Colonialism doesn't always involve invasion or conquest

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Sir Starmer’s speech on immigration earlier this week had obvious echoes of the words of Enoch Powell more than half a century ago, and repeated attempts to pretend that there is no similarity between the words used by the two men look like simply digging an already big hole a bit deeper. I accept that it was almost certainly unintentional. Starmer would have been about 6 in 1968 when Powell delivered his infamous speech, and the coterie of advisers and speech writers around him probably even younger. Lack of a direct memory of Powell’s speech – or even of the man himself – is understandable, even if it demonstrates a certain lack of knowledge of political history. The bigger problem isn’t about whether he was or was not aping an odious politician of the past, deliberately or otherwise – it’s about the extent to which what looked like extreme views in 1968 have become part of the political mainstream, not just for Reform Ltd but also for the Tories and even Labour. Starmer’s words would have been anathema to Wilson and the Labour Party back then, yet their modern-day counterparts are falling over themselves to justify and amplify them.

There is another unpleasant aspect to the words used by UK parties when referring to migrants, which is that it sees them largely in terms of their value (or cost) to the UK economy. So, low-paid (which isn’t the same as low-skilled, although one would be hard-pressed to glean that from Starmer’s words) bad, high-paid good. Rarely do any of our politicians seem to see migrants or would-be migrants as human beings with aspirations and needs. There’s also an interesting paradox in the fact that the low-paid are doing work for which it is proving difficult to recruit UK labour, whilst at least some of the higher-paid jobs are easier to fill locally. Who is ‘stealing’ whose jobs? Whether the higher-paid jobs can or cannot be filled locally, and whilst bearing in mind the caveat that high-paid isn’t always the same as high-skilled, attracting what are seen as being the ‘brightest and best’ from elsewhere has an inevitable knock-on effect on the society and economy of those countries losing those people to the UK. It’s a modern form of colonialism.

Even amongst those brave souls in the Labour Party who are speaking out against the proposed changes, there is a degree of objectification of the people involved. Take the words of a former adviser to Mark Drakeford, quoted here: “To have a sustainable indigenous population requires a fertility rate 2.1. The UK rate is 1.4. This means our indigenous population is shrinking and aging and we are completely dependent on immigrants to remain a viable country”. What could be more neo-colonialist than outsourcing the responsibility for maintaining population levels (even supposing that to be a good thing anyway, but that’s a subject for another day)? And where is the consideration of the impact on those other countries of losing the people of an age group likely to be child-bearing? Moving a perceived problem elsewhere doesn’t ‘solve’ it.

Migration is a complex issue which involves real people living real lives. Reducing it to a cost-benefit analysis, and treating migrants as units of economic production is dehumanising. But it’s what we get when politicians decide that playing to prejudice is more likely to win them votes than attempting to conduct a serious conversation around the issue. Starmer is part of the problem, and what he has to offer is no solution.

Minds don't need to be particularly great to think alike

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Apologists for Britain’s colonial past invariably point to what they see as the ‘good’ outcomes of imperial conquest for the conquered, usually expressed in terms of systems of government, the rule of law, Christianity, cricket, and the English language. Whether these are actually ‘good’ things or not depends on perspective; the assumption that they are is itself a product of the imperialist mindset, revolving as it does around some concept of cultural superiority. Leaving that aside and assuming, for the sake of argument, that these are indeed good things, none of them actually formed any part of the original intention of conquest. That was always about access to resources, and the opportunity to use the power of the imperial state to extract wealth which could be accumulated by individuals, and much of which was repatriated to the shores of the imperial power. That wealth, taken by force from the conquered peoples, was the basis of the great wealth of the cities of the imperial powers, including, of course, Britain. In return, the natives got Shakespeare, a bargain for which they should, apparently, be eternally grateful.

Sometimes, people confuse imperialism with colonialism; but not every country added to the empire was actually heavily colonised. Some were, of course – the territories currently known as the USA being one of them. From a British point of view, the other territories most heavily colonised were places such as Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. They’re not known as the ‘white commonwealth’ without reason. The USA (a former colony in the true sense of the word) and its constitution were founded on a number of ideas, one of which was the rejection of colonialism and imperialism, and the idea of ‘freedom’ (a word which has many different meanings). Watching that former colony lapse into its own form of imperialism ought to be surprising but is somehow not.

