Richard Titmuss discusses poverty and how it keeps reoccurring
BROADCAST: 1968 | DURATION: 00:49:40
Synopsis
Economist Richard Titmuss discusses the cycle and repetition of poverty, economic inequality, and obstacles for immigrants with Studs Terkel. “Fire Brigade” by Attila the Hun is played, as well as “Dance of Zalongo” and a Nepalese piece of music.
Transcript
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Studs Terkel Talking to Richard Titmuss, a professor of social administration department head London School of Economics and Political Science, University of London, who made what some of his colleagues consider one of the most stirring presentations at the recent conference of the National Association of Social Workers, and Dr. Titmuss' theme is social policy and economic process, which is another way of saying poverty and affluence and how does it work? And Dr. Titmuss, I'm thinking about you living in London, in Britain, in England, and visiting America. The two societies and facing us both similar problems, yet ours being a bigger country, perhaps faster. Where do we begin? Talking about the war on poverty. When I say war on poverty, what does that mean to you, an Englishman?
Richard Titmuss Well, I agree. We have both in Britain and the United States, we have common problems. That's one reason why I'm here, because I find the United States a stimulating place and one that has ideas, but I think little realized in the United States the terrifying challenge that the problems of poverty and discrimination, race, color, and social stigma. We have similar problems. We have about a million immigrants in recent years from Pakistan and India and the West Indies. We are facing common problems you in the United States. Now I'm glad we are, because it does mean that we can no longer, as some of my British friends have tended to do in a snob fashion look down their noses and said, "Well, what a mess the Americans make of the problems of poverty and racial discrimination and so on." And we are now challenged by similar problems on the smaller scale, of course. Different in kind because many of the people who come to us in recent years bring their own cultures and they can't even speak the language.
Studs Terkel You're
Richard Titmuss I'm speaking of Indians and Pakistanis and West Indians and Cypriots and other groups who've come in recent years to Britain. They come with their own cultures. They have not yet embraced the values of the Englishman. I do not see that our problem is to make good respectable little Englishmen. Our problem is to find how to accept them harmoniously, to treat them as equals, and yet not to divorce them from their culture psychologically and sociologically and how to integrate, whatever one means by the word integration, and these are some of the topics I take up in my paper I gave to the National Conference of Social Work.
Studs Terkel Well, that's why the paper of course was so exciting, stimulating, this point you raised about not to make the Pakistani or the Cypriot, the new arrival or the strange figure, you know, whoever it might be, the Pakistani a proper little Englishman adjusting to a value of that society to make him different than what he is. This, of course, is the problem here, too, which young civil rights groups question the very values of society aside from integration itself.
Richard Titmuss Can I go back to the paper for a minute? I was asked to talk about and I did talk about, put very simply this question: As we become richer in Western society, is there a future for social policy and what is its role? I attempt to answer this by looking back to 1951, when the president of the Council of Economic Advisers talked about the revolution in so, in the distribution of income and wealth in the United States and how economic growth would solve the problems of poverty, would solve the problems of discrimination. So I look back at 1951 in Britain and in the United States at the position in both our countries and what was known then about effects of poverty and inequality. And then I say, "Well, what is the situation today in 1966 in the United States and in Britain? One American child in four is considered to be in poverty, and so on and so on. And then I asked the question, "What has gone wrong? Where is the thinking of the economists that led us astray? Why haven't you solved this problem? Why hasn't economic growth solved the problems of poverty and discrimination? And then I try and talk about what I call social growth. We talk about economic growth as though economics is going to solve--as we get richer, that just getting richer solves all the problems of values of discrimination, of inequality, or poverty, or felt discrimination, whether you're white, pink, Black, colored, yellow, whatever you are. And I think we can learn a good deal in both our countries of the mistakes that we have made, the two easy assumptions we've made, that economic growth alone is going to solve these problems.
Studs Terkel And
Richard Titmuss The possession of more things or even just getting richer that the poor share in rising standards of living. Our problems in Britain with the poor, the colored poor or pink poor, or how to channel proportionately more resources to these groups for proportionately better education, better housing, better medical care, better social security. So I can conclude we have to discriminate in favor of the poor. The problem for our age is how to discriminate without stigma.
Studs Terkel This, of course, you raise a very delicate and fascinating point and one that's been touched on here, discussed, the matter of compensatory discrimination. This applies here to the question of jobs, the Negro, and what you use the phrase, by the way, pink in color. That's very interesting.
