British Guardian Newspaper : British Empire, Violence and Brutality, Empire still lives, Are we Brits Angels or Devils ?? - Still doing "Imperialist" things - Mysterious Boxes abandoned in an old house condemn us

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Madeleine Bunting of the British "Guardian" has fought forgetfulness and British Parties insisting that the past be left behind. What a mistake that has been ! - "Empire was good, We Brits were the Good Guys", Pleading ignorance or forgetfulness to mask Ruthless Ambition, Violence and Brutality.

British Guardian
The endgames of our empire never quite finished – just look at Bahrain
The discovery of the Mau Mau boxes reveals a lot more about the British government than just archival mismanagement
By Madeleine Bunting
Sunday April 17, 2011


The endgames of our empire never quite finished – just look at Bahrain


Some excerpts :

Second, this imperial endgame explains so much about today: for instance, the growing crisis in Bahrain, where new arrests over the weekend appear to herald a fresh bout of violent repression, and why we are not currently bombing this Gulf state with as much enthusiasm as we are Libya.

It has been one of the most successful chapters in British imperial domination; the Al Khalifa dynasty signed its first treaty with the British in 1820 and they finally "left" in 1971. The British have backed a repressive regime in a very cosy, mutually advantageous relationship of finance, military training, arms deals and royal ceremony (one of the less edifying aspects of the imperial endgame has been the use of the royal family to flatter and seduce client regimes, however unpalatable). In the last few months the Bahrain government has beaten, killed, tortured the Shia protest movement. On Saturday, the Guardian reported that Bahraini students who had protested against this repression in Britain now feared violent reprisals. The west has done little but mumble incoherently; too many interests are at stake to live up to the grand moral rhetoric now being lavished on Libya.

In Asia, Bahrain is characterised as evidence of the west's endemic hypocrisy: it promotes democracy and human rights only when it suits its self-interest. It's a sobering reminder that the day will come when we are no longer the ones who decide how our history is told.

Pleading ignorance or forgetfulness of the imperial record will hardly wash. Indeed, one of the most striking continuities of Britain's quest for power has been a studied forgetfulness. It was often said Britain acquired an empire "in a fit of absence of mind", and much the same appearance of distracted pragmatism – a sort of "we do what has to be done with no great masterplan" – applied to the imperial endgame. Very quickly, empire became an obscure subject reserved for a few historians to worry about; everyone else was instructed to "move on". Has any empire been so quickly forgotten by its imperialists as Britain's?

Forgetfulness proved a clever way to mask ruthless ambition. And, as we have seen in the last week, it's also a deft manoeuvre to conceal official complicity in brutal violence. Muddle, confusion. "Oops, dear me, we have a problem with archival management." It's been the Miss Marple model of empire, but who are we kidding?

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