The methods are different in the twenty-first century; although Trump hasn’t ruled out direct military conquest, he has a clear preference for economic domination, even if his grasp of economics leaves more than a little to be desired. But his motivation – control of resources, and the transfer of wealth from other countries to the US – is a direct match for the motivation which led to the empires of the past. And blatantly so. Having got Ukraine to agree to allow half of its mineral wealth to be expropriated on the basis of a lie that aid provided was a loan rather than a gift, he has done as all bullies do when the bullied bow down before them. His conclusion from the willingness of Ukraine to give up 50% is that he didn’t ask for enough, so he’s doubled his demand. He now wants control of all of it. Along with a veto on Ukrainian policy.

His motivation for taking Greenland, although presented in terms of ‘security’ is much the same. He wants access to its resources, and his promise that Greenlanders will become rich if they allow it is as valid as his promise that US citizens would become richer by electing him; it’s a promise which is only ever intended to apply to a tiny minority. Yesterday, Putin declared that he thinks Trump is serious about taking Greenland, but thinks that it's what he described as “an issue that concerns two states and has nothing to do with us”. It’s an open invitation to Trump to view Russia’s intentions in relation to Ukraine in the same terms. The two presidents are clearly thinking along similar lines. And the opinions of others count for nothing, with either of them.

Economic migration is neither new nor unique

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For generation after generation, Wales has lost people, particularly young people, who have left to seek a better future elsewhere. The immediate cause is well-understood: a lack of opportunity here, coupled with greater opportunity elsewhere. Within the UK, it’s not a phenomenon unique to Wales of course; Scotland and much of England outside the south-east corner have suffered the same fate. The wider reasons for that economic imbalance are well-understood as well: a centralised state which concentrates power, wealth and talent in the centre by sucking it in from the peripheries. The extractive and exploitative nature of the Welsh economy is easily seen by looking at transport links – the best ones overwhelmingly run from west to east rather than north to south, historically facilitating the extraction of mineral and other wealth.

The fact that Wales has not been an independent country during that time, and the consequent lack of a recognised international border obscures the basic fact: most of those who left Wales were (and are) what are today called, usually pejoratively, economic migrants. People who live in an area denuded of much of its wealth by far-away rulers migrate in search of a share of what was originally theirs anyway. We’re not good at recognising it, but it is the same imperative which drives many of the migrants reaching these shores currently. Coming from countries which were systematically exploited and robbed by their colonialists, they travel to where the wealth now resides in search of opportunity. And it should be no surprise that the country of choice for many of them will be the one which colonised them, and whose language was imposed upon them. So, for example, Algerians tend to favour France and those from the former British Empire tend to favour the UK.

If anyone should be able to understand and empathise with economic migrants, it is us here in Wales. But by and large, many amongst us don’t. Perhaps it’s due to a lack of understanding of our own history, coupled with an acceptance of the version of history with which we are fed. But the bottom line is that, whilst many in Wales blame the exploiters for the loss of those who leave, they blame the individuals for the new arrivals. In truth, our interests have more in common. If it’s an unfair distribution of wealth which drives economic migration, it is a fairer distribution which will reduce it. It’s no accident that, in the UK as in the US, anti-immigrant sentiment is being driven and funded by some of the richest political donors. We only have to ask ourselves who might feel most threatened by any suggestion of a fairer distribution of wealth, whether within a state or more globally, to understand why.

What about the inhabitants?

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Failing to rule something out isn’t the same as ruling it in, and it’s perfectly possible that Trump thinks that leaving the threat of military action hanging over Greenland and Panama will ‘encourage’ Denmark and Panama to cave in without any need to resort to actual use of force.

He is probably serious about wanting to take control of Greenland, but that doesn’t make him unique in US history. Other presidents have also had designs on the territory and various land swaps have been envisaged in the past, including his own suggestion of giving Puerto Rico to Denmark as well as the 1940’s suggestion of swapping it for land in Alaska and the 1910 proposal to exchange it for some islands in the Philippines (so that Denmark could, in turn, swap them for a chunk of what is now Germany). The UK doesn’t exactly have clean hands on the issue either, having once sought to be given first refusal should Denmark decide to sell, with a view to it becoming part of Canada in order to keep it out of the hands of the US. He’s also probably at least semi-serious about annexing Canada, and he’s not the first to think that either: the US actually invaded Canada during the 1812-1815 war with the UK, expecting (rather like Putin in Ukraine) to over-run the country in days. Buying territory along with the people who live there is hardly a new concept either, especially for the US, which bought Alaska from Russia in 1867 and a huge chunk of the mid-west from France in 1803. Describing the purchase of Greenland over the heads of its residents as ‘decolonisation’ is perverting the meaning of words somewhat, but the process itself is hardly historically novel.

