Britain's persistent racism cannot simply be explained by its imperial history

It played its part, but empire does not explain all of Britain’s record of elitism, exploitation and discrimination writes David Edgerton in The Guardian


 

Enoch Powell electioneering in his Wolverhampton constituency, 1970. Photograph: Leonard Burt/Getty Images


The question of empire has become central to discussions of Britain’s national past. Some see residual imperialism as the prime element in a deficient, delusional, racist culture. Others think emphasising the dark underside of empire is an attempt to erase British history. The problem is that although long historical tradition sanctions criticism of imperialism, national history has proved far more resistant.

Talk of empire is now omnipresent, but it was previously written out of history. In the 1940s the unashamed imperialist Winston Churchill didn’t offer an imperial history of the second world war, or even a national one, but an Anglo-American, cold-war version of events in his six-volume work, The Second World War. Subsequently, what’s striking about postwar historiography is the lack of imperialist histories and the absence of condemnation for nationalist and anti-imperial forces. At most there were sotto voce claims that the British empire should have done a deal with Adolf Hitler in 1940 to keep itself alive.

More importantly, national histories ignored empire altogether. The reason is easy to find: after the war, a new nation arose that wanted to tell a national, not imperial, history of itself. This story was about the dawn of the welfare state, the Labour party and the National Health Service. This country’s ancestry lay in the industrial 19th century, but it only became a true nation in 1940, during the Battle of Britain and the blitz.

Putting the empire in its proper historical place is hugely important for understanding the sheer scale of slavery, the racialised nature of the imperial project, and how this project shaped the Conservative party into the 1950s. For much of the elite, the UK was seen as a part of something far bigger: the empire. This is why we have an Imperial War Museum and an Imperial College, and why the head of the army was called the chief of the imperial general staff. Britain’s second world war, as it was understood at the time, involved the whole British empire (and many, many allies). In 1940, no one in authority could say “Britain stood alone”. If anything was alone, it was the entire empire.

It’s also important to remember the important role anti-imperialism played for radical liberals and socialists. Radical liberals in 19th-century Britain criticised imperialism as the cause of unnecessary wars, and for sustaining a useless elite. More recently, the British centre-left has cited imperialism as the cause of war, militarism, nuclear weapons, economic decline, the failure to join the common market in the 1950s, and the failure to adapt to it since. For some historians, the demons and ghosts of empire are the spectres driving contemporary racism and Brexit, too. The UK, according to these critics, seems perpetually trapped in an Edwardian imperial mindset.

Blaming empire is a deep-seated reflex that feels reassuringly progressive. But it has also been a way to avoid confronting things that lie a little closer to home. It has long been easier, and less morally and intellectually contentious, to castigate the actions of the British state and elite in faraway colonies than confront their actions at home. Far too many ills of past and present are lazily laid at this door.

To make empire the dominant story in British history is to misunderstand the nature of Britain, its elite and its exploitative power, and its persistent racism. The racism of Oswald Mosley and Enoch Powell, for all its roots in the past, was a self-consciously post-imperial nationalist one. Imperialism reluctantly granted British Caribbean people UK citizenship. These rights were stripped away by nationalists, right down to Theresa May – this was the essence of the Windrush scandal. People voted for Brexit not because they were imperialists, but because they were nostalgic for a national Britain. They were certainly not voting for the return to free immigration from the old imperial territories. The history that seems to matter most to Brexiteers is a particular account of the second world war, one that is decidedly nationalist.

Empire has only ever been part of the British story, but it can never stand for the whole. Even at its peak, it represented only a fraction of Britain’s relations with the rest of the world, not least in war, but also in trade. From the late 19th century onwards, the Caribbean empire was tiny in terms of trade and population compared with Canada and Australia. In population numbers, India accounted for four-fifths of the entire empire, but trade with India was significantly less important than trade with the dominions. And the history of migration to and from the UK stretches wider than the empire, too – with people flowing into and out of the country to the US and from Europe. Britain’s global history, in other words, is not the same as its imperial history.

