Losing Paradise

By Sarah: Maid of Albion

On the other side of the world and on the island of Viti Levu, the largest of the 322 islands in the Fijian archipelago, lies Suva, the faded old colonial capital. Having been the Fijian capital since 1882, Suva, situated on the rainy south of the Island, does not have the glitzy, tourist pleasing, gloss of Nandi or Levuka, the glamorous resorts in the north which, being situated closer to the international airport end up as the locations of reality TV shows with names like “Love Island”.

In Suva, where less tourists now visit, and where the once magnificent Grand Pacific hotel,the premier hotel in the South Pacific for the first half of the 20th century, fell into dereliction, before recent attempts at restoration, a more traditional Fiji, without Hawaiian style grass skirts, jet skis and Tequila and passion fruit cocktails, can be found.

Although younger women now tend to adopt more western styles of clothing, before venturing into town the older ladies of Suva will don that quintessentially Fijian garment, the sulu, an ankle length cotton, or sometimes silk underskirt, which is worn beneath a more conventional knee length dress. Sometimes, with a final touch of South seas charm, the costume will often be enhanced by a hibiscus, the Fijian national flower, often worn behind the ear. Many Fijian men also often wear sulus , however, the male version extends only to the knee and is usually worn with sandals. The result is surprisingly smart and, as with the Scottish kilt, any unwise comment regarding a man in a skirt could well elicit an unwelcome response from a burly Fijian soldier, policeman or rugby player.

In addition to a somewhat eccentric style of dress, the Fijians have various traditions and ceremonies including that surrounding the drinking of yangona (Kava), Fiji's national drink. There is a strict protocol associated with yaqona drinking, one should clap once, then, clasping the hands, take the cup, and drink the yaqona in a single draft before returning the cup to the bearer, and clapping a further three times.

Another charming feature of Fijian culture, and indeed most Polynesian cultures, is their view of the female sex, apparently that the fatter a woman becomes, the more desirable she is considered. As someone who has fought a long battle against a taste for red wine and white chocolate, in order not to venture beyond the size 14 rack, this strikes me as a particularly attractive national characteristic.

Having reached this point, some may be wondering why I am writing about Fijian culture on a blog set up in support of the BNP.

There are two reasons for this. Firstly, one of the main aims of the BNP is that of preserve the indigenous culture of our native island, the Fijians are another Island race with a culture worth preserving, and both of which are cultures which, if they were lost, would result in the world being a poorer place.

British nationalists are routinely accused of hating different cultures and wishing to destroy them, nothing could be further from the truth, we are the ones who passionately want to see different cultures preserved, however, our crime is that we also want to preserve our own unique and beautiful culture.

If multiculturalism means to cherish individual ethnic cultures then it is we who are the true multiculturalists, not the brain dead, fascist, automatons at the UAF who do not understand that cultures only survive if that which makes them different is protected. To love the multitudes of different world cultures is to love them for what they are and for the things which make them unique from each other. Not for us the grim and bleak homogenisation which the thought police at “Searchlight” seek to impose, for that can only destroy the cultural differences which adorn our planet, not enrich them.

We do not travel to Fiji in search of spaghetti and sombreros, but if that is what we find there, then the essential Fiji is lost to us. Will anything emerge from a meting pot in the same form as it went in, or, worse, in any way discernibly different from anything else which came out of it?

People often complain about the homogenisation of our towns and cities, which are progressively loosing their individuality, as identikit branches of SpecSavers, Car phone Warehouses and Starbucks blur each town into an indistinguishable uniformity. Yet why do they applaud the invidious campaign to homogenise humanity?

Nick Griffin was unfairly attacked by the deeply unattractive Jabba the Gaunt, when he referred to a “Chocolate coloured sameness” Gaunt's implication being that the term was, in itself, racist, but how can it be when what Griffin described is no more than the obvious and and inevitable result of the sort of racial and cultural mixing so beloved by our opponents?.

His were the words of a man who loves his country and they were also a warning of the dire consequences of this flawed social experiment. They were not the words of the knuckle dragging” Nazi he was compared to. However, in the Bizarro World which is the anti nationalist mindset, truth becomes lies and lies become truth, in the same way as love of country is, in their minds, hate, and homogenisation, to them, means diversity.

I do not want our world to loose the Fijian culture, the Mexican, Scandinavian or Peruvian cultures, nor do I wish the world to lose our white, British, culture, there is no conflict between the two, both are essential to the preservation of our world and they do not mean I hate anyone.

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Another reason for mentioning Fiji is that it provides us with a very good example of of how fragile an indigenous culture is, and how vulnerable an indigenous people can be when faced with an aggressive, or ambitious, immigrant race.

A great damage done to the Fijian people was partly due to a charming if unfortunate national characteristic, namely the total lack of the Puritan work ethic, and also due to one of the very few acts of Empire for which the sometime British Colonial rulers of Fiji could justifiably feel a pang of guilt.

Towards the end of the 19th century, having discovered that the average, culturally laid back Fijian will seldom do today what can be put off until tomorrow, the British imported a number of Asians to Fiji to work in the sugar cane and copra plantations (why does an image of a Pacific Empire Windrush spring to mind?) and set in motion an inevitable chain of events which led to the problems which now beset those troubled Islands.

As we have seen happen elsewhere in the world, not least in Britain, over the ensuing years, the Asian community in Fiji made heroic and spectacularly successful efforts in terms of increasing their numbers and producing a rapidly growing Fijian Asian population, which, according to the 2007 census now amount to almost 37% of the total Fijian population.

In common with their kin folk elsewhere in the world, the Fijian Asians are a very ambitious and industrious race of people, especially by comparison to the less driven Fijians, and consequently by the end of the 1990s, not only did they own and run most of the businesses in Fiji, but Fiji had an Indian prime minister and an Indian dominated parliament. This has led to considerable ethnic tension in Fiji, and has resulted in a series of no less than four coup attempts in the last two decades most famously the one in 2000 led by the charismatic George Speight which attempted to ensure that power remained in the hands of ethnic Fijians.

Ominously, given what we may soon see in Europe, this act of ethnic preservation was viewed as akin to heresy in the politically correct world of the 21st Century. International outcry followed, and Fiji found itself (albeit briefly) expelled from the Commonwealth as punishment for its inexcusable racism. George Speight, a man who, although flawed, had acted in defence of his own people, was (bizarrely) tried for treason and sentenced to death, although that sentence was later commuted. Speight's fate is a warning to national patriots elsewhere in the world that those who love their country and their people face a deadly enemy.

An uncomfortable truce now exists in Fiji whilst a resentful and nervous indigenous population watch helplessly as, month by month, year by year, they lose more and more power within their own land, in the full knowledge that any attempt to prevent the gradual theft of their homeland will instantly result in international condemnation.

This is not how the media have chosen to report events in Fiji, but it is what has actually happened, and we can see parallels to the Fiji experience all over the world, not least in Europe.

We in Britain would do well to note the fate of that tiny Island race, with a unique and vibrant culture , and wonder whether it delivers in a scaled down form, a warning of what could happen to us. The Fijians are black, we are white, but that is where the difference ends, Fiji is their land, Britain is ours and those who seek to deny those truths are liars.

Tags: Sarah: Maid of Albion, fiji