People tend to forget that most – maybe all – of the world’s political boundaries between states are the result of war, or treaties agreed between nominally equal parties (even though, in reality, many of those treaties were effectively imposed on the weak by the strong). The boundary between Canada and the US, like Danish ownership of Greenland, are both accidents of history. Trump’s mindset in this context isn’t radically different from that of Putin – both think that the boundaries of the states which they govern should be drawn differently to include more territory, and both are willing to consider, at least, the use of force to bring about those changes. It is, unfortunately, far from inconceivable that an early meeting between Trump and Putin – which both want, apparently: Putin because he thinks he can outwit Trump, and Trump because he believes his own hype about his abilities as a dealmaker and his friendship with Putin – will lead to something akin to the Yalta conference after the second world war, in which the so-called great powers (now reduced to two, in the eyes of both of those involved) carve up Europe and the Americas between them.

As for the people of Greenland themselves, such evidence as exists suggests that their preferred status is independence. In a world where invading the territory of the EU is not ruled out, and an invasion of the UK is floated as an option, the chance that the Greenlanders’ voice will be heard seems slim.

Nuance is sometimes a way of avoiding hard facts

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When the statue of slave trader Edward Colston was toppled in Bristol a few years ago, reactions were mixed, to say the least. In general terms, views fell into two main camps: those who felt that we should not be celebrating the lives of those who were responsible for a cruel and despicable trade and those who felt that, like him or loathe him, he was a part of history which should not be, to use one of their current favourite words, ‘cancelled’. The compromise, ultimately, was to place the statue in a museum with an appropriate explanation of his role in the past. It’s a nuanced response, which attempts to placate both sides in the debate about statues. It does little, however, to resolve the underlying debate about what history is and whether – and to what extent – we should feel ‘proud’ of it.

No such nuance was observed when it came to the toppling of statues of Lenin or Stalin in the former Soviet Union and its satellites, nor in the case of the toppling of statues of Hussain in Iraq or, this week, those of Assad in Syria. I don’t recall any great outpouring of outrage about the rewriting of history or about the attempts at ‘cancelling’ the role of dictators in the history of those countries, only pleasure at their fall.

That underlines the hypocrisy and deceit at the heart of the arguments of those in the UK who oppose the removal of statues and symbols of those whom history no longer treats so kindly as attitudes and values change. It isn’t just about slavery, it’s about imperialism, colonialism and militarism, with all of which slavery was inextricably bound up. Those who opposed the removal of the statue of Colston and other such statues are actually proud (and believe the rest of us should be too) of Britain’s imperial, colonial, and militaristic past, and it is that – rather than the celebration of slavery – which they don’t want to see ‘cancelled’ or revised. Most of them (but I’m not convinced that this is true of all of them) might see slavery as something of a blot on that history, which is why they want to divert attention to Britain’s role in the abolition of slavery rather than dwelling on its role in creating the trade, but they are unable or unwilling to accept or understand that slavery was actually a key element in the accumulation of wealth from colonial activities. What Colston was actually being celebrated for was what he did with the wealth which he brought back to Britain, as though the means by which he acquired that wealth is somehow irrelevant or unimportant.

Syrians cannot change the history of their country; the Assad dictatorship is something which will always be taught in their schools. But knowing history, understanding history, interpreting history – these are not the same as celebrating history. Those who tore down statues implicitly understand that better than most, even if it was not the uppermost thought in their minds at the time. There’s no nuance around the idea that ‘he did some good things as well’. It’s an attitude from which we can learn something ourselves.

"They should be paying us"

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Not to be out-done by Starmer’s display of his imperialist credentials, one of the would-be leaders of the Tories went even further yesterday  by saying that former colonies do not only not deserve any compensation for the exploitation of their resources and the enslavement of their peoples, but they should actually be grateful for having been colonised in the first place. Ever willing to add comedy to arrogance, Sirjake added that “they should be paying us”. Perhaps it isn’t completely surprising that people who believe that taking a substantial economic hit in order to gain the illusory ‘freedoms’ of Brexit should also believe that having their resources and people systematically extracted and exploited is a small price to pay for the delights of an English-based law system and the imposition of Christian values.

