“[A]cts of violence and brutality were committed that weigh still on our collective memory. The colonial period that followed also caused suffering and humiliations. I would like to express my deepest regrets for the wounds of the past, the pain of today, which is rekindled by the discrimination all too present in our society.”
It couldn’t have been easy for King Phillipe of Belgium to sign the letter containing these words. His country’s apology to the Congo, which was oppressed and exploited by the Belgian crown and government, is a necessary step in confronting the ugliness of colonialism.
Belgian rule in Africa is remembered for its’ particular brutality and inhumanity, so it may be no surprise that of all the former European empires, the Belgians have taken this leap first.
And King Phillipe’s decision should be the first of many. Every former colonial power should now cast a cold eye on its’ self and do what’s right – admit the evils of the past, accept the judgement of history and apologise.
In this, if nothing else, the United Kingdom can lead the way. The British Empire was, famously, the largest and, arguably, the most diverse of the colonial empires. Stretching from far northern Canada across the sea to Ireland, through Egypt down to South Africa, as far east as New Zealand, on every inhabited continent the British flag flew.
And it was brutal. Land was stolen, natives slaughtered en masse, innocents carried across the Atlantic into slavery, cultures oppressed and destroyed. It happened at “home”, with plantations in Ireland and clearances in the Scottish Highlands, just as it did overseas. First it was the English, later the British, but the difference meant little to the Zulus and the Indians and the Maori and countless others.
Nor is this a distant memory. Even after the defeat of Hitler and the revelations about the Holocaust, the UK behaved with appalling barbarity towards the Mau Maus in Kenya, just as they had against the Irish some thirty years before – men and women who were ostensibly citizens of their country.
When Queen Elizabeth II visited Ireland in 2011, she came within a hair’s breadth of saying sorry for what her country had done there. Tony Blair, when a newly minted prime minister in 1997, apologised unambiguously for British failings during the Great Famine, while Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, threw himself down in penance for the Amritsar Massacre in India.
There is precedent. But none of it has been enough. None of it seems to have done what must be done: change the perception of empire in the British psyche. Just this year, a survey found that 30 per cent of Britons are proud of it, while the British are more nostalgic for colonialism than other Europeans. There is also a worrying lack of knowledge about the crimes committed in the name of empire – a situation ruthlessly exploited by apologists for empire in the advancement of their own cruel politics.
The Queen shouldn’t apologise for the empire because she bears personal responsibility for it. How could she have such responsibility? She should apologise because of the immense emotional effect that would have, not only on the world but on her own people.
Elizabeth II is a symbol of Britishness, a beloved figure who will be remembered by most of her subjects as the exemplar of what a constitutional monarch ought to be. That gives her a kind of moral force no politician or prime minister or historian could ever have. She is a woman born to the British Empire and that, too, gives her authority to speak about it and to denounce it in ways no-one else can.
There will never be healing between the UK and its’ former colonies without recognition of the wrongs of the past – not piecemeal regrets here and there, but a singular, symbolic, unprecedented confrontation with the past.
And there will never be healing on these islands – this petri dish of empire – until painful truths are spoken to those who don’t want to hear them. Until mutual understanding of history is nurtured, until the national consciousness is fundamentally changed, the ancient cracks will continue to grow. The Queen can help to build a new foundation for the next stage of British, Irish and world history. That can be her legacy.
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