If we want to look for great silences in our history, empire is hardly the only one. There has been a glaring hole where the history of British capitalism and the British capitalist class should be; in its place are overwrought stories of decline and of imperial finance. The neglect of the British working class is particularly stunning. Giants of (anti-imperialist) postwar history such as EP Thompson and Eric Hobsbawm made this their field, and inspired countless others in a historical endeavour that peaked in the 1970s, but has since decayed even more rapidly than the industrial working class. Around 1900, Britain’s industrial proletariat was one of the three largest in the world, comparable to those of the US and Germany. The British working class alone accounted for roughly 30% of the population of the entire empire outside India, and a far higher proportion of those producing for capitalist markets.

There are many aspects of British history – many dark sides, too – other than imperialism. We should not admit the framing of the debate about history as a question of a dark imperial history sullying a bright national story. To do so would be to ignore a more difficult truth: all our national history needs rethinking.

Shamima Begum has a right to British citizenship, whether you like it or not

Sajid Javid makes Britain look weak by refusing to take back a groomed teenager – nationality doesn’t depend on whim writes Gary Younge in The Guardian

 

When I was 16 I stopped off in Holland, during a camping holiday with a friend. We bought as much marijuana as we could and smoked it all in an afternoon. Sat behind a housing estate in the border town of Nijmegen, we giggled, rambled and lay around until the local police came. They took us back to the campsite (we found the fact that they spoke Dutch hilarious), where we were asked for our passports and train tickets. They already had our number: a couple of idiots out of their minds and out of their depth. They told us to get on the next train in the direction of the port. We’d stopped laughing by then. We went home.

Adolescents do stupid things. Often they know they are stupid at the time. But what’s stupid is often also exhilarating, particularly when the consequences are either not known or have not even been fully considered.

Shamima Begum, from Bethnal Green in London’s East End, did something extraordinarily stupid and extremely dangerous when she was 15. She, and two girl friends from school, told their parents they were going out for the day, and went to Turkey and joined Islamic State instead. Shamima lived in Raqqa, married a Dutch convert, had two children, both of whom died, and got pregnant with a third. She left Raqqa when it fell, saw her husband surrender to Syrian fighters and now sits in a refugee camp with her newborn son. Still only 19, Begum says she wants to come home to Britain. The home secretary, Sajid Javid, has revoked her citizenship. He has said she cannot come home because she is no longer British and that she should instead go to Bangladesh, where her parents are from. She has never been there; Bangladesh says it won’t take her.

A couple of weeks earlier Javid successfully deported several people to a country many did not know, according to David Lammy MP. A plane to Jamaica chartered by the Home Office left with 29 people on it. Of the more than 50 originally scheduled to go, 13 came to Britain as children, 11 had indefinite leave to remain and one had a British passport. Between them they would leave 36 children behind. Javid claims they had all committed serious crimes. One, who came to Britain when he was 14, had been convicted for dangerous driving. Among several to receive a last-minute reprieve was an ex-soldier; another had applied to remain under the Windrush scheme.

While the issue of Begum’s return, the Windrush scandal and the plight of these Jamaican deportees appear quite different, they in fact centre on the same two questions: what does it mean to be a citizen of this country? And how easily can the rights of citizenship be withheld? Evidently, the weight of the response and the burden of proof fall more heavily on those who are black and brown, whether we were born here or not.

Equal access to justice, regardless of race, has always been an issue when it comes to British citizens. But the right of British citizens to actually exist here, regardless of their race, has never felt more contingent. For those of us whose parents hail from elsewhere, our right to be here seems to depend on anything from what we think to whether and how we transgress. We must prove good character not to get here but to stay here.

Javid’s claim that allowing Begum to return might compromise public safety is not completely baseless. In August an 18-year-old woman was convicted of plotting to bomb the British Museum, along with her mum, sister and a friend.