The thing is, though, it’s not for ‘us’ to decide whether it was a good bargain or not. The only people who can decide whether what they got outweighs what was taken from them are the peoples who were colonised. It’s possible, of course, that some of them really do believe that they got the best end of the deal – one could argue that the earliest English colony of all, Wales, contains plenty who think that there are net benefits from being ruled from elsewhere. It is, however, clearly not the perception of most of the former colonies, and no amount of criticising their ingratitude is going to change that.

And even if it were to be true that, by some sudden strange Damascene conversion, all the former colonies were to agree with the proposition that colonisation had been a good thing, it doesn’t alter the fact that any benefits from colonisation were more accidental than intentional. Colonisation took place with the express intent of gaining access, by force, to resources, and as a process, it made some of the colonisers very rich indeed. Much of the wealth of the UK’s biggest cities came from the exploitation of colonial possessions. It really doesn’t matter how enlightened some (but certainly not all) of the colonisers were or whether the legacy they left was good or bad: nothing can alter the underlying intention of accumulation of wealth by expropriation of resources. The people seeking to rewrite history here are those who seek to deny that basic truth.

Labour's anti-colonialist delusionists

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A few Labour MPs have criticised their leader in the past few days for his imperialist stance on the question of reparations for slavery. To listen to them speak, one might think that the Labour Party is a bastion of anti-imperialism and anti-colonialism. They’re deluded – the Labour Party is as much an English imperialist-minded party as the Tories. That’s how we are allowed to have elections in the UK: by ensuring that nothing changes very much. If it wasn’t obvious to the ‘rebels’ previously, surely the half-hearted handover of only part of the Chagos Islands whilst retaining the UK’s ‘right’ to Diego García ought to have opened their eyes at least a little.

It isn’t only in relation to reparations that the imperialist mindset operates; it also underlies the nonsense that the UK is a major world power which can threaten (or maybe create) adversaries across the globe. To say nothing, of course, about the continued possession of nuclear weapons. Starmer has been at it again this week, telling Iran that it must not respond to Israel’s ‘retaliation’, and that Iran and the Palestinians must allow Israel to have the last word – or last airstrike, more accurately – in the current tit-for-tat round of violence. Why either should listen to a state which is the former colonial ruler of Palestine and which has a history of using force to secure the economic interests of its capitalists in Iran (and which itself therefore bears no small historical responsibility for the situation in the Middle East) is a question which only a died-in-the-wool imperialist wouldn’t even think to ask. That we need a ceasefire and proper peace talks with the serious intention of seeking a just settlement goes without saying; that the conflict can be ended by the historical school yard bullies telling one side to desist is as delusional as believing Labour to be inherently anti-colonial.

Is it all about Empire 2.0?

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At first sight, the idea that the UK should leave a large and prosperous trade agreement on its doorstep in order to join one based on the Pacific Ocean looks like a very strange decision. It doesn’t look much less strange on second, third, or even fourth sight either. It’s not totally geographically invalid however – part of the UK is, in fact, close to the very centre of the Pacific Ocean. The Pitcairn Islands may only have a population of 47 (at the last count), but the men are all out of prison now and anyway even 1 would be enough to make the UK a Pacific nation. In a strange quirk of history, that infamous mutiny back in 1789 has given the UK access to the untold riches of a 0.08% boost to GDP (maybe – even the trade minister seems a little dubious about that claim), all based – as was much of the empire – on a bit of robbery, rape and pillage, for which we should now, apparently, be grateful.

The logic of there being strength in numbers as outlined by the minister is clear, and joining a large and successful trade partnership is therefore well worth the price of having to agree to a set of rules drawn up by the existing members and submitting to the judgements of the partnership’s courts. We need to keep reminding ourselves that it’s nothing like being part of the EU’s Single Market, even if that’s only because the benefits are so much smaller and under the new partnership the courts meet and arrive at their decisions in secret rather than in a more public and accountable fashion. And in what might well look to the remaining EU members as an echo of the past, the new kid in the bloc is already preparing to demand that it has its own way on who else might be allowed to join.

