“Britain controls today the destinies of some 350,000,000 alien people, unable as yet to govern themselves, and easy victims to rapine and injustice, unless a strong arm guards them. She is giving them a rule that has its faults, no doubt, but such, I would make bold to affirm, as no conquering state ever gave to a dependent state.”

Professor George M. Wrong, 1909

“ . . . Colonialism has led to racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance, and . . . Africans and people of African descent and indigenous peoples were victims of colonialism and continue to be victims of its consequences.”

World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance, 2001

To be young, middle class and interested in politics in Britain today invariably means to be opposed to ‘the war’, to be suspicious of the military-industrial-zionist-neocon complex, to hate globalisation and to love the work of, sigh, Banksy, (he’s like, just so political, you know?). Okay you still get the odd Tory Boy and the occasional baby faced neo-socialist (Ed Miliband?) but most of the time to be interested in politics means to hate ‘the system’. You don’t see very many gatherings celebrating how wonderful it is to live in a liberal democracy with a thriving mixed economy do you? Although on second thoughts maybe you do, it’s called shopping; but no-one really holds rallies calling for the creation of a shopper’s paradise. Perhaps this knee-jerk countercultuarlism has its origins in the social revolutions of the late 1960s. Sure the counterculture movement helped end segregation in the Deep South and had a hand in ending the Vietnam War and, granted, it also produced some awesome bands, although personally I prefer The Supremes to Jefferson Airplane. Yet when it ran out of legitimate targets, the counterculture movement start to turn its ire towards any aspect of the dominant Western culture, good or bad. Even worse it started to praise Third World despots such as Mao, Castro and Pol Pot. When one sees anti-globalisation riots or pro-Hezbollah marches today, one understands that the reflex position of many young political radicals is the subconscious mantra ‘Third World Good; First World Bad’.

Now this brings me, by way of a rather convoluted introduction, to the British Empire. For me, white guilt over the Empire is one of the main reasons for the actions of brain dead liberals today; we were the bad guys the Third World were the good guys. Yet to dismiss the Empire as universally bad is simplistic and naïve, and to blame the Empire for the Third World’s problems is to ignore the issues and challenges that we face today.

Let’s start with the bad stuff. Yes, I know, imperialism is morally wrong. I do not in any way advocate imperialism; I’ll leave that to the Communists and the Islamists. Yes the Tasmanian aborigines died from war and disease and yes Britain was a major player in the slave trade. It is also worth remembering that it was African nations that caught and sold the slaves, Britain was the first power to permanently ban slavery, the Royal Navy forced other countries to end the slave trade and Britain set up free states for emancipated slaves. Furthermore slavery has been endemic across the world from prehistoric times to the present day; Saudi Arabia officially abolished slavery in 1962 and slavery is a long way from being eradicated forever.

The Roman Empire also enslaved hundreds of millions but it is not a cause of shame for Italians, partly because it also brought civilisation, science and wealth to millions. One does not look at the Roman Empire as a moral issue but rather as a part of the human historical narrative. I do not wish to glorify the British Empire, I merely want to look at it from a wider historical perspective. For me Britain became Great, not when it gained its empire, but rather when it gave it away.

The moral reasoning against imperialism is that it denies freedom and liberty, yet conversely the British Empire may have been one of the great catalysts for the spread of democracy and liberty across the world. The United States of America, the greatest force for freedom and democracy in world history, is a clone of the British state. They were the first, but not the last colonies to form a state based on the principles of the magna carta, common law, parliamentary democracy and the ideas of the enlightenment. From empire the world’s greatest democracy was born. Many of the world’s other great liberal democracies such as Canada, Austrailia and New Zealand, are also clones of Great Brtain. Their societies were based on British values and were built by British settlers. Of the other territories that made up the empire few, if any, had originally been democratic nation states. India, for example had been divided by the Moghal Empire and warring Hindu Kingdoms; ironically it was the British who were the first to create a united India. Indian peasants lived as serfs before the British came, yet after three hundred years of British rule India emerged as the world’s biggest democracy. In contrast uncolonised China remains a ruthless dictatorship. Many of the other commonwealth states have also emerged as liberal democracies with legal systems based on English common law.

It is a myth that the Empire made its subjects poorer; Hong Kong is richer than Britain, Zimbabwe has a lower standard of living than it did under British rule and the gap between western and African economies is now some four or five times larger than it was during the days of empire. Britain invented and enforced free trade which, if enforced today, could make the whole world rich. The economic historian Gregory Clark has demonstrated that the colonies were free to gain as much from the empire as Britain did. The British founded great trading cities such as Calcutta, Bombay, Hong Kong, Alexandria, Shanghai and Singapore. Any entrepreneur from anywhere in the world could have set up in these cities and taken advantage of the cheap labour, British technology, property rights, capital and access to the biggest market in the world. In short the colonies were free to undercut British workers if they had chosen the path of industrialisation they are only now embarking upon.

There are many other lasting benefits bequeathed to the world by the British Empire. The British remain the biggest investors in infrastructure in India and British built railways remain the country’s most efficient means of transport. Across Africa and even South America British built railways, locomotives and boats continue to provide an efficient means of transport. The Royal Navy nullified the dangers of piracy and opened the oceans up to trade and commerce; modern banking and capitalism soon followed in its wake. The British tried to reform indigenous societies; untouchables in India are still treated as sub-human, how has their life been improved by independence? British education and values were adopted by many colonies; Ghandi was a British educated lawyer, modern India itself was built by British trained civil servants.

Not only did the Britain spread the idea of democracy and liberty across the globe but it stood with its empire to defeat fascism and militarism in Europe and Asia during World War Two. Millions of West Indians, Africans, Irish and Indians volunteered to join the fight against the fascists. Many professed an explicit desire to fight for the motherland, which is strange considering they supposed to have been toiling under the yoke of British oppression. To paraphrase the irrascible imperialist Winston Churchill World War Two was the finest hour for the empire and its subjects. They stood together to defeat fascism in the name of liberty and in doing so they won the freedom to become citizens of their own nation states.

In 1956 Dean Acheson remarked “Britain has lost an empire and not yet found a role”, yet to me Britain’s post-imperial years have been amongst the proudest in its long history. The empire launched scores of mainly democratic nation states and Britain has continued to champion freedom and democracy since 1945. In the last 60 years Britain has used its military power to liberate the people of Greece, Malaysia, Brunei, Oman, South Korea, Cyprus, the Falkland Islands, Kuwait, Bosnia, Sierra Leone, East Timor, Kosovo, Afghanistan and, yes, Iraq. Britain was also instrumental in bringing about the downfall of the Communist Empire and Apartheid South Africa. Since 1945 Britain has produced some of the world’s best music, films, literature and television. It invented the jet engine, the computer, the internet and the ipod, it pioneered cloning, stem cell research and discovered DNA. In short it is a world leader in culture, science and technoloy.

I don’t want to glorify empire but merely to recognise it as a historical fact. The world was divided into empires between 10,000 BC and 1989 AD. The injustices of empire should never be forgotten but we should also recognise that we see its benefits all around us in the present day. The age of empires has not disappeared for ever and Britain and the U.S. lead the fight against the neo-imperialists in the deserts of Helmand and Iraq. Dean Acheson was wrong, Britain has found a role; it is a leader of the free world.