VIDEO: How America wrecked Britain and China’s Golden Age

The Brexit trigger that changed the world

Our British Defence Secretary John Healey keeps up the Labour government’s war-on-China schtick with a “we’re ready to fight” battle-cry that was widely mocked. Was Britain always this aggressive and desperate for war with China? Anna Chen analyses how it got this bad after so much promise.

Britain scored a victory in Beijing in 2010, ushering in a “golden age” collaboration that was mutually profitable & peaceful, uniting the Eurasia landmass in Belt and Road trade. What followed was a concerted effort by the declining US to stop the prosperous stabilisation of Europe and Asia at all costs and stifle the emergence of BRICS. The results have been tragic and avoidable.

Article first published 30 July 2025: How the US wrecked Britain and China’s “Golden Age”

“Ready to fight,” blustered British Defence Secretary John Healey, heady on the new car smell rising from a lone HMS Prince of Wales aircraft-carrier docked in Australia at the weekend.

To widespread mockery, Healey delivered his oration on the fantasy threat to Taiwan the moment Prime Minister Anthony Albanese stepped on Yellow Peril turf on his diplomatic trade mission to China.

Were Healey's lurid suggestions of China invading its own province designed to inject steel into an Oz government wavering under an AUKUS lash-up now shrunk to AUK?

Some Australians finally twigged the folly of an existential war with their biggest trade partner (not to mention regional superpower). It’s no surprise, therefore, to see them seeking an off-ramp. If only the same could be said of the UK.

Britain wasn’t always so aggressively determined to wage war on China. Certainly not since the Cold War or even the Hong Kong handover. What changed?

BBC: China, Britain and the Nunzilla conundrum

In 2010, the BBC allowed me to make another programme for Radio 4: China, Britain and the Nunzilla Conundrum. It pointed out that China’s days of making our tat were over and the new kid on the block was about to transition into a world-leading technological, giant.

How they laughed. What, with all those suicide factories?!

The timing turns out to be most telling. 2010 is the year of Obama’s Pivot to Asia (announced November 2011), following declaration of his status as the first Pacific President in a gargantuan territorial-pissing statement of intent.

Hillary Clinton kicks off the all-change with her incendiary speech at the ASEAN Regional Forum in Hanoi on 23 July 2010. She initiates the “smart power” strategy: stirring up enmity using carrot and stick to get the rising superpower’s neighbours on board to “contain China.”

Dubbing the Chinese end of the Pacific the “Western Pacific,” the US will later rename it the “Indo-Pacific,” removing China’ presence from its own coastal territory in favour of another Asian country completely round the corner. And as round the bend as Trump’s much-sneered-at renaming of the Gulf of Mexico as the “Gulf of America”.

All despite China saving the global economy from America’s greed-fuelled Great Crash of 2008 only two years previously. Oh, yes, who was it who did the damage? And who came to the rescue?

The BBC green-lighting my programme was a clear signal that, at that time, Britain had no intention of torpedoing their lifeboat and growth engine just on Obama’s say-so.

“Expect proxy wars and monstering of China in the supine media as we all get programmed to cheer World War Three and a Half.”
Anna Chen, 17 November 2011 after Obama’s Pivot to Asia

Britain not on the “contain China” bus

US and UK divergence is confirmed later that year after China floats the world economy out of danger.

In November 2010, Prime Minister David Cameron and his trade team score a victory in Beijing, ushering in a “golden age” with China. A collaboration that is mutually profitable, peaceful and helps knit together the Eurasia landmass end-to-end in Belt and Road trade.

Remember not so many years ago when food was cheap and plentiful? Interest rates were near zero? And supply chains were mwah!

In the geopolitical Three Body Problem of Europe, China and the US, Italy signs up to BRICS. Duisberg shapes up to become Europe’s busiest port. Crimea is granted pole position as a major BRICS hub, while China invests heavily in Ukraine’s agriculture. The first freight train from China running the entire length of Eurasia arrives in east London in 2017.

Ominously, a declining America, still on the naughty step for its global malfeasance, finds its influence jeopardised. What with being so well protected by two oceans that it’s cut off from the rest of the Northern hemisphere where all the action’s happening. And so dependent on sea and air. If only it had terrific High Speed Rail like that lot over there. What, not even one kilometre of HSR? And those pesky oceans keep getting in the way.

So g’wan, guess what happens next. Maybe America accepts China’s invitation to join in and keep the party going, as asked by ambassador Cui Tankai?

Nope.

Check out my Shakedown Timeline, compiling articles, analysis and programmes over two and a half decades as it happened.

Made in China 2025

Europe and China have stabilised Eurasia following recession and the near-fatal US crash harshing everyone’s economic mellow. The global economy is rising in sync and there are very few flashpoints to blow up. Slow and steady as it goes.

In 2015, Premier Li Keqiang signs Made in China 2025 (MIC 2025), announced by President Xi to great fanfare. This strategic plan aims to lift China out of its role as world’s factory by upgrading manufacturing and innovation, turning itself into a technological powerhouse, and earning a place at Top Table with the Big Boys.

