They Call it “Loving” — But it Is Not

by Frederick Dixon

DID ANYONE EVER have a more perfect name than the hero of Hollywood’s latest romantic drama? It will not have been easy to miss the publicity for this film, but just in case anyone has, here’s the plot of what is presented as a true story: Mr. Loving, a White man, “fell in love” with a Black woman in the Virginia of 1958. They wished to marry but Virginia law, in common with that of many of the American states, forbade interracial marriage. They took the State of Virginia to the Supreme Court and won, thus rendering all laws forbidding interracial relationships void.

Also released recently was A United Kingdom, telling the true story of the 1948 relationship between Seretse Khama, heir to the throne of Bechuanaland (today’s Botswana) and Ruth Williams, an English typist. I remember the former Miss Williams being interviewed on the radio some years ago and telling how she and Seretse were booed and jeered when they walked out together, so rare and unpopular was the sight of an interracial couple in the London of the 1940s; as someone once said “the past is a foreign country, they do things differently there”.

We have become very used over recent decades to the routine media representation of the interracial couple, the clear intention being to make us so accustomed to the sight that we no longer notice. And I will not comment on the way in which the media, even the right wing newspapers, coo over Prince Harry and his mulatta girl friend. The purpose, conscious or not, is to bring us to the point anticipated by the late Iain McLeod, a prominent Conservative politician of the post war decades, when he addressed young Tories in 1962 with these words: “I look forward to the day when the question ‘would you let your daughter marry a black man’ will be as meaningless as the question ‘would you let your daughter marry a man with blue eyes’”.

It is, I suppose, unlikely that the makers of these celebratory films have heard of McLeod as he is a largely forgotten figure except among those interested in the history of the Conservative party. Nevertheless it is possible that the films have appeared now because the social climate is right, and the social climate is right because, perhaps, we are nearing the point at which McLeod’s vision becomes reality. This possibility occurred to me when I was sitting in a restaurant on the south coast a few days ago. Already in the restaurant were three White women with five mixed race children between them. The women were not together. Was I just very unlucky to see something quite rare — three such family groups at the same time in the same place? No, if race mixing were a rarity that would be a nearly impossible coincidence. The unhappy truth is that race mixing is prevalent in a way which would have been unthinkable in the recent past. I confirmed this for myself with a few minutes research on Google — in 2011 six percent of under fives were mixed race, five percent of five to tens, and so on and so forth, the younger the age group the higher the mixed race percentage.

Perhaps we should remind ourselves just why it is that such relationships, although now so widely accepted, are so wrong. It is because they destroy our national and personal identity, turn our country into a foreign place and deprive our ancestors of their reasonable hope for descendants who would resemble themselves. The truth is that these films elevate individual desire over the individual’s duty to his people and his community.

If we are indeed nearing the point at which McLeod’s vision becomes reality we are not quite there yet, and the celebrations are premature. We may well be at one of those political cum social turning points which occur every couple of generations, when the established order is turned upside down, when the impossible becomes possible, when the unsayable is said. That is not my opinion alone; it is very clear that the left is bewildered by the way in which ordinary people in Britain and in the United States have turned on their cherished internationalist projects and demolished them. Steve Bannon, President Trump’s confidential adviser, is regarded by the left — with some cause — as a figure of the “far right” and he is of the opinion that history is about to undergo a sudden and “cleansing” turn.

We shall see. But even if we are at such a turning point we should not be complacent. The British are a remarkably docile people, taught to be proud of the “tolerance” which has given us the highest rate of mixed race relationships in the Western world. When we recover control of our borders after Brexit there is every possibility that we will settle down comfortably in the belief that we have done enough and that our ethnic minorities can and should be absorbed. That is why nationalists, gathered around the two fundamental principles of racial nationalism, must construct a parallel society in which we look after our own people within our own institutions. Only thus, by ceasing to be scattered individuals and becoming instead an organized community — in other words by doing what many ethnic minorities do — can we be certain of the long term survival of a White British people in our country.

* * *

Source: Western Spring