An Empire we should be proud of

KEMI Badenoch MP says school children should be taught a “balanced” view of the British Empire: not before blimmin’ time. One of the most weasly and unpleasant trends of recent times is to behave as if the Empire was some sort of Death Star, murdering its way across the globe.

Of course there were some atrocities. No one should pretend otherwise. But in a book about Empire last year, Sathnam Sanghera actually compared our imperial past to the Nazis: Germany has come to terms with its past, he said. We have not.

Does this man have any idea what happened in Nazi Germany? Or indeed that it could be said we sacrificed the remains of our Empire in order to defeat the fascist threat?

I have yet to hear of a British leader condoning using human skin to make lampshades or herding groups of people into gas chambers on the pretence they were actually showers and then turning the switch.

But ignore such ignorance and indeed the fact Britain would not be the multi-cultural society it is today if it hadn’t had an Empire and just think about what a force it was for good. For a start, we put a stop to suttee in India. You know the one: the practice whereby a woman would throw herself on her husband’s funeral

pyre and be burned alive. It was barbaric: designed to make it look like the ultimate sacrifice for love. It was actually a way of getting rid of an economic burden, namely a woman who no longer had a man to support her and presumably was not of childbearing age. The Empire was extremely active in promoting the overthrow of slavery (the British Navy pursued slave ships) and we helped to create infrastructure in the form of roads and railways which benefit poorer countries to this day.

We also helped to spread the English language, which might irritate the French, but did create a global tongue in which people from vastly different backgrounds could communicate. We spread our stable and on the whole excellent legal system – nearly a third of the world operates a system based on English Common Law. We quite significantly improved many countries’ education systems. Banking and trade practices also improved. The idea the Empire was wholly bad is a ludicrous one, promoted by people who hate Britain and our history and it deserves to be exposed for the travesty it is.

No one pretends it was pure because world history isn’t – as we are witnessing so horrifically in Ukraine.

But our Empire was something to be proud of and to celebrate. It’s just that the Left cannot bear to accept this was yet another venture that (capitalist) Britain got right.