We’ll make you so proud of us, they think naively. I remember shuddering a bit and wondering, did you get an okay from the alpha male? Not that you should be asking permission, but America might not be the proud parent you’re hoping for. You can feel the frisson of fury in the West as MIC 2025 throws the spotlight onto China’s beautiful cities, shrinking poverty, a growing middle-class and numerous achievements.

Oh, well, you must know what you’re doing.

Britain and the China Golden Goose

Britain continues to resist pressure to give up the Golden Goose they accessed in 2010. A big yah-boo-sucks to Obama’s neocon Pivot. Yay, bring on the Chinese tech. C’mon Huawei and your gorgeous 5G. Rah, Hinkley Point C nuclear power, you are so gonna make us world class. We might even get a Chinese built High Speed Rail.

China is throwing money at us, investing in lil old Britain because it loves us. It loves our style, our queen. Our status as former biggest empire the world has ever known. Forget the pokey embassy in Portland Place up the street from the BBC. We’re gonna need a bigger base. Let’s have us the Royal Mint as home from home.

And then … and then …!

2016. Prime Minister David Cameron snatches defeat from the jaws of victory and caves in to right wing pressure to hold a referendum to leave Europe. Brexit: just the move that would fracture Europe and halt progress in its tracks.

“In order to bring China to heel, Trump would have to break the European Union first. That affects Britain, too. Once we’re out of the EU, it’s unlikely that Trump will allow Britain to trade with China … What was that about Brexit ‘taking back control’?”
Anna Chen, What’s Donald Trump’s trade war with China REALLY about? 13 November 2018

Boris Johnson – London mayor (2008-16), Foreign Secretary (2016-18) and Prime Minister-to-be (2019-22) – and the Brexit bus promise to fund the NHS from money saved, 2016.

Brexit wrecks it

American-born Boris Johnson, who doesn’t care about anything except his own interests, is pulled both ways. He eventually campaigns for Brexit in front of a red London bus bearing the promise to save £350 million a year for the NHS.

Later, Peter Thiel’s Palantir and Cambridge Analytica, Facebook and the Donald Trump campaign (close to Nigel Farage) are all suspected of links to the outcome. Far from taking back control, 37% of Britons have voted to leap out of the EU frying pan and into the US fire, nailing us to the USS Titanic. Not burning but drowning.

Still, not to worry. Everyone knows it’s only a non-legally binding referendum to take the temperature of national opinion and not an actual deciding vote.

Over to you, leader of the opposition who is our last ditch defence against such xenophobic madness. Whatever you do, don’t press that big red Article 50 button.

Clown car reverses gear

The deed done, we may be losing the huge European market, as well as considerable political influence in the EU, but at least we have China as backup.

Taking us completely by surprise, however, unforeseen by everybody except those of us paying attention, the Right and far Right float to Europe’s surface, emboldened by the wave of xenophobic reaction sweeping the continent.

In Britain, Farage reverses sharply from using trade with a rising China as a bribe for leaving the European Union: “Look at lucky Iceland, able to make lucrative deals with China! Leave the EU and we can too”.

Overnight, post-Brexit vote, China is morphed from strategic partner to competition bogey man. Preaching conflict with China, Farage’s new pet project, sits in alignment with US neocons and isolationists like his hero, presidential candidate Donald Trump.

Britain hangs on to benefits

However, Boris Johnson isn’t blind to China’s great wealth. A massively overflowing trough, it awaits the likes of clever men like the Prime Minister to free up all that moolah. In addition to the benefits the country enjoys from our golden age relations, Johnson’s family has financial interests in China. Johnson holds out manfully.

In his 2005 Telegraph article, in which he scoffed at the Chinese for being incapable of original thought, he wrote: “It has become a cliché of geopolitical analysis to say that China is the next world superpower, that the 21st century will belong to Beijing, and that we had better get in tutors to teach our nippers Mandarin if they are to make it in the new world order.”

Boris Johnson writing on China in the Telegraph, September 2005

Britain has invested around £7 billion in Huawei 5G infrastructure which will secure our place ahead of the pack in the modern tech era. Helping our energy independence now that the North Sea is running out of oil (unfortunately privatised and no longer owned by the nation), there are several nuclear power stations in the pipeline, including Hinkley Point C, a third owned by the Chinese who are investing billions in the UK.

But there’s a new sheriff in town, a new clown in the driving seat, a giant bluebottle in the ointment. Choose your own metaphor and stir until shaken. Meet President Donald Trump, a throwback to 1950s nostalgia for a powerful America, Jim Crow and war on everyone who won’t bow down. Or am I confusing him with Nero or Caligula or Eric Cartman? Whatever, the prognosis isn’t looking good for anyone.

Superman versus Kryptonite

Brexit Day, 3 February 2020. Prime Minister Boris Johnson gives his famous Superman speech at the Old Royal Naval College in Greenwich about future trade agreements and championing free trade now that he’s lost us our key neighbouring market.

