overdue
The chronic cover-up of torture of the Mau Mau shows how far Britain
is from acquiring a true post-imperial maturity
David Anderson
Tuesday July 26 2011
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jul/25/kenya-empire-mau-mau-britain
History teaches us that empire can bring out the worst in people. In
Britain we applaud the "civilising mission" of our imperial past, but
are less happy to acknowledge the violence and brutality that so often
girded our imperial endeavour. It is time we were more honest.
As a nation Brits nurture memories of empire that are deceptively
cosy, swathed in a warm, sepia-tinted glow of paternalistic
benevolence. The British empire, so the story goes, brought progress
to a primitive and savage world. Education, hospitals
and improved health, steamships, railways, and the telegraph ?
these were the tools of empire, brought to colonised peoples by the
gift of commerce and good British government.
We take pride in this imperial heritage, pointing with scorn at the
lesser achievements of other European powers - the French, Italians,
Germans, Belgians and Portuguese - whose empires we variously view as
haplessly mismanaged, malignly exploitative and brutally coercive.
Britain's empire was better than all the others, historians such as
Niall Ferguson [http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/feb/20/niall-
ferguson-interview-civilization" title="], Andrew Roberts [http://
www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/jul/26/andrew-roberts-storm-of-war"
title="] and Lawrence James [http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/sep/
12/aristocrats-lawrence-james-charles-spencer" title="] have assured
us, so why should we worry?
The reasons to worry became all too apparent last week, in a path-
breaking judgment of the high court [http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/
2011/jul/21/mau-mau-torture-kenyans-compensation" title="]: Mr Justice
McCombe ruled that the British government has a case to answer in
relation to charges of systematic torture and abuse of detainees
during Kenya's Mau Mau rebellion of the 1950s.
We have long known that Kenya was a dirty war and that bad things
happened. But the extent of abuse now being revealed is truly
disturbing. Documents brought to light in connection with the Mau Mau
court hearing catalogue more than 400 separate charges of abuse,
spanning every element of the British security and administrative
services in Kenya at the time.
And the matters raised are far from trivial. Of the four elderly
Kenyan plaintiffs who brought this case, two were allegedly the
victims of castration, one claims to have been savagely beaten and
left for dead on a mortuary slab, and another was allegedly the victim
of repeated sexual abuse ? all acts conducted during British
"interrogation" of suspects against whom no crime had been proved.
In Kenya there has long been indignation at British cant in refusing
to acknowledge that such things happened. The sense that Britain has
tried to deny Kenyans their own history by removing documents and
concealing them in the bowels of the Foreign Office for more than 50
years has only deepened these resentments. All of this will be aired
in the high court early next year, when the Kenya case will be heard
in full. It is going to be very uncomfortable for those in the Foreign
Office who have tried to prevent this case coming to court - and for
many in the British political establishment who are still in denial
about the realities of our imperial past.
And the problem goes far beyond Kenya. In a further revelation, it has
been admitted in the House of Lords that the Foreign Office
"irregularly" holds 9,500 files from 36 other former British colonies
[http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/mobile/uk-12983289" title="]. Do these hold
further horrors yet to be revealed of colonial misdeeds? The discovery
of this vast tranche of documents has prompted historians to suggest
that a major reappraisal of the end of Britain's empire will be
required once these materials have been digested ? a "hidden history"
if ever there were one.
Squaring up to the seamier side of our empire is long overdue.
However benevolent empires aim to be, they are invariably
built on political, economic and military domination. Empires are by
their very nature exploitative, the authority of imperial rule often
established and sustained through violence and coercion. In all
of this, Britain's empire was no different than any other.
To the imperialist at the time, such matters were functional and may
even have seemed immaterial; to the colonised, they marked out the
experiences that mattered - the history of oppression, of occupation
and of subjugation that shaped their national consciousness and,
often, their political identity.
It is time for a reappraisal of our imperial past ? for a new kind of
reckoning that takes account of the power relations that must
inevitably determine the history of any empire. This should not be
just a balance sheet of progress, but rather a candid review of the
history, warts and all.
And this is a history that we in Britain should all be more familiar
with than we are. We need to begin in our schools. Though the history
of the British empire is now available to students at GCSE and
advanced levels, it is seldom taught. As history has shrunk in our
schools, the diet of courses offered has come to resemble fast food ?
familiar topics, hastily thrown together from familiar ingredients:
comfort eating. Can it be right that our schoolchildren are far more
likely to learn about the Americans in Vietnam, or the Russian
revolution, than they are about the British empire?
At university level, too, we can do much better than we do. The
history of British imperialism ought to be part of the teaching of
mainstream British history, part of an explanation of how Britain has
become the society that it is in the 21st century. British students
need to know how we lost an empire, just as they need to understand
the place of former colonies in the modern world. We have much yet to
do to rise to this challenge.
We will achieve this more readily if we can move toward an honest
public debate on difficult imperial questions, such as the torture and
abuse of detainees in Kenya. When revelations about these atrocities
were first published in 2005, the reaction of many in the British
establishment was to dissemble and deny. The bitter truth about
torture was disguised behind arguments about death rates and the
relative levels of abuse, as if such things mattered. At least Mr
Justice McCombe has brought the denial to an end.
But can we now move forward to the more honest debate we need? Probing
the imperial past can be an uncomfortable experience, but some of
Europe's other great imperialists of the modern world have done so
with greater honesty and humility than have the British. The German
government has formally apologised for the enslavement and genocide of
the Herero peoples [http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2004/aug/16/
germany.andrewmeldrum" title="] of Namibia in the early part of the
20th century, and even the French have managed to swallow some
national pride over the Atlantic slave trade ? though not yet over
Algeria.
We live in an age where the notions of atonement and historical
reconciliation have become increasingly important in relations between
countries. Sometimes the reasons for an apology can be transparently
political, as David Cameron learned to his cost in Pakistan. Such
flagrant opportunism aside, the British have so far remained
implacably opposed to an honest assessment of their empire. It is time
to face up to it.
We do not need to apologise to everyone for everything. But we do need
to be willing to admit our imperial wrongs, and in the process to
admit that others may have rights that we have infringed. To do so
would mark a post-imperial maturity, a coming of age. It is time to
lay the ghosts of empire to rest.
guardian.co.uk Copyright (c) Guardian News and Media Limited. 2011
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