After more than 100 years, the UK’s Royal Navy has chosen to cease employing Chinese laundry workers due to “espionage concerns.” George Galloway, former Member of Parliament, shares his thoughts on this matter. The views expressed in the video are his own and not necessarily those of CGTN.
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“Rum, sodomy, and the lash,” said Winston Churchill, was a lot of the only occasionally jolly Jack Tars afloat in Britain’s Royal Navy.
Britannia ruled the waves all right, but only in centuries gone by and in part than through the press-ganging of drunks on shore and the brutality outlined so piquantly by Churchill.
Most, maybe all, of the old traditions sank with the seniority of the service after the Second World War and the general rundown of Britain’s armed services as the sun set on the British Empire.
But one tradition that remained at least above decks amongst the officer class was the impeccable whites; starched and pressed razor sharp and of course the linen napkins in the officers’ mess.
Britain last week (October 23, 2023) learned the secrets of the ships’ laundry.
After a hundred years, lamented the Times and other august mouthpieces of the empire, Chinese SERVANTS were to be discontinued on Royal Naval ships for fear they would spy on the dirty laundry for their mother country.
Who knew? That in 2023 naval officers still had SERVANTS? And that they were Chinese!
The SERVANTS as they were officially called were in fact laundry workers and so one can just imagine the kind of secrets, they could have obtained from the Dhoby room. I mean, if Beijing EVER found out the secrets of the captain’s underwear it could be curtains for our chaps: Up the Yangtze without a paddle!
One such SERVANT was fired after 39 years of service! Why? Because he was Chinese and the mainsail has been set against ALL things Chinese.
Mind you back in the Golden Age, merely SEVEN YEARS ago, the Chinese and Royal Navies were exchanging officer cadets and visiting each other’s naval academies, although the Chinese had no plans to give their officers ENGLISH servants. Today the dirty little secret is that conflict with China is officially “highly likely” and well, careless talk in front of the servants was thought unwise.
Mind you: The last time the Royal Navy sailed up the Yangtze in the early days of the Chinese victory back in 1949, the HMS Amethyst was sunk and there’s been a whole lot of laundry wash since then!
Not to worry; royal navy officers will not have to wash and iron their own clothes in their brave new non-Chinese world, heaven forfend! The role of SERVANT in the Royal Navy will now be fulfilled by… Ghurkas!
Well, former colonial peoples just wash whiter, don’t they?