He has ignored US demands on several occasions, including from Mike Pompeo only the previous month, to drop Chinese investments such as Huawei’s 5G, to which Johnson had just given limited approval, excluding it from military and nuclear sites and keeping it to the uncontroversial phone mast system.

The cheeky monkey even has the temerity to comment that America’s trade war on China has been “letting the air out of the tyres of the world economy”. This will be the last time Johnson ever shows evidence of a spine.

A few days later, Johnson feels the wrath of Trump in a phone call.

US Vice President Mike Pence says that the Trump administration had made its disappointment with the UK “very clear to them”. According to the Sunday Times account of the White House delegation’s visit to London in May 2019, the GCHQ team whose detailed intelligence and technology assessment exonerated Huawei, was given the hairdryer treatment for five hours. Former British ambassador to the US, now Lord Kim Darroch, says there were no “compelling technical arguments that undermined GCHQ’s case” and that the US case was “political”.

Nevertheless, Johnson ditches Huawei in June 2020 after Trump bans the company from using US-made chips. Neither Theresa May nor Johnson gets a post-Brexit trade deal with the US out of this.

“The people who brought us AUSTERITY, then sold us BREXIT on the promise of a trade deal with China beyond the dreams of avarice, are the same Empire Crusaders who now want a war with it. China is the newly rich kid who’s strayed onto mafia turf and is about to be rolled.”
Anna Chen, The Sleep of Reason produces monsters from the West’s own id, 13 January 2021

Eurasia land mess

A far cry from the optimism of 2017, and in contrast to the pre-Trump era, Europe is shooting down the swannee.

The world is stuck between Scylla and Charybdis. Had Trump not won the 2016 election, the US might not have doubled down on Obama’s Pivot to China quite so fast. But had Hillary won, Russia would be back where it was after Gorbachev and Yeltsin sold out their own country. Pensioners going unpaid, children addicts living in sewers. Really bad Christmas-style jumpers being the height of fashion in Moscow. And quite possibly flattened.

With a four-year Trump pause, they’ve had time to build up defences against predatory NATO schemes.

In the Middle East, the Democrats have already shown their appetite for ruthless cruelty against the Palestinians, so no advantage there.

Ukraine is a proxy-war tragedy. “F**k the EU,” said Victoria Nuland to the US ambassador in Kiev just before their 2014 Maidan coup, as I am fond of reminding everyone. And they certainly did.

Europe, your nine lives are up

The EU bankrupts itself, throwing money at Zelensky even as he takes the anti-corruption agencies under his control. Germany is deindustrialised by the loss of cheap Russian energy, accepting the Nordstream pipeline being blown up by allies. Mertz wants a replay of Stalingrad with Russia and neglects domestic matters.

Ursula von der Lyen has more lives than a cat. She’s survived accusations of grift, dodgy Pfizer deals, war-mongering galore, and a humiliatingly bad deal with President Trump. A $700b commitment over three years to buying America’s expensive LNG even though declining supplies make fulfilling orders unlikely. A $600b “investment” tribute to Trump, and “only” 15% tariffs. What a bargain.

France has been shafted before by the US, previously over the AUKUS nuclear submarine deal. Ursula’s agreement that the EU market be prised open for US aggrobiz has not pleased French farmers.

NATO chief Mark Rutte calls Trump “daddy” and dreams of fighting China. Presumably from the depths of a luxury bunker while the rest of us fry.

It would be ironic as well as suicidal for Britain to now rejoin the EU. Brexit did the damage. Is there really any point jumping into it as it circles the drain?

BRICS is now the largest trade bloc on the planet.

How the US wrecked Britain and China’s “Golden Age” is also published at Anna’s Substack

About Anna Chen: Writer, presenter and broadcaster: BBC and Guardian before the pivot to China; ResonanceFM. She has written for Asia Times, Tribune, Morning Star, New Internationalist, South China Morning Post. TED speaker, Orwell Prize shortlisted, cultural outrider.

Opium Wars 2 and the propaganda war on China: No Cold War launch

No Cold War Online launch, 16th June 2021

Text of Anna Chen's speech

Tonight, I'm going to discuss the current build-up in hostility towards China in the context of the Opium Wars of the 19th century and the propaganda war leading us there once again.

At the start of the first Opium War in 1839, China was the most technologically advanced country in the world. It had already invented hydraulics, gunpowder in the 9th century, ships’ rudders, the stirrup, paper, moveable type printing and much more.

But it was their beautiful porcelain and silks, tea, lacquer (the first plastic) and furniture that drove the enthusiasm for chinoiserie in Britain in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Because Britain had little to trade with China that they didn’t already have – rough woollens and clockwork toys being top of the list on offer — Britain’s treasury was being drained to satisfy the public’s appetite for all things Chinese.

Britain’s solution to the trade imbalance was to grow cheap, mass-produced opium in stolen Bengal and sell that to China. Up until then, opium had been an expensive habit only used by the wealthiest Chinese.