Richard Titmuss I use it deliberately. I dislike the word "race." I abominate the word "race" and "color." There isn't any scientific basis for the concept of race. We have to use words, we have to use words in certain contexts. In order to educate we first have to confuse. This is the problem. This is the major role of the universities. If the university has anything to give to modern society, they first had to confuse the young in order to educate, so I quite simply say the pink and the colored, and people say, "Professor Titmuss, what do you mean, the pink and the colored?" And I say, "Well, there are all shades of color in the world. There are pink and there are yellow and there are brown," and then it begins to make them think. But if you use the black and white antithesis and all the images and the fantasies that are colored out by the Black and the white, the good and the bad. So I begin by confusing, and I think it's a very useful technique.
Studs Terkel Confusion and disturbance, and--
Richard Titmuss Confusion and disturbance.
Studs Terkel And so this particular turbulence, this mental/intellectual turbulence, makes for then, by the very nature of thinking, of thinking out, through.
Richard Titmuss Of thinking out and thinking through, and not simply to accept unquestioningly and uncritically the myths that are being handed on to us by our parents or by our teachers and so on.
Studs Terkel So we hear the word, again, Britain and the United States, we hear the phrase "welfare state" used in England, and specifically or particularly about national health, the national health program. Now we have a touch of it with Medicare here. Now this had many--much opposition to it originally when Nye Bevan, I believe, was the father of it, wasn't he?
Richard Titmuss Yes. Well, I have many American friends who ask me about socialized medicine in Britain. How is it working? Wouldn't it work more effectively and more efficiently if medical care was treated as a consumption good? That in "The Economist", some economists, even in the city of Chicago argue that medical care is a consumption good and people should have the freedom to choose and buy those quantities of medical time and medical care and that they should choose between spending more on doctors or on hospitals or on medical care than on going on vacation or clothes and so on. A medical care consumption good. I think this is a value question. So I'm interested in how medical care as a consumption good in the private market is operating in the United States, and why you decided on the first of July to introduce Medicare and how it will work when it comes into operation. What unmet needs you will discover among the poor and the pink and the colored when Medicare comes into operation on the first of July. How it will operate with what effects.
Studs Terkel Medical care as a consumption good. This, of course, is the very phrase itself, as though medical care were a thing like an automobile or Chevrolet or a deodorant or a tube of toothpaste. And the implication you make is maybe this is something else, isn't it?
Richard Titmuss One thing that distinguishes medical care from other kinds of services or goods I think is that the patient is at the mercy of the doctor. He does not know and cannot know how much medical care he wants, what kinds of medical care he wants. If he wants a blood transfusion, what blood group he needs, how much blood he needs to buy, someone else makes this sort of decision. Should these decisions be made on a profit-maximizing basis, or should they be made on the basis of the ethical content of medicine of what the patient needs irrespective of age, class, income, color, or what? So I think that there are values in medical care, as there are in teaching in a university which distinguishes it from the economists' theory of the private market.
Studs Terkel So this medical care then, you know, as a commodity in the minds of many, you're saying it's something beyond this.
Richard Titmuss Well, let us take as an example, it's awfully hard to generalize over the whole field of medical care, whether you're talking about psychiatric illness or surgery, and so on. You take one concrete example in the field of medical care. Let us take blood, human blood, and the need for human blood. Now this, the basis of the modern hospital and a great deal of the work, heart surgery, road accidents, and lifesaving operations depends critically on an adequate supply of human blood, blood groups and types and so on. Now in Britain today, we have over a million voluntary blood donors who give their blood, all they get is their bus fares and a cup of tea.
Studs Terkel Of a population of 40 million.
Richard Titmuss In a population of 50 million, we have one million, over one million registered blood donors, who give a supply of blood regularly every year, maybe every three months, and they're not paid for this. This is all organized on a voluntary basis. And since we introduced, since Nye Bevan introduced socialized medicine in 1948, the number of voluntary blood donors has risen in Britain by over 300 percent. Then I come to the United States and say, "Well, how do you," I mean, this is critical to the future of medical care and hospital care in the United States, "How do you organize blood services?" In New York City today, 51 percent of all the blood used in New York City is bought and paid for. There are people who now are spending their lives selling blood. Who are they? Many of them are addicts on Skid Rows, and it's bought and sold on a commercial basis. But much of it is untrustworthy, because these people who live by selling their blood don't tell the truth when they're asked about their medical histories. And we know that with infective hepatitis and other diseases, there is the problem--
Studs Terkel Alcoholism.
