‘Labour Party will apologise if voted to power’

WILL ALSO HOLD AN INQUIRY INTO UK GOVT’S ROLE INTO OPERATION BLUESTAR

LONDON: If the opposition Labour Party wins the next general election — likely to be held later this year to resolve the Brexit imbroglio — its government will tender a formal apology for the 1919 Jallianwala Bagh massacre in Amritsar, the party said on Monday.

Emily Thornberry, shadow foreign secretary, told the party’s annual conference in Brighton that the apology will be part of several such initiatives to correct historical wrongs. It will also hold an inquiry into the UK government’s role into the 1984 Operation Bluestar.

Thornberry told party delegates: “We have committed to issue a formal apology for the first Amritsar massacre, and hold a public review into Britain’s role in the second.” The British government has so far confined itself to expressing “deep regret” for the Amritsar massacre, but the Labour joined several demands in India and the UK that a formal apology should be tendered in its anniversary year in 2019.

The UK government’s role in Operation Bluestar emerged in 2014 when a declassified note released by National Archives suggested that SAS, Britain’s elite special forces, advised former PM Indira Gandhi on flushing out Sikh extremists from the Golden Temple, three months before the operation.

The then David Cameron government ordered an inquiry, but it concluded that Britain’s involvement was ‘purely advisory’ and was ‘fundamentally different’ from that carried out by Indian security forces. Uk-based groups have since demanded an inquiry into Britain’s role amid claims that more confidential documents on the issue were subsequently held back.