15.01.2004
What have Arabs ever done for us?
The t.v racist Kilroy-Silk has created a wave of reactionism
One reader of the Weekly Worker tells me that her favourite part of the paper is the sometimes laconic picture captioning. We have run the politically analytical "Sean Matgamna: isolated?", the somewhat cryptic "Pierre Khalfa: different", and the more direct "Alistair Campbell: ranting". She is waiting for the day when we run simply "[insert name here]: wanker".
It is curious that the term to describe someone who indulges in the harmless and condemnably 'safe sex' practice of masturbation should be used in everyday speech for a particular kind of corrupt, oily, self-seeking, insincere, bull-headed moron, but if anyone deserves the caption this reader craves to see it is ex-Labour MP and television presenter Robert Kilroy-Silk.
On January 4, the Express on Sunday carried an article entitled 'We owe Arabs nothing'. Here Kilroy argues that the Arabs should be grateful for liberation by the west, and if that is at the cost of "destroying the Arab world", then: "Should we be worried about that? "¦ After all, the Arab countries are not exactly shining examples of civilisation, are they? Few of them make much contribution to the welfare of the rest of the world. Indeed, apart from oil - which was discovered, is produced and is paid for by the west - what do they contribute? Can you think of anything? Anything really useful? Anything really valuable? Something we really need, could not do without? No, nor can I."
The worthlessness of the Arab race is a theme close to Kilroy's heart. He asks why Arabs should loathe "us": "For providing them with science, medicine, technology and all the other benefits of the west? They should go down on their knees and thank god for the munificence of the United States."
Ironically, the Arabs may well have given us nothing: or, more precisely, the concept of 'nothing'. In the ninth century, Arab mathematician Abu Ja'far Muhammad ibn Musa Al-Khwarizmi built on the number theory of the Indians and is credited by some historians with the first use of the digit 'zero' as a 'place holder': for instance (using European notation) distinguishing the meaning of the digit '5' in the numbers '50' and '500'. He also played an important role in the development of algebra: indeed, the term 'algebra' derives from his use of the Arabic term al-jabr, or 'completion', in describing his methods. Both these developments are, of course, fundamental to our science and technology.
The Arabs achieved another important development in number theory. While the Indian system relied on the use of 'dust boards' to perform calculations, they adapted it to suit pen and paper. This was important as, though the Chinese invented paper, it was brought to Europe by (you've guessed it), the Arabs.
There is not room in this article to describe all the contributions the Arabs brought to humanity. Suffice to say that - through both their own development of mathematics, astronomy, philosophy and science, and their far-flung settlement and trading - the Arabs not only achieved advances, but spread them widely: not least to western Europe, where Kilroy, like some cretinous Alf Garnett made real, seems fondly to imagine they all originated.
Kilroy is a fantasist of such pure water that, had his career as an MP not thankfully been cut short, he might have been New Labour's answer to Jeffrey Archer. On arriving at Saltley Grammar School near Birmingham as a boy, such was his confidence that he wrote a poem in praise of "¦ himself. It began: "There! He's arrived, made, and successfully done it/For what he's got, he's striven, won it." Elected as Labour MP for Ormskirk, and later for Knowsley North, he would apparently tell anyone who would listen that he had the looks, the brain and the charm to become the next prime minister. He was opposed, and finally ousted, largely through the work of the comrades of Militant (now the Socialist Party). I was a member of the group and remember watching him on television claiming that we had sent him a letter warning that "Militant supporters use baseball bats". Strangely, he never produced it. Instead, in the same way that the vacuous, alienated, brittle self-obsession of Archer found reality unsatisfactory and chose to live in a world of Boys Own novels, Kilroy found an equally unreal world in which to posture: BBC daytime television. With characteristic modesty, he called his show Kilroy!
In a glitteringly antiseptic white studio, the perfectly coiffured presenter would preside over an audience made up of a mix of emphatically 'ordinary' people (and a few others playing the role of 'experts' or side-show freaks). Nominally, they would be brought together by their common connection to an 'issue': which might be anything from sexual relationships between the old and young to obesity and dieting. Kilroy would wander through this human menagerie uttering combinations of earthy bonhomie and platitudinous wisdom, seeking to convey a message of importance to humanity: the message usually being that Robert Kilroy-Silk was a rare and wonderful thing.
In the face of the protest Kilroy's article has generated, the BBC has taken his show off the air. One cannot help but wonder what really lies behind this decision. After all, Kilroy did not use the show to promote his views, and the BBC cannot but be aware that the views themselves are not a million miles from those which underlie the opinions of politicians and pundits they broadcast every day. It seems rather that Kilroy has shattered an illusion, and thereby broken an unwritten deal with the corporation. Kilroy was presented not as a person but as a personality: a sanitised, colourless, unreal, and inoffensive manikin. People may have political opinions, get into debt problems, have dandruff and go to the toilet. Personalities may not. They hired a man with the bland, hygienic neutrality of a hotel room - not to any particular taste but acceptable to all - who could smoothly manage proceedings without lowering himself into them. He has suddenly plonked himself alongside the opinionated freaks on his own show, and has broken its structure. That's just not Kilroy!
The wider debate is interesting too. Crude, overt racism, of the kind Kilroy has foolishly betrayed, is one of the few things which is culturally simply unacceptable even in reactionary mainstream politics, but it is despised more for its gaucheness than for any real concern for the peoples of various ethnicities. Many bourgeois and petty bourgeois who roundly criticise Kilroy for his statement will still approve the actions of the US and western Europeans in manipulating Middle Eastern politics both through behind-the-scenes diplomacy and arms-trading with dictators, and through direct military action of the kind we are seeing in Iraq. They may do so on more charitable, paternalistic grounds of bringing the 'western values' of freedom and democracy to the deserving but powerless Arab peoples. They may, more quietly, even sadly acknowledge the 'necessity' of such action on Realpolitik grounds: the theory of maintaining stability in 'troubled' regions, supporting lesser evils, securing oil supplies, and preventing worldwide instability.
It is all, however, cant. The pious New Labour, Conservative and Liberal Democrat politicians who will doubtless condemn Kilroy's appalling lapse of taste will continue to support the imperialist policies which are actually bringing misery and death to the Arabs in the Middle East and others all around the world.
I cannot quite bring myself to say that 'at least Kilroy is honest about it', because he would not know honesty if it sat on his face and wriggled. However, if I were an Arab, I would sooner contend with his ignorance and folly than with the guns ordered onto the streets of Iraq's cities by Blair. Manny Neira