This was my submission to last month’s HoS list challenge! This month’s theme is “Legacy”, and there’s still two weeks to get an entry in!
Yanking On The Wires
Presidents of the Board of Hygiene:
1919-1921:
Will Crooks (Fabian Socialist)
1919: Board established by Prime Minister Sidney Webb
1921-1933:
John M. Keynes (Radical)
1921: Appointed by Prime Minister Sidney Webb following death of predecessor
1933-1936:
John Burton Haldane (Ind. Socialist)
1933: Appointed by Prime Minister Victor Grayson following election
1936-1938:
Ronald Fisher (Fabian Socialist)
1936: Appointed by Prime Minister Ellen Wilkinson following Dissolution Night
1938-1947:
Ronald Fisher (Independent)
1938: Retained job after National Efficiency reforms
1947-1958:
Ronald Fisher (Independent--"Positivist")
1947: Began to side with Positivist faction after the economic fallout of the Kikuyu War
1958-1960:
Colin Bertram (Independent--"Selectionist")
1958: Appointed by First Committee Chair Ron Nethercott following death of predecessor
1960-1971:
Cyril Burt (Independent--"Selectionist")
1960: Appointed by First Committee Chair Richard Beeching following resignation of Ron Nethercott over the 1960 Economic Plan
1971-1975:
Julian Huxley (Independent--"Hostilic")
1971: Selected by Board of Hygiene members following death of predecessor
1975-1975:
Vera Houghton (Independent--"Positivist")
1971: Selected by Board of Hygiene members following death of predecessor
1975-1989:
Raymond Cattell (Independent--"Selectionist")
1960: Selected by Board of Hygiene members following Vote of Incapability of predecessor [sectionalism]
1989-1991:
Vera Houghton (Independent--"Positivist")
1989: Appointed by First Committee Chair Peter Mandelson following resignation of predecessor over Triple Correlation Affair
1991-2007:
Johnathan Porritt (Independent--"Positivist")
1991: Selected by Board of Hygiene members following retirement of predecessor due to old age
2007-2011:
Kamal Ahuja (Independent--"Positivist")
2007: Selected by Board of Hygiene members following retirement of predecessor due to appointment to International Coordination Board
2011-2017:
Chris Brand (Independent--"Selectionist")
2011: Selected by Board of Hygiene members following Vote of Incapability of predecessor [fraudulent qualifications]
2017-
0000: John Guilleband (Independent--"Hostilic")
2017: Selected by Board of Hygiene members following death of predecessor
Let's talk, for a minute, about health. About the Genetic Revolution.
No doubt you did it at school. "Finally harnessing the potential of genetic theory, Pearson and Fisher built on Galton's foundations an edifice of health. Out of chaos, came the order of the scientific state, sweeping away the unequal distributions of genetic heritage and eliminating diseases that once crippled man, eliminating the negative effects of excess population on society and on nature. That's why we call it a revolution, after all. Just as Webb had handed us the means of production, we finally gained control of the means of reproduction as well."
Yeah, they weren't lying, it introduced some revolutionary stuff. It totally revolutionised, for example, the ways the government was allowed to track us, at all times, and what they were allowed to know about us--every last bit of your family tree was down in MinInfo's books, ready for the day it could justify sterilisation because your great-grandfather went to see Trooping the Colour. There was a real revolution in new ways to let people die, as below-average babies and wheezy kids and men who'd lost limbs in the siege of Liverpool were culled, by degrees off their ration-books or euthanising chambers, so as not to hold back the people who made decisions. There was a total and utter revolution in the number and the complexity of the reasons as to why, even if my parents had the temerity to come to this country, they couldn't expect the same pay and the same houses or even the same basic respect given to their white comrades, and as for trying to get their old home some collective dignity--forget it!
And, behind the scenes, at the back of those authoritive cabinets of forms and charts, there was a very quiet revolution going on. A revolution in fraud. A great and radical leap forward in how to hide the raw data in a maze of files, outright fabricate whole human beings as supposed experimental subjects, and fiddle with the numbers to get sky-high correlation estimates--don't act surprised, mate! I make it my business to know my enemy. All this fraud, all this politricks, just to soothe the egoes of the cabal of boffins who depended on it, who needed the idea that some lines of biological code made a man superior by birth. And I do mean "man" there.
I know what you're gonna say, and you can stuff it. Yeah, sure, there were apologies. The liars and cheats were turfed out, at least some of them, and so were their ideas, at least some of them. The new people on the top, they made all sorts of new promises, promised a retool--it's all about "reproductive health" and "environmental damage" now, nice, safe things. But nothing bloody changed, because you can't reform over the problems with a rotten structure. There's no more official "racial hygiene" laws anymore, but black and Indian and Catholic families still get referred to, at twice the rate, to "family planning clinics" and Snip-For-Cash--oh, I'm sorry, what, I should be calling it Children Need Care, all official-like? You want my view, you get the whole thing. If this is making you
uncomfortable, I could tell you about the slums they stuff disabled kids in to learn in, no ventilation no heating no good food because you won't kill them anymore but you still don't want them to live, oh, and speaking of kids, has anyone looked at the late great Professor Chris Brand's hard-drive lately? No? Well, I suppose there's no need to investigate, seeing as he has his
wonderful A-1 genetic heritage card that seems to come standard with Party & Society membership these days, and isn't it funny how that doesn't line up with--sit down?
Sit down? I'm still talking,
mate!
It's an affront! At birth, you get a family chart drawn out, and a little genetic horoscope to go with it, and--get your hands off me!-- and then, that position at birth determines where you go to schoo, how well you're fed and housed, if you get a flat with two bedrooms or one, if you get on in the workplace, if [inaudiable] who you can marry or have kids or any kind of fucking private life! How the hell can we claim we're a socialist state when we do this? They're even planning editing now, to make their nonsense true! Right up in [inaudiable] Reaching inside man's genes wasn't no revolutionary act! It's no better than an aristocracy--a genetic aristocracy, just as fucking twisted and exclusionary as King George's aristocr--Oi! I said,
hands off--
[inaudiable, shouting]
--and I say, meet this so-called Genetic Revolution with a revolution of our own!
[inaudiable]