It's easy enough to mock, but it’s a lot harder to understand what on earth might drive anyone to believe that a small benefit from a far away trade partnership is better than a large benefit from one much closer at hand. Badenoch’s claim that it is like buying into a start-up is an interesting one, basing the decision on faith about relative economic growth rates into the far distant future, although it rather overlooks the fact that most investments in most start-ups fail. The argument that economic growth in the Pacific will be faster than in Europe probably stands up only if China is included; but that is not part of the plan and, even in China, growth is stalling.

I have a rather different theory about the potential attraction to the Little Englanders with their dreams of Global Britain, and it’s all about harking back to the past. Of the 11 existing members of the partnership, 6 are former British colonies and use English as an official language (4), a recognised language (1), or the main business language (1), so (unlike those pesky Europeans), they are not proper foreigners at all. Those who dream of Empire 2.0 fondly imagine that all those countries and their inhabitants see England (and England is what they tend to call it even if geographically inaccurate) as the motherland, the country that gave them their laws, customs and culture. This is England’s opportunity to place itself, once again, at their head and to provide them with the guidance that they’ve missed so much since foolishly becoming independent. From that perspective, their history is ‘our’ history; they share in the glory of empires past and dreams of empires future. It’s utter tosh, of course; exceptionalism always is. But never underestimate the power of exceptionalist tosh to drive decision-making either consciously or sub-consciously, even if – perhaps especially if – the decisions are economic madness.

The past won't conform to prejudices

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As far as I’m aware, none of those arguing about whether a book which has been commissioned to tell the ‘patriotic’ story of the English Monarchy should or should not be circulated to children in Wales via schools has actually seen the content as yet. Certainly the public at large hasn’t yet seen it, and debating whether to distribute it or not without seeing the content can only be based on a mixture of supposition and prejudice. Having said that, one thing of which we can be certain is that any book which sets out to tell a story from a ‘patriotic’ standpoint (and that is the clearly-stated intention of those who have commissioned the work) is, by definition, not setting out to give a balanced or objective view. That, in effect, makes it, wholly intentionally, a work of propaganda rather than information. Whether a work of propaganda should be distributed in schools is a matter of opinion; for what it’s worth, I see no harm in that at secondary level if the intention its to study and analyse the work in comparison with other versions of the same events; critical analysis is a valuable skill. There should surely, though, be no place for the distribution of one-sided propaganda in primary schools – not in a democracy, anyway, or even a semi-democracy like the UK.

There’s something rather Soviet-era about such a blatant approach to ensuring that a particular version of history is inculcated into children as part of their education, but in truth all states seek to ensure that their citizens share a common understanding of history, as a means of building a sense of commonality and belonging. The problem in this instance is that the current rulers of the UK are stuck in a time-warp, and are trying to reinforce a narrative which has become outdated, using the methods of a long-gone era when people had no other sources of information, methods which simply look crass in the devolved landscape of the twenty-first century. I don’t believe that it would be impossible to build a new narrative of the UK fit for the current era, but it would look nothing like the immediate post-war narrative to which the current government seem to want to return (let alone the eighteenth century narrative more favoured by the Rees-Moggs of this world). Whilst ‘history’ is built on a series of facts which are themselves unchanging, the interpretation and relative importance of those facts is always changing, as new facts come to light and new perspectives are applied, in a process which exceptionalist Anglo-British nationalists seem incapable of grasping.

It isn’t just the much-debated book which underlines the attachment of our rulers to an outdated view; we’ve recently had the Education Minister, Nadhim Zahawi arguing that pupils should be taught about the benefits of the empire and colonialisation as well as the brutality. In a limited sense, he has a point. People probably should know and understand that when they look at grand old houses in the countryside and grand old buildings in our city centres, they are indeed seeing the benefits of colonialism – for the colonialists. And it would be far from an entirely bad thing if many of those railing against immigrants and refugees coming here from poorer countries had been taught, and had understood, that much of what makes the UK a wealthy country was acquired by transporting stolen wealth from those poorer countries. I suspect, though, that that isn’t what Zahawi and his ilk have in mind. His statement referred to the way the colonists set up administrative systems and exported the British Civil Service (and others have referred to building railways) – he’s talking about the ‘benefits’ which should be taken into account on the plus side of the equation when the exploitation, the massacres, and the slavery are being criticised. To call these ‘benefits’ of colonisation, though, requires us to assume that leaving those areas uncolonized, letting them benefit from their own natural resources and developing links through trade and commerce rather than conquest, would not have left them better off, and that they would never have developed such administrative systems of their own accord. It’s an arrogant assumption, to say the least. It might be less pejoratively-worded, but at root it’s simply a modern variation on the old idea that Britain brought civilisation and cricket to the savages, in return for which they should be grateful enough to overlook the worst excesses.

