Brexitwatch: a lesson from history - the Great Chinese Famine

From 1959 to 1961, tens of millions died in a terrible famine in Chairman Mao’s China. There was bad weather, but foolish government policies, such as ordering peasants to abandon their fields and concentrate on making steel instead, were also to blame.

Anyone watching the mainstream media or listening to politicians would have had no idea that millions were starving to death. The State Statistical Bureau had been shut down and replaced by ‘good news reporting stations’, and there was fierce competition between local activists to be the most Maoist by announcing the best news.

So the smaller the real harvests became, the bigger the phantom ones reported. The New China News Agency said peasants were growing pumpkins weighing 10 stones, cows were supposed to have been successfully crossed with pigs. There seemed to be more than enough food to go round, so Mao cut imports and increased exports.

He refused to hand out food from the official granaries, and party activists tortured peasants they believed were hoarding non-existent grain. This was perhaps the first famine in history that devastated the whole of China, but the areas that suffered most were those run by the most fanatical Maoists.

*For more, see A Disastrous History of the World.

The power of lying. The Popish Plot Part 2

For part one, see my post of yesterday.

When Titus Oates presented his ‘evidence’ to the Privy Council, King Charles II tore it to shreds, but Oates had the support of the London mob, and standing up to him publicly - that was quite another matter. It would have caused an almighty row.

So the king did nothing to save from execution at least 15 people he must have known to be innocent, while Oates was heaped with honours and money.

But gradually people became more and more sceptical about Oates' claims, and in 1681 Charles had him arrested and imprisoned. And when the king was succeeded by his brother, the Catholic James II, who Oates had denounced, the perjurer was imprisoned for life, put in the pillory and whipped through the streets of London.

The story was not quite over, though. When James was deposed by his daughter Mary and his son-in-law, William III, Oates was pardoned, released and given a pension.

The power of lying. The Popish Plot Part 1

Some of the Brexit strategists and bankrollers think they are awfully clever to have conned people into supporting them by a campaign of mendacity and deceit, but actually there’s nothing new about lying in order to achieve a political objective, even in England.

Back in 1678, Titus Oates (pictured)  was in a tight corner. His cv included being expelled from school, failing to get a degree at Cambridge, then falsely claiming he had one to get ordained as a Church of England priest. Next he had lied about a schoolteacher whose job he wanted, accusing him of sodomy.

This time Oates got arrested for perjury, but he escaped and in 1675 managed to get a job as a ship’s chaplain. The following year he was sacked for buggery, and arrested again for perjury, but managed to escape again.

Next he tried his hand at becoming a Catholic priest, but got expelled from three different seminaries. What on earth was he to do? Oates decided to turn to the thing he did best. Lying. In September 1678, he concocted fake news on a heroic scale, claiming there was a huge foreign-backed Roman Catholic plot, involving hundreds of priests and nobles.

They were planning a Catholic takeover of England while the Queen’s doctor and her sister-in-law’s secretary were to assassinate King Charles II.

To be continued…………….