Madam President and gentlemen, ladies of thehouse. I standing here with eight minutes in my handsin this venerable and rather magnificent institution, I was going to assure you that I belong tothe Henry VIII School of public speaking - that as Henry VIII said to his wives 'I shall notkeep you long'. But now finding myself the seventh speakerout of eight in what must already seem a rather long evening to you I rather feel like HenryVIII's the last wife. I know more or less of what expected of mebut I am not sure how to do it any differently.
Perhaps what I should do is really try andpay attention to the arguments that have advanced by the Opposition today. We had for example Sir Richard Ottaway suggesting- challenging the very idea that it could be argued that the economic situation of thecolonies was actually worsened by the experience of British colonialism. Well I stand to offer you the Indian example,Sir Richard. India share of the world economy when Britainarrived on it's shores was 23 per cent, by the time the British left it was down to below4 per cent. Why? Simply because India had been governed forthe benefit of Britain. Britain's rise for 200 years was financedby it's depredations in India. In fact Britain's industrial revolution wasactually premised upon the de-industrialisation of India. The handloom weaver's for example famed acrossthe world whose products were exported around the world, Britain came right in. There were actually these weaver's makingfine muslin as light as woven wear, it was said, and Britain came right in, smashed theirthumbs, broke their looms, imposed tariffs and duties on their cloth and products andstarted, of course, taking their raw material from India and shipping back manufacturedcloth flooding the world's markets with what became the products of the dark and satanicmills of the Victoria in England.
That meant that the weavers in India becamebeggars and India went from being a world famous exporter of finished cloth into animporter when from having 27 per cent of the world trade to less than 2 per cent. Meanwhile, colonialists like Robert Clivebrought their rotten boroughs in England on the proceeds of their loot in India whiletaking the Hindi word loot into their dictionary as well as their habits. And the British had the gall to call him Cliveof India as if he belonged to the country, when all he really did was to ensure thatmuch of the country belonged to him. By the end of 19th century, the fact is thatIndia was already Britain's biggest cash cow, the world's biggest purchaser of British goodsand exports and the source for highly paid employment for British civil servants. We literally paid for our own oppression.
And as has been pointed out, the worthy BritishVictorian families that made their money out of the slave economy, one fifth of the elitesof the wealthy class in Britain in 19th century owed their money to transporting 3 millionAfricans across the waters. And in fact in 1833 when slavery was abolishedand what happened was a compensation of 20 million pounds was paid not as reparationsto those who had lost their lives or who had suffered or been oppressed by slavery butto those who had lost their property. I was struck by the fact that your Wi-Fi passwordat this Union commemorates the name of Mr Gladstone - the great liberal hero. Well, I am very sorry his family was one ofthose who benefited from this compensation. Staying with India between 15-29 million Indiansdied of starvation in British induced famines. The most famous example was, of course, wasthe great Bengal famine during the World War II when 4 million people died because WinstonChurchill deliberately as a matter of written policy proceeded to divert essential suppliesfrom civilians in Bengal to sturdy tummies and Europeans as reserve stockpiles.
He said that the starvation of anyway underfedBengalis mattered much less than that of sturdy Greeks' - Churchill's actual quote. And when conscious stricken British officialswrote to him pointing out that people were dying because of this decision, he peevishlywrote in the margins of file, "Why hasn't Gandhi died yet?" So, all notions that the British were tryingto do their colonial enterprise out of enlightened despotism to try and bring the benefits ofcolonialism and civilisation to the benighted. Even I am sorry - Churchill's conduct in 1943is simply one example of many that gave light to this myth. As others have said on the proposition - violenceand racism were the reality of the colonial experience. And no wonder that the sun never set on theBritish empire because even god couldn't trust the English in the dark.
Let me take the World War I as a very concreteexample since the first speaker Mr. Lee suggested these couldn't be quantified. Let me quantify World War I for you. Again I am sorry from an Indian perspectiveas others have spoken abut the countries. One-sixth of all the British forces that foughtin the war were Indian - 54 000 Indians actually lost their lives in that war, 65 000 werewounded and another 4000 remained missing or in prison. Indian taxpayers had to cough up a 100 millionpounds in that time's money. India supplied 17 million rounds of ammunition,6,00,000 rifles and machine guns, 42 million garments were stitched and sent out of Indiaand 1.3 million Indian personnel served in this war. I know all this because the commemorationof the centenary has just taken place.
But not just that, India had to supply 173,000animals 370 million tonnes of supplies and in the end the total value of everything thatwas taken out of India and India by the way was suffering from recession at that timeand poverty and hunger, was in today's money 8 billion pounds.
You want quantification, it's available. World War II, it was was even worse - 2.5million Indians in uniform. I won't believe it to the point but Britain'stotal war debt of 3 billion pounds in 1945 money, 1.25 billion was owed to India andnever actually paid. Somebody mentioned Scotland, well the factis that colonialism actually cemented your union with Scotland. The Scots had actually tried to send coloniesout before 1707, they had all failed, I am sorry to say.
