The Olympics Opening Ceremony – “none more black”!

Anyone watching last night’s ceremony, directed by left-wing film director Danny Boyle, might have concluded that blacks make up roughly 40% of the British population. According to the 2009 census, the proportion of Britons who describe themselves as black (Afro-Caribbean or African or “Black British”) is 2.9%, with those describing themselves as “Mixed” stands at 1.9%. That means that less than one in 20 of Britons consider themselves to be even partly black. 

And yet - in Danny Boyle’s mind at least – they're punching well above their demographic weight. The BBC, of course, agrees. One of the three  presenters who provided the TV commentary was Trevor Nelson, who is - I believe - a black DJ or TV host, or something. If he’d had anything even remotely interesting or informative to tell us, I wouldn’t have minded, but it was like being stuck next to an ignoramus in a pub who won’t stop offering random opinions on subjects of which they are cosmically ignorant (come to think of it, not a bad description of this blog - only nobody has to read my witterings in order to enjoy a major national event on television). 


The increasing exasperation of Nelson's fellow-presenters was painfully evident – Hazel Irvine sounded as if she wanted to knee him in the groin: I know I did. At one stage we saw a Spanish athlete wearing an orange wig. "That's what it's all about," said Nelson. The Olympics is all about wearing brightly-coloured wigs?  The BBC seems to have learned nothing whatsoever from the furore which resulted from its abysmal Jubilee coverage.

I knew we were in for some social re-engineering when a black Victorian industrialist popped up complete with top hat in the Kenneth Branagh Industrial Revolution section. But Boyle wasn’t only rewriting  history – he was rewriting present-day reality to fit his political prejudices. The lengthy section which began with a mum driving up to her suburban house centred around an ethnically-mixed married couple, their mixed-race daughter and the black boy who picks her up: the climax of the sequence was accompanied by black singer Dizee Rascal performing live. (A Scottish female singer with an extremely unsuitable voice later sang "Abide With Me" - obviously, she was black too. I'm surprised Boyle didn't ask Paul McCartney to black up to sing "Hey, Jude", which would at least have diverted our attention from the fact that the old boy's voice is now completely shot.)

The Olympic flag was carried by Doreen Lawrence, the mother of Stephen Lawrence, the black teenager brutally murdered by white thugs in London nineteen years ago. None of the mothers of white boys murdered by black thugs was asked to carry the flag alongside Mrs Lawrence, because, as we know, blacks can’t be racists. (Shami Chakrabarti, the Director of Liberty isn’t black, but when her name was announced as another flag-carrier, I almost threw up.)

I won’t bother critiquing the ceremony (I had a go at it here when its rag-bag of socialist themes was first announced). There were one or two very good bits – the Queen and Daniel Craig (a genuine coup); Rowan Atkinson and Simon Rattle; the lights at the end. And Branagh made a very good fist of his role – the man has real presence. Much of the rest was a mess, but anything's better than the over-blown, fascistic regimentation of the Beijing Olympics ceremony.

I’d have liked some reference to fox-hunting, Nelson, Wellington, the British Empire, the colonies, parliamentary democracy, free trade, the aristocracy, and a greater role for the military (from the absence of the British Navy, you’d think this was a land-locked country rather than one which boasts the greatest naval tradition in the world). But all that stuff’s a bit embarrassing for lefties, so we had to make do with the Jarrow marchers, the NHS, and, inevitably, the arrival of the Windrush, which signalled the start of mass immigration to Britain from the West Indies. Hurrah!

Throughout, the role of blacks in British life was deliberately highlighted and exaggerated. People of Afro-Caribbean descent have made sizable contributions in many fields: music, sport, the NHS, the military and the issuing of parking tickets, to name just a few. But to wildly overstate the case is patronising to blacks and, frankly, insulting to other racial groups, who make up 95% of the population.

I know it probably sounds as if I’m obsessed by the issue of race, but the real obsessives belong to the Liberal-Left: in fact, given the extent of their mania, I’m surprised they have time to think about anything else. They really must stop confusing reality with how they want the world to be. As for me, I’m just tired of living in what’s beginning to feel like one vast political re-education camp.

Well, at least Lenny Henry didn’t put in an appearance.