Transcription
Nigel Bigger is one of Oxford's most eminent professors of ethics. His publisher called his book one of the most important manuscripts they had seen in years, then cancelled it because junior staff complained. This video is about who gets to decide what you're allowed to know. Watch it through because the facts Nigel lays out are the ones that never make it onto the BBC. And by the end, you'll understand why. If that matters to you, subscribe.
A Cambridge academic tweeted her followers, "OMG, this is serious. We need to block capitals. Shut this down."
[music]
I got an email announcing that they were postponing publication indefinitely because, quote, "Public feelings unfavorable." Wow. One man raging against a machine, and that machine just completely [music] clamped down on him, even though he was right.
>> Junior staff at Bloomsbury had protested about having to deal with offensive problematic material and significantly, the management said, "There's something deliberate happening."
>> Oh, it's quite deliberate. [music] They are deliberately excluding things from vision. Why? Because they want to create the impression that the British were uniquely guilty. They want to push the narrative of they built careers, social circles, movements around. That's a question I think to be asked of a lot of progressive crusaders. [music] What do you really care about?
Around 12.5 million were taken across the Atlantic by Europeans, but about 9.5 million were taken north by Arabs. And another 12.5 [music] million were taken. I didn't know this. At least 40 million were traded.
>> Wow.
>> If we're talking about reparations, why are we fixating on the Brits, given the British share of that is... You've written many controversial books, particularly recently, and there was a campaign in Oxford where you were, you were what, librarian associate things, things that I never understand titles and [laughter] things.
>> And and then you were shut down. What, what happened?
>> Yeah. So, um, this was in December 2017, Andrew. Um, I was then a professor of ethics in Oxford and, uh, I'd launched a project with, with a very eminent historian of empire, John Darwin, in July of that year, uh, called Ethics and Empire. And the idea was to look at how people in ancient China or in the medieval Arab world, how did they view the empires of their day? And did they regard empire the way we tend to, as a necessarily bad thing? And if not, why not? And what might we learn from that? Um, so that, that was launched in July '17, went very well.
>> And what was your finding, by the way?
>> Uh, so the, the project lasted, uh, about six years, and the findings were, first of all, if you were to ask, um, well, if you were to look for, uh, uh, critiques of ancient Chinese empire or, or, um, medieval Arab empire, you won't find them. Uh, you will find, uh, um, um, books about what makes a good emperor, but, but empire as a form of political organization was completely unremarkable because it was so taken for granted.
>> Wow.
>> Yeah.
>> Okay. And that's, that's fascinating because we are obsessed with our own empire and how terrible. So we are unique in that aspect.
>> This is, this is a recent unique obsession on the part of the, of the English-speaking world, I think.
>> Wow. Because because empire, you know, everyone was doing empire since the dawn of history all over the world. People of every skin color. Uh, the Comanche were doing it in the, what's now the US, in the 18th century. Uh, the, the Maori were doing it in New Zealand. Um, everyone does empire. Nothing, nothing remarkable about it at all.
>> But the only remarkable thing is that we feel guilt around ours.
>> Indeed. Um, just back to my story. So, so, uh, project launched and went well. November, uh, '17, I wrote an article in the London Times making what I thought to be the completely, um, unobjectionable point that we British, we can find in our colonial history, reasons for both pride and shame, shame and pride. Who could possibly object, I thought. Um, and then a week later, I put online a description of the Ethics and Empire project, which was my, my fatal move, because a few days after that, uh, a Cambridge academic called Priyamvada Gopal, um, tweeted her followers, um, particularly in Oxford and Cambridge and London. Uh, she wrote, uh, "OMG, oh my god," referring to the Ethics and Empire Project, "This is serious. Uh, we need to block capitals. Shut this down." And that precipitated, um, a week's worth of three online mass petitions, um, against the project, the last of which was addressed to Oxford University, urging them to take it out of my hands. [snorts]
>> It's an irony that you were a professor of ethics at that time, and this is very much a question of ethics.
>> Yes, they didn't notice that. Uh, their view was, I'm not an historian, so I have no business treading on their turf. Uh, whereas my response was, well, folks, I don't know if you've noticed, but my interest is in the ethics of empire, uh, on which topic you have no expertise at all. I do. Uh, so what's your problem? And then they would say, well, oh, you know, things, good and evil, right and wrong. Uh, that's for philosophers and theologians. We don't do that kind of stuff. And I said, well, actually, your reaction to me is rife with moral assumptions of which you have no awareness. Um, so, no, it's very, very ironic. Very ironic.
>> Man, those nuances are lost. And then what ultimately happened?
>> Well, in the short term, four days after the first, uh, um, online protest was published, my historian colleague John Darwin resigned from the project, uh, claiming, uh, personal reasons. Uh, he did have personal reasons, but the timing was suspect. >> I'm pretty sure he was leaned upon. And, and significantly, you know, this was a very eminent scholar, um, about to retire. Nothing I would have sought to lose. And yet, my, my speculation is he succumbed to pressure, and that's the, the, the degree of fear in university circles, um, is considerable. We can come back to that. So that, that was bad. Um, my, my name was in the newspaper for about a fortnight. Um, after that, um, I had to postpone the next annual conference for a year because we had to find someone to replace John Darwin. Um, and it was, it was, I was a, a thin-skinned, um, um, mild-mannered academic. I wasn't used to this kind of stuff. I'm used to criticism, but not this. Um, so it took me a while to figure out what was going on. Um, so at the time, it was quite distressing. But the good news is, uh, out of that came a contract in, uh, I think March or April 2018, from Bloomsbury Publishing, for me to write a book on, on an intelligent person's guide to colonialism.