Begum does not seem particularly remorseful. She said she knew what Isis did, including beheadings, and wasn’t troubled by it. “From what I heard, Islamically that is all allowed, so I was OK with it.” 

In another interview she said: “When I saw my first severed head in a bin it didn’t faze me at all. It was from a captured fighter seized on the battlefield, an enemy of Islam.” It appears she doesn’t want to return because she now thinks joining Isis was wrong, but because Isis has, for now, been defeated and she wants her baby to survive. But the home secretary’s case is hardly watertight either. Begum has expressed regret. She said: “I was hoping Britain would understand I made a mistake, a very big mistake, because I was young and naive.” Of Isis-controlled Raqqa, she has remarked: “There was so much oppression and corruption that I don’t think they deserved victory.” We don’t know if she fought, but given that she had three children in four years it’s reasonable to guess she didn’t. She now says all she wants is a “quiet life with her baby”.

The risks are as much a test for us as they are for her. The notion that Britain could not handle her, could not show her a better future, could not try her, convict her, reorient her or support her, is worse than pathetic. Far from making Javid look strong, it manages to make Britain look both callous and weak. A government that thinks it can take on the world with Brexit can’t take back a bereaved teenaged mother with fundamentalist delusions.

Moreover, the risk does not obviate two crucial facts in this case. First and foremost, she is a citizen. That means something. Or at least it should. Citizenship is not about character. It is not about risk or regret. It is about rights and responsibilities. That’s as true for Stephen Lawrence’s killers as it is for Begum or the victims of the ongoing Windrush scandal. It applies to everyone who qualifies or it does not apply. It is not a status to be trifled with in cavalier fashion for the momentary advance of a political career. Whatever the prime minister feels about “citizens of the world”, the state should not be actively in the business of creating citizens of nowhere. A home secretary should know this, not least because last year his own department produced a report that presaged almost precisely Begum’s situation. Imagining the government response if a British woman flees Isis-held territory with a newborn baby, the Home Office report suggests “a police investigation”, assistance “reintegrating into society”, “sessions with a specially trained deradicalisation mentor” and “appropriate measures” to “safeguard the child’s welfare”. Nowhere does it mention stripping her of her citizenship.

Second, when Begum went to Syria she was a child. She must take personal responsibility for what she did. But our society understands that we have collective responsibility for children – it’s why we have child services and youth courts. We, as a society, should in some way be held accountable for how a 15-year-old girl went from watching Keeping Up With the Kardashians to joining a terrorist cult in a war zone. Begum was 15 when she did a reprehensible thing; Javid is 49. What’s his excuse?

The Tories keep getting blamed for the terrible events they caused. To be honest, it’s out of order

Mark Steel in The Independent

Amber Rudd says she finds the cases of families who were threatened with deportation, and harangued for documents they never had, “heartbreaking”. So she deserves respect for having the strength to carry on, while she suffers from a broken heart like that.

She also denies there was ever a “target” for removing immigrants, so we can only imagine how poignant a moment it must have been, when she was told “home secretary, you know when your government boasted before the 2015 (actually 2010 election) election it would ‘cut net migration to tens of thousands’? And an Inspection Report stated there was a ‘target of removing 12,000 immigrants?’ It turns out some people in the immigration office interpreted that as implying there was some sort of target.”
She must have cried and cried and howled, sniffing, “I know it sounds silly, but I can’t help feeling that makes this government partly responsible.”

Hopefully she’ll have had plenty of friends consoling her, saying reassuringly: “Oh home secretary, you mustn’t blame yourself. All of us set targets for removing people, regardless of the fact we’ve been told by an array of institutions this will cause appalling hardship to innocent people. You’re a good person. Stay strong, Amber, stay strong.”