But, then of course, came union and Indiawas available and there you had a disproportionate employment of Scots, I am sorry but Mr Mckinseyhad to speak after me, engaged in this colonial enterprise as soldiers, as merchants, as agents,as employees and their earnings from India is what brought prosperity to Scotland, evenpulled Scotland out of poverty. Now that India is no longer there, no wonderthe bonds are loosening. Now we have heard other arguments on thisside and there has been a mention of railways. Well let me tell you first of all as my colleaguethe Jamaican High Commissioner has pointed out, the railways and roads were really builtto serve British interests and not those of the local people but I might add that manycountries have built railways and roads without having had to be colonalised in order to doso. They were designed to carry raw materialsfrom the hinterland into the ports to be shipped to Britain. And the fact is that the Indian or Jamaicanor other colonial public - their needs were incidental. Transportation - there was no attempt madeto match supply from demand from as transports, none what so ever.
Instead in fact the Indian railways were builtwith massive incentives offered by Britain to British investors, guaranteed out of Indiantaxes paid by Indians with the result that you actually had one mile of Indian railway costing twice what it cost to builtthe same mile in Canada or Australia because there was so much money being paid in extravagantreturns. Britain made all the profits, controlled thetechnology, supplied all the equipment and absolutely all these benefits came as Britishprivate enterprise at Indian public risk. That was the railways as an accomplishment. We are hearing about aid, I think it was SirRichard Ottaway mentioned British aid to India. Well let me just point out that the Britishaid to India is about 0.4 per cent of India's GDP.
The government of India actually spends moreon fertiliser subsidies which might be an appropriate metaphor for that argument. If I may point out as well that as my fellow speakers from the proposition have pointed out there have beenincidents of racial violence, of loot, of massacres, of blood shed, of transportationand in India's case even one of our last Mughal emperors. Yes, may be today's Britains are not responsiblefor some of these reparations but the same speakers have pointed with pride to theirforeign aid - you are not responsible for the people starving in Somalia but you givethem aid surely the principle of reparation for what is the wrongs that have done cannotbe denied. It's been pointed out that for the exampledehumanisation of Africans in the Caribbean, the massive psychological damage that hasbeen done, the undermining of social traditions, of the property rights, of the authority structuresof the societies - all in the interest of British colonialism and the fact remains thatmany of today's problems in these countries including the persistence and in some casesthe creation of racial, of ethnic, of religious tensions were the direct result of colonialism. So there is a moral debt that needs to bepaid.
Someone challenged reparations elsewhere. Well I am sorry Germany doesn't just givereparations to Israel, it also gives reparations to Poland perhaps some of the speakers hereare too young to remember the dramatic picture of Charles William Brunt on his knees in theWalter Gaiter in 1970. There are other examples, there is Italy'sreparations to Libya, there is Japan's to Korea even Britain has paid reparations tothe New Zealand Maoris.
So it is not as if this is something thatis unprecedented or unheard of that somehow opens some sort of nasty Pandora box. No wonder professor Louis reminded us thathe is from Texas. There is a wonderful expression in Texas thatsummarises the arguments of the opposition 'All hat and no cattle'. Now, If I can just quickly look through theother notes that I was scribbling while they were speaking, there was a reference to democracyand rule of law. Let me say with the greatest possible respect,you cannot to be rich to oppress, enslave, kill, maim, torture people for 200 years andthen celebrate the fact that they are democratic at the end of it.
We were denied democracy so we had to snatchit, seize it from you with the greatest of reluctance it was considered in India's caseafter 150 years of British rule and that too with limited franchise. If I may just point out the arguments madeby a couple of speakers. The first speaker Mr. Lee in particular concededall the evil atrocities of the colonialism but essentially suggested that reparationswon't really help, they won't help the right people, they would be use of propaganda tools,they will embolden people like Mr Mugabe.
So, it's nice how in the old days, I am sorryto say that either people of the Caribbean used to frighten their children into behavingand sleeping by saying some Francis Drake would come up after them that was the legacy,now Mugabe will be there - the new sort of Francis Drake of our time. The fact is very simply said, that we arenot talking about reparations as a tool to empower anybody, they are a tool for you toatone, for the wrongs that have been done and I am quite prepared to accept the propositionthat you can't evaluate, put a monetary sum to the kinds of horrors people have suffered. Certainly no amount of money can expeditethe loss of a loved one as somebody pointed out there. You are not going to figure out the exactamount but the principle is what matters.
The fact is that to speak blithely of sacrificeson both sides as an analogy was used here - a burglar comes into your house and sacksthe place but stubs his toe and you say that there was sacrifice on both sides that I amsorry to say is not an acceptable argument. The truth is that we are not arguing specificallythat vast some of money needs to be paid. The proposition before this house is the principleof owing reparations, not the fine points of how much is owed, to whom it should bepaid. The question is, is there a debt, does Britainowe reparations? As far as I am concerned, the ability to acknowledgeyour wrong that has been done, to simply say sorry will go a far far far longer way thansome percentage of GDP in the form of aid.
What is required it seems to me is acceptingthe principle that reparations are owed. Personally, I will be quiet happy if it wasone pound a year for the next 200 years after the last 200 years of Britain in India. Thank you very much madam President.
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