>> I see.
>> That was good.
>> Yeah.
>> But then that, that then got cancelled later.
>> Yes, that's right. And why was that? So is that again, just the pressure from the crowds?
>> Yes. Uh, so I, I, I was contracted to produce the manuscript by the end of 2020, and on New Year's Eve, uh, 2020, I pressed the send button at 3 p.m. and off it went. And then, uh, in early January '21, the fellow who had commissioned my book from Bloomsbury, uh, Robin, wrote back to say that, um, this was one of the most important manuscripts to come across his desk in years. He was speechless with admiration for the book's rigor and comprehensiveness, and he predicted sales of up to 20,000 copies. The book then went into the copy editing process. They produced a cover. Uh, two and a half months later, I got an email from the top of them reannouncing that they were postponing publication indefinitely because, quote, "Public feeling is unfavorable."
>> Wow.
>> And that, that was really depressing.
>> Wow. It's kind of, it's hard, this stuff, because you almost want to compare it to Galileo or something, but then you don't want to appear solipsistic.
>> No. No. Was a bit melodic.
>> Yeah.
>> Yeah. Or or concede, you know, I'm that level of, but if you forget the level of the importance of his discovery, the fact that it was one man raging against a machine, and that machine just completely clamped down on him, even though he was right.
>> That's the parallel, right?
>> Yes. Uh, and I, I was really distressed. I mean, I was distressed partly because I, I had no alternative publisher for this book. I thought the book was important. And by the way, uh, Bloomsbury's commission editor thought it was one of the most important books to come across his desk. I mean, important publicly. I mean, because my aim really was to educate the British public, not to address other academics, because I thought I perceived that we were going to a period when Britain's historical record was going to be trashed. And I wanted to arm British citizens with the whole truth, not just the partisan part of the truth. So, I thought it really was important, and it wasn't going to get published. And I thought, have we in Britain really come to the place where something publicly important, um, that my publishing editor reckons, uh, uh, important, is not going to get published? Because, as I was told, junior staff at Bloomsbury had protested about having to deal with offensive problematic material, and significantly, the management caved. That's what happened.
>> Why do you feel, from an ethics perspective, it is important to educate the British public about our own self-hate being about empire being unique?
>> Right. So, so the story that's been told, um, especially in the last, I think, five, six years, and I think the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis in 2020, >> was an inflection point when the Black Lives Matter movement, um, upsurged, crossed the Atlantic, landed here, and the narrative being put about by anti-racist groups, by the progressive left, is that Britain is systemically racist. And that our systemic racism is rooted in our colonial past, which can be epitomized in two words. First of all, slavery and the racism that justified the enslavement of Africans. So, so, so, um, our colonial past really can be reduced to slavery and racism. And any, um, admiration we have for it, uh, as incarnated, for example, in statues to Cecil Rhodes, >> um, any imperial, uh, um, hero, anyone who had anything to do with slavery at all, um, they have to be repudiated. Um, well, I mean, if that's true, if it was true that that, um, Britain's 400 years' worth of global engagement, um, colonially and imperially, was nothing but a litany of racism and oppression and exploitation, then that really calls into question much that we've inherited, all our institutions, um, and it makes Britain, Britain that we've inherited, appear to be a bad thing. And it's a, if that were to, if that view were to take hold, it's a precondition of, of, um, erasing everything and trying to start from scratch again. It's a, it's a, um, a preconditioned revolution. And my view is revolutions that, that imagine they can erase everything and start from scratch, tend not to turn out well. Um, tend to turn out, in fact, extremely atrociously.
>> What, what are a few, briefly, examples of that?
>> Well, I mean, just take the communist revolution in Russia, um, under Stalin, um, hundreds of thousands, millions of people were either starved to death in Ukraine or purged. Um, and even going further back, I mean, the original modern revolution, the French Revolution, uh, started off well, but then became extreme, and you end up with people being carted off to be guillotined in their thousands.
>> I don't know enough about the history, but is there something to be said for, um, the previous regime in Russia, the aristocracy there, and maybe that there's a line to draw a parallel to Iran, for example, the Shah?
>> Were not ideal either.
>> No, no, no, no. There's a lot. I mean, um, certainly Tsarist Russia was no poster boy for political organization. It needed reform. And, but I guess my view, and I speak as a conservative, both with a large C and a small C, um, um, gradual reform, patient reform, tends to last longer and tends to be more effective. Um, but the idea you can pull everything... Revolutionaries are great at pulling things down, not so great at figuring out what the hell to put in its place.
>> Yeah.
>> So it's not that Russia in 1917 didn't need reform. It did. Uh, but it got revolution.
>> That's my concern, I think, drawing from what you've said, is in this country that we, if we don't have a sense of who we are and what we were and who we came from, and we lie about it, we say Britain was built by immigrants, for example, then the people who do come to this country have no incentive to assimilate into a country that, you know, hates itself and says, "We, you know, what's the point?"
>> And then another culture might come that does have a greater sense of who it is. And I think that probably, you know, people are conjuring up images of Islam. Islam has a very good sense of who it is and who they are. And cousin marriage enforces bonds in those families. They come here.
>> Yes.
>> Not only, I mean, do they not necessarily want to assimilate, but we're telling them, "Why would you donate to us? We're terrible, we're awful." And gradually, we're going to have that reform, or that revolution might be an Islamic one.
