Great article
Matthew Syed
Sunday June 14 2020, 12.01am, The Sunday Times
Pretty much all the most vivid memories of my childhood involve my dad. Handsome and charismatic, he came to the UK from Pakistan in 1961 to study law and met my mum, a red-haired girl from Wales. Both families were against the marriage, not least because of what it meant for the children. “They will be half-caste,” Mum’s aunt exclaimed, horrified. Thankfully (for me and my siblings), my parents rejected the advice, got hitched and are still together, more than 50 years later, living in the suburban semi in Reading where they have been since 1972; the house in which I grew up.
Dad has not been in the best of health, struggling with so many conditions we stopped keeping score. He has been in and out of hospital, most recently undergoing a heart operation. I was with him at the Royal Berkshire Hospital when he surfaced after the op and I often think about that conversation. We chatted about the Test match at Lords from the day before, then I put Yes Minister, his favourite programme, on the iPad. He was still a little groggy but he laughed — full belly laughs — at the antics of Jim Hacker and Sir Humphrey.
Dad has been on my mind a lot in recent days. As issues of empire and colonialism dominate the headlines, as statues become the locus for clashes, and as popular culture gets dragged into this tug of war, it is more important than ever to have a mature discourse about British history and race. This is worth doing not merely to enhance mutual understanding but to pull the rug from under extremists on both sides who are weaponising these issues for their own political ends.
It is sometimes difficult to convey the love that many immigrants have for our nation. To describe my father as a patriot is to be guilty of understatement. That is not to say that he is unaware of the atrocities this nation committed in the age of empire. As someone who grew up in India during the Raj (he left for Pakistan after partition), he knows only too well about the deadly famines, the Amritsar massacre and the crimes of the East India Company. Colonial atrocities trip off his tongue like Waterloo, Trafalgar or Dunkirk might for an indigenous Brit. He also speaks eloquently, sometimes painfully, of the racism he suffered in his new home.
You might ask: how can you admire a nation that committed so many crimes? How can you love a country in which you endured racism? It is these paradoxes, I think, that we need to more adequately understand if we are to make sense of our past, and chart a better future. As my dad put it when I went to see him last Sunday, the first time since lockdown (and the same day that the statue of Edward Colston was dragged through Bristol): “The British sometimes abused their power. But they also did many progressive things that I doubt any other nation would have done.”
Dad’s experience of racism cast a long shadow. A man with a keen brain and attitude, he worked his socks off as a civil servant and spent free time completing diplomas to expand his mind. His problem was that he couldn’t secure promotion, something that crushed him. I recall the attrition on his face, the sense that he was butting his head against an invisible obstacle. Eventually, he studied for an MSc, secured a job in academia and worked his way up to a professorship. This was a tribute to his drive, but it also meant travelling away, staying in student digs and missing large chunks of his children’s lives.
Why didn’t these experiences destroy his love for Britain? Why didn’t he become bitter, even resentful? The answer is, I think, both subtle and profound. As an immigrant, he was all too aware of the racism and sectarianism that existed in other nations. He grew up as a Shi’ite Muslim in a majority Hindu nation. His family lived in fear of persecution even before partition. He knew of the bloody atrocities that had been perpetrated in the name of religion throughout India’s history, from the 7th century onwards, persecution that continues, in various forms, to this day. He knew of the bubbling tensions between Sunnis and Shi’ites within Islam itself. A widely read person, he knew of apartheid in South Africa, Jim Crow laws in America, tribal conflict in sub-Saharan Africa. He was also painfully aware of the corruption and nepotism that has long been integral to kin-based societies (and remains so today). Black and Asian people may have faced barriers in the UK, but the nation was less sectarian and more meritocratic than almost any other.
The point is that if history is about anything, it is about context. Isn’t this what is so conspicuously missing in today’s debate? The Atlantic slave trade is a good example, an episode that is crucial not merely for understanding our past, but our present. I agree with those who say that schools should teach how Britain dominated that sordid industry, the horrors of the middle passage — the journey across the Atlantic from west Africa to the Americas or Caribbean — the mutilation and rape of innocent people, along with the scientific racism that provided the pseudo-moral justification for crimes of naked economic self-interest. I imagine I am not alone in having watched the television series Roots as a teenager before moving on to read the rich literature chronicling the slave experience, as well as the economic logic that underpinned the triangular trade from Africa to the Americas.
But shouldn’t we also ensure that students learn about the African chiefs responsible for selling the slaves to the European powers, along with the broader history of this barbaric practice, one that was perpetrated in Egypt, Babylon, Greece, Rome, Israel, Han China and Japan, as well as by the Aztecs, Maoris and more. Canon law accepted slavery, the Prophet Muhammad practised it, as did the Ottomans, who raided the west coast of Ireland and carried off English settlers to bondage and death. So, too, did the other European powers, who wanted to use the bounty of slave trading to usurp and destroy Britain itself. Moreover, shouldn’t students learn that while slavery is now outlawed in every nation, it continues to this day, not least in Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Chad and Sudan, as well as in a more modern form in the brothels and some nail bars of capitalist nations?
The same context is needed for colonialism. I watched Sathnam Sanghera’s sobering documentary on the 1919 massacre of Jallianwala Bagh, in which British forces opened fire on a peaceful gathering, mainly Sikhs, killing hundreds. These atrocities should be a part of a shared understanding of our history, along with the exploitation vividly chronicled by Shashi Tharoor in his book Inglorious Empire. But shouldn’t this also include the thesis that many British colonies prospered relative to those of France, Spain and Portugal because of the institutions and culture gained from Britain, not least the common law?
Perhaps the crucial point is that we should resist the temptation for British history to be exploited by the political extremes, something that will exacerbate polarisation. When MPs wrote to the government last week arguing that we need more black history in our schools, I found myself nodding. All youngsters would benefit from learning about the achievements of ethnic minority Britons, along with the injustices they faced. Likewise, I think most reasonable people will empathise with those offended by statues that memorialise slavers, and that a debate on this topic was long overdue (albeit one that should be decided through democracy rather than vandalism). But most will also find it astonishing that broadcasters are tying themselves up in knots as to whether to pull such television classics as Fawlty Towers in response to a relatively small group of activists, vocal on Twitter and the streets. This isn’t debate; it is intimidation.
Above all, we should remember that morality evolves. A hundred years ago, most people thought homosexuality was sinful. Five hundred years ago, most cultures believed slavery was justifiable — St Paul positioned it as part of God’s plan and it existed in the ideal cities discussed by Plato. This implies that many of our practices today will be regarded as primitive, even repugnant, by future generations (such as, perhaps, the killing of animals for meat). Does that mean that nothing we do today can be good? Does it mean we shouldn’t even try? Or does it mean that, whatever we do, however imperfect when judged by future standards, it is nevertheless possible to take society in a progressive direction?
If the latter is the case, and I believe it is, the same must hold for historic figures and, indeed, empires. As my father put it last week: “Britain is a great nation that also committed great crimes. That is the paradox that both sides need to grasp.”
