Seumas Milne (Guardian Utd): Barbarity is the consequence of foreign rule

From the Guardian Unlimited (UK)
Dated Thursday January 27

Barbarity is the consequence of foreign rule
Brown has gone further than Blair in the attempt to rehabilitate empire
By Seumas Milne

Perhaps Gordon Brown is preparing for that day after the next general election when Tony Blair is expected to offer him the choice of the Foreign Office or the backbenches. Or maybe he just thinks that if he can't beat the Blairites, he might as well join them. But the chancellor's declaration in Africa that Britain should stop apologising for its colonial history must give an unwelcome jolt to anyone hoping that a Brown government might step back from the liberal imperialist swagger and wars of intervention that have marked Blair's leadership. Far from being some heat-induced gaffe, his latest imperial turn follows an earlier remark that we should be proud of those who built the empire, which had been all about being "open, outward-looking and international". Even Blair, who was prevailed on to cut an "I am proud of the British empire" line from a speech during the 1997 election campaign, has never gone this far.

Apparently it is meant to be part of an attempt by the chancellor to carve out a modern sense of British identity based around values of fair play, freedom and tolerance. Quite what modernity and such values have to do with the reality of empire might not be immediately obvious. But even more bizarre is the implication that Britain is forever apologising for the empire or the crimes committed under it. Nothing could be further from the truth. There have been no apologies. Official Britain put decolonisation behind it in a state of blissful amnesia, without the slightest effort to come to terms with what had taken place. Indeed, there has barely been a murmur of public reaction to Brown's extraordinary comments and what public criticism there is of the British imperial record has increasingly been drowned out by tub-thumping imperial apologias.

The rehabilitation of empire began in the early 1990s at the time of the ill-fated US intervention in Somalia, used by maverick voices on both sides of the Atlantic to float the idea of new colonies or UN trusteeships in Africa. But in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, what had seemed a wacky rightwing wheeze was taken up in Britain with increasing enthusiasm by conservative popular historians like Niall Ferguson and Andrew Roberts, as the Sun and Mail cheered them on. The call for "a new kind of imperialism" by Blair adviser (and now senior EU official) Robert Cooper brought this reactionary retro chic into the political mainstream, and Brown's endorsement of empire has now given it a powerful boost. The outraged response to South African president Thabo Mbeki's recent denunciation of Churchill and the empire for a "terrible legacy" was a measure of the imperial torch-bearers' new confidence. The empire had brought "freedom and justice", Roberts blithely informed the BBC.

Imperialism is the moral brother of slavery. Both systems are based on the presumption that some people are naturally morally superor to others and have a right to rule over them. Those who advocate imperialism should be ashamed of themselves.

The natives are much better armed these days, too, and
well aware of how to play the game.