Horrible histories — knowing what tore us apart can help knit us back together
This month, amid the usual but even more heightened Brexit mayhem, we celebrated Commonwealth Day. This is a day to feel joyous about the global network of 53 countries under the leadership of the Queen. This year’s theme was connectedness — something we certainly need more of today. And something the Centre for Public Impact has examined closely in our work on legitimacy.
It’s somewhat reassuring that while Brexit breaks the UK apart from our neighbours across the English Channel, older networks and traditions such as the Commonwealth, still try to hold us together. In many ways, they always did— through music, dance, travel, sport, immigration and trade. We can certainly smile and celebrate that.
But can we keep celebrating and restating a commitment to connectedness and inclusiveness — and all the fanfare that comes with it — without facing up to the reality of our less connected past? Without challenging the mindsets that the old ways of government persist in hanging on to that means information about the truth of our past is so hard to come by and discuss?
The official Commonwealth website said the day would be “celebrated with a broad range of activities, including faith and civic gatherings, debates, school assemblies, flag raising ceremonies, street parties, cultural events and a multicultural, multi-faith service at Westminster Abbey.
“The theme for 2019 is ‘A Connected Commonwealth’, which offers opportunities for the people, governments and institutions of this richly diverse family of nations to connect and work together at many levels through far-reaching and deep-rooted networks of friendship and goodwill.
“This year also marks the 70th anniversary of the formation of the Commonwealth as it is configured today, with old ties and new links enabling co-operation towards social, political and economic development, which is both inclusive and sustainable.”
I can’t deny that I love the warm intentions of this day, or that I smile seeing the diversity of people and cultures brought together. A few things, though, are really bothering me.
The day is about celebrations. Yet not a word from my children’s local school about the day itself. Nothing about what the Commonwealth is, why it came about, and the horrors that came before it, not on that day, not on any day. This week I explained to my children (aged 7 and 11) how Britain, like many western world countries, has a shameful history of slavery and colonisation. This left them a bit silent, poor things. Nothing in their education has talked of the British Empire and its break-up as anything other than a story of greatness and pride.
Last week also marked International Women’s Day (again, no word from the school about this), and I was invited to speak to Warwick University students about workplace harmony and succeeding as a millennial today. I stressed the need for cultural respect in the workplace, for an appreciation of how we got here and the journeys we and our ancestors have made to be able to work together across the divides, despite the years of pain and injustice which many of us still feel. Why then, asked a bright young female student, is the curriculum so ‘white?’ A bold question I couldn’t answer — other than to say, ‘because it is written mainly by white people, but let’s change that.’ As if doing so were that easy. What I really felt would have been too much for what was intended as a positive event about young people’s futures. So I am saying it here now.
It’s hard to bite my tongue on issues like educating young and old about our true history, such as that of the Windrush scandal — whereby people from Caribbean islands of the Commonwealth who were invited to the UK after the Second World War were recently told they had no right to live here, with some being sent “home”. Many have even been left without access to the homes or funds they were depending on here.
I feel my children are of an age to appreciate their own grandmother, and many like her, who came to the UK in the 1950s and 1960s, alone and very much in a minority. She came to serve our NHS as a State Registered Nurse and worked for over 30 years. As a citizen of the Commonwealth country of Mauritius, she was invited to work in the UK. She always taught respect for Queen and country, but even she didn’t speak much of the colonial history of her island, such was her desire to fit in and appreciate the opportunity she had.
It‘s always humbling to see how much some Commonwealth countries adore the Royal Family and Commonwealth Day. Even more amazing and wonderful, given the painful past that lives on for them.
Strained friendships
Those ‘friendships’ the Commonwealth speaks of, and that I admire, are feeling very strained at the moment for the second country I call home, Mauritius. This idyllic island is trapped in a territorial war with the UK over the rightful ownership of the Chagos Islands. This small group of islands, far from our shores and minds, has been at the centre of a dispute that originated in 1965, when Britain gave Mauritius its independence. It came with one big condition — that the UK would keep control of the Chagos Islands. They are now home to a military base used by the UK and the US, and the agreement was that this would remain the case until further notice.
Mauritius has repeatedly asserted that the UK’s claim to the islands is a violation of United Nations resolutions banning the dismemberment of colonial territories before independence.
Last month, the International Court of Justice handed down a clear verdict (albeit advisory) that the detachment of the Chagos Archipelago from Mauritius in 1965 had not been based on a “free and genuine expression of the people concerned”. The judge said that the UK has an obligation to bring to an end its administration of the Chagos Archipelago as rapidly as possible. We shall see.
When the handover happened, a group of indigenous people were displaced and have since been in limbo, waiting for the day when they can return to their paradise. The stories and tears of those who were forced to leave are painful to hear and what’s even sadder is how little coverage there has been here in the UK.
These stories of an island population and the Windrush generation may seem insignificant, but they are a microcosm of the many injustices people suffer as a result of being at the behest of a far more powerful nation and government. It’s something policymakers struggle to understand, manage or resolve.
The indigenous young people I’ve met in Canada asked me recently why people across the Commonwealth and even in their own country are unaware of their own history, culture and traditions. They know little of the pain indigenous Canadians feel about the fight to reclaim or remain in control over their lands, which the settlers laid claim to. I spoke about this just last month in Ottawa to an audience of policymakers who were keen to understand how they can strengthen the strained relationships of today that stem from our recent past. They’re not alone in facing that challenge.
I love that the Commonwealth can knit together countries with a unity we can celebrate, to help countries prosper and learn from one another. But it is meaningless and empty to me and lacks any legitimacy if we can’t talk, throughout the year, of the hardships such political hierarchies have caused and are still causing. Or about the impact that keeping power over not just countries but information is really having.
I feel we need to appreciate this sense of truth and persistent pain in our schools and in the workplace, where many feel this ignorance adds to their feeling of being invisible.
When history is airbrushed out, it comes back to bite us — and facing it, as Truth and Reconciliation is trying to do in Canada, is an important first step.
The Mauritian warmth would never ruin Commonwealth Day — even though the Chagos islands dispute has been a source of tension for many years.
So there they were outside Westminster Abbey, serenading the Royals and our prime minister. They danced in the cold temperatures of London in their beautiful floral two-piece dresses and trouser suits, which we stare at in wonder but, sadly, not with wisdom. Their dance a reminder of the days of being sold as slaves but where music lived on in the soul.
Let’s educate for the wisdom needed in governments and in society for us all to live and work together so that we can design and influence policies that work in this diverse and beautiful world. Let’s not feel old power has a right over truth anymore. This is how we can strengthen our countries’ ties, truly embrace diversity in the workplace and secure that all-important legitimacy.