War being economics by other means, when the Chinese government objected to their country being flooded with narcotics, Britain forced these massive industrial quantities of opium onto them at gunpoint, turning an expensive aristocratic vice into a nationwide addiction.

Chinese were slaughtered, their land pillaged. Lord Elgin ordered the Summer Palace burnt to the ground by British soldiers, joined in by the French, as punishment for not being submissive enough. Notoriously unfair treaties were used to carve up China, which was divided between Western imperial powers, with Britain grabbing Hong Kong until the colony was finally returned in 1997.

Around the same period, the invention of the glass Wardian case enabled Robert Fortune to steal China’s tea plants and transport them to India where the British set up a rival tea industry in possibly the first case of industrial espionage — intellectual property rights meaning very little to the invaders.

Fast forward to the modern era — a couple of revolutions, two world wars, a vicious Korean war and a rapprochement with the United States — later.

Today, China is the factory of the world, specialising in making our stuff. iPhones, electronic kit, solar panels, cotton, everything from foodstuffs to 5G are the new porcelain, silks and tea of the 21st century.

It’s taken nearly fifty years into its modern era for China to drag itself out of the hellscape inflicted by the Western powers. It’s raised 850 million human beings out of absolute poverty, and created a growing middle-class 550 million strong, almost twice the size of the population of the US. And it’s established the Belt and Road Initiative that promises to do for poorer economies what China has done for its own.

China’s investing in Africa and building their infrastructure at much lower interest rates than the World Bank charges, so we no longer need Bono to front Drop the Debt campaigns.

As well as eradicating poverty while we implode, China is the world’s biggest investor in renewable energy, vital in the fight against climate change.

But some people in the West simply can’t bear the idea of Chinese excelling or being given credit for anything.

Just as the Chinese economy draws level with the US at this classic Thucydides Trap point, the declining superpower goes on the attack in a poisonous one-sided Case for the Prosecution with no judicially verifiable evidence or right of reply, involving a wall of hate and daily monstering of America’s upcoming rival.

America could have continued working together with China in a multi-polar world but instead throws huge resources at waging Opium Wars 2, dragging in some of the worst perpetrators who gained from the 19th century imperialist atrocity. Billions are spent on character-assassinating propaganda, economic war and actual weaponry to ensure the Chinese model doesn’t give the public any big ideas that there might be a better system that’s working for its own people.

The absurdity that caps all of this for me is that Brexiteers, from Boris Johnson to Nigel Farage, used the promise of yummy trade deals with China to persuade Brits to vote to leave the EU. And the minute Brexit’s sewn up, we send a warfleet to China’s back yard.

Taking back control has meant handing control to a waning America that’s tearing itself apart, and doing their bidding even when it hurts us – such as ripping out billions of pounds-worth of 5G infrastructure we badly need and spending our remaining treasure on whipping up a war with a nuclear power.

And now we prostrate ourselves as America’s Airstrip One. In the West’s rewrite of history, we have always been at war with Eastasia.

We’re halfway through 2021. This conflict has been building for years. John Pilger even made a film in 2016 warning about The Coming War on China. Trump fired the first salvo in his trade war shakedown in 2018. And we’re sending warships.

So, instead of maintaining its own steady course, Britain nails itself to the USS Titanic, and tries to sink our global lifeboat in what could end up as a horrific world-wide war. China is both a scapegoat and a cynical diversion from Brexit chaos, an enfeebled economy, and catastrophic Covid mishandling.

With another Opium War brewing, let’s hope it’s first time as tragedy, second time as farce. The sensible option would be not to go there at all.

— ends —

FURTHER READING AND VIEWING:

The Roots of the Clash between the United States and China: Anna Chen speaks at the Virtual Vigil for the Victims of the Atlanta Shootings organised by the Goldsmiths Anti-Imperialist Society — Sunday 2nd May 2021

How Racism has its Roots in Politics: Anna Chen speaks at Standing up to Sinophobia: From Fu Manchu to Bat Soup Online event hosted by The Society for Anglo-Chinese Understanding (SACU) 6th April 2021

The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters from the West's Own Id: Anna Chen speaks at the the No Cold War online event, 13th January 2021

'Let's Blame China": an infantile disorder when Covid-19 comes knocking: How the White House turned "China bought us time" into "China lied, people died" and put the world at risk - 23rd June 2020

Plague, protests and how the hybrid war on China is prolonging Covid-19 pain in the West - 14th June 2020
Covid-19 and the UK's missing PPE - NHS health-workers you need this!

