Who Do You Think You Are?

You would be proud to do it for the glorious fatherland, Dom. I don't mean you might think about it. I mean you WILL be proud to do it! There were already baby farms, weren't there, producing blonde babies to order? The women were told how important it was for them to produce children for Deutschland, to keep it uber alles. We should all thank our lucky stars for that little strip of water between Britain and Calais... :o
 
Looks most interesting, Derek. You know, not once in any History lesson at school did we once touch upon the persecution of Jews in Britain? I was a fully-formed adult before I even heard about it, and that was through watching a programme on TV. Their treatment has been diabolical down the ages, but largely brushed under the Axminster. I'm not sure (Brian will know!) when Jews were allowed to become MPs - not that long ago, or to enter various gentlemen's clubs in London, from which they had been barred by virtue of their religion. I am on shaky ground, but I doubt that various Arab kings and sheikhs, and successive Agas, were similarly barred, or at Court.
 
Originally posted by krizon@Feb 3 2006, 11:38 PM
I'm not sure when Jews were allowed to become MPs
Click to expand...
It's quite interesting as there were cases of Jews being elected before they were allowed to serve! In 1828 Daniel O'Connell was the first Catholic to be elected to parliament but was not allowed to take his seat until the law was changed, because of the nature of the oath. This happened in 1829 and O'Connell took his seat.

Lionel de Rothschild was elected in 1847 but was not allowed to serve. He was elected again subsequently as was another Jew David Salomons. Salomons actually participated in voting in the house but was then fined and removed. Again the problem was the oath. A number of attempts were made to change procedure, as had happened with Catholics but they were always defeated in the House of Lords. Finally parliament amended the law in 1858.

In 1868 Benjamin Disraeli became the first Jewish Prime Minister.
 
The expulsion of the Jews by Edward I and their general treatment in the UK is nothing to be proud of . It pales however in comparison with their treatment on mainland Europe , which is why England was the place they escaped to .

Our treatment of Jewish asylum seekers in the 1930s was pretty poor too .
 
Last night's offering, with Gurinder Chadha tracing her roots, was rather disappointing compared with some of the earlier programmes in the series.

It promised much, but delivered little. The really interesting story, about the Indian-African uncle, just sort of petered out. I know that it's probably more difficult to find things out in a country like Kenya, but I got the impression that it wasn't just her uncle that didn't want to know.
 
Didn't watch the programme myself but my wife totally agrees with you, Venusian.

She also formed the impression that the subject of the programme didn't want things revealed.
 
What was amazing to me was her visit to the pandit in Jhelum village, who produced a well-worn sheaf of hand-written documentation, showing all of her family's tree back to the early 1700s! In spite of the chaos of Partition, it surprised me how well documentation had been kept in both Pakistan and India. All by hand, and entrusted to the care of clerks, who still consider their positions to be estimable and respectable, rather than the sloppy computer-reliant come-and-gos we have here now.

(I'm sounding tetchy, because dealing with three different departments for Mother's pension is enough to send me crackers, let alone ever wanting to deal with the Registrar's office!)
 
I missed the first 20-odd minutes, so I didn't see the main issues being laid out. Her mother looked beautiful, I thought. Perhaps she already has info at home on her and her background?

It was interesting for me to see how the issue of race has become less important in some places now, rather than in the timeframe which Gurinder examined. Recalling my childhood/teens in then-Northern Rhodesia, Indians were pretty much viewed by Europeans of any class as a separate species, good at setting up shops, doing clerical work, typing, etc. They weren't as low down the racial pecking order as Africans, but they weren't invited to Government House teas, either. When Gurinder gave her guide/taxi driver a hug at the end, this would have been unthinkable even as recently as 40 years ago. Indians kept their families as pure as possible, so the hint that there was an 'African' uncle lurking somewhere would have been pretty appalling. I'm not saying any of these attitudes were intrinsically wrong - they are just the way things were, and in many 'self-respecting' families today, that's still the way they prefer.

My South African cousin's eldest daughter has just married for the second time. The first marriage was to an Afrikaaner, who turned out to be a double-timer. The second is to a South African Indian, a Hindu. I asked my cousin if the bridegroom's family were happy for him to marry not only a (white) Englishwoman, but a divorcee to boot. Surprisingly, they are very pleased and are delighted to have her in their midst. The couple will probably live in Port Elizabeth for a while, where it's amazing to think that this liaison would've meant social and family ostracism, in the not-so distant past.

If there's one thing that Gurinder showed, it's the changing notions of race, place, and identity. She feels completely 'at home' in London. When I returned to the UK at 20, I felt like an unwilling tourist for at least the first three years.
 
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