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.

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.

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.

Imperial fantasy is a weakness, not a strength

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The Institute of Economic Affairs isn’t exactly famous for being a politically-neutral organisation. It has an agenda which it vigorously promotes, based around the idea that ‘free’ markets are the answer to just about everything. Having an agenda isn’t a good enough reason to reject everything they say, but it’s a pretty good reason for reading what they say with a sceptical eye. They recently produced some research on the economics of the Empire, and it makes for interesting reading. It claims, on my reading of it, that the wealth of the UK is not to any significant degree based on its imperial past nor on the slavery which was a part of that past, but would, in general terms, have accumulated anyway, based largely on innovation and enterprise. It’s a thesis which is not universally accepted, to put it mildly. Other interpretations and analyses are available.

It's a conclusion which some on the ‘right’ of the Tory Party, such as Kemi Badenoch, have seized on, though, to validate their own interpretation of the pros and cons of Britain’s imperial past. But even if, as she wishes, we were to accept the contentious conclusion that the UK benefited only slightly if at all, even the report itself notes that that doesn’t mean that it was a good thing from the point of view of the colonised. As the author puts it, “The implication is that colonialism and slavery were not zero-sum games that benefited the colonisers at the expense of the colonised. It was more like a negative-sum game, which hurt the latter without really benefiting the former”. A shortish blog isn’t the place to develop a detailed analysis of the economic arguments; I’m more interested in the political implications for the way we remember our own history and what it means for identity. As the author himself says, “The reader will have noticed that we have avoided promoting any specific narrative about Britain’s (or any other country’s) history or expressing a view of how that history should be collectively remembered today. A cost–benefit analysis cannot tell us any of that and is not supposed to”. That hasn’t prevented Badenoch from trying to use the report to do precisely that.

For those who want to cling to the traditional British view of history, it is important to their political and historical identity that the Empire should be remembered for the ‘good things’ which it did, rather than the bad ones. For sure, the argument goes, the Empire might have destroyed communities, stolen resources, wiped out languages and cultures, and enslaved populations, but look, we gave them Christianity, democracy and the rule of law, the English language and Shakespeare. And cricket. Those who claim that taking an alternative view involves ‘rewriting history’ are themselves rewriting history because, even if it were to be accepted that those things were indeed advantages, they were never the motivation for the initial colonisation. It’s very much a post hoc rationalisation of a mindset which was based on a desire for conquest and exploitation. Even if the IEA were to be proved right about imperialism not being very cost-effective, that would merely show that the imperialists failed to achieve their aims, not that they were somehow acting charitably.

It's also a very arrogant and ethnocentric view of the world. It assumes that the colonised could not and would not have developed their own systems of law and democracy without having them imposed by the colonisers, and it assumes that the culture, values and beliefs of the colonisers were and are superior to those of the colonised. However, presenting imperialism as having been, on the whole, a good thing is absolutely key to the identity and belief systems of Anglo-British nationalists, and they feel threatened by any alternative view. Their increasingly desperate lashing out at alternative views is a sign of weakness, not strength.

Peas in a pod?

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“Tone deaf” doesn’t begin to describe the message which Boris Johnson sent to the Edinburgh International Culture Summit yesterday. It was apparently intended, primarily, as a defence of Ukraine and a condemnation of Putin and Russia, and it started promisingly enough, with the words, “Throughout history, we’ve seen what happens when aggressors try to oppress and to eliminate culture. We saw it with the Nazis in the Second World War, the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, the Taliban in Afghanistan”. There’s little there with which one could disagree, but the problem is with what it misses out. The list of miscreants over the last century or so is a reasonable starting point, but using the phrase “throughout history” surely invites, or even requires, a rather more comprehensive assessment of cultural genocide. And to a lot of people, in many countries of the world, there will be one obvious, glaring omission from the list of rogues. There is one state which, in its various previous guises, has invaded more of the world than anyone else, ever, and has committed extensive cultural genocide in the process. Systematic looting of cultural treasures and imposition of its own language was the norm for the empire in question, and still colours the attitudes of those (such as, er, Boris Johnson) who want to insist that English should be the first language of everyone in the UK. From the point of view of an English exceptionalist like the PM, there is of course, a huge difference. Whilst replacement of Ukrainian by Russian is an act of cultural vandalism, in the case of the British Empire, the English language was a ‘gift’ for which those who previously used other languages should be grateful, and not an imposition at all.