>> Yes. No, I think that's right. And if the self-hatred persists, and let me be clear here, um, I've never said, as some of my critics accuse me of saying, that the British Empire was all rosy, the British Empire did nothing but good. Never said that. Uh, I mean, the British Empire was run by human beings, for God's sake. Uh, and human beings are a mixed bag. Some villains, some saints, and most of us are a mixture. So, I'm quite, in the book that eventually got published, Colonialism: A Moral Reckoning, in 2023 by Harper Collins, William Collins, um, I'm quite frank about the bad things that the British Empire presided over during its 400-year career. That shouldn't surprise us. I mean, name any state lasting 400 years that didn't present up bad things. But >> there were also some extraordinarily liberal and humanitarian achievements. Uh, Andrew, not least, Britain and its empire being among the first states in the world's history to abolish slave trading and slavery, and then trying to abolish it worldwide after that. Um, so, so there's a big story to be told. But, but, but Britons need to have a balanced view. Uh, by all means, let's lament the fact that Britons ever got involved in slave trading, but let's admire and celebrate the fact that Britons were among the first people to abolish the damn things.
>> People don't, people don't seem to understand quite how horrific. I don't think they don't want to believe what humanity is capable of. I was reading just the other day about, um, castration and how common that was throughout the world.
>> Right.
>> Um, and they would just drag, often children, in and all, and no anesthetic, no anything, right? 25% of them died, and just so they could do jobs like, you know, guarding concubines or I don't know what.
>> This wasn't Justin Marozzi's book?
>> No, this was, um, Charles Cornish Dale.
>> Oh, really? Okay. [clears throat] So, um, Marozzi published a book last year, I think, called Captives and Something. It's about Islamic slavery.
>> Right.
>> And he reports that a French witness in 1860 in the Sudan reported that every year the Sudan would furnish the Arab slave trade with 35,000 young African boys, age between 6 and 12, which produced 3,800 eunuchs.
>> Wow.
>> In other words, almost 90% of them died in the process. I mean, and the percentage of those who die varies according to when and where. Um, other estimates have 60%.
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>> But no, no, no. And your point about people nowadays don't realize just how horrific human beings can be, nor did they realize just how dreadful, compared to what we have, the past was for most people until not very long ago. Uh, because we are extraordinarily privileged to live in the 21st century in the current country we do. And that's something that Britons and young Britons in particular need to appreciate. Of course, Britain needs change, needs reform with a small R. [laughter] Um, but we need to be careful what we throw away, because what we've inherited from our history contains some very, very valuable things too. And that's why I want us to get the history right.
>> I feel like we are going to lose this as well. I think this will become an Islamic state. I think, and also I think, do you ever watch the cartoon Futurama?
>> No.
>> This is made by the guys who made The Simpsons. It's in the future. He gets fro... the guy, the main guy, gets frozen and so the bit at the beginning shows he gets frozen and then it shows outside and it shows like while he's in the frozen thing, you see outside and you see the... I suppose a better one might be, is it H.G. Wells? Was it H.G. Wells or the other one?
>> Yeah.
>> Who wrote the time traveling one? Ah, uh...
>> I think H.G. Wells did do that. Yeah, that's another one. Science fiction.
>> If you go into the future a certain amount, it's like, oh, what an amazing. And then you go a bit further, the whole place is just torn to shreds. And then a bit [clears throat] further again, it's good again. It just feels like that's the ebb and flow of history, and there's going to be another. It can't just be the future of humanity is just, everything's like it is now. There's going to be some bad times where it's going to be a bit like it was the last 300,000 years.
>> Well, I'm not as pessimistic as you, Andrew. I mean, I, I mean, I grew up in the 1970s. Uh, I mean, I was born in '55, but I was late teenager, early 20-year-old in the 1970s. And, um, I mean, the fix we're in right now in this country is bad. It's not as bad as that. And my, my parents lived through two world wars. Well, my father was a child during the First World War.
>> We've not experienced that. So, um, we certainly have serious problems in Britain. And we need an incoming government that will get a grip on them. Um, but I'm not despondent. What we do about, in terms of Islam, I mean, I, I, I'm pained to say that as with Judaism and Christianity, there are different kinds of Islam, some of which are no threat at all, some of which are quite mystical. But there is also political Islam.
>> Yes.
>> And we have imported that. And, uh, we've also allowed, um, um, Muslims, particularly from rural Pakistan, not particularly well-educated, poorer, to congregate and create ghettos. I mean, we should never allow that to happen. We did. And what we do about that problem now is really difficult. We certainly have to be a lot more rigorous in whom we admit in the future.
>> Um, and that's a real problem. Um, but my sense is, I mean, politically, um, I mean, we all know about the grooming gang scandal and the refusal of authorities to identify this as a particular problem among a certain Pakistani Muslim community. But we're now talking about that in a way we weren't for 15 years, 20 years.
>> And my sense is, you know, particularly with the rise of Reform, the whole political um world has shifted to the right. Even Labour are talking about, well, they're talking about reform of the European Convention of Human Rights, which is a [snorts] um, hiding into nothing, but at least they're talking about it in the way they were before.
>> That's interesting. Uh, and we also, we also have in this country, unlike Canada, where woke domination is virtually unchallenged, we have a pretty vigorous right-of-center press.
>> Uh, which gives an airing to these issues that you won't find in Canada.
>> Yeah.
>> Uh, so I'm, I'm not, I'm not despondent.
>> That's interesting.
>> It's, it's hard, though. I mean, what we don't have is the culture, um, you get in the States, you get these kind of center-right or right-wing actors and things. Yes. Right. You get, I don't know, what Clint Eastwood is. Well, maybe he's not, but Woody Harrelson, a few of these guys. In the UK, they're just completely, I mean, they exist. They're just utterly silent. And those guys get paid a lot of money to endorse things. So it must work. When they have a lot of influence, is what I mean.
