Recognition of historical injustice should not be a political afterthought

“Britain caused many of the world’s problems.” These are not the words of a “radicalised” individual “indoctrinated” by an extremist narrative; they are the words of the British Prime Minister, David Cameron.

This rare admission of guilt over the violent hangover from Britain’s colonial past was made in 2011 during a trip to Pakistan when he was asked how Britain could help to end the row over Kashmir. Cameron insisted that it was not his place to intervene in the dispute, saying: “I don’t want to try to insert Britain in some leading role where, as with so many of the world’s problems, we are responsible for the issue in the first place.”

If only the prime minister had taken his own advice in the Middle East, he could have reversed the misguided policies of his predecessor Tony Blair and prevented the region from falling off a precipice. Unfortunately, political admission of guilt over historical injustice is just an afterthought; it’s rarely made in any meaningful way that could change the course of history and reverse the trend towards oppression and injustice.

This kind of collective contrition over the past is even fused into a distinct mode of cultural discourse that rarely leaves the public space. Just last month Britain’s piratical colonial history was again put under the spotlight during an Oxford Union debate on the motion, “This house believes Britain owes reparations to her former colonies”. Shashi Tharoor, an Indian politician and writer arguing for the motion, won the largest applause by a considerable margin. Even the Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, was sufficiently stirred by the arguments put forward to call for reparations from Britain for its colonial rule.

Tharoor’s central argument was that the famed British industrial revolution and economic progress was founded on the depredation and deindustrialisation of India, which at the height of colonial rule stretched from modern-day Pakistan to Myanmar (Burma). British ruthlessness was epitomised by the tragic man-made famine that cost the lives of 15-29 million Indians. The worst hit area was Bengal, in what is now Bangladesh, where four million died after Winston Churchill deliberately ordered the diversion of food from starving Indian civilians to well-supplied British soldiers and European stockpiles.

The racist mindset that enabled centuries of exploitation and dehumanisation was presented powerfully in a two part documentary, “Britain’s forgotten slave owners”. David Olusoga’s very moving film, which was shown on the BBC recently, revealed how the profits from slavery are ingrained within the fabric of British culture. For two hundred years slavery was the engine of the British economy. Ending this barbaric practice during the 1830s was made possible through the largest compensation pay-out in British history, more relatively-speaking than the bank bailout in 2008, with 46,000 slave owners receiving the equivalent of 40 per cent of national expenditure in 1834. This money was then used to amass personal fortunes, including that of an ancestor of David Cameron. The moral crusade against slavery would not have succeeded without a crucial compromise because the economic privilege underwritten by the mass enslavement of people was being defended and promoted by powerful members of the establishment. The slaves were only freed when campaigners for their emancipation abandoned, for a moment, the core of the argument against slavery; that debasing humans as property was a grave crime and sin.

Collective British memory has been conditioned to recognise the cruelty of its colonial past but rarely do we see a similarly sensitive approach in the way that we think of British involvement in the Middle East. We are not comfortable about admitting that, somehow, the racist views underpinning “the white man’s burden” as well as the economic gains made possible through access to free or cheap labour and economic exploitation — upon which rested colonialism and slavery — found new ways to subjugate and dominate in order to preserve the global power structure that was built on the back of slavery and empire.

As David Cameron’s frank admission of responsibility for the impact of the tentacles of the British Empire shows, such apologies and shows of guilt are usually just afterthoughts; they are made when they have little or no impact on British foreign policy. What would be truly remarkable is an admission of responsibility that changes policy, and if politicians and the establishment are behind the moral curve on this, civil society ought to take the lead and make the case for why Britain needs to recognise its complicity in the ongoing political meltdown across the Middle East.

Progressive members of parliament like Jeremy Corbyn are rare when they push this agenda forward by calling for Tony Blair to stand trial for his disastrous policy in Iraq which opened a Pandora’s Box in the region. That is but one example. From Palestine through Iraq to the rise of Daesh/ISIS, Britain has been instrumental in creating the template for disaster. From planting the seeds of future conflict in the Sykes-Picot carve-up of the region after the First World War, the entire Middle East is in fact a swamp of failed British policy. The invasion of Iraq in 2003 was the latest in a catalogue of failed interventions, which includes cheerleading for some of the most brutal regimes in recent history.

The pursuit of British and American self interest in the Middle East is founded on unworthy victims, four million to be precise, which is the number of Muslims who have been killed by Western military action since 1990, according to a landmark study by the Washington DC-based Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR).

Britain’s single biggest failure, which has scarred the region for nearly a century, is unquestionably the ongoing plight of the Palestinians. The case for an admission of guilt over Palestine are just as compelling, if not more so, than that for British contrition over Kashmir. Palestine was more developed and advanced than the neighbouring Arab countries and the Palestinians were more than ready and willing to take on the burden of self-determination and representative government. While its neighbours became nation states, Palestine was placed under a British Mandate and the path towards conflict and destruction. It was a broken land when the British abandoned it to the nascent state of Israel in 1948 and has never been allowed to recover. The two decades of British rule reflected some of the worst of colonial attitudes, with total disregard for the rights of the people and their aspirations for independence, in contradiction of the terms of the mandate.

If Britain had done the right thing and established a democratic state in Palestine in the twenties based on the population ratio at the time, political control would have been vested in the Arab population. Naturally, that would have defeated the objective of the 1917 Balfour Declaration and undermined its implementation due to the conflict between the basic principles of democracy and the concept of a “Jewish National Home”, which in any case morphed into a “Jewish state”, in Palestine. This is why in 1922 Britain’s Colonial Secretary Winston Churchill rebuffed the Palestinian Arab Delegation’s demand for self-government based on majority rule. As Churchill noted, “The creation at this stage of a national Government would preclude the fulfilment of the pledge made by the British Government to the Jewish people,” which came at the expense of the vast majority of the inhabitants of Palestine, who weren’t defined by what they were, but by what there weren’t: “non-Jewish”.

Such a reversal of history and the natural evolution of a culture and its people could not have been achieved without violence and repression as was clearly evident throughout the period of the British Mandate. Increasing Palestinian unrest was met with repression and brutality by the colonial authorities. During the 1936-1939 “Arab revolt” alone, more than 10 per cent of the Palestinian population was either killed, imprisoned or exiled.

We can get a sense of the level of violence and repression that was used by comparing it to other areas under British control. In the last moments of its rule, Britain had 100,000 troops in Palestine, an enormous garrison for a country no bigger than Wales and with a population of only two million people. Compare that to India under British rule, a country immeasurably larger with a population of three hundred million; Britain’s imperial rule was carried out with the backing of just 20,000 British soldiers. Consider also that up to 35 per cent of British expenditure in Palestine was on security, a euphemism for the suppression of Arab majority aspirations in the interests of a tiny Jewish minority.

Even before the end of mandate rule in May 1948, 400,000 Palestinians had been expelled, directly or indirectly, from their land. Two hundred and twenty-five villages and many towns had more or less been ethnically cleansed of their indigenous population. Most of the villages were reduced to rubble by the proto-Israeli forces, in order to prevent the Palestinians from ever returning; they never have.

We should not wait a hundred years to recognise the role that Britain is playing in the undermining of democracy in the Middle East, especially in Palestine, and then offer apologies as an afterthought. History demonstrates clearly that Britain has not been a detached observer of the unfolding wars, conflicts and repressive regimes that have shackled religion, society and culture in the region. Far better to recognise the mistakes now and promote policies rooted in the same moral and ethical values that triggered British contrition over Kashmir, imperialism and slavery.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.