‘Prejudice’ played part in graves failure
The Defence Secretary has acknowledged "prejudice played a part" in failures to properly commemorate potentially hundreds of thousands of black and Asian service personnel who died fighting for the British Empire.
Ben Wallace issued an apology and expressed "deep regret" on Thursday after an investigation found the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) did not formally remember them in the same way as white comrades.
The Cabinet minister told the Commons that the report, which found that "pervasive racism" underpinned the failures, made for "sobering reading".
"There can be no doubt prejudice played a part in some of the commission's decisions," Mr Wallace, the CWGC chairman, told MPS.
"On behalf of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission and the government, both of the time and today, I want to apologise for the failures to live up to the founding principle all those years ago and express deep regret that it has taken so long to rectify the situation."
He said there were cases where the commission "deliberately overlooked evidence" that would have allowed it to find the names of the dead.
He also said there were examples of the officials employing an "overarching imperial ideology connected to racial and religious differences" in order to "divide the dead and treat them unequally in ways that were impossible in Europe".
Mr Wallace announced a public consultation over plans to waive the visa fee for service personnel from the Commonwealth and Nepal who choose to settle in the UK in order to honour their contribution.
The CWGC also issued an apology, saying the actions were "wrong then and are wrong now", and that officials would be "acting immediately to correct them".
Originally named the Imperial War Graves Commission, it was founded in 1917 to commemorate those who died in the war with the principle that each fatality should be commemorated by name on a permanent headstone or memorial. The investigation discovered at least 116,000 predominantly African and Middle Eastern First World War casualties "were not commemorated by name or possibly not commemorated at all".