Oppression.   Part One.  

We all like a bit of oppression.  Dishing it out I mean, though there are a few odd souls who like it the other way, forget them, they wear pinafores anyway.

Oppression is in us all I think.  Not you?  Did you ever do any bullying at school?  Any?  Right you're an oppressor.  (or a pinafore.)

I started bullying at school. Trying to establish playground credentials I suppose, but I was no good at it.  There was a tall, thin faced, immaculate (we were rag bags) child at my school, he was called Robert. It was the job of the toughs to take the mickey out of him because he was 'slow'. After witnessing a dinnertime session of this from the rough boys I went up to him and said. 'Has your Mother got any dripping?' This was a favourite bullying phrase. It seems perfectly innocuous now and I have no idea what connotations it may have had. It was just after the war, dripping was a luxury. Robert appeared to take no notice at all of my jibe and I slunk off ashamed at this gratuitous verbal violence.   I didn't bully much thereafter.  That I still remember abusing Robbie now indicates how it made me ashamed. I was not the type to do it.  The other boys would still encircle this tall bemused, smart boy many a day with 'Robbie,  Robbie, Has your Mother any dripping?'  I bet they don't remember it with shame like I do.  

Being no good at all at dishing it out I was hereafter bullied myself.  I was puny but in a scuffle I had accidentally but painfully bent a boys hand back.  This became the 'Death Grip' and I was left alone most of the time for fear of this terrible retaliation. What small things we place reliance on.

Oppression is unfortunately part of our human nature. It is in one of those genes, just where it looks like a ride at Alton Towers.  It's a similar undesirable characteristic to being glad to see the misfortunes of others.

Pubescent boy gangs do a bit of oppressing. Rich kids, or kids with proper blazers, or new bikes, etc, would at least be shouted after.  They were a bit frightened of us, that was good enough, that counted as oppression. Oddly enough when there was only one rich kid and one rough pubescent, like me, there was no oppression. It's more a collective phenomenon.

We get married and then oppress the new wife. Well we might try to for a day and a half, then their secret weapon, whatever it is,  is triggered off and we skulk about defeated, wondering about our Mother's dripping for the rest of or lives. 

At work, when we are very junior, the oppression of the playground is repeated.  We know by now who is our intellectual better or inferior. It is the latter who oppress most. When we ourselves reach a position of authority we can oppress a bit. Get your own back on some special few who had ‘come it’.  And a bit of gratuitous oppressing when you feel miserable or have done something wrong yourself.  The bad thing is that, without being a one man plumbing firm (and it is quite possible to oppress yourself) we never reach the top. There's always someone bringing up the ‘mothers dripping’ question.

Top oppressors are Nations. They are the experts. Colonialism it was called. There's the dripping with no death grip for natives to fall back on. We did it, Britain, and many other top nations.  Two hundred year oppression of anybody at all, provided they had something we wanted and they weren't tough. Top oppressor was a little old lady dressed all in black living in a very old house. Sounds like your granny. 

As soon as we could get about with the British Navy, sail then steam, off we went to shoot the Zulus in their Impi's in Africa. All they wanted was to get on jumping up and down and eating biltong. (Dried meat, something like eating your belt)  At the same time we oppressed the Indians and made them all 'wallah's'.  There was a wallah for everything. Shoe cleaning wallah, ironing the newspaper wallah.  I hope there was a spitting in the soup wallah. The central philosophy of oppressors is that they know best, whether you like it or not. Can you imagine a boat load or two of gentle brown chaps, with a sprinkling of orange fakirs, coming here and making us 'garland maker for the God Shiva wallah.'  It didn't happen, we had the guns, but I think the had the nicer personalities.

We oppressed by religion, the very thing that should be left alone. What flat nosed aboriginals made of the parting of the Red Sea and the fifth Sunday after Pentecost, heaven knows.  We set about to convert them anyway, they'd been OK for thousands of years but we were just in time to stop the rot. Unfortunately many died in the process, but civilising saved a few.  Nearly all the Tasmanians died.  Indians in America died in possibly the greatest oppression in history.  Europeans did it and Britain was well represented among these frontiersmen.  The worst oppression was slavery of course, an aspect of which is that oppressors will willingly oppress their own.

We are back to the playground.  Today we are part of the gang taking the mickey out of Robbie.  Tomorrow we are on our own, up against the fence, crying, the shrill red ugly faces close to ours, howling, ‘Has your mother got any dripping?’