IF THE EMPIRE WAS SO TERRIBLE, WHY DO WE STILL HAVE THE COMMONWEALTH?

A GROUP of snowflake academics at Oxford, with support from elsewhere, have excoriated one of their number for suggesting the long-gone British Empire was not all bad. In their wittering complaint they would have it the empire was one vast concentration camp.

As it happens I have travelled widely throughout today’s Commonwealth, formerly the empire. Just about everywhere I met goodwill towards the British and especially among the elderly who recall colonial days. There was no such feeling towards the French, Germans or Portuguese in their ex-possessions.

The fact is the empire was not run by ambassadors and ministers but by a sprawling chain of lowly district commissioners who administered their county-sized territories as best they could. They retired at the end of empire, back to Britain most of them, to settle in brick boxes to eke out their lives on tiny pensions.

Why so poor? They did not steal or embezzle, to the bewilderment of the local people. An elderly Ghanaian told me: “We have not had an incorrupt judge since you left. Here you do not argue for a verdict, you buy one. If you cannot, you lose.” In Nigeria a chief told me: “If we had to be colonised at all, thank God it was you lot.”

This prevailed from Guyana in the West across to Singapore in the East and especially in Africa where no office-holder has retired on state pensions since we left. After public “service” they all have personal fortunes. Running down this country seems to be the new conceit as our institutions swerve to the trendy Left. Considering the staggering salaries university vice-chancellors pay themselves they are in no place to lecture on integrity. The empire made its mistakes and had its bad eggs but it left behind the UK-friendly Commonwealth, which is absolutely unique in world history.

The anti-British voices are very young, very privileged or pseudointellectual like the Oxford dons.