China: scapegoat and diversion from what ails western capitalism - 5th October 2019

Donald Trump's hostile takeover of the Chinese economy continues: Eternity in a grain of sand, heaven in a wild flower ... and revelation of character in a golf ball.
"People who cheat at golf also cheat at life." - 11th May 2019

Happy New Year: Will Donald Trump's tiny hand press the Big Red Button in 2019? - Anna Chen's warning that war between the US and China is a possibility, 24th December 2018

What's Donald Trump's trade war with China REALLY about? History repeats itself: Trump's fantasy trade-deficit is an excuse for carving up China - 13th November 2018

Who Should We Let In? Anna Chen joins Ian Hislop's investigation of immigration hysteria in Britain: Anna Chen discusses Victorian and Edwardian-era Yellow Peril fears with Ian Hislop on Who Should We Let In? Thursday 22nd June, 9pm, BBC2 - 24th June 2017

Trump's protectionism could be midwife to prosperous Asian region — if he doesn't nuke it first: New Beijing-backed RCEP trade treaty offers hope to emerging markets in Asia - 19th November 2016

The Opium War by Julia Lovell book review: Smoke and mirrors. - 17th May 2012

The 2001 Foot and Mouth disease outbreak scapegoating Chinese Brits: Early signs of establishment sinophobia in the UK in 2001

The Opening to China Part I: the First Opium War, the United States, and the Treaty of Wangxia, 1839–1844 The 1844 Treaty of Wangxia replicated many of the key terms of the Treaty of Nanjing. Most importantly, it established five treaty ports as open for Chinese-Western trade (Guangzhou, Xiamen, Fuzhou, Ningbo, and Shanghai). These treaty ports became key crossroads for Western and Chinese culture, as they were the first locations where foreigners and foreign trading operations could own land in China.

The Opening to China Part II: the Second Opium War, the United States, and the Treaty of Tianjin, 1857–1859

Chatham House report: Debunking the Myth of ‘Debt-trap Diplomacy’: How Recipient Countries Shape China’s Belt and Road Initiative

Twitter: https://twitter.com/@NoColdWar and https://twitter.com/@NCWBritain

The Red Dagger by Heathcote Williams: what the power elite do when the poor play up

Part 1 of The Red Dagger, a fascinating history of the poor from Heathcote Williams. When the power elite clamped down on the masses, Wat Tyler led a challenge and was martyred for it. I'm not saying we're heading back to feudal times, but …

Narration and montage by Alan Cox.

Ken Loach's 'The Spirit of 45' review: ethnically cleansing history

There have been black people in Britain at least from Roman times; some historians claim that north Africans were here 3,000 years ago. The first Chinese visitor we know of was Jesuit priest Shen Foutsong, who communicated in Latin when he worked at the Bodleian Library in the 17th century. His portrait still hangs in the Queen's collection. British involvement with India has a long history: Indian people were here in Shakespeare's time.

People of colour have been part of the fabric of British society for centuries, but seek as you might, you won't find any in Ken Loach's feature-length documentary, The Spirit of 45.

It gets off to a cracking start. Powerful archive footage from the 1930s reminds us of the horrors awaiting if the Tory-led coalition succeeds in clawing back all the post-World War II gains made by the British masses.

Witnesses of those grim pre-war times are interspersed with commentary from younger pundits. In perhaps the most moving testimony, Sam Watts describes how he and his siblings slept five to a bed infested with fleas and bugs in a hovel with rats in the skirting and behind the walls.

Outside toilets were the norm. Meals consisted of swede and potato with no meat. Bread and dripping, far from being a staple, was a luxury as you needed beef for dripping, so carbohydrate-heavy jam was the unnutritious standby for hungry children.

To see footage of swaggering mine-owners juxtaposed with that of miners who'd had to dig out the bodies of their fellow workers because the health and safety the right so gleefully lampoons was absent, is to well up with tears of both sorrow and anger.

The tragedy befalling us, and a key message of the film, is that the days of filthy rich exploitation of the dirt poor are coming back.

Time and again you find yourself drawing parallels between the inequity we thought was consigned to history, and the devastation wrought today during the biggest upward redistribution of wealth — from the poorest to the richest — for centuries. A third of council housing is now owned by private landlords who charge exorbitant rents, subsidised by the public purse because successive governments won't dare cap rents. Our utilities are in the hands of profiteering cabals. Food production is skewed by the big supermarkets (squeezing both farmers and consumers) who donate to political parties and even sit in government.

Back then, politicians understood that, to build a home fit for the heroes who'd won the war, it was crucial to combat the five evils: “Want, Disease, Ignorance, Squalor and Idleness.”

Atlee's government accelerated the construction of council homes, nationalised key industries and gave us the first National Health Service in the world. To combat poverty, the government's emphasis was on creating proper jobs making things, the best known cure for "idleness". The tone of the era as captured by the film was one of coming out of the second world war together and rebuilding the nation out of the rubble.

As an antidote to the poison being poured out by today's media backing the corrupt and discredited austerity policy of our unelected government, it is a powerful reminder that better things are possible.

However, about thirty minutes in, a growing unease sets in. The film may be shot in monochrome, but it presents a rose-tinted view of the Labour government, lacking any reference to its savage treatment of liberation movements in Kenya and Malaya, or its pursuit of cold war policies that specifically excluded people like Loach and his associates.

