. Thatcher without the five year recession and hundreds of thousands of job losses.
When it reality its just old people wanting to relive the days when they could move without pain, and obviously that’s the German’s and the French’s fault.
Mr. Hilter? A Nazi? Nein! Nein! Verboten!
He’s also an ignorant twat: the object of his ire - Fraser Nelson - went to private school, and Glasgow University is hardly a frigging diploma-mill.
Not sure if he wrote them, but the Scotish jokes in Python always seemed to be cheap and broad, as opposed to the English ones which were surprisingly light and loving with regards to the people’s eccentricities for a show whose humor could be so biting.