Whether we are talking about the monarchy or the empire, understanding our history is important in giving us a sense of who we are, but that requires an ever-changing analysis of the facts. We cannot change the past. Whilst some of us might wish that it were possible to airbrush the monarchy and the empire from history, that would be no more honest than presenting them as unchanging symbols of what it means to be British. Trying to imbue our children with a biased view of either the monarchy or the empire does them no favours when they will eventually find themselves in a world which has a totally different understanding. Addressing that is rather more important than sloganizing about the distribution of a book.

Employing the definite article

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Given his lawyerly background, and his careful use of language in his increasingly pointless weekly attempts to ask questions of a PM who deliberately avoids answering any of them, it is reasonable to suppose that when Keir Starmer chooses a particular word or phrase, he does so with care and thought. So, when his speech to the Labour Party’s conference was widely billed as him wrapping himself in the flag, it’s reasonable to suppose that the use of the definite article before the word flag is entirely deliberate. It’s also revealing.

‘The’ flag to which he refers and which was prominently displayed behind him as he spoke is, of course, the union flag, but it’s a flag whose power to unite is far from universal. In Northern Ireland, it’s deeply divisive. Revered as a totemic symbol by the half of the population which will never support Labour, and hated by the half more likely to vote for Labour’s partner party, the SDLP, wrapping himself in it seems hardly likely to attract much support there. But then, Northern Ireland’s voters are unimportant to Labour which chooses not to stand there. The situation in Scotland is rapidly heading in the same direction; the die-hard unionists unlikely ever to vote Labour may applaud his ‘patriotism’, but for the rest of the population – including, according to some polls, many traditional Labour supporters – it seems unlikely to do more than confirm Labour’s downward slide. But then, Scotland’s voters are increasingly a lost cause for Labour; perhaps they’ve been written off too. In Wales, the situation is more complex. There are some firm unionists, of course – but they’re more likely to vote Tory than Labour. And there are some of us who regard Y Ddraig Goch as the only flag of Wales, but we are still in a minority. My own assessment (and I’ll admit this is based on experience and anecdote rather than hard numbers, but I’m pretty confident in its accuracy) is that the majority here are more ambivalent, regarding both flags as having some salience as an expression of their nationality. If that's so, then demanding loyalty to only one of those doesn’t immediately strike me as the best way to enhance Labour’s standing in Wales. Perhaps they are simply taking Wales for granted – as usual. But all this means that it is, effectively, only in England where there is anything approaching unanimity over the question of whether the union flag represents them, and even there, there is a growing movement towards using the cross of St George. In essence, therefore, Labour’s appeal is pitched predominantly at English, or Anglo-British, nationalist feeling, without really taking account of the consequences elsewhere. It’s strangely at odds with his stated aim that, “we must once again be the party of the whole United Kingdom. The party of England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland” (a statement which, in itself, skates over the fact that the party has never even attempted to represent Northern Ireland). It’s English exceptionalism and superiority at its best. Or worst, depending on your viewpoint.

It wasn’t the only use of the definite article which struck me, though. He also said that he wanted the UK to be “the best country to grow up in and the best country to grow old in”. Note again the use of the definite article. For any country to be ‘the’ best necessarily requires that every other country be worse. Socialism, this is not. Internationalists not only want their own country to do well, they want to help others to reach the same level. It’s only a nationalist who want his or her own country to be regarded as ‘the’ best. He may not have gone quite as far in his jingoism as the current PM, who demands that everyone agrees that the UK actually is ‘the best’ when it patently is not, but the difference between someone who wants to make it so and someone who merely wants everyone to believe that it is so is one of detail and delivery, not of political philosophy. What Starmer has shown us is that the difference between Labour and Tory, when it comes to English nationalism and exceptionalism, is minor. Perhaps we should be grateful for that demonstration.