And suddenly the anaesthetisingly sentimental Hovis ad music shrieks and I'm shot out of the feelgood trance Loach is weaving, like Neo waking up in his dystopian cocoon in The Matrix. Not one non-white speaker. NOT ONE! He couldn't find any in the NHS? Transport? Posties? Pensioners? It's as if people like me have been bred out of the working class gene pool in Loach's vision of an idealised white working class.

My own father, an ex-seaman, was a British trade unionist in Liverpool from the 1920s onwards, and one of the founders of the Chinese Seaman's Union. It was needed as Chinese ran much of the merchant navy during World War II and plenty died for us in conflicts up to and including the Falklands War, and yet they were horribly discriminated against. Others, for example, wrote for the press, including Jack Chen, a correspondent for the Co-operative Movement's Sunday paper Reynolds News. Had Loach researched archive footage with any genuine determination to represent the working class and the movement in its full range and diversity, he would have found plenty of Chinese firefighters in wartime Liverpool.

Trade Union historian Wilf Sullivan has published an overview of the immensely important work done by people of colour in the movement since the 1930s, and I know personally of one south Asian shop steward at Dagenham Fords in the 1970s, and yet Loach couldn't find ONE?

If not from that specific period, then how about the younger talking heads commentating in the film? Are there really no activists of colour he could find who could add to our understanding of the political shift in post-war Britain?

Why distort the composition of the class that needs to resist capitalist predation? The Spirit of 45 gave rise to the Welfare State which required major waves of immigration from the Caribbean as a direct result of creating the NHS and all those jobs in transport. Where were they in the vision of '45? Why are we being sold a mythologised Little England where everyone is white?

George Orwell pointed out in his bitter 1939 essay, "Not Counting Niggers": "What we always forget is that the over­whelming bulk of the British proletariat does not live in Britain, but in Asia and Africa."

Loach is well aware of this, as he's been in enough revolutionary milieux and is familiar with the role of imperialism in the world. So why impose such a filter? Who gains?

Loach's airy dismissal on BBC Radio 4 of his ethnic cleansing of our history was simple: "That's how it was. That's the record of the time. That's what people thought, that was the moment of the time." You can't include stuff " ... to suit our present sensitivities."

Harking back to a fictitious Golden Age when everyone was white is a dangerous game to play in the current climate of immigrant-bashing. It represents a surrender to a media-created antagonism towards non-whites and immigrants with polls showing that increasing numbers of us blame immigration for dwindling resources. Is this the audience that Loach and the People's Assembly are hoping to win over? Films like The Spirit of 45 should be inspiring and educate people with the truth, rather than implying that if you can't beat the EDL and UKIP then join them.

In constructing a narrative palatable to a consistuency increasingly susceptible to the dishonest blandishments of the right, Loach is speciously coy about the identities of his participants.

I recognised most of the talking heads as being members of far left groups and yet they weren't identified as such, opting for titles that made them look like "ordinary" witnesses and workers when they clearly weren't. It is absolutely fair that the far left, as members themselves of our society, should have a say in how our society is run. However, I'm puzzled as to why left leaders who tell their rank and file members to publicly identify themselves — indeed, that they should shout it from the rooftops — fail to do so themselves here. Why not? Why be so modest about your political affiliations?

As the late prominent sect leader Tony Cliff used to say, you must never lie to the class. That presumably includes lying by omission.

The most disturbing moment comes towards the end with a dramatic lingering still shot of an angry young black man raising his fist, the first and last image focusing on an ethnic figure rather than ones who'd accidentally strayed into view. It was as if the filmmaker and his associates were saying, "We will utilise your fury but we won't give you a voice. We will do it for you using your muscle but not your political input. Thanks for the window dressing." Given the absence of minorities in the telling of the tale, this seems opportunistic at best. It is also a sharp reminder of how the 9/11 attacks prompted former SWP leaders (now running Counterfire) of the Socialist Alliance to ditch the People's Assembly Mk I when they courted the angry energy of disaffected Muslims. They weren't slow to dump white working class interests then, to be picked up ten years later when the Muslim charm offensive had run out of steam.

It's a shocking exclusion, and one that Loach's defenders have tried to write off as an unthinking omission. It's unlikely that a director with several decades' worth of experience at the top of his craft wouldn't know exactly what his mise en scéne was communicating.

It's the same with his amnesia regarding the less savoury aspects of Labour's history. Loach has been a political filmmaker since I was in nappies, so did he really forget Britain's shameful roles in Korea and Kenya? Or that while it was imposing eight years of austerity they still had the funds to make Britain's nuclear bomb? Or Labour under Harold Wilson closing more mines than Thatcher? Or its vicious attacks on the working class in the 1960s and 70s?

The film's leap from from 1951 Festival of Britain to 1979, missing out, among others industrial conflicts, Grunwicks, is jarring and baffling.

In his eagerness to weave a romanticised view of the period Loach has resorted to distorting events. Does he have the courage of his conviction to let the facts galvanise his audiences into action and develop their consciousness? Or does the film induce a trance-like state for his audiences, a slack-jawed Spielbergian passivity?

