Laurence Fox is an ignorant, spoilt brat.

[longwayoff]

What is wrong with this fool? Apparently in James Delingpole's podcast, heavy sigh, he criticises Sam Mendes for featuring a Sikh soldier in WW1 film. Ever heard of the British Empire, Laurence? How many Indians died for Britain? AIBU to say LF is being deliberately divisive and provocative and evidently doing his own publicity?

Sealioning Wasn't the original post though was it

Here it is full

Today 00:08Patroclus

Flax still mounting their own operation sealion I see

Childish schoolyard pack mentality complete with giggles emojis and insults which are now being explained away as puns, and also posts repeatedly referring a site member as 'it', doesn't really move the conversation on much? It just bogs discussion, about a serious subject, down to the mire

BTW, those who's been watching World on Fire – is it any good? I didn't catch it at the time but am now slightly regretting that.

Ditto anyone who's seen 1917?

Why are people so upset?

Because people like LF don't want to see it. Brown people have no business being in a war film because it distracts from the story. He wants to see an all white cast preferably public school. To me it's so very telling that he was bothered by this.

Even though I disagreed with LF comments about the historical accuracy, I haven't seen 1917 yet. I'm hoping to see it tonight
What doe others think of it?

A film I have seen recently, not a world war film but it does include the battle of Agincourt, was The King. I was really surprised how good it is. Recommended if you like that sort if thing

The one with Timothy Chalamet? Yes I've seen it.

Perking both are superb. I liked the fact that WoF didn't concentrate on plucky Brits, but showed what occupied countries had to deal with

Brass I don't think Chalamet was in either of them?

Whoops, this thread is going too fast. I missed the Agincourt post, so please ignore me!

Have been to Agincourt - a very boring field with a good visitors centre.

This thread reminds me of a conversation I had with my German mate about the Battle of Waterloo: “It was the Prussians wot won it”. We argued that one for ages. Which was difficult, since neither of us actually knew enough about it.

More seriously, spend a day at the Imperial War Museum and learn all about Empire (“not ‘Commonwealth’) troops in the World Wars and Korea.

Starbucks, thank you! I'll try to catch up with WoF.

I'm sure 1917 will make it to the telly some time. I'm still have Peter Jackson's They Shall Not Grow Old recorded – I've been warned it's quite a wrenching watch, so saving it for a suitable moment...

This “Britain stood alone (or didn’t)” argument here is unusual because both sides accept the same set of facts.

If a bit of poetic licence is applied, then Germany wasn’t fighting anyone except Britain and the countries Britain reckoned it owned. And Greece. Britain probably reckoned it should have owned Greece too!

But Britain would have fared much worse without the help, including manpower, that it got from abroad. As an aside, the RAF fighter planes used American propellors and American petrol, to make a very useful improvement to their performance.

@chomalungma

I wonder if @Flaxmeadow knows that Air Vice Marshall Keith Park, who commanded 11 Group responsible for the defence of London and the South East was not British.

He was indeed a New Zealander but would have regarded himself as British, as all New Zealanders did until really quite recently.

He would also have had the same citizenship status as people in the UK: there was no New Zealand citizenship back then.

He was even a lay reader at his local Anglican church.

Keith Park was British, on any reasonable assessment, and also a New Zealander.

Same applies to the aforementioned South Africans.

It's very sad how British people have quickly forgotten how close the ties were with the ex-Dominions who helped out during the war (and then got shafted by the EC).

The British Navy during Nelson's time was composed of not only British sailors, but many other nationalities. The crews of the ships that fought at Trafalgar included sailors from America, Ireland, Prussia, Sweden, the West Indies, Africa, and even France and Spain against whom the British were fighting. On Nelson's ship HMS Victory there were 22 nationalities involved in fighting on the British side

I recently read a book called Trafalgar by Roy Adkins.

It says 90% of the Victory's crew were from the British isles. Of the remainder, about a third were from North America. There were also some from the West Indies, ethnicity not given. The reminder, say about 6% of the crew, were from elsewhere.

I'm not saying that people born outside the UK didn't make an important contribution to the British war effort. They absolutely did, and two WW2 examples would be the Maori Battalion in Italy, and the Indian Army in the Burma Campaign.

But NZers, South Africans, Americans (at least in Nelson's time) weren't 'ethnic' or 'foreign' in the usual meaning of those words. They were white, English-speaking, generally with UK-born parents or grandparents, some probably born in the UK too, and if asked, most would have said they were British or Irish.

NZ passports had "British subject" marked on them until the late 70s.

there were load of black men in Nelson's fleet. Why are you reducing it to a single ship anyway?

''(Sara Saputo's) quantitative study conducted on a sample of crews – chosen among those serving the furthest away from Britain and thus most likely to include foreigners – reveals that around one in seven of the seamen (616 out of 4,392) were born outside Britain or Ireland. Aboard one of the ships stationed in Jamaica in 1813, the proportion rose from 14% to 23%.''

www.cambridge.org/core/journals/historical-journal/article/alien-seamen-in-the-british-navy-british-law-and-the-british-state-c-1793-c-1815/6753BD852473B6ADBF3DB03FCCD1B5D1

there were load of black men in Nelson's fleet. Why are you reducing it to a single ship anyway?

Because the book only gives details for that one ship. For the others, it only says that some ships were almost entirely British or Irish-born, others more like the Victory

There were certainly some people from all across the world in Nelson's fleet. Even from France. But to say "loads" of any particular group would be misleading.

I wouldn't be surprised to read that a RN ship stationed off Jamaica would have an increased proportion of Jamaican-born crew, but I imagine most of them would have been British colonists or Spanish creoles rather than people of colour, many of whom were slaves.

who helped out during the war sounds like they were washing the dishes or something.

I agree with TomPinch about people from the Dominions and US. They were a British diaspora rather than foreigners.