Yasmin’s Eye on …. Reform wants to re-educate the young – it would be a whitewash

Reform UK’s chair Zia Yusuf wants to instil in them national pride about Empire

The bones of the British Empire are being dug up again, not to expand or deepen our knowledge of those times, but to serve the interests of rising and flagging main political parties. Empire is a trigger issue; it opens up a space for politicians to rush in and gratify unthinking patriots and bid for their votes. It happens over and over again. And will forever more.

Last week, the Prime Minister’s official spokesman told reporters: “We have talked previously about the work of the British Empire and we’re proud of our history.” This blah-blah statement came after the trade minister Douglas Alexander rightly cautioned against “post-imperial delusions” over trade deals.

Meanwhile, Reform’s chair Zia Yusuf wants to “remoralise” young people and instil in them national pride about empire which “did more good for the world than bad”. So, it was good for local farmers to be made abjectly poor in his ancestral homeland, Ceylon (Sri Lanka), by British plantation owners and investors?

Whitewashing colonialism has become an essential part of the political handbook. Only now, brown and black Britons like Yusuf back historical revisionism to further their personal and party ambitions.

In 1988, Margaret Thatcher made a speech in Bruges, Belgium, outlining her vision for the future of what was then the European Community. By then, millions of Britons were resisting the neoliberal ideologue and European federalists were getting weary of her British exceptionalism.

So she pulled out hoary colonial myths: “From our perspective today surely what strikes us most is our common experience. For instance, the story of how Europeans explored and colonised – and yes, without apology – civilised much of the world is an extraordinary tale of talent, skill and courage.” That went down well with the white club and many native Brits and Europeans. Not so much with truthful historians, those who sided with the oppressed or ex-colonial migrants who bore the scars of that domination.

In Manchester just before the 1997 elections, Tony Blair was reportedly planning to say he was “proud of the British Empire”, but for reasons unknown, decided to drop that boast. At the Lord Mayor’s banquet in that same year, he did not hold back: “I value and honour our history enormously… The fact that we had an Empire…should be cause of neither apology nor hand-wringing; rather it must be used to further Britain’s global influence.”

In 2005, when visiting East Africa, and preparing to become PM, Gordon Brown rudely stated that Britain should stop apologising for its magnificent Empire. Pray tell me when and where these many apologies were offered. Passed me by.

Yes, British rule brought some benefits. I have always acknowledged that. But the lasting damage it caused affects many who weren’t born then.

Incredibly, then-PM David Cameron, the embodiment of Etonian arrogance and misgovernance, acknowledged that in 2011. During a flying visit to Pakistan he admitted that Britain was responsible for “so many of the world’s problems”.

 And in the 14 years of Tory rule we endured, the right embarked on a project to vilify anyone – including excellent historians – who refused to concede to the spun sunny tales of Empire. Some have had to have police protection.

We talk about the dangers of fake information online. And yet, there, in plain sight, propagandists, for decades, have hidden or denied what was done to nations, peoples and their lands. The Caribbean islands were depleted; fertile areas were stolen by white settlers in Kenya, South Africa and Zimbabwe, previously Rhodesia.

The Balfour Declaration led to the creation of Israel and, again, disposessed the original inhabitants. Blood and tears have flowed ever since. India was divided into two nations which cannot live in peace. The Mau Mau in Kenya were subjected to indescribable physical maltreatment. It was only after survivors won a case against the government in 2013 that they got tepid recognition of their pain.

Since independence, there has never been a famine in India. The 34 such calamities that decimated populations during the Raj were man-made. In 1770, the parliamentarian Horace Walpole spoke with unrestrained rage: “They starved millions in India by monopolies and plunder, and almost raised a famine at home by the luxury occasioned by their opulence raising the price of everything, till the poor could not purchase bread.”

Edward Gibbon, in The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (written between 1776 and 1788), made this observation: “The history of empires is the history of human misery…A more unjust and absurd constitution cannot be devised than that which condemns the natives of a country to perpetual servitude, under the arbitrary domination of strangers”. The Victorian historian Sir John Seeley warned: “It is a mistake to suppose Empire is standing proof of some vast superiority of the English races over the races of India.”

Those men were living witnesses. But nostalgic Brits won’t believe such testimonies or accept that, in spite of colonial racism and exploitation, millions of soldiers, including countless Muslims, fought with the allies to end the Nazi reign of terror. They endured prejudices, and the heroes among them remained unrecognised for the longest time. A new poll by the British Futures think-tank found only a quarter of Britons know about the sacrifices made by soldiers of subjugated nations. When you mark VE Day, remember them too.

This article was originally published by iNews