The Spirit of 45 is emotionally effective but, as Tariq Ali once said of the huge Vietnam War protests, emotion doesn't last. Look at how the Occupy movement has fizzled out despite the best efforts of principled activists. You need the politics and the theory to plan a course of action that will be effective and endure, otherwise you end up repeating the same mistakes and time is running out. I could quote Pete Townshend and the greatest political rock song ever written, Won't Get Fooled Again, but most have been around the block more than once and know it by heart. If only it no longer held true.

My Guardian article: Ethnically cleansing working class history.

Harpy Marx on The Spirit of 45

A review by Tom Jennings who also spots the glaring exclusions and omissions.

Not quite the Spirit of 45, Blood and Treasure.

The Left's Invisibility Bomb

The People's Assembly led by the same characters who destroyed the Socialist Alliance (People's Assembly MkI) when it suited them, and Respect.

More SWP rape accusation: "a dangerous place for a woman"

Dr Evan Smith with an illuminating response to my Guardian article: the British left and BME workers.

Chinese coolies on the Western Front in World War I.

How was anti-Iraq war demo energy frittered away? Demobilising the STWC on the most crucial day of the anti-war movement.

British Chinese Richard III on national tour

David Lee-Jones as Richard III

Britain's first Chinese Richard III — David Lee-Jones — is currently on national tour from Scotland until 22nd August at the Penlee Park Open Air Theatre in Penzance.

I was part of a rehearsed reading of The Other Shore last year at the New Diorama where David's presence and gravitas stood out, so I'm really sorry to have missed the London performance at Peckham Rye last Sunday. Here's a great review by Avril Silk of the Somerset performance.

Event Venues & Times
29/07/12 only Newhailes | Newhailes Road, Musselburgh, Edinburgh, EH21 6RY
04/08/12 only Falkland Palace | Falkland, Cupar, Fife, KY15 7BU
03/08/12 only House Of Dun & Montrose Basin | Nature Reserve, Angus, DD10 9LQ
27/07/12 only Leighton Hall | Carnforth, Lancashire, LA5 9ST
finished New Inn | 16 Northgate Street, Gloucester, Gloucestershire, GL1 1SF
25/08/12 only Jewry Wall Museum | St. Nicholas Circle, Leicester, LE1 4LB
finished Chepstow Castle | Bridge Street, Chepstow, NP16 5EY
26/08/12 only Oakham Castle | Off Market Place, Oakham, LE15 6DX
finished Highcliffe Castle | Rothesay Drive, Highcliffe, Dorset, BH23 4LE
Showing until 19/08/12 Halls Croft | Old Town, Stratford-upon-Avon, CV37 6BG
08/08/12 only mac | Cannon Hill Park,, Birmingham, B12 9QH
finished Beaudesert Park School | Minchinhampton, Gloucestershire, GL6 9AF
finished The Gate Farmhouse | Itchington, Alveston, Bristol, BS35 3TA
10/08/12 only Cressing Temple | Witham Road, Braintree, CM77 8PD
finished Caerleon Roman Amphitheatre | Broadway, Caerleon, Newport, NP18 1AG
18/07/12 only Shaftesbury Abbey | Shaftesbury, Dorset, SP7 8JR
19/07/12 only Sand | Sidbury, Sidmouth, EX10 0QN
28/07/12 only Higham Hall | Bassenthwaite Lake, Cockermouth, Cumbria, CA13 9SH
01/08/12 only Pitmedden Garden | Ellon, Aberdeenshire, AB41 7PD
05/08/12 only Threave Garden | Castle Douglas, Dumfries & Galloway, DG7 1RX
12/08/12 only Langar Hall | Langar, Nottingham, NG13 9HG
20/07/12 only Poulton House | Poulton, Gloucester, Cirencester, GL7 5HW
14/08/12 only Raglan Castle | Raglan, Monmouthshire, NP15 2BT
finished The Royal Crescent & York Gardens | Clifton, Bristol, BS8 4LN
finished Bosworth Battlefield Heritage Centre ... | Bosworth, Sutton Cheney, CV13 0AD
finished The Mill House | Netherbury, Dorset, DT6 5LX
23/08/12 only The Swan Theatre | The Moors, Worcester, WR1 3ED
finished Wolvesey Gardens | Bishops Palace, Winchester, SO239NB
finished Sterts theatre | Upton cross, Liskeard, PL14 9AZ
finished Frampton Court Estate | , Frampton on Severn, GL2 7EP
finished The Manor House Museum | Hall Green Road, West Bromwich, B71 2EA
11/08/12 only The Chequers | High Street, Yelden, Bedford, MK44 1AW
24/08/12 only Woodchester Mansion | Woodchester Mansion, Nympsfield, GL10 3TS
22/08/12 only Penlee Park Open Air Theatre | Morrab Road, Penzance, TR18 4HE
finished Whittington Castle | Castle Street, Whittington, SY11 4DF
finished Cothay Manor | Greenham, Wellington, TA21 0JR
finished Little Chalfont Village Hall | Cokes Lane, Little Chalfont, HP8 4UD
finished Kingston & Dormston Village Hall | Cockshot Lane, Dormston, WR7 4LB
finished Pontefract Castle | Castle Chain, Pontefract, WF8 1QH
finished Bartons Mill | Bartons Lane, Old Basing, Basingstoke, RG24 8QE
finished Cafe on the Rye | Strakers Road, Peckham Rye Common, London, SE15 3UA

The Steampunk Opium Wars at the National Maritime Museum

National Maritime Museum
18.30-22.00
Thursday 16th February 2012

A satirical extravaganza about China, Britain, imperialism and drugs in the 19th century in verse & music. See narco-capitalists & Chinese lawmakers slug it out, take part in a poetry slam, and watch the weirdest tea ceremony ever.

