As a small boy in the late ’forties and early ’fifties I was an ardent imperialist, spending hours in the lending library devouring Arthur Mee’s Our Empire Story. Unfortunately, although Empire Day was still marked at my primary school, the institution it celebrated was rapidly joining Nineveh and Tyre. One thing puzzled me: why had the French labelled our nation ‘Perfidious Albion’? For Arthur Mee made it clear that England had heroically shouldered the burden of bringing enlightenment to the savage regions of the world.
When I was a sixth-former I discovered the answer. Together with a group of classmates I attended a meeting of the Council for Education in World Citizenship held at a local girls’ day-school. The draw, of course, was the girls not any desire to become a world citizen. As a sex-starved teenager incarcerated in a boys’ boarding school any opportunity to be in the same room as a girl was eagerly seized. The main business of the meeting was a talk on the White Highlands given by an indigenous Kenyan. The speaker was a quietly spoken man who steered clear of passionate denunciations of injustice. His case was the more compelling for it. I left the meeting a changed man.
At university I became aware of aspects of Our Island Story other than those highlighted by Mee: strapping Indian mutineers across the muzzles of cannon and then firing them; going to war with China because their Emperor tried to curb his people’s addiction to opium. Opium grown very profitably in the jewel in our empire’s crown.
Although the Empire, along with my youth, is long gone its attitude to ‘lesser breeds’ persists. Today’s Guardian carried the unbearably moving story of a severely injured 13 year old Iraqi boy ‘lost’ by the Army medical corps. After visiting the hospital for ten days, without being allowed to see his son, his father was told that he was becoming ‘annoying’ and banned from making further visits. A year later he was told that the boy had been moved to Kuwait and the army had lost track of him. Unbelievably two and a half years later the army's chief claims officer said he could not offer any compensation for negligence “since I have been unable to find any such evidence of negligence by the British forces in this matter”. The letter ends: “Please accept my sincere sympathy”.
And there you have it: we’re a decent civilised people, able to offer sincere sympathy even to an annoying Iraqi who’s unaccountably upset that his son has disappeared and has the impudence to accuse us of negligence.
Click here for main site.
When I was a sixth-former I discovered the answer. Together with a group of classmates I attended a meeting of the Council for Education in World Citizenship held at a local girls’ day-school. The draw, of course, was the girls not any desire to become a world citizen. As a sex-starved teenager incarcerated in a boys’ boarding school any opportunity to be in the same room as a girl was eagerly seized. The main business of the meeting was a talk on the White Highlands given by an indigenous Kenyan. The speaker was a quietly spoken man who steered clear of passionate denunciations of injustice. His case was the more compelling for it. I left the meeting a changed man.
At university I became aware of aspects of Our Island Story other than those highlighted by Mee: strapping Indian mutineers across the muzzles of cannon and then firing them; going to war with China because their Emperor tried to curb his people’s addiction to opium. Opium grown very profitably in the jewel in our empire’s crown.
Although the Empire, along with my youth, is long gone its attitude to ‘lesser breeds’ persists. Today’s Guardian carried the unbearably moving story of a severely injured 13 year old Iraqi boy ‘lost’ by the Army medical corps. After visiting the hospital for ten days, without being allowed to see his son, his father was told that he was becoming ‘annoying’ and banned from making further visits. A year later he was told that the boy had been moved to Kuwait and the army had lost track of him. Unbelievably two and a half years later the army's chief claims officer said he could not offer any compensation for negligence “since I have been unable to find any such evidence of negligence by the British forces in this matter”. The letter ends: “Please accept my sincere sympathy”.
And there you have it: we’re a decent civilised people, able to offer sincere sympathy even to an annoying Iraqi who’s unaccountably upset that his son has disappeared and has the impudence to accuse us of negligence.
Click here for main site.