Richard Titmuss Alcoholism and so on. And the United States and New York in particular is short of blood. There are even commercial blood bank associations which are thinking of buying blood in other countries, because the United States, the richest country in the world, cannot organize on a voluntary basis a sufficient blood supplies for its hospitals.
Studs Terkel Of course, you raise here Professor Titmuss, a very dramatic and powerful metaphor, really a metaphor of that what you call welfare quote unquote state in battling poverty or medical needs as against a laissez faire theory, and what comes out of this is that in Britain with national health there's been a voluntary, people are part of this 300 percent rise in donors since Nye Bevan's health program went into effect. Well, here it is bought from people who for reasons of their own despair and need sell this blood, as though almost the blood itself is untrustworthy.
Richard Titmuss Yes.
Studs Terkel So you have a nutty kind of situation involved here, haven't you?
Richard Titmuss This is partly connected with the whole concept of what one means by the welfare state. There are some people, some of my friends in Britain and many in America who think of the welfare state as an organization or a system or of services which is benevolently given by the rich to the poor, by the middle classes to the undeserving or deserving poor. I think this is the wrong conception, and I would rather see people developing a sense of responsibility in a society of giving. I think it's more important that people should be giving their blood to the hospital services voluntarily in return for a free socialized medical care program than that they should be fundraisers or selling flags. These values and the sense that this is our house, that is, and that we have to contribute to it. And this is the way we like it, is a very different conception from the idea of the welfare state or socialized medicine, where it is imposed by a centralized bureaucracy and the freedom of patients and the freedom of doctors is taken away. I don't think that the British public feel that they've lost a freedom to choose if they are voluntarily giving their blood in such large numbers and on such a voluntary basis regularly.
Studs Terkel You know, I found an interesting experience when I was there, that several, practically everyone I've met has been in favor of the national health program, including this one girl who is a social climber who votes Tory all the time, and she is, and she has a fit of contempt to what she calls the working class, who are lazy, as she put it, "Nonetheless, I will not give up national health," she said, because she benefitted from it. And she didn't find herself at all deprived of her initiative of free will. That interesting. This is the feeling, then, generally, isn't it?
Richard Titmuss This is very interesting, that although the Labor government went out of office in 1951, three years after the National Health came into operation and conservative governments were in power for 13 years afterwards, I think it's an interesting historical question that the National Health Service was never killed. I don't think they like the health service. It was starved of money for 13 years, for one thing. We made lots of mistakes in Britain. We haven't trained enough doctors. We haven't put enough money into building new hospitals or we haven't trained enough workers all along the line. So we have serious problems of manpower shortages and inadequate services, inadequate hospitals and waiting lists and so on. But nevertheless I think the conservatives were right. They sensed that British public opinion, this was the most popular service which had been developed. And you see, it had its connections with the problems of civil rights and how to differentiate and discriminate without stigma. Our West Indians and Pakistanis who come to us, they can use the health service. They're poor people, they can use the health service and there's no money. They don't have to pay, so that as they come, as many of them do, their state of health is not as good, they may come with TB, tuberculosis and other diseases, they can be treated without any questions or whether they can afford it. So we don't have to discriminate against them because they haven't got the money to buy medical care. And I do not believe one can solve these problems of channeling more social resources to the pink and the colored and the poor unless you can do it without discrimination in your public services.
Studs Terkel And without that feeling of noblesse oblige, without that feeling of charity for the deserving poor, the deserving colored by the pink. So that's gone. In other words, the feeling of dignity is there. I mean, the indignity of receiving something as a handout.
Richard Titmuss I hope there is, and this is one thing that troubles me about the--some aspects of the poverty program in the United States. A war on poverty, a poverty problem can suggest that there's something wrong with the poor. All we have to do is to give them work skills and make them into middle-class Americans, accept the same values, adjust them to American values, and you will solve the problem of poverty.
Studs Terkel Just to middle-class American values.
Richard Titmuss Middle-class American values. And we can't do this with the Pakistanis and the Indians. I think it would be wrong to take away from them their cultural inheritance and the diversity that peoples from the different world--this is what makes the world exciting and interesting. But to think that the problem of poverty is simply a problem of poor people, as though this is pathology, there's something wrong with poor people, evades the question as to whether there isn't something wrong with us, who are--maybe we've got to change our values and our attitudes and our systems if we are to solve the problem.