>> Yes. That's interesting.
>> Yeah. And the same with comedians. I remember meeting a right-wing comedian, which was, I've never met a right-wing comedian before in my life, and I've never watched one perform because they're so rare.
>> Yeah.
>> Uh, I, I mean, my sense is, my sense is, um, many Britons are conservative. But the, but our institutions are run by progressive elites.
>> Yeah.
>> And therefore, the progressive elites create the impression.
>> Yes.
>> That theirs is the only show in town.
>> Yes.
>> But it's actually a false impression.
>> Uh, because they, they, it seems as if they dominate because they're the only ones who appear. There are many people who disagree with them who don't appear because they're not allowed to. And that's the problem.
>> In terms of the people who disagreed with you, you, uh, infamously recently were on Mehdi Hasan's show, which was Al Jazeera, wasn't it? I think.
>> Yes, it is. Yes. Were you surprised by the hostility in the room?
>> Uh, yes. Um, I mean, I was, I did debate whether to accept the invitation, but I always feel obliged to kind of stretch myself and expose myself. And, um, someone advised me, you know, "Good to take the message to the enemy." So I knew it was going to be tough, aggressive. Um, I hadn't anticipated a [clears throat] couple of things. First of all, Mehdi wasn't just an interviewer, he was a moderator. He controlled the timing. He cut me off when he wanted to cut me off. Um, and he also played the audience because most of the audience were his fan base.
>> Yeah.
>> And that I hadn't anticipated. I, yeah. So, so the whole environment was a whole lot more hostile than I had expected. And then, uh, one of the features of his program, he also has a panel of three experts. Um, one of whom, Lawrence Goldman, whom you've had on your show, yeah, >> was on my side. The other two were not.
>> Um, and you know, one of the things that's difficult about talking about British imperial history is there's so much of it. Um, so it's very hard to be defended on all fronts. And one of the panelists, who's a professor from Sussex University, she made the claim that until the British came to India, there was no famine in India. And I didn't at that time know enough to be able to contradict her. But I went away afterwards and asked Titanka Roy, who's a Bengali-born professor of colonial economic history at the London School of Economics. I said, "Did what she was what she said true?" He said, "No, it's not true." But at the time, I didn't have enough ammunition to answer it. So the whole thing felt loaded against me. And I, I mean, I applaud myself for taking the risk. I had to take risks. I wouldn't do it again, though, because it, the playing field was so unlevel.
>> That is such a, that's such a shame because for me, it's, I guess, the complete opposite because of that cultural and political leftism that we speak of. It's very hard to get leftists to come on this show. And when they do, partly because I have, you know, a sense of fairness, I try and make them feel comfortable and say, "I'm listening to your side. That's interesting. What do you think about this?" However, what he was doing was playing to the audience like, "Oh, really?" He had that kind of, "Well, what does everyone in the audience who all hate you think of that?"
>> Yes. Yes.
>> I would never do that. I would say to the audience, "Guys, this guy's got a different opinion to us. Let's hear it out. Let's try and have that conversation." One thing I've become aware of, Andrew, over the last few years when I've encountered critics, progressive critics, frankly, is how unscrupulous they are.
>> It's mad, isn't it?
>> Yeah, absolutely unscrupulous. Um, and it occurs to me that whereas I tend to go into a situation like that expecting some kind of conversation, and discover I'm in a war, and the other side observes no constraints at all. And that's been a bit of a shock. But I think one has to realize that that's the way they regard it.
>> Um, how do people like me respond? How do we respond?
>> Um, I think we need to stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop being naive. Choose which battles we fight. I don't want to adopt their tactics because they're unfair.
>> And...
>> Well, wouldn't you, if you had someone coming on your show who had the complete opposite views, and you had a big audience of your fans, wouldn't you feel you should tell your audience, "Guys, come on, let's listen to this. Hear them out."
>> Yeah, well, partly, if you invite anyone to your show, you want to understand why they think what they think. If you're constantly attacking, you're not going to find that out. I mean, my overall impression of the Mehdi Hasan event was this was all about Mehdi.
>> Yeah, the Mehdi show.
>> The Mehdi show. And it was a kind of gladiatorial contest in which he got to play the gladiator, and I was the Christian or something.
>> Imagine if he'd, imagine if he had shown enough interest to say, "You know what, maybe the truth somewhere between where we both lie right now." And, "Oh, that's interesting what you've said about that, but however..." You know, none of that. He put you, I was saying to you before we started, he put you in this kind of ridiculously unfair bind whereby the whole premise was, he was trying to suggest to you, "Oh, you know, Britain was uniquely evil, its empire was uniquely bad." That's the whole point. That's the point of your writing. And then whenever you defended by saying, "Well, you know, well, that compared to other places, yes, that's the whole..." He then came back to you and said, "Oh, that's what about, isn't it?" And then, "Well, how can you prove Britain wasn't uniquely evil without referring to other places?"
>> No, no, indeed, indeed. But, but on the issue of how one responds to that, I mean, I think, apart from being, you know, not being naive about it, uh, my view is one, you know, we need to maintain our dignity and to continue to be reasonable. I mean, robustly reasonable. Um, because the baying crowd, they're not listening. You're not going to persuade them. But it's the, it's the wider range of people who are not in the crowd, not in the mob, who might be persuaded. Um, in 2019, I ran a conference in Oxford, um, under the title "Academic Freedom Under Threat: What Is To Be Done?" And at the end of the conference, a fellow called Bret Weinstein.
