The recent Black Lives Matter protests sweeping the globe have forced governments and the public alike to examine long held attitudes regarding racial politics. While the US generally leads the way when it comes to police brutality and gun violence, Britain is far from innocent when one considers our bloodthirsty colonial past. The root of change lies in education, and right now we are seriously lacking when it comes to teaching our children the truth of our haunting legacy, referring to the glory days of our Empire rather than the years of lasting damage it has caused. Here is a round up of 10 things we need to start adressing on the school curriculum if we ever hope to right our past wrongs:
1. Winston Churchill was a racist
Once voted the greatest Briton of all time, the uncomfortable truth remains that Churchill held some rather despicable views about race. His belief in eugenics (a view also promoted by the Nazi regime) founded his statements that British imperialism was a benefit to the 'primitive' races, even claiming that he did not 'admit that a wrong has been done to those people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race.... has come in and taken their place'. It has also been argued that his failure to react properly to the Bengal famine of 1943-4 (more on this later) contributed to the deaths of over 3 million Indians, as he stated that the famine was caused by them 'breeding like rabbits'. A war hero yes, but also a white supremacist.
2. Britain was heavily involved in slavery
While slavery was technically illegal on British soil, thousands of British plantation owners profited from using slaves across the Atlantic in the Carribean before the 1833 Slavery Abolition Act. Since then it has been relatively easy for us to overlook this period of our history, given that these slaves were never brought over here - nevertheless slave ownership was more common and more accessible than we might expect, as people without their own land were able to 'rent out' the few slaves they had and often inherited them through family wills. 800,000 Africans were freed by the Abolition Act, yet this same act also provided for former slave owners to be compensated for their losses, a loan which amounted to £300bn in modern money. This money was still being paid off through taxes as recently as 2015.
3. The Amritsar massacre
On 13th April 1919 at least 379 (although Indian sources put the total at closer to 1,000) unarmed protesters were shot dead by British and Gurkha troops in Jallianwala Bagh park in the city of Amritsar in India. The demonstration had been organised to protest against the British government forcing Indian soldiers into conscription and the war tax that had been forced onto the Indian population. 13th April was also the day of the Sikh Baisakhi festival and many had congregated in the park unaware of the recent ban on public gatherings that had been brought in by the British government, after they enacted martial law a few days previously. 100 years later Britain had still issued no official apology.
4. The Boer war concentration camps
During the Second Anglo-Boer War in South Africa in 1901-02, British soldiers built refugee camps to house those who had been displaced by the fighting. However as the fighting wore on, the camps became prisons where Dutch Boers and native South Africans were sent to after being rounded up by the British. This was the first time the phrase 'concentration camp' was used - some 40 years before the Nazis and the Holocaust - and was also the first genocide of the 20th century. At least 25,000 people died in the camps, the vast majority being children, with the overall civilian death toll from the war standing at approximately 46, 370.
5. The Mau Mau uprising
After Kenya was settled by European forces in the early 1900s, they began farming the fertile areas which produced tea and coffee. This led to the displacement of the native Kikuyu tribe, who were further pushed out in 1920 once Kenya became a crown colony and official restrictions on land ownership were introduced. By the 1950s resentment was growing and towards the end of 1952 the banned secret Mau Mau society launched a series of attacks against those loyal to the British government. A state of emergency was declared in October 1952, however once the attacks stepped up the British retaliated hard. They arrested and detained many of the Mau Mau members, used spies to infiltrate Mau Mau groups, and by November 1955 had caused the deaths of over 10,000 Mau Mau members.
6. Partition and its problems
The Partition between majority Muslim Pakistan and majority Hindu India began in 1947 when Britain left India after 300 years of inperial rule. Not only did this force a mass migration of Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs across the country, it led to unprecedented violence as communities that had lived alongside each other peacefully for centuries exploded into rape and genocide. By 1948 the death toll stood at somewhere between one and two million, and over 15 million people had been forced to leave their homes. Religious relations in this part of the world are undoubtedly complex, yet Britain's hasty exit certainly left little room for negotiation and management of this delicate issue.
7. The Bengali famine
The Bengali famine of 1943 has been attributed to drought, although scientific studies conducted on six separate famines between 1873 and 1943 showed that this particular case was the only one not directly linked to crop failure or a lack of moisture in the soil. In reality the three million people who perished during this famine due to the British government's failure to supply the Indians with the grain provision that they needed, even diverting food supplies to British soldiers who were already well stocked. While problems with malnutrition and refugee crises were exacerbated by World War II, Churchill indisputably failed in his duty to provide for those under British control whom he considered second class citizens.
8. Colonialism did not benefit those colonised in the ways we have been to led to believe
Many defendants of the British empire point to the technological developments and benefits that the colonialists brought to their subjects, for instance modern transport systems and societal infrastructure. Studies in this area have proved the opposite to be true, a classic example being our old friend India. Economically speaking India continues to develop rapidly in the present day, however throughout the entire British Raj they experienced precisely zero increase in per capita income: since their independence life expectancy has also risen by around 66%, in comparison to a 20% drop in the period 1872-1921. Those notorious railways were in fact often used to transport food out of fertile areas, thereby contributing to the famines which killed between 12 to 30 million Indians living under British rule. Similar examples of decreasing population due to disease and increased life expectancy after independence have also been found in the DRC, a country which suffered under Belgian colonisation until 1960. On the other hand, huge economic successes like Japan have never been under legitimate colonial rule.
9. The Windrush scandal
Since this story hit the headlines in 2017 many of us have received an education about the people behind our post-war economic recovery, who have as recompense for their hard work and paid taxes been treated in a manner nothing short of appalling by our government. The name 'Windrush' comes from the HMT Empire Windrush ship which transported many workers from the Caribbean to the UK in 1948: they filled important labour posts left vacant after the losses of World War II, as well as taking up positions in the newly founded NHS, and as Commonwealth citizens were automatically granted British citizenship and were free to live and work where they chose. The scandal arose when many years later these same people, who had settled here and contributed to society for decades, were wrongly detained and in some cases deported under an aggressive 'hostile' immigration policy desperate to prove they were criminals. While there is now a government compensation scheme in place, the Windrush generation are still waiting on an apology, and a reform to discriminatory immigration laws.
10. The legacy of colonialism continues to cause problems today
Countries that have suffered under colonialism are still trying to correct the faults that their European overlords left in their infrastructure, some admittedly with more success than others. In Africa countries like Kenya have inherited a labour system which produces and exports primary commodities while importing manufactured goods - it produces what it does not consume and consumes what it does not produce. Physical infrastructure such as roads, communication and energy systems is dictated not by need but by where those with the most money live. Africa is a continent rich in minerals and natural wealth, yet it has been left pillaged and torn apart by a deeply damaging colonial legacy, a legacy which the UK and other Western European powers must accept responsibility for.
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