So she’s proved her leadership qualities and overcome the heartbreak she feels so deeply, to explain: “We are deeply bountifully humongously sorry, but I would remind the country that three years ago, we thought it was popular to scream about chucking out piles of immigrants, so we can hardly be blamed if that has turned out not to be true after all. Now if you’ll forgive me, I must take some more antidepressants. I’m heartbroken you see.”

Theresa May must be even more heartbroken, because she was home secretary at the time. Some people suggest this means she had some knowledge of the targets, but that would be unfair, as she was busy sending out vans with signs on the side saying “illegal immigrants, go home”, so she can’t have had time to write down lots of numbers as well.

But now they love Caribbean people so it’s worked out fine in the end. Soon Amber Rudd will feature on a dancehall track with Shaggy, about the Windrush families, that starts “Dem tell I sad tale dat send chill trew I blood, Me weep so many tear dey call I Heartbreak Rudd.”

And the prime minister will end her apology by saying “I would now like to repeat my message for my Caribbean bredren. Listen up rude boy, me send out one love for me have pain in I ‘eart. But blame be upon dem raasclat immigration official, for me is vexed upon why dey carry out act what I tell dem do, Selasie I.”

She must feel even worse than Amber Rudd, because last year she made speeches such as “Brexit must mean control of the number of people who come to Britain. And that is what we will deliver.”

It would be ridiculous to imagine this was designed to create the impression she was in a rush to cut immigration, which was why Conservative Party spokespeople sometimes mentioned cutting immigration as few as 46 times in a three-minute interview.

Sometimes, if a minister was asked for a statement about the standards of maths in schools, or whether England would ever win the World Cup, they wouldn’t even mention their pledge to be tough on immigration until the ninth word.

So it’s a puzzle how anyone in the immigration office got the impression they were required to be a little bit zealous in the area of immigration.

It’s possible a pattern could emerge here, in which Conservatives start to feel sorry about other matters that they get unfairly blamed for just because they caused them.

For example, they’re dreadfully shocked about the lack of health and safety regulations in housing, even though David Cameron can’t possibly have predicted that his pledge to create a “bonfire of regulations” might lead to a reduction of regulations.

Iain Duncan-Smith will declare he’s appalled by stories of disabled people having their benefits stopped after being declared “fit for work”, when he can’t possibly have known this was going on, which is why he’s “truly awfully shocked and immeasurably saddened and exploding with volcanic sadness”.

Then they’ll announce they are devastated by the revelation that cutting benefits for the poorest people while asking the wealthiest people for less in tax made the poor poorer and the rich richer.

But they will add that cutting the top rate of tax was in no way designed to lower the top rate of tax, and they certainly don’t ever remember setting a target to cut the top rate of tax. It was probably down to some heartless tax official, and he’ll be in right trouble when they catch him.

But much of the Labour Party must be on Valium as well. Because throughout the years of the coalition, they went along with many of these measures. They were so concerned to appear tough on immigration that they had special mugs made, saying “I’m voting Labour, for controls on immigration.”

If they’d had the money, they would probably have made other household goods with the same message, such as toilet rolls and Ventolin inhalers. The Labour leaders from that time must be heartbroken.

So they should make one joint statement together, to cover all their heartbreak, that goes: “We’re really sorry, we had no idea our policy of being proudly, relentlessly foul would lead to any foulness.

“When one lot screamed, ‘Vote for us because we’re really foul’ and the other lot shouted, ‘That’s not fair, we’re quite capable of being disgustingly foul’, we didn’t know we’d misjudged the situation and foulness wouldn’t always be popular. So we’re all really really sorry, even though it’s not in any way in the slightest tiddly bit our fault.”

Windrush saga exposes mixed feelings about immigrants like me

Abdulrazak Gurnah in The FT

In 1968, soon after arriving in England from Zanzibar as an 18-year-old student, I was talking with a friend while a radio played in the background. At some point we stopped talking and listened to a man speaking with tremulous passion about the dangers people like me represented for the future of Britain. 

