If anything, Britain is owed a debt for its imperial and colonial endeavours, argues Daniel Hannan in the Mail. “Our species benefited hugely from the industrial revolution, the abolition of the slave trade and the defeat of Nazism.” Here’s an excerpt.
Some senior retired mandarins, including the former Cabinet Secretary Mark Sedwill, have just produced a report, ‘The World in 2040’, which is aimed more or less explicitly at an incoming Labour Government.
It sets out their vision of how Britain should conduct itself as a “medium-sized off-shore nation”. In essence, they think we should be humbler, readier to pool our sovereignty and less hung up on our past.
They want Britain to be more engaged on climate change, and “to share rights in multinational institutions with emerging powers”. Perhaps most strikingly, they propose renaming the Foreign and Commonwealth Development Office and abandoning its headquarters, the handsome Victorian palace on King Charles Street designed by George Gilbert Scott.
“Modernising premises – perhaps with fewer colonial-era pictures on the walls – might help create a more open working culture and send a clear signal about Britain’s future?”
It is not clear whether that ungrammatical question mark is an attempt to ape the rising intonation of young people or whether the authors know, on some level, that what they are asking for is risible.
For one of this country’s greatest assets, embodied in that building’s grand staircases and marbled meeting halls, is its story. Few nations have done more, down the years, to promote human rights and the rule of law.
When we talk of countries becoming more developed, we mean (though we are too polite to put it this way) that they are becoming more like us. In other words, that they are acquiring free parliaments, independent courts, uncensored media and secure property rights.
The report’s authors write that “former colonies are making increasingly vocal demands about the need for reparations from colonialism”.
Well, perhaps so. But where do you suppose they got that idea? In no small measure, from British universities and British cultural representatives. Our self-flagellating wokery has been picked up overseas, with the striking result that there is far more resentment about British colonialism now than there was at the time or during its immediate aftermath.
Although you would not think so today, most of Britain’s colonies were brought to independence without a shot being fired in anger – something no other empire has managed. Yes, there were tragic exceptions, notably Cyprus, Kenya and India.
But, even in India, when the colonial flag was lowered for the last time in 1947, assembled representatives of the new Government sang Auld Lang Syne with tears in their eyes.
In recent years, a cartoonish version of history has been promulgated in this country, and exported around the world, in which Britain is cast as the villainous Alan Rickman of the global drama. As a result, many people in former colonies fulminate against an imagined version of British colonialism in a way that their grandparents, experiencing the real-life version, never did.
I don’t enjoy having to write these things. I have always been sceptical of the British Empire on liberal grounds. But the idea that Britain owes a debt to the places it modernised would have astonished Victorian officials, who saw colonies as an administrative headache, but who felt under pressure from missionaries, abolitionists and assorted humanitarians to assume responsibility for new tracts of land.
If the British Empire was an attempt at financial exploitation, it was a spectacularly inefficient one, for taxes in Britain were always higher than in her colonies.
If anything, Britain is owed a debt. Our species benefited hugely from the industrial revolution, the abolition of the slave trade and the defeat of Nazism.
Worth reading in full.
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It’s becoming laughable at this point. If a news article talks about a violent attack, or about assault and rape, or about sexually abusing minors and you don’t see the name or photo of the criminal responsible for it, you can already assume his immigration status, and you’d be right 90% of the time. Terrorists are screaming out why they’re doing all these attacks, but the media is deaf. But get 10 people together that are displeased with how the government runs things and the media won’t shut up about “far right” and “white supremacy”.
How delusional do you have to be to trust the media these days?
Why can’t we just accede to his desire for martyrdom?
This one’s doing the rounds, in case you didn’t see it. I honestly thought it was AI-generated, but apparently it’s legit. The contrast with the backdrop is just seriously peculiar…How many were in attendance, I wonder?
https://twitter.com/WayneGb88/status/1755302991760937255
Absolutely grotesque.
Plod excelling at F. A.
Yes, agreed. That’s how my mind works now too. A bit like if somebody dies suddenly and unexpectedly, especially decades before the end of their expected lifespan, I always assume it’s the death jab until proven otherwise.
And I note that Afghan alkali attacker in Clapham still hasn’t been found. For somebody who’s reportedly got ”significant facial injuries”, in a city that has masses of surveillance cameras, it’s surely safe to assume he’s being helped and kept hidden by somebody he knows. Well, either that or he’s walking around freely, identifying as a Muslim woman, complete with burka and niqab.