>> Oh, yeah, I know.
>> You know him. Uh, he was driven out of his university job in Evergreen College in the States because he protested against, uh, a day when only non-white people were going to be allowed on campus.
>> Um, he and his wife both lost their jobs.
>> Um...
>> But his pearl of wisdom at the end of the conference was, "Always remember, the room is not the room." That's to say, when you're facing a mob there, I mean, carry on. Be as reasonable as possible. Don't be fazed by the fact these guys aren't listening and they're trying to provoke you and insult you and distract you and whatever, because it's those guys up there. Those are the ones you're addressing. And I, there was a tweet that came to my attention after I was on the Mehdi Hasan program. Some guy with a Muslim name, was it Muhammad? I forget. Arabic name, >> who said he watched the Hasan program and thought that, um, um, Gurinder Chadha, who was the, who was the one on the panel who made the comment about famine, that she was the star of the show, but he said, "I was surprised to be impressed by Nigel Biggar." So the thing is, remember how you speak is as important as what you say.
>> That's really interesting. Never has that been true than with Jordan Peterson, I imagine, because he was just hounded and hounded, video after video of people screaming at him. Yes. And that actually brought him to a wider audience who appreciated him more than anyone.
>> Yeah. I mean, the famous interview with that Channel 4 woman, >> Cathy Newman. >> Cathy Newman. >> Who, I think unfortunately, from what I've heard, was ill-prepared. I feel a bit bad for her because she got absolutely killed for it.
>> All right. Okay.
>> And, and I gather, you know, she has to do a book a day or whatever it is. Was probably told, "You're going in with the devil right now."
>> Right.
>> And had to fight, and she just wasn't armed to be able to handle him.
>> But yeah, so, um, that's very charitable of you. [laughter]
>> But that's the point, isn't it? Shouldn't we... This is what Mehdi didn't offer you.
>> It is. It is. It is. Uh, but the thing about Jordan is, and I, I, I watched him. He was extraordinarily relentlessly reasonable, actually. And Kathleen Stock too. Um, I really admire Kathleen, um, in a much more, um, much milder fashion. She is relentlessly reasonable, um, and we have to keep on being that, being liberal in that fashion.
>> Yeah, there have been reasonable. I mean, Helen Lewis had, there was another Helen Lewis had a debate with Jordan Peterson. I thought both were very, very...
>> Is that right? Okay.
>> Yeah, they were really both really good.
>> Thoughts. Um, but, but yeah, going back to your work, the, this erasure of Britain's role in ending slavery, do you think that's an accident of history, or is that something, something deliberate happening?
>> Oh, it's quite deliberate. It's quite deliberate because you have to ask yourself, um, why the obsessive focus on British Empire when empire was a universal phenomenon? Why the obsessive focus on British involvement in slavery? Why ignore the fact that Britain was among the first countries in the history of the world to abolish slave trading and slavery? Why ignore the fact that the British were involved in suppressing slavery from Brazil to New Zealand for a century and a half after that? Uh, why ignore the fact that Africans and Arabs were involved in slave trading in Africa long before the Brits turned up, and some decades after the Brits abolished slavery? So all these things are knowable. But those who push the line, those who obsess about Britain's empire and Britain's involvement in slavery, they are deliberately excluding things from vision. Why? [clears throat]
>> Because they want to create the impression that the British were uniquely guilty. Why? Um, because they want to push the narrative of black victimhood and white oppression. Why? Well, I mean, I guess some people really believe that, although, you know, they do it in defiance of the whole truth. I'm driven to think this: it's about certain people have created social personas. They've built careers. They've built social circles. They've built movements around the anti-racist crusade. Uh, but this is not really about solving real problems of ethnic disadvantage or racial prejudice, such as it is. This is really about the crusader.
>> Interesting. Uh, I think, because you've got to explain why relevant facts are being excluded from vision, and what it's serving a political purpose. What is the political purpose? Um, so, so when Tony Sewell, um, his commission on race and ethnic disparity published their report in 2021, and this was a, um, a Conservative government-sponsored commission. Nine out of the 10 commissioners were not white. Tony himself is British-born, but he lives between Jamaica and London. And the report said, um, first of all, the differences in outcomes for different ethnic groups in Britain are really quite varied. So at the top, you've got Chinese and Indian Britons, broadly speaking, I think, in terms of education and income.
>> Underneath that, you've got West Africans. Underneath that, you've got Caribbean Britons. Who's at the bottom? Poor whites.
>> Mmm. So this is not a white and black, white versus black thing. Um, and they said, you know, the reasons for disparities in outcomes between ethnic groups are all sorts of reasons. It could be racial prejudice, or it could be, as Tony Sewell was saying 20 years ago in Leeds when I was living there, that one of the problems afflicting young Caribbean Britons is an anti-educational youth culture. Right. So they don't make, they don't regard education as a way of getting out and getting up in the world. They, they, they take a gin.
>> And that's why black people from the Caribbean do worse than black people from Africa?
>> Yeah, broadly speaking. Um, so, so, so my point is this, that if you really care to address the problem of unfair disadvantages between ethnic groups or racial prejudice, then you really care to get the diagnosis right, because if you don't get the diagnosis right, whatever remedy you come up with is going to misfire. And [clears throat] I noticed, I read the Guardian for a week after the report came out in March '21, and I noticed the response was instant dismissal, instant attacks on its credibility, no thoughtful engagement at all. And I thought to myself, guys, if you really care to solve the problem of racial prejudice, you take this seriously, you engage with it carefully, you weigh up its pros and cons, and you'd reach a conclusion. But that's not how you behave. You behave with knee-jerk rejection. So the question arises, what do you really care about? Because you don't care about solving the problem. And that's a question I think to be asked of a lot of progressive crusaders. What do you really care about?
