Wider still and wider

Sir Edward Elgar's Pomp and Circumstance March No 1 was composed in 1901 and a year later, at the urging of King Edward VII, lyrics were added by A C Benson to form the patriotic song, Land of Hope and Glory.

This song, still belted out by fervid 'Promenaders' attending The Last Night of the Proms - the grand finale of a series of concerts given in London's Albert Hall every summer and broadcast by the BBC - encapsulates the very quintessence of Britain's imperial might at the apogee of her Empire. Its jingoistic sentiments allegedly gave Elgar himself misgivings but the King-Emperor's command could not be ignored.

How have the mighty fallen. Unfortunately, though, Britain's 'great imperial project' - now viewed with embarrassment, if not shame, by many Brits - still has the power to inspire some of the world's less enlightened leaders with dreams of territorial aggrandisement. One only has to look at China's grip on the natural resources of Africa, Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine and destabilisation of Georgia, or Donald Trump's aspirations to annex Canada, Greenland and Panama, to see that the spirit of imperialism is resurgent in the modern world - if it ever truly went away.

The view apologists of 'the Empire on which the sun never set' like to peddle is one of a selfless exercise in civilising and modernising the world; spreading Christianity, democracy, the rule of law, schools, hospitals and railways wherever the Imperial writ ran. Furthermore, so the story goes, this was achieved at great financial sacrifice to Britain, constituting an unparalleled altruistic humanitarian project conducted without any thought of material gain. And all of this was freely given away after the Second World War when the Independence of India in 1947 ended the Indian Raj and began the process of dismantling the once-proud Empire.

Of course, nothing could be farther from the truth. Even a cursory glance at the history of single-minded cruelty, greed, colonisation, slavery, massacre and mayhem perpetrated during Britain's centuries-long acquisition of her Empire reveals the lie behind such blatantly revisionist propaganda. I defy anyone reading about the trade in Africans, their brutal treatment on Britain's Caribbean plantations, the transportation of British convicts to Australia, the deliberate starvation of Irish Catholics during the Potato Famine of 1845-52, the so-called 'Indian Mutiny' of 1858, the pernicious Indian Salt Tax or the Bengal Famine of 1943, exacerbated by Winston Churchill's antagonism, to find anything glorious or ennobling in any of it. 

And while Churchill rightly condemned Hitler's concentration camps, he ignored the fact that the British first employed them during the Boer Wars in South Africa which he covered as a war correspondent. But perhaps the two greatest stains on Britain's reputation, which have echoed through time and still resonate geopolitically today, are the botched Partition of India of 1947, in which millions died or were displaced, and her Palestine Mandate from 1920-48, which paved the way for the horrors playing themselves out now in Gaza, the West Bank and wider region. It is a long litany of shame.

It seemed almost inevitable that Australia and Canada would follow Hong Kong, and many African and Caribbean countries, in shaking off the lingering shackles of British imperialism around the globe. However, in the case of the first two at least - members of what used to be referred to as the 'old white Commonwealth' - Donald Trump has given pause for thought. Both Anthony Albanese and Mark Carney owe their recent premierships directly to a decisive vote against Trump's neo-imperialist posturings and only yesterday, King Charles opened the Canadian Parliament as Sovereign of Canada at Carney's invitation, the first time this has happened in almost seventy years.

This may not spell the sunrise of Empire but it is far from being the sunset.










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