What do the humble cup of tea and the opium poppy have in common?

Britain’s craving for chinoiserie in the 18th and 19th centuries resulted in a trade imbalance that threatened to empty the treasury. To pay for the tea, silks, spices and porcelain we liked so much, the East India Company sold enormous quantities of cheap Bengal-grown opium to China, turning an aristocratic vice into a nationwide addiction.

The profits from the opium trade made fortunes, earned revenues for the British government, paid for the administration of the Empire in India and even financed a large slice of Royal Navy costs. When the Chinese tried to halt the import of the drug, the narco-capitalists persuaded Foreign Secretary Palmerston and Lord Melbourne’s government to go to war in 1839. The first military conflict, lasting a bloody three years, resulted in the Treaty of Nanking and the transfer of territory including Hong Kong to British rule.

A dastardly tale of imperialism, drugs and warfare, the story of this dark episode in British history is told in The Steampunk Opium Wars, a satirical extravaganza hosted by poet Anna Chen inside the belly of the beast, the heart of Empire, the Royal National Maritime Museum in Greenwich. 

Government narco-capitalists and Chinese law-enforcers slug it out in verse, and members of the audience have the chance to write and take part in a Farrago Poetry History Slam.

Featuring Paul Anderson, John Crow Constable, Neil Hornick, John Paul O’Neill, Hugo Trebels, and Louise Whittle.

With music from legendary writer Charles Shaar Murray and The Plague’s Marc “The Exorcist” Jefferies; former Flying Lizards singer Deborah Evans-Stickland singing her mega-hit “Money”; DJ Zoe “Lucky Cat” Baxter of Resonance FM; and Gary Lammin of The Bermondsey Joyriders in the weirdest tea ceremony you’ve ever seen.

Have your photograph taken in your finest steampunk paraphernalia on stage by Mrs Sukey Parnell, who has exhibited in the National Portrait Gallery, and maybe see it displayed on the interweb.

Celebrating Chinese New Year and the opening of the new Traders Gallery at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich

Come and play with us … 

More here

Free entry but book tickets

Facebook page here

Royal Wedding Blues Pt II: the ruling class are 'avin' a larf, innit?

The gargoyles and grotesques who attended yesterday's publicly-funded royal wedding give us a glimpse of a confident, decidedly non-democratic ruling class in the ascendent. With a government of their own clobbering the very people who turned up to celebrate, they must be very happy indeed.

While I loathe the Blairs for their greed, worship of wealth and status above their own constituency, and his addiction to wars, the fact that the office of Prime Minister, one voted in by a landslide (even if he did turn out to be a scumbag), was snubbed like this, says more about what they think of UK subjects (for we are not free men and women despite all the PR to the contrary) than what they might think of the Blairs.

Meanwhile, lawful peaceful protest was crushed in a way that must have made the Bahrain torturer and Saudi despots feel utterly at home, and more bad news about further cuts to our NHS was buried.

Peter Hain may moan that Ed Miliband was given no TV coverage, but I think the BBC did him a big favour. Who'd want to advertise their consorting with this company? We need Ed to stand up to this carve-up, not tug his forelock in obeisance to his betters.

Which reminds me: that speech by Kate's brother, James Middleton, reading Romans 12, urging the Firm and their peers to 'associate with the lowly'. How sad it that? The rich man in his castle, the poor man at his gate and all that.

I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God - what is good and acceptable and perfect. Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good; love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honour. Do not lag in zeal, be ardent in spirit, serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the saints; extend hospitality to strangers. Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another; do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly; do not claim to be wiser than you are. Do not repay anyone evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all. If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all.

Yep, they get to decide 'what is the will of God', just like the 'mad mullahs'. 'Hate what is evil' but you get to decide what constitutes 'evil', and, wondrously, it is never anything you yourself have done. 'Serve the lord', especially if you or your mates are that lord. Sounds like a cushy number to me.

I say never trust anyone who says they have a hotline to the Divinity. Call for the men in white coats, instead.

Will and Kate are the pretty face of a ruthless bunch of rulers who have only just begun their counterattack on the workers and peasants who got too uppity after World War II; a period, coincidentally, of unprecedented creativity by the masses.

UPDATE: Saturday 30th April. An emboldened ruling class cleanses networking site of dissent. This lot will put China in the shade.