I won’t lay this next one directly on Starmer himself; it’s not something which his speech actually referred to, but it’s of a piece with his message. In response to the speech Baroness Chakrabati suggested that, amongst the things in which British patriots should take pride was the English language. It is again an Anglo-centric view of the world (and in this case, even of the UK itself). It’s true, of course, that English has become the lingua franca of the world, but taking pride in that fact without recognising the reality of how it happened displays a certain blindness to history. The language wasn’t something generously shared with the world community, it reached its dominance through a process of imposition and dominance; it involved cultural genocide enforced by waves of colonialism and at the point of a gun. The clock cannot be turned back, and the cultural dominance of one language is certainly beneficial to those of us able to speak it fluently, but pride in the process of imperialism which achieved that position doesn’t seem wholly appropriate to me. It is, though, the position to which ‘patriotism’ of the not-nationalist-at-all Anglo-British variety so often leads.

Whose history?

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A while ago, in the wake of the release of the film “Darkest Hour", there was something of a debate about the nature of the leading character portrayed by the film.  Was Churchill a great wartime leader whose resolve and stirring rhetoric motivated people throughout the empire (and it was the British Empire which went to war with Germany, not the United Kingdom) to fight and win, or was he a white supremacist, a vile racist who believed other races to be inferior, and a war criminal prepared to order killing on a horrific scale in order to achieve victory?  In truth, he was all of those things; but there’s also a sense in which he was none of them, in that none of them alone paint a rounded and complete picture of a complex character.  Yet both sides in the debate demand that the other accept their assessment, that he be considered an out-and-out goodie or an out-and-out baddie.  The fact that, within the UK at least, prevailing culture regards him as a hero owes more to the fact that history is written by the victors than to a balanced assessment.  

From Churchill’s viewpoint, the Empire was unquestionably a ‘good’ thing; he came from an age in which ‘civilising the natives’ (even if they would, nevertheless, always be inferior) was part of the beneficence of European rule.  It’s an attitude which is mirrored by one of the candidates for the Tory leadership – in 2002, writing in the Spectator, Boris Johnson said of Africa, “The continent may be a blot, but it is not a blot upon our conscience. The problem is not that we were once in charge, but that we are not in charge anymore.”  There are others who would argue that such attitudes are based on a very superficial understanding of what the Empire was about and what it did, and that understanding could be improved if a more balanced view of history were taught in schools in the UK.  In truth, the problem isn’t so much that pupils don’t learn anything about the history of the Empire, it’s more that they learn a very superficial version of that history which largely glosses over the negatives.  Again, the history we think that we ‘know’ is based on that written by the victors; changing that ‘knowledge’ is a long slow process.

The question raised by that article – about changing the history which is taught in schools – brings me to the point raised in the Assembly recently by a Plaid AM in relation to the teaching of Welsh history.  Whilst I entirely agree that pupils should learn more about the history of Wales, the real issue is about which version they learn.  To take one example: is the history of Wales over the last few centuries the story of a nation valiantly clinging to and promoting its own unique identity and language in the face of the overwhelming dominance of our neighbour, or is it the story of a nation being slowly but surely subsumed and assimilated into a greater whole?  The ‘facts’ and ‘events’ are the same, but what matters is the selection, interpretation, and emphasis placed on those facts and events.  There is no such thing as ‘objective’ history, and little point teaching students dates and facts without also teaching them how to interpret and understand those dates and facts.  (For what it’s worth, my answer to the question I asked above is similar to that attributed to Zhou Enlai in relation to the French Revolution – “It’s too soon to say”.)

I’m reasonably certain that the version of history that I’d like to see taught would be very similar to that which Siân Gwenllian wants to see taught, so I don’t disagree with the point which she is making.  Bearing in mind, though, that history is always written from the point of view of the victors, I wonder whether demanding that the version written from the point of view of the ‘losers’ be taught instead isn’t putting the cart before the horse.  The state – any state – always wants its citizens to know the version of history which most promotes the unity and continuation of that state.  There’s an element of chicken-and-egg, (or perhaps interdependency) here – changing the ‘official’ version of history depends on first creating or controlling the necessary elements of the nascent Welsh state; but one of the factors involved in creating a full Welsh state is giving people a better understanding (or, rather, a different understanding) of their own history.  Of the two, I tend to suspect that making a different version of history the ‘official’ one will follow, rather then precede, the political change.  After all, it’s the winners who decide what history is.

