British Empire Day Today.

Well, no it isn't, and that we abandoned what was 'Empire Day' and changed its date from Queen Vic's birthday (24th May) to Queen Liz's (June 11th) and its title to 'Commonwealth Day', and don't celebrate it either, tells its own story about head-in-the-sand British denial and self-flagellation (in this sense I'd be all for that ban on smacking ;-) ); there just seems to be a bit of reflection on the topic of Empire at the moment.

I think for a fair number of the British public the war in Iraq conjured up an image of the past; a feeling of colonial meddling that fuelled the absolutism of the marchers. If you didn't feel that way, either because you aren't British (the surest way!) or because you prefer to avoid such stereotypes as British Empire = Evil, that's perhaps why you were open to other arguments including the one that said that getting rid of Saddam was both a pre-emptive move and a progressive one, and that it was not all about oil.

I've always felt that we must resist the desire to characterise the Britsh Empire as evil. There are undoubtedly power relations that are unjust and the British Empire threw up quite a few of them, and if you want an example of overreach it would be a good one, but it's precisely in learning such faults that you see each situation as different and don't equate Rumsfeld with Palmerston or whatever comparisons the modern British mind is inclined to make. That way lunacy lies and they aren't called moonbats for nothing.

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The Beeb has an article today about a minor renaissance in the teaching of the British Empire in schools. They call the British Empire a 'thorny' issue; I don't think they mean 'as a rose has thorns', I think they just mean thorny. Of course one issue clouding our history has been that our cousins in the US tended to look down on the Empire (yes, there was some history behind that!), and they certainly backed its dismantlement throughout the 20th C.. This is one reason why 'high' Tories don't back the US more wholeheartedly over Iraq.

Anyway, the Beeb article has come about because there is a new museum, The British Empire and Commonwealth Museum, which has opened in Bristol. Actually it opened in 2002, so I guess the Beeb's spiel about it being acceptable to talk about Empire again is partly to deflect attention away from the fact that it's taken them so long to feature it (there are no other hits from a search of the BBC website). I stayed in Bristol last year and if I'd known about it I might have visited.

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Natalie Solent has an interesting post at Samizdata. I don't know whether I'd call it an investigation of the intervention of the state into the lifestyles of traditional peoples- the story concerns the Bushmen of the Khalahari desert in Botswana- or an attempt to make sense of BBC reporting. I can definitely relate to her experience trying to piece together the implications of various BBC reports.

It also reminded me about an old book I've got called 'Our Empire Story' which I read as a child towrds the end of the 80's (very much out of line with my contemporaries). According to this book which was given to my father to mark the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953,

'The Bushmen were the most ignorant [of three indigenous S.A. races], although it is thought they were the oldest of the three races. They were of a yellowish-brown colour, and very small. But although they were small, they were very wiry and could run with wonderful speed. They lived in caves and holes in the ground, wore no clothes, and had no possessions at all. They roamed about hunting the wild animals with which Africa swarmed, living on them and on wild plants'

I'm sure the Empire Museum won't put it quite that way- but maybe it won't call them 'wonderful' either.

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Via Natalie's own blog I found a blog that seems very cutting edge in the light of the new trend in reexamining the British Empire (I'm sure the Beeb knows what it thinks about it the Empire though.). It's called 'God Save The Queen' so it should get some hits from an odd mix of British patriots and Sex Pistols devotees.

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But I think I should end this evening's little disquisition (I just started so I'll finish) by saying whether I think the British Empire was 'bad'. What is my answer to this 'thorny' question? My answer is that I don't think there is such a thing as a 'bad' political entity, although many are if not most are 'bad' in practice. There are 'bad' situations, and the British Empire had many; but doubtless those situations were composed of many incidents, some of which were bad. If these situations were not solved or healed by the people who initiated them then that is 'bad'- and there's no doubt we did start things we haven't solved subsequently. Often though what is bad is the walking away. Like the blogger at God Save The Queen, I'm a fan of Philip Larkin, and he knew that fact well:

Homage To A Government

Next year we are to bring all the soldiers home
For lack of money, and it is all right.
Places they guarded, or kept orderly,
Must guard themselves, and keep themselves orderly.
We want the money for ourselves at home
Instead of working. And this is all right.

It's hard to say who wanted it to happen,
But now it's been decided nobody minds.
The places are a long way off, not here,
Which is all right, and from what we hear
The soldiers there only made trouble happen.
Next year we shall be easier in our minds.

Next year we shall be living in a country
That brought its soldiers home for lack of money.
The statues will be standing in the same
Tree-muffled squares, and look nearly the same.
Our children will not know it's a different country.
All we can hope to leave them now is money.

Philip Larkin- From 'High Windows' F&F 1974