Studs Terkel You said in your address to the National Association of Social Workers, the last part you were pointing out, you were offering various suggestions and pointing out certain problems, and lastly, Professor Titmuss, quoting part of his address paper, "Lastly and most significant of all, we have sought too diligently to find the causes of poverty among the poor and not in ourselves. Poverty we seem to have been saying has its origins in either social pathology and the lack of self-determination or in agency delinquency and failure in coordination or in the shortage of social workers and psychiatrists. Now, the poverty program in the U.S. appears to be discovering a new set of causal explanations. The lack of political power amongst the poor themselves," and then you quote "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars but in ourselves, that we are the underlings." Now I'm thinking about that point, if we may extend this just a bit, Professor Titmuss, this particular point that we have to search deeper then, don't we? I mean, how easy it is to be righteous, self-re--this apply--you found this the case in Britain as well as here, then, haven't you, to a lesser extent because it's less a problem, for one thing, population and the nature of affluence is a bit different in degree, too, isn't it?
Richard Titmuss It is not just a problem of the lack of purchasing power among the poor. There are some economists here, there are some politicians who think here as in Britain that the answer is to just give the poor a little more money. We talk about negative income tax. We talk about guaranteed or a subsistence income, of changing Social Security, of reforming public assistance. This is not the whole of the answer, and the poor are handicapped because they do not know how, and they cannot manipulate a society. It is poverty, it's educational poverty, it's social poverty, it's environmental poverty. It's not just, the answer is not just to give the poor, necessary as it is, a little more money. And we may have to change, I'm sure we have to change the way in which many of our social welfare programs operate if we are effectively to involve the poor and involved their--and involve ourselves.
Studs Terkel When you spoke involving themselves, too, you spoke, used, in my quoting of you during your paper, used the word the feeling of power, that is, it must be then, must not be an, that is, the feeling of impotence is there and accepting and being given and thus the loss of self and dignity and contrast, this feeling that they have some meaning and thus are potent.
Richard Titmuss That they have some meaning in society and they are respected in society and respected for the contribution they make. You know, it's a very odd thing about, one of the discussions I've been involved in at the conference this week is an examination of what is called transfer payments. How far a system of social security or public assistance operates effectively to transfer resources from middle classes, from the rich to the poor. And you know, I noticed that many of the speakers were talking in statistical terms, in economic terms about the problem of transfers or redistribution in American society, never stopped to ask themselves "What do the poor give?" And they give in many ways. Has anybody ever tried to say how many physicians in the United States are now earning $30,000, $40,000, $50,000 because they got their education on being taught on the poor? The poor are teaching material for physicians, for social workers, the teachers, and for many others. The poor give their blood. One has to think in these values in life. It's not purely a monetary transfer from the rich to the poor. We benefit. We haven't recognized this in terms of a transfer. We get rich. We use these people as the way to our own individual progress.
Studs Terkel Of course, this is a terribly fascinating point Professor Titmuss is raising, yet indeed the poor do contribute in this way as the steps in the ladder of someone on his way up, but also can he not contribute even in a more affirmative way? I mean, you spoke of the Pakistani dramatically a case, here are the colored as against the pink natives. I use this word now in the reverse, native so often used in a patronizing way by British and by Americans, by all or Dutch or French or colonial peoples about natives who are colored, if we could speak of the pink natives of Britain for a moment, having these new people come in who are strange to them, Pakistani, West Indians, who have, in a sense, a culture of their own that may even add to the pink natives' culture, as indeed the Negro may add or the poor white may add to the middle-class Americans' culture, too. So aside from being what he has been, the step on the ladder for the make-out doctor, he also can--this question of we can learn from them in other ways, too, can't we? When I say "we," I speak of the pink here and there.
Richard Titmuss Well, I would have thought that the history of civilizations shows that we have benefited and being enriched by the contribution of the cultures of other people. It has broadened our education. It has made us more citizens of the world than inward-looking or parochials people, and I think we have, our society in Britain can be enriched by the contribution that the Indians and the Pakistanis and others can make to the education of their pink natives. This is little recognized by many people who simply think of them as they, as the people in Britain or in the United States, who will do the dirty work that nobody else wants to do, in transporters, nursing in the hospitals, and so on and so on. The dirty, the unskilled jobs that nobody else wants to do. We--they very rarely think of it like this, but what they, I think, are saying is that we want a permanent underclass, and if the underclass happens to be colored other than pink native, well then there are forms of social control. But the ultimate answer to this I think is the Watts district in Los Angeles, I mean, that a permanent underclass of human beings is going to revolt, and it's going to revolt against deprivation and denial of human rights. It isn't just a civil rights issue. It isn't just a colored issue. It's the deprivation and the indignities of being denied, of being excluded from society on a permanent basis.
