The Blood Never Dried: A People's History of the British Empire

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John Darwin, Unfinished Empire: The Global Expansion of Britain (London: Allen Lane, 2012), xi, 6–7.

By the 1860s the British were exporting 60,000 chests of opium to China annually, rising to 100,000 chests in the 1880s. The British opium trade with China did not finally come to an end until 1917. Matthew Hughes, “ Introduction: British Ways of Counter-insurgency,” Small Wars and Insurgencies 23, no. 4–5 (2012): 583. As far as the British were concerned, the military bases in the Canal Zone were of vital importance. The scale of the commitment was enormous. The network of bases occupied 750 square miles between the Nile Delta and the west bank of the Canal.

In Scotland the task of separating political from national rights has begun with voting rights being granted to all legal residents (including asylum seekers) – setting a new bar as the UK regresses and pulls political rights from EU citizens. Another officer wrote of “Hundreds of sepoys dead or dying, many on fire . . .a suffocating, burning, smouldering mass.” He saw 64 prisoners lined up and ‘bayoneted.” As well as the tens of thousands interned without trial (the best estimate is that over 160,000 people were interned during the course of the emergency), even more were imprisoned for emergency offences. Between 1952 and 1958 over 34,000 women were imprisoned for Mau Mau offences, and the number of men imprisoned was probably ten times that figure. ‘At least one in four Kikuyu adult males was imprisoned or detained by the British colonial administration.’

Revolutionary Kenyans used their employment positions – as cleaners, waiters, servants, desk clerks – to gather sensitive information on the colonial regime. Through coded language (which is collated in a table by Durrani) this was then disseminated around the country. This is a tactic that has been used around the world by anti-imperialists, including, as the author points out, in revolutionary Cuba and Vietnam. Durrani advises us there is much to be explored in these connections, but falls short of doing it himself. While this is a text intended more to be a reference guide for the student or teacher of this historical period, one can’t help but wish that Durrani would have further drawn out these threads rather than teasing us with suggestions. John Newsinger (born 21 May 1948) is a British historian and academic, who is an emeritus professor of history at Bath Spa University. In fact, there are a very large number of international codified agreements which have widespread global support, but the USA is an outlier in failing to ratify many of these (which would have force of law in the USA if it did). You can look these up on the UN’s OHCHR interactive dashboard. A miserable total of 5 treaties for the USA (Tunisia, for example, has ratified 15). Look at the details, and see how much of an oddball/rogue state the USA actually is. It is noteworthy to look at nationally-specified exceptions and whether optional clauses were accepted or not. It is through a codified constitution or international treaties that environmental protections are best laid out, and we may be moving towards that.

Winston Churchill led the way: ‘It is alarming and also nauseating to see Mr Ghandi, a seditious Middle Temple lawyer, now posing as a fakir of a type well known in the East, striding half-naked up the steps of the regal palace . . . to parley on equal terms with the representative of the King Emperor.’ This combination of racism and ignorance was to characterise Churchill’s attitude to India and Indians. The American political system, however reluctantly and belatedly, called Nixon to account. The British political system has signally failed with regard to Blair. The invasion of Iraq began on March 2003. Its catastrophic consequences for the Middle East have been well documented. By the end of December 1945 the British began their withdrawal, handing Saigon and the South over to the French. They had fought a short but bloody campaign. By the middle of January 1946 the British had suffered 40 men killed while they claimed to have killed some 600 Viet Minh. The actual numbers were considerably higher. David Anderson, “Mau Mau in the High Court and the ‘Lost’ British Empire Archives: Colonial Conspiracy or Bureaucratic Bungle?,” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 39, no. 5 (2011): 710. See also in the same issue of the journal: Caroline Elkins, “Alchemy of Evidence: Mau Mau, the British Empire and the High Court of Justice,” and Huw Bennett, “Soldiers in the Courtroom: The British Army’s Part in the Kenya Emergency Under the Legal Spotlight.” When presented with details of the crisis in Bengal, Churchill commented on ‘Indians breeding like rabbits.’ Churchill’s attitude was quite explicitly racist. He told Amery, ‘I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion.’ Amery, on one occasion said, ‘I didn’t see much difference between his outlook and Hitler’s.’ And it was not just to Amery that Churchill made his feelings clear. He told his private secretary that ‘the Hindus were a foul race . . . and he wished Bert Harris could send some of his surplus bombers to destroy them.’

We seek to be a space for debate on the left, a resource for movements for social justice, and a home for open-minded anti-capitalists. The EU model represents a rejig of traditional notions of separation of powers – a political tradition that is old an ancient, from the Spartan Dyarchy to the Roman Republic (and are prevalent in other political cultures around the world). On 27 October 1933 a demonstration against Jewish settlers was dispersed by police gunfire that left 15 protestors dead. A general strike was called that was accompanied by demostrations and protests that left another ten people dead. China: General strikes were called in Canton and Hong Kong. When demonstrators approached the Shameen concession area of Canton they were machined gunned by British troops, with over 50 people killed.

Malaysia: In Malaya the British had cooperated with the Malayan Communist Party and with the Communist-led resistance movement during the Japanese occupation. One important question that has to be considered is why it was that the Labour government set out to smash the left in Malaya.

In the UK in A Changing Europe Brexit Tory former minister Owen Paterson describes the Brexit trap the UK is caught in perfectly: “It was a decisive sovereign moment when Parliament, which was elected as a sovereign body, said it would give sovereign power, for a day, to the people to decide this massive question.”Insane mothers began to eat their young who died of famine before them; and still fleets of ships were sailing with every tide, carrying Irish cattle and corn to England.’