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Of a racial Marquess, a Sikh taxi driver
WSN Network
London: Across Britain, and
across the Sikh community in Punjab and the Diaspora here in the US
and elsewhere, the news about an English aristocrat racially abusing
a Sikh taxi driver was widely reported and discussed, but Davinder
Singh, who complained to police after allegedly suffering a torrent
of racial abuse from an aristocratic customer — the Marquess of
Blandford — would have understood all, forgiven all and perhaps even
sympathised with his tormentor if only he had been familiar with
Satyajit Ray's depiction of the crumbling of a once great zamindari
family in Jalsaghar.
Although he belongs to one of the noblest families in the land, the
51-year-old Marquess of Blandford could have inspired an evocative
film on the last days of an old aristocratic English line had a
person such as Ray existed in Britain.
To the tabloids, Charles James Spencer-Churchill, Marquess of
Blandford, born November 24, 1955, and heir, as his eldest son, to
John George Vanderbilt Spencer-Churchill, 11th Duke of Marlborough,
has long been a ridiculous figure.
Marquess he might be and a distant relative of Sir Winston
Churchill, but "Jamie Blandford" is now considered the upper class
equivalent of Jade Goody, the reality television character with whom
Indian film actress Shilpa Shetty clashed on Celebrity Big Brother.
However, Jamie appears to have few of Jade's redeeming qualities.
All of Britain, with the exception of Davinder obviously, also knows
that Jamie's main claim to fame is that he is the UK's best-known
upper class drug addict.
In fact, Jamie's father is so fed up with his son that he has
announced that his inheritance will pass not to son but his son's
son, George Spencer-Churchill.
The boy was born in 1992 to Jamie and his first wife, Rebecca Mary
Few Brown, (Rebecca, Marchioness of Blandford), whom he married in
1990 and divorced in 1998. George, incidentally, is called the Earl
of Sunderland.
But there is nothing that the 11th Duke can do to stop Jamie
becoming the 12th Duke of Marlborough when he dies.
To complicate matters and make all this sound though it was all
taken from the pages of a P.G. Wodehouse novel, Jamie's second
marriage to one Edla Griffiths (Marchioness of Blandford), took
place on March 1, 2002, at Woodstock Register Office. Although Jamie
and his second wife have been living apart since 2004, their
daughter, Araminta Clementine Megan Spencer-Churchill (Lady Araminta
Spencer-Churchill) was born on April 8 this year.
The latest drama in the life of Jamie took place when one morning
recently he summoned a cab from his ancestral home in the Blenheim
Palace estate, Oxfordshire, to go to Coventry Crown Court where the
heir to the Dukedom of Marlborough was facing a charge of dangerous
driving and cutting up, of all people, a policeman on the M42.
Davinder also did not know that on the previous Monday, Jamie had
appeared at Oxford Crown Court, which found the podgy peer guilty of
"road rage" — he had turned on a motorist, screaming abuses and
kicking his door in an unprovoked attack.
Jamie, currently being treated for drug abuse at The Priory clinic,
had looked weary as details of the incident were read out. He
admitted criminal damage and dangerous and careless driving on two
separate occasions.
 According to a report in the Daily Mail, Davinder said his problems
began when he rang to check the exact location of Jamie's rural
residence. When he arrived, Davinder claimed he was met with a
torrent of abuse. Blandford never made it to court that day.
The shocked driver contacted the police and Jamie was arrested and
questioned on suspicion of racially-aggravated behaviour the
following day.
"I can put up with rudeness but not racism," said Davinder. "I was
having trouble finding his house so I called him and he said, 'Why
are you f***ing ringing me? You are the taxi driver you should know
where you are f***ing going.' "
The driver was called a "Hindu" or "Hindi".
Davinder continued: "He said I should remember I was a guest in this
country and I replied that I was British. He looked me up and down
and said, 'You? British?' I was just completely shocked."
Given the history of the English upper classes, Jamie's confusion
over Davinder even in today's multicultural Britain is entirely
understandable.
In the good old days, turbaned Indians were loyal orderlies who
pulled off sahib's boots after a hard day's hunting on the
North-West frontier, readied the bath, brought a chota peg and
perhaps procured a local boy for him.The problem was that they were
not sardars, they were just turbaned. The upper British classes used
to associate turban with an Indian very often.
When he was confronted by an impertinent fellow claiming to be
British, the Marquess probably felt he could murder an Indian — and
he wasn't thinking of ordering a takeaway curry.
Davinder, 45, a father of four, who has been a taxi driver for
almost 25 years, was so angry he decided to forego his £120 fare and
drove off. "He told me I would never work for the company again.
When I saw the Marquess of Blandford on the order, I was thinking he
would be a polite gentleman but he is just a racist."
A spokesman for Thames Valley Police confirmed that following
Davinder's complaint, "a man was arrested for racially aggravated
public order and bailed pending further investigations".
Described by social commentators as "Britain's premier aristocratic
rogue", Jamie had served a 30-day jail sentence in 1995 for forging
prescriptions to feed his drug habit.
15 August, 2007
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