Studs Terkel So the challenge that you see in raising, and to a lesser extent you see this in England, too, to a lesser extent. We see it in a very dramatic form here in Watts, to be specific. In England you've seen it, too, in I suppose a number of cases.
Richard Titmuss Yes, and I happen to believe in having these kind of values and looking at society in this kind of way that social policy on the social welfare services and the social worker and medical care has a major contribution to make towards resolving these great challenges.
Studs Terkel And this major contribution if I may perhaps just, I'm thinking of Professor Titmuss and various other engagements, too, about these comments, the--as you see it then it's a question of the whole social, of what other values that are not noblesse oblige. The whole approach that can no longer be laissez faire an approach, either, that indeed there must be a governmental aspect involved here.
Richard Titmuss It means more governmental intervention. This doesn't mean, necessarily mean a centralized bureaucracy. It means that we have to have better schools and more schools and hospitals and physicians, more services, better housing if we are to raise these people and to channel more resources in their favor. This is a problem of equality, of human equality, and it isn't just a financial equality, it is in the end a problem of freedom of choice. These people, the poor and the other groups are denied freedom of choice in our society.
Studs Terkel I know that Paul Jacobs, who has been doing a good deal of writing and observing during the recent meeting of social workers nationally spoke of the poor denied freedom of choice, indeed have, do have less choice and pay more money because of credit, because of lack of credit, and pay more money for inferior things than more affluent people.
Richard Titmuss All the studies that have been made suggest that the poor pay more, because of a lack of education, because they are manipulated, because they do not know, and because they cannot choose medical care again, as an example. The middle class can and have through friends, through know-how, know a little better how to choose and what is wrong. The poor can't.
Studs Terkel And also I suppose are looked upon differently, too, by the merchant or whoever it might be. Looked upon differently. And so we come back to this matter of righteousness, don't we? You were at the last part of your address again, this matter of there's something wrong with them in being poor. They--deserving poor in that they deserve to be poor, and therefore there's something right with me, in that I am better off, more right with me than with them. So it comes down to that again, doesn't it?
Richard Titmuss It comes down to this, the self-indulgence. We like to think that there's nothing wrong with us and we get satisfaction from this by thinking the poor are poor because they deserve to be poor, and there's nothing wrong with us. So it's a problem in ethics and ethical behavior. And I think that the professions, there's an ethical content in the professions in medicine and teaching and social work. They should be the standard bearers. They should lead the way in terms of ethical values and how you treat people in a professional relationship.
Studs Terkel This is, perhaps, the challenge then to be faced. Professor Titmuss our guest, Professor of Social Administration, department head of the London School of Economics, University of London, whose recent paper caused a great deal of talk, all favorable, at the National Association of Social Workers. Any last comments, sort of postscript you care to make involving written American, poverty, quote war against it, righteousness. Whatever. A sort of an epilogue, there's something on your mind that you haven't talked about as yet or have or feel like reiterating.
Richard Titmuss Well, might I just make a comment here about the relationship? We've been talking about rich societies and to come to the United States one has this feeling that you are bothered about what to do about your wealth, and you're worried about the problems of poverty and civil rights and discrimination. But even larger than that is the problem of the poor nations of the world, of the developing countries. I may be wrong, but I happen to think that unless we get our own social values right, we are not going to be in a position to help the poor nations of the world with respect and with dignity and to help them unless we get our own values right, and this is the greater challenge of the world being divided into the haves and the have-nots, and all the threats of violence and of war between--from the have-nots, who will look in 20 years' time at the rich nations getting richer, and unable to solve their own internal domestic problems of discrimination and poverty.
Studs Terkel Thus we have, again there's looking back, "Dear Brutus," what is it? How's that go again? How's that quote go again? "Dear Brutus, the"?
Richard Titmuss You'll have to look it up. I've forgot.
Studs Terkel "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are the underlings," and in being less than we can be, because we can be more than we are by the very nature of recognizing the humanness, in fact the equalness of the other, that we're depriving our--we are the deprived. In short. Professor Titmuss, thank you very much indeed.
