This is a short post about two Black Britons separated in time by a little over a century. One was a high achieving sporting hero who without doubt faced racism of the most awful sort in his life and then later paid the ultimate price on the battlefields of France for serving his country. The other person is a bit of a dickhead. He’s a highly paid, tax exiled, spoiled child of privilege who virtue signals about ‘racism’ from the country that supported him and didn’t see his colour, only his achievements.
Here’s the hero.
Walter Tull was one of the first three Black or mixed race footballers to play in the upper echelons of English football when he played for Tottenham Hotspur in the early part of the 20th century. When World War One broke out he joined the Middlesex Regiment and was part of the two ‘Footballers Battalions’ that were formed to fight in that bloody conflict. In 1917 he was commissioned as an officer as Second Lieutenant and was allegedly recommended for the Military Cross for gallantry during fighting in Italy. However, it is possible that Mr Tull may not have been awarded this medal on the grounds of race although an officer senior to Tull said after Tull’s death that his conduct deserved such an award. Walter Tull was killed in action in March of 1918 during fighting in the Calais region during Germany’s Spring Offensive. His body was never recovered despite efforts to do so under enemy fire by another soldier, Private Tom Billingham, the former goalkeeper of Leicester Fosse football team. May Walter Tull’s memory be for a blessing.
Now here’s the zero
Lewis Hamilton is a child of relative privilege when compared to other Britons. He went to a voluntary aided Catholic school where I have little doubt that the education he got there was far better than many other Black Britons get in secular State schools. His father sacrificed everything to get him into racing via Karting and he was talent spotted at a very early age and appears to have got significant backing as his career progressed in the lower levels of motorsport. Some have said that far from suffering racism as one of the few Black drivers, his skin colour became an advantage in attracting sponsors whilst he was driving and racing Karts.
Lewis Hamilton has to my knowledge, never been turned down for a job because of his skin colour and never been hampered by the media or the governing bodies of motorsport because of his race. In fact Britain and in particular the motorsport industry, nurtured Lewis Hamilton’s talents and supported him and helped him become one of the best F1 drivers of his generation. There was no racism from the fans of motorsport directed at Hamilton, in fact nobody I know whose into motorsport saw his colour, only his talent.
Unfortunately, Lewis Hamilton has decided that he will climb aboard the bandwagon set in motion by the Marxists of the Black Lives Matter movement and has led protests in favour of BLM. I must admit that there is something deliciously ironic about a man whose net worth is said to be £88 million, supporting a Marxist group that would take all that he has earned away. He has also turned his back on Britain and become a tax exile in Monaco and although I don’t blame him for wanting to protect his assets, such a move does look to some like a kick in the teeth for the nation that supported and nurtured his motorsport career over many years.
So, it’s over to you. Who out of these two Black Britons is the true hero here? Is it the man who faced genuine prejudice to make it to top flight football and then gave his life for his country? Or on the other hand is it the virtue signalling multi-millionaire who screams about ‘racism’ when he probably didn’t suffer much of it himself and who backs a Marxist group that would quite happily have him living in penury and under oppression?
Hamilton is a shit.
Hamilton’s sulky, ungrateful, unappreciative, chip-on-shoulder demeanour / refusal to engage with the interviewer / blaming everyone but himself if he didn’t win every time etc, was a major turn-off for me and amongst the reasons I stopped watching F1 several years go.
Since then, he’s “played the race-card” – claiming that he was only penalised for bad driving at Monaco “because I’m black” – whereas the truth is that the sport fell over itself to nuture him from the time he was a child, and his mixed-parentage has been nothing but an advantage to him.
I was therefore not in the least surprised to see that this charmless pillock – motor-racings’ answer to Owen Jones – whose only talents appear to be pointlessly driving round in circles on Sunday afternoons and dodging taxes – has now gone the whole supremacist hog and is proclaiming his contempt for society by making “Black Power” salutes.
Think of the roll-call of great British champions – Mike Hawthorn, Stirling Moss, Peter Collins, Roy Salvadori, Graham Hill, Jim Clark, Jack Sears, Jackie Stewart, Derek Bell, Richard Attwood, Vic Elford, James Hunt, Nigel Mansell, Damon Hill, Jensen Button etc etc etc – and you have to conclude that no matter how many F1 championships Hamilton grinds out, he simply isn’t in their league.
(To see real, politics-free motor-racing, go to Youtube and watch the historic racing from Goodwood – real racing cars with real racing drivers – exemplifying sportsmanship and racing for the fun of it with never a penny to be made: Better still – go there every September and watch as I do. Love it.)
It’s not equality that black people are protesting for. They already have that. They want superiority over whites. We cannot help the colour we are yet if black people read the history books of British ancestors they would understand why whites are so patriotic. That will never change.
I would not go so far as to say that it is ALL black people who are protesting for racial superiority causes. It is a small coterie of far Left activists who happen to be Black and who are using the BLM vehicle as a way of promoting a leftist cause. There is a world of difference between a BLM thug and someone like Walter Tull, or Trevor Phillips or Thomas Sowell or any one of a number of Black citizens or subjects who are thoughtful and not ideologically doctrinaire. You are correct when you say that we cannot help the colour we are born as. This we cannot change even though we can change religion, culture or via education, our station in life. I completely agree that the history books show the United Kingdom as being a nation that really punched above its weight on the world stage and gave the world so much. However, based on my own experiences, I’ve found that it’s not just one race in Britain that is patriotic and who loves and respects the nation, patriots I’ve found come in all colours.
As a junior karter Hamilton was a precocious little tyke – just watch where the told Ron Dennis that he would be a Mclaren driver one day.
I don’t think he played any “race” card as a junior, he succeeded in that because of his raw talent. Unfortunately, for me he’s never matured enough to be a GREAT driver such as Bell, Clark, Hailwood, Hill/G, Ireland, Moss, Stewart or Surtees (and there are a hell of a lot more than these few.
Remember, ALL LIVES AND FAITHS MATTER.
He may not have deliberately played any race card as a junior but there are a lot of tales going around how he got early sponsorship because he was a black driver at a time when black motorsport drivers were unusual. I would not deny that he has talent and it was his talent that people in the audience saw, not his skin colour but I agree with you that he doesn’t seem to have matured as a person and I’m not sure he could have competed against some of the greats, especially at a time when motorsport was more anarchic and considerably more dangerous than it is today. I’m with you on the all lives matter but not all ideologies whether religious or secular are equally worthy of respect.
If he had denounced BLM for the thugs they are the left would be calling him a Nazi sympathiser. Or an Uncle Tom. Or even a coconut, black on outside but white inside. But he is a cowardly whining attention seeker who cares nothing for real suffering endured by black people in less comfortable countries than Britain. Or of the dozens of black teenagers of knife crime in Britain in recent years. For the left only some black lives matter if a tragedy can be exploited to advance their twisted world view.