HOW TO BE AN ANGLO-SAXON

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32352, 18 July 1970, Page 12

HOW TO BE AN ANGLO-SAXON

(By

WHIM WHAM)

"New Zealand’s record In industrial relations compared with other Anglo-Saxon countries can be called satisfactory. We should not think too much of the black side."—The Associate Minister of Labour, Mr Riddiford, in the House of Representatives. Now, Sir! Speaking as a Scottish-Cornish Hybrid, Whose primordial East Anglian Forbears could have been half-Danes, Or Trolls, or Pixies, and with Nobody knows what by-bred Ancestral Wrigglies and Foreign Bodies in my Veins, Ever since old Dame Kind began mixing and cooking the Genes To produce the ethnological Prodigy which is ME, I’m at a Loss to make out what Hon. Riddiford means By calling us all Anglo-Saxons, whoever THEY may be. With what ‘other Anglo-Saxon Countries’ am I allied? As I spin my schoolboy’s Globe my bewilderment grows. He says, ‘We shouldn’t think too Much of the black side’ But that’s only an innocent psychological Slip, I suppose. Anglo-Saxon! It sounds so cosy and old-world and White, A World without any naughty French or Latins or Greeks, And among those Countries, America must be quite The biggest, in the good Kiwi-English the Minister speaks. In the State of New York I’ve got Anglo-Saxon Friends, Whose Parents were Russian, and Jewish, and Sicilian, And this Anglo-Saxon Country contains a thousand Blends, While it numbers its African citizens by the Million. Why, the whole of Africa Itself is Anglo-Saxon, too, It’s only those 250,000,000 People of the wrong Race Who got there first, and what a Pity! because They do Give People who don’t play Rugby a wrong Impression of the Place. Maybe I’m only writing down the Noises In my Head: And why shouldn’t a Minister talk this Way If he will? It’s only a Word among Thousands, the Minister said, But, in plain Anglo-Saxon, Sir, it’s a Word I take ill.