Labour asks govt to apologise for C’wealth mistakes

LONDON: As Britain prepares to host the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting next week, the opposition Labour Party has demanded that the Theresa May government apologise for the country’s historical mistakes in former colonies.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi and heads of state and government of 52 countries are due to attend the meeting against the backdrop of Brexit and the May government seeking to compensate for some of the ensuing economic losses by enhancing trade with the Commonwealth.

There have been demands in the past that Britain apologise for the Jallianwallah Bagh massacre, but it has not been forthcoming, apart from an expression of regret by former prime minister David Cameron during his visit to Amritsar in 2013.

Labour’s shadow international development secretary Emily Thornberry believes the Commonwealth now matters more than ever before, and wants Prime Minister May to use CHOGM to “send a wider signal to our Commonwealth cousins that we in the UK truly recognise that the days are gone when our union was described – in colonial terms – as the ‘British Commonwealth’.”

Writing in the political magazine The House, Thornberry mainly referred to Britain’s mistakes in the Chagos Islands and the refusal by former prime minister Margaret Thatcher to impose sanctions on apartheid South Africa in the 1980s.