Studs Terkel Our guest then, Richard Titmuss of the London School of Economics, and I thought in the, with my two front teeth. It isn't Christmas, but I want two front teeth for it. I shall have it sometime during the weekend, so forgive my--it's not a lisp, really. Or is it--Mel, how does it sound? The S, shall we say, is very sibilantish, but nonetheless, if I'm still comprehensible, I thought as an adjunct to the conversation with Dr. Titmuss, since he mentioned minority groups in England, I thought perhaps some of the recordings of the various groups, since West Indians are a large--many of the minorities in England are from the West Indies, and Colin MacInnes, the young British writer at the time of the conversation with him in London a couple of years ago, spoke of the lack of understanding on both sides and because the people carry their own culture with them, there is this antagonism by those who are there, particularly the British workingman, who is more antagonistic perhaps than the other because he sees competition, too. But because of the fact that here is a stranger, here is an alien, and if someone is an alien, someone's a stranger, therefore he must be hostile or the enemy. In a sense there is that feeling, and you've probably read now accounts now and then of the tensions that are there in England because of the circumstance. But, as Colin MacInnes described the West Indians, he spoke of the very zest they have for life sometimes, and the hour schedule being somewhat different, too, and British people who have lived a certain way, even though there was a Restoration period, and perhaps they're freer than we are in that respect, since we still, ours was based upon the Puritan ethos and to some extent still is. But there was a Restoration period following Cromwell, but still there was this contrast between the zest of the West Indians and the relative restraint of the British, and thus the conflict, so here's a song that might have been heard in one of the areas and might have disturbed some of the people. This is from Trinidad, and it's Atilla the Hun, you know, the names of some of the calypso singers are very colorful. Duke of Iron, Atilla the Hun. This is called "Fire Brigade".
Atilla the Hun [content
Studs Terkel And thus the Duke of Iron and thus music from the West Indies and thus, perhaps, a little tension in one of the areas in London or, perhaps in Birmingham. London, primarily, I think, although the West Indians in various of the industrial areas of London, another group among the minority groups in England today, the Pakistani, and I couldn't find a Pakistani record at the moment, but Nepal, not that Nepal is near Pakistan, but nonetheless they're both adjacent to India, so this will be the common aspect of it. Let's assume this is a Pakistani song. It happens to be a Nepalese love song, but love songs are universal anyway as far as intent. Certainly as far as intents are concerned, and as far as content, and this is, was a young singer in the '30s, and his name was Punya Prasad [Serkan Tacali?]. And I hope some good anthropologist will help me. I'll probably get a call correcting me, I'm sure, and we welcome those. By the way, during, from time to time I haven't mentioned this, when I pull a rock as I do on more than one occasion, I am delighted that a number of calls come in from various people more conversant than I am in that particular field. So indicates there is listening going on, that's good. So here, then, is a love song from Nepal, but assume it's Pakistan. Assume this, too, bothers hardworking, of course these are hardworking people, too, but somebody who is not quite sure of the language is strange, he feels somewhat wretched himself, and so he's mad as he hears this.
Punya Prasad [content
Studs Terkel And thus we have a Nepalese love song, which we assume I say for the moment Pakistan. And a third group, the Cypriots were mentioned, and this is a special group. By the way, London from the standpoint of restaurants is terribly exciting for this very reason. The number of ethnic restaurants in London are a great many, except somehow for Chinese, a very funny thing. We know, I don't mean to denigrate British cooking, but it's more or less accepted that it's not quite French or Italian as far as a certain kind of flavor is concerned, and there's a certain blandness about it, though the beef is excellent, but in Chinese restaurants in Britain somehow the Chinese food tastes British, a sort of a--more British than Chinese instead. However, when it comes to the key minority groups such as Indian and Pakistani restaurants and Cypriot restaurants, the food is magnificent because of the number of people of those particular minorities that are there, and Greek Cypriot close, of course, though I couldn't find a Cypriot record, assume this is Cypriot. And yet this is a better assumption than Nepalese one because it's Greek and these songs probably either Fleury will sing, you'll hear Fleury, Fleury Papadantanakis sing one. I'm sure unknown to Cypriots this, particularly this one, called "Women of Souli", which is the story of the Greek revolt against the Turks back in 1821, and certain villages were untouched by previous Turkish invasions because of the location. The difficulty on the part of the invaders in reaching them, but this particular one was reached and the women and children joined the men in the battle for their freedom, for their lives, and the women, as they are, the village is set on fire and the men are dying. The women jump off the cliff rather than surrender with the children in their arms. And this is song of farewell. "Farewell, you ill-fated world. Farewell, sweet life. Farewell to the water fountains, valleys and mountain tops. Fish cannot live on land nor can flowers blossom in desert sand, and [Greek], the women of Souli [Greek] women cannot live without freedom. Farewell to the fountains of water."
Fleury Papadantanakis
