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G4EBT > STOLEN 15.03.08 15:01l 130 Lines 5622 Bytes #999 (0) @ WW
BID : 158244G4EBT
Read: GUEST
Subj: British eugenics theory in Oz
Path: DB0FHN<DB0MRW<DK0WUE<ON0BEL<GB7FCR
Sent: 080315/1146Z @:GB7FCR.#16.GBR.EU #:64857 [Blackpool] FBB-7.03a $:158244G4
From: G4EBT@GB7FCR.#16.GBR.EU
To : STOLEN@WW
Why an Apology for genocide from the British Government is overdue:
Rudd's apology on behalf of the Australian Government was directed at the
policy that produced the stolen generations - Aboriginal children, mainly
girls, snatched from their mothers for "assimilation" into white society.
But make no mistake about this, the policy was developed by the British.
Its intellectual origin was the English eugenics movement, which held that
"feeble-mindedness" and other "degenerate" traits could be eliminated by
social engineering measures such as compulsory sterilisation of the
"unfit" and by "breeding out" what were described as "degenerate" racial
traits.
AO Neville (played by Kenneth Branagh in the Phil Noyce film Rabbit-Proof
Fence) held the title "Chief Protector of Aborigines" in Western Australia
and was the leading proponent of the policy.
It brings a new meaning to the term "protector".
The rather grandly named Auber Octavius Neville (20 Oct 1875 - 18 April
1954) was an Englishman. Born in Northumberland, Neville emigrated to
Victoria, Australia as a child.
In 1897, aged 22, he went from Victoria to Western Australia and joined
the civil service there, quickly rising through the ranks. Neville became
the state's second appointment in 1915 to the role of Chief Protector of
Aborigines.
During the next quarter-century he presided over the controversial policy
of removing Aboriginal children from their parents. In 1936, Neville
became the Commissioner for Native Affairs - a post he held until his
retirement in 1940.
Neville was inspired by eugenics theory.
He took very young girls from Aboriginal settlements and had them trained
for domestic service with white families, relying on miscegenation
(interbreeding of different coloured races) to produce, by the third
generation, an acceptable skin colour and a lack of any distinctive
'aboriginality'.
His stated aim was to "merge the blacks into our white community" so
that "we could eventually forget that there ever were any Aborigines
in Australia".
There's no doubt about any of this - it's all well-documented and
was widely accepted at the time.
Much as some white Australians may castigate themselves today for their
deluded assimilation efforts, it's necessary - as with every genocide,
to place the responsibility upon those who devised the policy.
So who was responsible for devising eugenics policies?
The British.
The enormously influential Fabian socialist thinkers believed eugenics
principles could be applied to produce a "superior" society. Sydney and
Beatrice Webb, John Maynard Keynes and Bertrand Russell all supported this
cause. George Bernard Shaw argued for humane extermination of "the sort of
people who do not fit in".
Marie Stopes publicly pleaded for the sterilisation of the "hopelessly
rotten and racially diseased". Virginia Woolf and DH Lawrence privately
urged that the state should eradicate "imbeciles".
Their slogan was coined by Oliver Wendell Holmes:
"Three generations of imbeciles are enough".
These enormously influential intellectuals formed these views well before
Hitler did, and were as close to Hitler's later outlook as it's possible
to be.
Against this background it's hardly surprising that Neville's "absorption"
policy adopted in 1937, was regarded by many as progressive - even kind,
and it was line with modern Darwinian thinking in the UK at that time.
A Department of Health report in 1934 recommended compulsory sterilisation
of the "feeble-minded" - a class comprising "a quarter of a million mental
defectives and a far larger number of the mentally subnormal".
It wasn't implemented, mainly because of opposition from Labour MPs, who
feared that working-class people who they purported to represent, would be
the real victims of the Fabian intelligentsia.
Historical wrongs can't be put right by belated apologies unless there's
a genuine attempt to understand, then remember and condemn - the thinking
behind the policies that have had such appalling results.
For that reason the UK government should find a way to endorse Rudd's
apology to Australian Aborigines, for whose sufferings Britain has been
in large part responsible.
Not only for the massacres and for the introduction of disease and alcohol
that further ravaged the indigenous population, but by a much later and
more insidious dose of eugenics theory right up until the early 1970s.
Every Holocaust Day we should remember the Tasmanians, and ask how it
came to pass that some of the finest minds of their day in Britain were
incapable of imagining the inhuman cruelty entailed by their plans for
a Fabian utopia.
Frankly, I'm dismayed that any Australians should seek to defend or deny
this British racist legacy with which they've been lumbered. It falls to
them to sort out the mess over time, but before they can do that, they
need to try to understand it.
That requires a large leap of faith.
Given the mix of people on packet, I don't think this is a topic which is
capable of sensible objective debate, but what I've written isn't a matter
of opinion, it is a matter of historical public record.
I hope it's been of interest to someone out there.
Quote of the day:
"Establish the rights of man; enthrone equality...let there be no
privileges, no distinctions of birth, no monopolies, make safe the liberty
of industry and trade, the equal distribution of family inheritances".
(Thomas Paine, dissertation on the First Principles of Government,
1795, seven years after the British settlement of Australia).
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