There was a second sentence in his address which also jumped out at me, when he referred to Putin’s “vile assertion that Ukraine is somehow not a real country”. It rang a very recent bell, because just a few days ago, Lord Frost made the 'vile assertion' that Wales and Scotland aren’t nations either. One can argue about the semantics of ‘country’ vs ‘nation’, but the message is essentially the same and the clear equivalence is that, in both cases, people are being told that they have no right to a different culture or a separate existence. Perhaps Johnson is judging people against a very special scale of vileness, where Putin scores highly because, well, because he’s not English, whereas Frost scores nul points precisely because he is. That’s just the way exceptionalism works – ‘we’ are always right and ‘they’ are always wrong. If you start from the utter certainty that your own language and culture are inherently superior to all others, alternative views are never going to count for much. Putin and Johnson aren’t really so different at all.

Seizing the opportunity?

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One of the consequences of the Russian invasion of Ukraine has been increasing speculation about the possible break-up of the Russian Federation. From the Washington Post, through Bloomberg, to the i, columnists have been analysing the situation and wondering aloud whether the war could provide the spur needed for some of the 22 autonomous republics currently part of the Federation to seize the opportunity to break free. It comes against a background of increasing centralisation as Moscow accretes power from the far-flung parts of its empire, and increasing Russification, as the centre tries to impose a common identity and language on a very disparate group of nationalities, and the theory is that weakening a large colonial power by breaking it up into smaller states would generally be a good thing for the world at large. But only in the case of Russia, of course. Brave patriots seeking to escape the clutch of Russia are an entirely different thing from the dangerous separatists seeking to break up other established states, such as the ‘most successful political union in history’, as unionists like to refer to the UK, without a shred of hard evidence to back up the claim. It’s worth noting in passing that some of Russia’s possessions have, in one form or another, been part of ‘Russia’ since before the UK came into existence – historical longevity is clearly not the factor which accounts for the difference in perception.

Attempted Russification is nothing new – and nor is the concept unfamiliar to us here in Wales. It’s happening in the occupied parts of Ukraine right now (and for balance, it’s worth noting that the Ukrainian government is also attempting a process of Ukrainification as well). The remaining residents are issued with Russian passports, school curriculums are being aligned with those in Russia, and the rouble replaces the Ukrainian currency. It’s something that many states have attempted to do at many times in history, usually under autocratic rulers (who tend to be rather more effective, due to their innate ruthlessness, in enforcing the rules, using as much violence as is required). And despite all the lessons of history, such rulers always tend to believe that they can succeed in rapidly eliminating any sense of national feeling which does not align with the ‘official’ state view.

History has almost invariably proved them wrong. In Spain under Franco, the Catalan and Basque nationalities and languages were viciously suppressed for a generation; it didn’t work. Whilst the personality – and ruthlessness – of Marshall Tito kept the different nationalities of the former Yugoslavia together for decades, the country rapidly imploded after his death. Closer to home, despite the Welsh language being effectively outlawed for all official purposes for centuries, a fifth of the population stubbornly persist in using it, and we now have a government committed to expanding its use. Eliminating national identity by force takes consistent effort over a long period. Conversely, gaining independence and elevating the status of the Irish language seems to have been something of a disaster for the language. Perhaps the lesson is that, in many circumstances, the oppression itself provokes a reaction, meaning that oppression may not be the best means of achieving the unity of identity that the state demands of its citizens.

It’s a lesson that it’s unreasonable to expect Putin to learn any time soon. Dictators are far too easily convinced that they can simply will things to be as they wish and impose them if necessary; by the time they realise that they’ve got it wrong, it’s already too late. A similar rule applies to world kings – imposing their will on their distant possessions in the teeth of local opposition is usually counter-productive in the end, but their misplaced sense of self-belief makes it impossible for them to realise that fact until it's too late.

Will Russia fall apart as a result of the war in Ukraine? In truth, nobody knows. It wouldn’t be the first time a movement for national independence saw the imperial power’s difficulty as their own opportunity. On the other hand – as we also know only too well – killing an empire and all the exceptionalism which goes with it is no short term project either.

Madness and self-destruction

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It was sometime during the 1970s that the late Harri Webb regaled a group of us with a tale of visiting a local newsagent to buy a felt pen. The newsagent told him that they didn’t have any Japanese-made pens, only “cheap British copies”. “And that,” said Harri, “was the day that I knew the British Empire was finished”. In more practical political terms, the Empire died slowly over a few decades between the end of the second world war and the early 1980s, with the bulk of former possessions disappearing during the 1960s and 70s. The attitudes underpinning imperialism have, though, taken a lot longer to die, but as the end approaches the death throes are moving from pathos to farce.