It was Enoch Powell and we were listening to a clip of his “Rivers of Blood” speech. I knew little about British politics and did not know who Powell was. But in the days and weeks that followed, I heard him quoted at me by fellow students and bus conductors, and saw television footage of trade union marches in his support. 

I have lived in Britain for most of the past 50 years and have watched, and participated in, the largely successful struggle to prevent Powell’s lurid prophecies about race war from coming true. But it would be foolish to imagine that all is set fair for the future of Britain and its migrant communities, because every few weeks we are provided with another example of the obstinate survival of antipathy and disregard. The treatment of the children of the “Windrush generation” who moved to the UK from the Caribbean several decades ago is the latest such episode. 

The injustice is so staggering that Theresa May, the prime minister, and Amber Rudd, the home secretary, have been forced to apologise. But the consequences for Caribbean migrants who grew up in Britain of the “hostile environment” for illegal immigrants could hardly have been news to them. 

In 2013, at the instigation of the Home Office, vans emblazoned with the message “Go home or face arrest” drove around parts of London with large immigrant populations. It may not have been intended that the clampdown on illegal immigration would snare such embarrassing prey as children of migrants who spent a lifetime working in the UK; but political expediency required that this small complication be ignored until it went away. That it has not is a result of the work of welfare, legal and political activists to make sure that the abuses against migrants and strangers are kept in plain sight. 

Before the second world war, there was no law to restrict entry or residence in Britain for people who lived in her colonial territories. That is what it meant to be a global empire, and all the millions who were subjects of the British crown were free to come if they wished. There was no need to worry about controlling numbers because, if they became a problem, they were sent back, as happened after the race riots in various British port cities in 1919. In a rush of imperial hubris, the British Nationality Act was passed in 1948 to formalise the right of British colonial subjects to enter and live in the UK. 

If the 1948 law was a desperate recruitment poster for cheap labour disguised as imperial largesse, the purpose of the successively meaner pieces of immigration legislation that began in 1962 was to slow and ultimately stop the arrival of dark-skinned former subjects of the British crown. It continued Britain’s centuries-long prevarication between sanctuary and xenophobia. 

Why has the Windrush saga been so embarrassing for the government? The answer has to do with Britain’s fraught relationship with the Caribbean and a history of racial terror instigated and supervised for centuries by British money and power. Caribbean institutions are still largely modelled on British ones and, until recent disillusioning decades, the Caribbean sense of identity was linked with a connection to the British empire. It is remarkable that this should be so given the brutalities of the plantation economies that prevailed in the Caribbean territories. This is an ambivalence that Caribbean intellectuals have reflected on for more than a century. The most perfunctory browse through the writing of the region will provide examples of its intricate legacy. 

What is now referred to as the Windrush generation was far from homogeneous. It included peasant workers, nurses, teachers, writers and artists. They came in response to the recruitment drive and because they were ambitious for a better life. They are in Britain for the same reasons that all migrants are here. 

In time they brought their children, and those children grew up, were educated and worked all their lives in this country. As any stranger knows, particularly if he or she is black in Europe, it is vital to keep your paperwork in order. What recent events have shown is that not all the children of the Windrush generation did because they were confident that they were at home and had no need to prove their right to be here. It seems they reckoned without the ruthless politics of contemporary Britain, in which xenophobia and hatred do not repel, but instead win votes. 

The Windrush saga has made headlines this week, but it has been going on for months — the bullying letters, the threatening sanctions against employers, the loss of employment, the withdrawal of benefits and healthcare, the detention and expulsion. Bullying in pursuit of bringing down the immigration numbers is never just or humane. But it is wrong to deny these people what are evidently their moral and legal rights. Their contribution to British society and culture has been immense. 

When it became clear the law had caught the wrong people, someone should have called a halt instead of pressing on with the bullying. As Sentina Bristol, the mother of Dexter, a 57-year-old man born a British subject in Grenada who died after several months of going through this process, observed of the government in a recent interview: “They are intelligent people, they are people of power. We expect better from them.”