Afua Hirsch rightly says that we must "assess the true legacy of empire" and "unpick the idea of glorious Britannia", but that is easier said than done, when successive governments have made it a deliberate policy to manipulate our history (Britain doesn`t just glorify its violent past: it gets high on it, 30/05/18). They have participated not only in the destruction of evidence, which might show, for example, that the ending of the empire was not as peaceful as has been claimed, and that atrocities are not exclusive to our enemies, but also in the secreting away, from the prying eyes of historians, 1.2m files of similar evidence in Hanslope Park.
Until these files are released by a government courageous enough to face up to the uncomfortable facts they inevitably will reveal, and until school text-books are revised accordingly, Hirsch`s hopes for "detoxifying Britishness" will remain unfulfilled. Feeding children lies about their country`s past, as has happened in Britain, has given many a "superiority complex" which verges on outright racism. Teaching about Churchill`s "responsibility for the number of deaths in the Bengal famine" would be a good start, but an appreciation of the fact that wars are never won single-handedly might be a better one!
No comments:
Post a Comment