Clinging on to strange symbols such as medals of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire with its five different grades of membership of an institution which to all intents and purposes ceased to exist half a century ago could simply be chalked down as quaint, if a little eccentric. Building useless boats as part of a pretension to be the same global colossus which conquered so much of the world a few centuries ago is rather pathetic, although those same delusions of grandeur can turn positively dangerous when the world king decides to start threatening China with an aircraft-free aircraft carrier, or to deliberately provoke Russia by sailing a warship into disputed waters, complete with pre-installed BBC reporter to report on events.

But it’s hard to avoid the word farce when we turn to some of the more recent attempts to shore up the remaining parts of the English Empire loser to home. Plastering union flags on everything in sight, encouraging school children to sing songs extolling the virtues of a model of Britain which has rightly been consigned to history, and campaigning for the government to provide a portrait of Mrs Windsor to hang in every home – these are more signs of desperation than a serious attempt to encourage unity. It’s as if they seriously believe that the imposition of visible symbols will awaken some sort of innate Britishness, one much more monocultural and deferential, which lurks somewhere within us all and simply needs to be drawn out. Backing it up with repeated attempts to brush away any idea that there can be more than one nation in these islands looks more likely to have the opposite effect to that intended, accentuating division rather than unity by trying to impose one single view of what it means to be British.

The old saying is that “those whom the gods would destroy they first make mad”, and madness is an appropriate description of current government behaviour. But perhaps the earliest formulation of the same sentiment, by Sophocles (an ancient Greek who will certainly be familiar to Johnson), runs more like "evil appears as good in the minds of those whom god leads to destruction". Genuinely believing that what they are doing is a very good idea rather than a very bad one is certainly a possible explanation for their bizarre approach. It’s still a form of madness, though – and it doesn’t get them out of being led to their own destruction either.

Gunboats and free trade

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The reference in yesterday’s post to the uncertain position of the PM in relation to the proposed trade agreement with Australia may or may not have been slightly superseded by Johnson’s robust defence of free trade in the House of Commons later in the day. Whilst his words have been widely interpreted as leaning towards favouring a deal which would undermine the UK’s farming industry, with particularly deleterious effects in Wales and Scotland, the position he took yesterday in order to support an attempted put-down of Ian Blackford will not necessarily be the same as the position he takes when discussing the matter with others. He’ll probably need to write two articles, one for and the other against, before working out which one gives the most benefit to himself.

Part of what he said in defence of free trade, though, shows a very selective understanding of history. Whilst “This is a country that grew successful and prosperous on free trade on exporting around the world” is basically true, it isn’t the whole truth. It conveniently overlooks at least two very important facts: firstly that the UK was at the time at the forefront of the Industrial revolution and a world-leader in manufactured goods, and secondly that other countries were forced to accept ‘free’ trade with the UK at the point of a gun. The second, in particular, doesn’t quite fit the image of romantic imperialists who prefer to believe that the UK became rich because it was special and unique. But obliging others to accept British imports by despatching gunboats didn’t necessarily look quite so attractive to those who were being bullied into taking those goods. To take India as an example, the country’s economy went from being the world’s richest country with 27% of global GDP in 1700 to one of the poorest with 3% of global GDP by 1947, and the country was deindustrialized to suit the needs of an imperial power which wanted to import only raw materials and to sell its manufactured goods. ‘Free trade’, that romantic vision of the Brexiteers, did indeed make Britain rich, but it impoverished others in the process. It was as much about wealth transfer as wealth creation.

Things have changed since then, of course, but Johnson’s words suggest that, at the back of their minds, the Brexiteers are deluded enough to believe that negotiating between equal partners is somehow going to produce the same results as imposing free trade with gunboats did, whilst they also fail to recognise that the UK is no longer the manufacturing colossus which it was in the past. They seem to see things only from their own, hopelessly outdated, point of view, and not understand that the main attraction of a trade deal from an Australian point of view is not importing manufactured goods that the UK no longer produces and which can be more easily obtained from China anyway, but opening UK markets to food imports in a way likely to destroy large swathes of British farming. In their rush for a completely unattainable repeat of past historical glory, the government are blinding themselves to the downsides. Forty years of inexperience of negotiating trade deals doesn’t help either.

Still, when they come to sign on the dotted line, I’m sure that there will be a suitable number of large union flags in the background. That will put those pesky Welsh and Scottish independentistas in their place. They probably believe that it will.

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.