Here’s another depressing travesty of justice. Another non-accidental ‘error’ by the Home Office ( as if we were born yesterday! ) to add to the extensive list. But I’m sure he’s seen the error of his ways and is now a totally reformed character, so that’s okay then;
”A terrorist who murdered three people was allowed to stay in the country after a series of “woeful” Home Office errors.
Khairi Saadallah murdered James Furlong, 36, Joseph Ritchie-Bennett, 39, and David Wails, 49, in Forbury Gardens, Reading, on Saturday June 20, 2020.
Now, an inquest has heard how Saadallah had wrongly been granted five years’ humanitarian leave to remain by the Home Office.
The department made a series of “woeful” errors in handling the case, which included allowing him to stay in the country even though he had served five prison sentences for violent offences.
The inquest was told that the Home Office had no record of Saadallah’s arrival in Britain on a multiple-entry tourist visa with his father in March 2012 and again in September 2012, reports The Times.
The department also had no record of his failure to depart by the visa expiry date on September 28 before he claimed asylum on October 16.
Six years later, Saadallah was still in the country. This is despite exhausting all his appeals, after launching a new legal challenge to his deportation.
He argued that Libya had become unsafe in the meantime due to a new round of conflict in the country. He was eventually granted five years’ leave to remain on a humanitarian protection basis and withdrew his legal appeal.”
https://www.gbnews.com/news/reading-terrorist-khairi-saadallah-home-office-failings
I do not blame the trash that are coming here. I do however blame the trash that brought the trash here. —-Government. hand wringing parasite globalists that will facilitate our cultural destruction so they can get a little gold star on their lapel from the One World Government people at the UN and WEF
When the mistakes always go one way, maybe they’re not mistakes.
Or they only turn into mistakes when they happen to become public.
I remember that (I was in the Forbury earlier that day and the police blocked all of the area for days). But this wasn’t a run-of-the-mill islamist terror attack. The victims were all gay and I strongly suspect this was someone having seriously violent second thoughts about “experiences he had shared with them”, ie, that the motivation was rather personal than religious. That’s obviously not an excuse. But still a different kind of murderous delusion.
Self hating projection.
Jealousy would be another conjecture. Or some drug-fuelled tete-a-tete somebody really didn’t want to remember when he became sober again. As far as I can recall, nothing about the motive for the murder was ever published. This happened on a sunny day right in the center of a popular public park which suggests that it was rather a targetted than a random attack.
We’re already being set up for the Afghan chemical attacker being declared to have “mental health problems” as justification for his murderous attack.
A fellow Afghan appeared on the news pleading for the Afghan community not to assist him because he “needs medical attention and may have mental health issues.”
I knew people could sleepwalk but I never knew a whole continent could. ——-But in the last 20 years or so I have realised that Europe is SLEEPWALKING
How perfectly horrendous everything is: these obviously terrorist Muslim attacks, the cancer epidemic (as in Dr Dalgliesh’s article), the wars. All extremely depressing but only to be expected in the spiritual war we are in, essentially waged against us by the devil. We need to (re)turn to God.
I don’t really agree with this statement. But it’s certainly a lot better than many others. Defeatism always ends in defeat.
I don’t mean to sound defeatist – sorry! I resist at every opportunity: masks, lockdowns, jabs, and now in our area, Lower Traffic Neighbourhoods – a couple of other guys and I, all in our 70s or more, are standing at the very badly signed barriers warning motorists of the fines they can expect if they drive thorugh). We do what we can! And fight on!
You didn’t. That was the part of the statement I liked — it offered a positive perspective instead of the more common “We are doomed!” mongering. I’ve been raised by pretty religious parents and used to call myself a Christian during most of my lifetime. I’ve started to reconsider that due to too many bad experiences with organised (protestant) churches.
So I expect you disagreed with what I said about returning to God? I’m sorry you have had bad experiences with churches. We were blessed with ours, which although it closed initially during lockdowns did manage to stay open in one way by having ‘support groups’ where we all had lunch together, pray together, etc. And now we have a large percentage (of a very small church) who are on board with everything and still tolerate those in the church who aren’t on board (as they tolerate us in spite of disagreeing with us). I hope and pray that should there be another lockdown or other measures, we’d stay open. There’s no perfect church because there’s no perfect human being (Jesus being the only one!).