>> I wonder if there's, if you look at the individual psychology of it, there's an element of sunk cost fallacy. You know, I've spent my life campaigning for this thing.
>> Without a doubt.
>> Yeah. I've been shouted out on LBC by Paul Mason. He was shouting at me, going, "What have you done? What have you ever done? I've been fighting racism for years." And it's like, "Well, if racism isn't as prevalent as you think it is, what have you been fighting?" Ghosts. So that's the issue. And then I think also, I wonder, so I've seen this in the sort of Jewish community, so to speak, or the ethnos in North London, because that's where I grew up. I'm, I suppose I'm part of it. And there was a knee-jerk instinct among younger Jewish people, 15 years old or so, at least 20 years ago, to be vehemently anti-Israel. Now, people can be anti-Israel or they want. But I felt it, and I suppose I was almost drawn towards that myself. And it's this feeling of, if you're going to attack the thing, at least I'm not the bad guy. So I'm able to say, like, "No, no, I'm one of the good Jews. Don't have a go at me. I hate Israel more than anyone." And if you extrapolate that to people in Britain, I suppose they're saying, "Gosh, there's a rising hatred of us and our values. I better jump on board and let it be known publicly that I'm not one of them. I'm against empire. I'm against everything we've ever done, and maybe people will like me more."
>> Uh, uh, that's really astute, Andrew. I haven't put it that way, but I think that's on the button. Because, um, what I've experienced since I was drawn into the culture wars by Priyamvada Gopal in December '17 is that, um, lots of decent people, lots of decent friends, um, take a step away from me. Hm. Because I've attracted agro, and they don't want it. Um, so, so that's one step. Another step you can take, if you want really want to camouflage yourself against aggression, uh, being accused of being racist, for example, is, yes, is you join the hate, the self-haters, and say, you know, "Yes, I'm British, but woe is me. Um, my country's been wicked, but at least I have purified myself and separated myself from this wicked thing called Britain." Yes. I guess it is a way of escaping.
>> Is there a more cowardly, pathetic attribute? It really angers me. I've had friends of mine say to me, "Oh, you should distance yourself from so-and-so." And I say, "Well, that person, what have they said you don't like?" And they've actually said, "Well, that doesn't matter. The point is the optics. That you look bad by association." To me, that is the worst thing. How dare that person even suggest that? The idea, I mean, to me, it's so important. I can see it is to you, and I'm sure it is to most viewers of this show, that I will stand by this person no matter how much aggro it gets me, because otherwise, what are we?
>> No, I agree. Yeah. And this notion of optics, I mean, that gets me angry too. Um, I mean, I take another example. I, several times now, I've gone out to Budapest to speak to students at a conservative Hungarian educational body called the Mathias Corvinus Collegium. And, um, one of my critics, one of my most obsessive critics, who's a professor at Sussex University, um, he wrote about me and mentioned that, uh, yes, I've been out there, and of course, of course, um, Budapest is where Viktor Orbán is, and Viktor Orbán, we know, is a fascist, therefore Biggar is what... And I, I wrote back in a published response and I said, "Look, when I go out to Budapest, yes, which is associated with Viktor Orbán, and yes, this academy is a conservative education institution, but you can quite show when I open my mouth, I say what I think. I don't say what Orbán thinks. And by the way, yeah, I disagree fiercely with Orbán's view of Ukraine." And, um, so, so this damnation by association, I utterly reject. Utterly reject it.
>> Um, and next time some left-wing interviewer makes that point, I say, "Well, look, I'm sitting on the same platform as you. Does it mean I agree with you?" You know, I've had it from the right as well, because I interviewed, you know, Bonnie Blue.
>> I heard. Ah.
>> You don't want to admit to knowing who she might be. Okay. [laughter]
>> She was a porn star, kind of thing, and she got a lot of attention, most of it negative. Um, and I had her on. I pushed her about... This is not a good example for, blah, blah, blah. She's a multi-millionaire. She doesn't care. You know, she's got... But it was fascinating for me to talk to her. But a lot of people on the right were very angry about that, that I gave her a platform, even though I was critical of her.
>> Yes.
>> But then people interviewed me on their show saying, "Why did you have Bonnie Blue on?" And I'm saying, "Well, you're getting the same, you know, you're putting Bonnie Blue in the title of this video with me and getting views from her and platforming her by talking about her the same way I did." So, you know, what I... I think, you know, air things.
>> Yeah. Yeah.
>> That's what I would say.
>> Yeah.
>> Um, Lenny Henry's among the many celebrities calling for reparations. Yes. Uh, what are your thoughts on that? Is there a historical precedent with the Nazis and the Jews? Is there not?
>> Yeah, there is. There is. Yeah. So, so, um, yeah, after the Second World War, the German state restituted property taken by the Nazis from Jewish families. They also gave a lot of money to Israel.
>> They've also made reparations to Poland. And that makes pretty much good sense because in the case of Jewish property, you know, we know who it was taken from. We knew who took it, and even if the Jewish owners perished during the Holocaust, we know who the relatives are. We know who it goes back to. And yes, the German state succeeding the Nazi regime, they weren't the same people, but it's, you know, there's a continuity there. So that all made pretty good sense.
>> Because because the kind of the lines of responsibility were clear and direct.
>> And quite immediate as well, after.