Trains, boats and planes

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Many years ago, I had a boss who regularly used to say that “if we had some ham, we could have some ham and eggs if we had some eggs”.  His point, albeit repeated ad nauseam, was a valid one: people always come up with new obstacles and dependencies which prevent them getting on with the task in hand, and as soon as one dependency is resolved, there’s always another one.  And sometimes, they’re even circular.

It was the Foreign Secretary who brought this to mind this week, with his expression of a wish to have a new aeroplane to fly himself and other Brexiters around the world doing new trade deals.  Suitably painted, (presumably in union flags – but definitely not grey, apparently) this would project this undefinable thing called ‘soft power’ in ways which would make people fall over themselves to do new trade deals.  He’s got form on this as well; it’s not so long ago that he was calling for a new royal yacht with the same objective in mind. 

They told us that Brexit would be easy; that the rest of the world would be falling over themselves to do new deals with us if only we supported Brexit.  But now it seems that we need a bit more than that.  If only we had a royal yacht we’d be able to do lots of deals if only we had a shiny new aeroplane as well.  I don’t doubt that if we gave him both, he’d come up with a host of other essentials which are prerequisites for doing the deals of the century; failure will never be his fault, it will always be everyone else’s for not giving him the proper tools for the job.

Meanwhile, in a faraway universe whose existence Brexiters continually deny, those countries which were supposed to be lining up to do deals with the UK are actually lining up to do deals with the EU.  Apparently, from their clearly misguided perspectives, a market of 600 million is more attractive than a market of 60 million.  Who in their right mind would ever have thought that?  Even worse, those antipodeans don’t even realise that they are supposed to get new yachts and aeroplanes first, so that they can project their ‘soft power’.  If we would only buy Boris a plane and a boat, he’d be down under like a shot projecting a bit of this ‘soft power’ stuff, and then they’d fall into line and understand that they need to talk to their former colonialists and masters first, not those beastly European types.

Alternatively, the UK could make a positive effort to try and engage with the rest of the world on terms that everyone else understands, rather than demanding that they all fall into line with the UK.  Just a thought.

A rather different referendum

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Cameron has been rather more unequivocal about the proposed referendum in the Falkland Islands than he has been in relation to Scotland.  It is, he says, entirely up to the people of those islands to decide their future, and he will respect their choice.  It’s probably easier to be clear when everyone knows in advance what the result will be.

The referendum might allow people to think that they’ve ‘won’ something in the short term, but in the longer term it will resolve little.  Argentina is not about to simply renounce its claim, and with the inevitability of further defence cuts in the future, the UK is not going to be for ever in a position to guarantee the status of the islands.    

Sooner or later, negotiation is inevitable.  Given recent history, that's a particularly difficult thing for a Conservative Prime Minister to face up to.  But burying his head in the sand won't help.

Many nationalists have tended to support the claims of Argentina.  I suspect that to be in minor part because of a romantic attachment to the Wladfa in Patagonia, but more generally because of a strong and natural anti-colonialist stance.  There’s nothing wrong with that, as far as it goes, but the history is complex, to say the least, and there’s more to the situation than simply British colonialism.  Support for Argentina’s claim is over-simplistic.

Argentinean claims to the island owe more to Spanish colonialism than they do to any historical relationship between Argentina itself and the Islands; the Islands were long disputed between the two major colonial powers and were uninhabited before the British and the Spanish took turns at attempting to colonise them.  And the desire to possess the Islands seems to be more to do with territorialism and economic resources than with freeing colonial possessions.

The days when territory and the people living on it could simply be transferred between two countries at the whim of those countries with no heed paid to the wishes of the people themselves are long gone, thankfully; but that leaves a problem.  However unrealistic for the long term is the idea that such far away islands can sensibly remain ‘British’, there seems little doubt that that is the preferred choice of the people themselves.

And however much we might feel that the UK should be divesting itself of its remaining imperial possessions, there is as big a problem in granting independence to people who don’t seem to want it as there is in trying simply to pass ownership to another state.  Nevertheless, it seems to me that Independence, backed by some sort of international guarantees and negotiated agreements with other parties, is the only logical long term solution.

In that context, touting the inevitable result of the referendum as a clear indication of the will of the people and encouraging them to think that no change is required, as Cameron seems to be doing, is likely only to increase tension and prolong the stand-off.