>> Quite immediate. But when you're talking about what happened 200 years ago, um, a lot's intervened to change the fates of the descendants of slaves from what their ancestors suffered. I mean, Tony Sewell, descendant of slaves. Trevor Phillips, descendant of slaves in Britain. Uh, Tony is a peer of the realm, and Trevor Phillips is a knight. Uh, so, you know, other things have happened to change their fates. Um, and I often, uh, I make the analogy that my own people in Scotland in the 1600s were Covenanters, and we, you know, they, my people had to go and worship their God in the hills because their worship was banned, and they fought battles with government troops, they lost, and they were hunted down the hills by troops. Do I feel their pain? No. [laughter] No. Because a lot's happened since. Um, so this notion of intergenerational trauma needs to be, it's often asserted, never questioned. It needs to be questioned. And I, I was...
speaking to uh someone who was partly Polish or Hungarian. I think Jewish uh extraction. I think his grandparents perished in the Holocaust. And he said uh do I suffer their trauma? No, it was their trauma. I mean, you know, it's it's very distressing to to reflect what happened to them, but it had didn't happen to me.
>> Yeah.
>> So, so um time makes a huge difference. Time makes a huge difference. Um so, for example, um the population of Barbados in the Caribbean is is mostly the descendants of slaves. Likewise, the population of Jamaica. But Barbados has flourished since independence in a way Jamaica hasn't. Why? Because of the superior postc colonial government.
>> Huh.
>> Right. Uh I Jamaica adopted state socialist policies. Barbados went more with the free market. Barbadians uh in terms of literacy, life expectancy, and I think they think the global average income way ahead of Jamaica. And actually way ahead of of Nigeria, some of whose people are the descendants of slave traders.
>> Wow. Wow.
>> So So time makes a huge difference.
>> Yeah. It would be mad trying to work out and then who's black enough?
>> Is it just all black? I mean, who would be Do you know what I mean?
>> I know. I know.
>> It's it's the same as what I had. I had this debate with a guy on here who was a a far-right ethn who who was saying we need to kick out anybody who's not,
>> you know, entirely English. And I I said, "Well, you know what? [laughter] Where do you draw the line? How the percentage?" And they say, "Well, if one of your parents English, is that parent English because their parent was, you know, I'm not saying that there's not some theory and it's but he was saying, oh, we need to start having what we would do is we'd implement medical, you know, would be working out people's blood and stuff like that. I thought this is not really a road we want to go down." But it appears again, it's that horseshoe theory, isn't it? It appears that that sort of lefty side that wants reparations really is angling for the same thing.
>> Yeah. Um,
>> who's black enough to receive reparations?
>> Yes. And and and um um yeah, I mean, most British people have nothing to do with slave trading. Um so, uh are British taxes going to go to reparations? And that of course lots of lots of black Britons will end up paying too.
>> Yeah,
>> there is that. But there's also the fact that the the um um Africans were involved in slave enslavement and slave trading for thousands of years um before Europeans pitched up off the coast of West Africa in about 1450. um Martin Plout, who's a man of the left,
>> has just published a book called Unbroken Chains, 5,000 Years of African Slavery to make the point. And he he he on page two, he's got a table where he roughly guesstimates the number of Africans um enslaved and traded. And yes, around 12.5 million were taken across the Atlantic by Europeans, but about 9.5 million were taken north by Arabs to the Mediterranean in the Middle East. And another 12.5 million were taken, I didn't know this, across the Indian Ocean, even ending up as far east as Japan. Wow. So he reckons at least 40 million were were traded. Uh and the British share of that is 3.258. So, um, nothing to be proud of,
>> but [clears throat] in the context, and by the way, um, the British traded 3.258 million Africans across the Atlantic roughly between 1640 and 1807, 150 160 years. In about 1850 in what's now northern Nigeria, the African Muslim fani people ran vast slave plantations employing 4 million at one time uh equivalent to to the whole slave population of the then United States.
>> So if we're talking about reparations again, why are we fixating on the Brits uh given widespread African complicity? Why on earth is the African Union uh um uh uh about to to submit claims for reparations?
>> It's again this bigotry of low expectations, isn't it? These it's almost like saying the left, you know, these these less than human they couldn't possibly have known better, but we should have known better.
>> No, that's that's right. That's right. But no, it's it's a it's an opportunistic um bid for cash. You you are a Christian.
>> I am. I'm even a priest.
>> Yeah. Oh, right. Bloody hell. [laughter] Do do you feel that Protestantism in particular may have shaped what what we have in this culture, this culture that I fear we might be losing?
>> Um certainly. Well, let's start with Christianity. Um yes, I do. Uh, I mean, the not all cultures, not all civilizations uh have held the dignity of the individual so high as western Christianized culture. And I attribute that actually it goes back beyond Christianity to to um um the Hebrew scriptures
>> or [clears throat] uh Hebrew religion where where you have this figure of the prophet and what what's a prophet? Well, in the case of uh the Hebrew scriptures and in the case of of Jesus, a prophet is someone who is possessed of uh certain convictions about the truth and about justice and is willing to speak out even though no one else will listen and even though what's being said is deeply unpopular. So this notion of of someone uh called out from the mass of people who don't want trouble, just want to keep their heads down, called out to speak the truth. Um, to stand out as an individual from the mass um and that's deeply written into the into Western Judeo-Christianized culture and not all cultures rate the individual so highly. But but let's be clear here. This is not a this is not an individual um um this is not an this is not a a radically individualistic individual. This is not an individual who just as we tend to think of it nowadays this notion that you can make yourself what whatever you want to be. You can be whatever you want to be. You invent the world. No, this is an individual responsible to God, responsible to the moral order.
>> Uh speaking out for for the sake of what's true and what's just. This is a responsible individual. But but this this this this importance of individuality manifested itself for example in uh a medieval require the medieval notion that when a couple wants to get married what matters is their consent. Um, um the priest the priest may presside over a marriage but the priest doesn't do the marrying. It's the couple individually giving their consent that matters. Um, and and by the way, it's not it's not it's not the families that make the marriage. It's it's so this notion of individual consent. And then in in the medieval period, it was Christian bishops in England and France who lobbied against slavery.
>> So in the late in the medieval period, I forget when exactly 12th century, both in Britain and France, slavery lost its legal status.
>> Um,
>> it also pushed against uh cousin marriage, the the church. Yes. Okay. That's that's right.
>> Which I think was important regarding individual the individual country we became.
>> Absolutely. Absolutely. So so so Christianity has certainly um shaped Western European, English, British uh uh culture. As for Protestantism, I mean, I I suppose there again, you know, the protest, uh, Luther protesting against the Catholic Church, another kind of prophet. Um, and and so the the the the Protestant premium on free speech,
>> being free to speak what we believe to be the truth. um that's been a a major feature of of English culture ever since the 17th century.
>> I look at countries steeped in Protestantism and as Britain, Germany, states I think so these are cultural beacons in our society and so the Catholic countries have not necessarily done as well economically, culturally.
>> Yes, that's right. That's right. But particularly now, I mean when free speech is is is under pressure.
>> Mhm. Um, I mean, I think that that Protestant Christian heritage is is really important. And I'm aware that I mean, I published an article in the the liberal Roman Catholic magazine, the tablet, recently um um coming out as a as a liberal Christian. M
>> by which I mean um you know as a Christian um I I regard the point of every conversation and this goes back to what we were saying earlier the only worthwhile point of any conversation is that we learn something both of us be why because we recognize ourselves as creatures not gods. We don't possess the whole truth and yes we're we're sinners too. We might we might distort bits of it because some truths are too uncomfortable to admit and that's why we we need we need to be free to say what we think the truth to be. So we can test each other and by testing each other we might get closer to the truth. Um, but there is this notion of of being subject to to to a reality and truth that is above you in some sense. Uh, and we're both in that position which is why we need free dialogue.
>> Um, and and when when trying to describe the way in which my woke critics, my progressive critics behave, I I found myself saying that they behave as if they're little gods.
>> I think so.
>> Um, that's why they're utterly merciless to those who disagree with them
>> because they have the truth and anyone who disagrees with them is is wicked and is to be damned.
>> Like the Bolsheviks.
>> No. Exactly. Exactly. And it's it's really ugly and it's really in humane. Um, but I I just I'm I'm I become aware that the way I behave and the way I see things is deeply influenced by my Christian and my my Protestant Christian views. Um,
>> I noticed you pointed up when you said the truth and you said the truth is above us.
>> Yeah.
>> It's it's a difficult answer, a difficult question for a priest to answer, but but do you ever have doubts? Do you doubt about God? Oh, sure. Uh, sure. I mean, I I wasn't brought up in the church.
>> Um, I look back and I wonder how on earth did I get here? Age of 12, my father put his hand on my shoulder and and I remember it because the only time he ever put put his hand on my shoulder and he said, "It's okay, son. It's just a phase." [laughter]
>> About what?
>> Oh, so I just become a I just I told him I become a Christian.
>> Oh, I see.
>> Yeah, [laughter] it's just a phase, huh? Yes, I know. We all have phases, but that that was the one he was referring to. Um, yes, look um it's it is possible there's no god. I found it very hard to make sense of human dignity if there's no god. I if we are literally sort of accidents thrown up by a cosmos who couldn't give a damn. I mean what what what on earth is it about?
>> Nothing potentially.
>> Nothing. Uh
>> well I think it might be about nothing.
>> Yeah. Well, I agree it might be. I I just find that
>> I find that uh so radically demoralizing.
>> Yes.
>> Um, so there's there's that. So I you know it might be true. I don't want it to be true. But then the the other thing is you know I I look at my life and I I I consider what are the most most beautiful things I've discovered in in in my life. Uh, if push came to shove, what are the most worthwhile things I've discovered? Uh, what are the things I I if push came to shove, I'd say this is valuable. And I I think of I I think of the of the face of my wife.
>> Um, who is is is a beautiful human being. Uh, and I could I can numer I could enumerate her qualities. You can guess what some of them are. Um, just just a very beautiful human being. Um, you know she weeps but she never weeps for herself. Um, and I say to myself, she's now 81. Will how many summers will she survive? And I say to myself, um, does how much sense does it make to suppose that that Jenny will become nothing but dust? Does does that make sense? No. Uh, I find it easier to believe in God and an afterlife and the resurrection than to believe that. We're not talking about proof here. We're talking about trying to make sense of the ambiguities of human life. So, do I doubt? Uh, I'm always been a bit skeptical. Uh, and I look at myself, how on earth did you get here, Nigel? And I I can see how I got here. Um, but it, you know, amidst all life's ambiguities and uncertainties, um, I'll wager on God.
>> That was beautifully put. I think a lot of people listening, atheists or believers, will be shedding a tear at that. It was be very beautifully put. Um, we will put your books in the description for like links to some of your books in your book. We'll do that. People please go and get hold of them. Nigel Bigger is one of the best out there and he was cancelled and pushed away. so much that he he deserves your support and praise in the comments. So, please put some nice things down there. Hit the like button and keep watching this show.