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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Historical British torture and misconduct in Kenya
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no prophet's flag is set so...
Proceed to see sea
# 15560
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Posted
In Canada and in some other countries, there is a push to deal with past wrongdoings by settlers toward aboriginal peoples, with already billions in settlements and more lawsuits and inquiries underway. It's not exactly parallel because we're still in Canada and the British have left Kenya, but I wondered if this is a thing in the UK.
I came across this today: The British in Kenya, Mau Mau, torture and reparations. quote:
Only by detaining nearly the entire Kikuyu population of 1.5 million people and physically and psychologically atomising its men, women, and children could colonial authority be restored and the civilising mission reinstated.
quote:
...found thousands of records relevant to the case: more evidence about the nature and extent of detainee abuse, more details of what officials knew about it, new material about the brutal “dilution technique” used to break hardcore detainees.
Is this news in the UK? Do you support your government making reparations and taking responsibility for torture? Has anyone from government apologised yet?
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ExclamationMark
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# 14715
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Posted
Well we could start with the UK Government's oppression of the poor within the UK.
Slavery was abolished within the Empire in the 1830's but was pretty de rigeur in England until 1947 and remains in isolated pockets still
[ 24. August 2016, 06:51: Message edited by: ExclamationMark ]
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mdijon
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# 8520
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by ExclamationMark:
Well we could start with the UK Government's oppression of the poor within the UK.
Why does that compete with the torture and misconduct committed in Kenya?
(By the way I feel some of the criticism of Elkin's book is justified - it is a little over the top in places and the faux-naivety is a bit much, but the bottom line is that the book exposes history that was previously swept under the carpet and most of the abuses recorded are likely accurate.)
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Posts: 12277 | From: UK | Registered: Sep 2004
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rolyn
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# 16840
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Posted
The CofE is our official mouthpiece for apologies.
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Change is the only certainty of existence
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mdijon
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# 8520
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Posted
Not in this occasion it wasn't.
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Posts: 12277 | From: UK | Registered: Sep 2004
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Curiosity killed ...
Ship's Mug
# 11770
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Posted
This story was in the news some years ago - when the case reached the Royal Courts of Justice in 2011 and each time decisions were made, including the reparations. There were several broadcast interviews with people who were in Kenya at the time, discussing what happened and the Mau Mau rebellion. There were even Radio 4 plays about the Mau Mau rebellion.
I knew about the torching of the records and that some had survived. I even remember Hanslope Park being involved, but I knew about Hanslope Park having lived near there as a child and being told it was top secret.
There are novels describing British colonial efforts in a range of countries, from a number of authors and the violence is there. As a child, I overheard accounts from people who started their careers in the Colonial Office - men who started off as District Officers in the 1950s and 1960s, who returned to the UK when the various colonies became independent.
It is well known that the British invented concentration camps during the Boer Wars, which ended in 1902.
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Mugs - Keep the Ship afloat
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mdijon
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# 8520
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Curiosity killed ...:
It is well known that the British invented concentration camps during the Boer Wars, which ended in 1902.
Started them in 1902 and still going strong in the early 60s in Kenya.
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Penny S
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# 14768
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Posted
Used them in the Boer War, but I recall having been told in an evening class that something not dissimilar was used in the US Civil War.
Not to excuse the vile behaviour in Kenya and other places. I would like to know at which level in the hierarchy the orders originated, and if any of the lower ranks objected.
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chris stiles
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# 12641
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Penny S:
Not to excuse the vile behaviour in Kenya and other places. I would like to know at which level in the hierarchy the orders originated, and if any of the lower ranks objected.
The communications that we know of between the attorney general and the governor at the time make it clear that the orders originated at quite a high level - and indeed that they recognized that what they were doing would be seen as barbaric even then (to those who want to make the excuse that the past is a different country).
Repentance in this case should consist - in part - of releasing all documentation still available about the acts perpetrated by the outgoing administration (and should probably also encompass documents from all the colonies more generally).
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mdijon
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# 8520
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Posted
Churchill was PM at the time. Although his view on empire and the dignity of foreign nationals are rather beyond the pale, apparently the correspondence at the time from him suggested that he was urging the colonial office to take more of a negotiating stance and view the colony in Kenya as a liability. Apparently he was unwell and distracted with other matters and so didn't really enforce his view. (Which also seems uncharacteristic for him to be honest, no matter how ill he was).
I don't know if any recently released documents challenge that cover story.
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Gamaliel
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# 812
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Posted
British colonial and post-colonial actions and policies were a pretty mixed bag. How could they be otherwise?
In some places, like Malaysia, despite some brutality and even a massacre or two, the British tried to implement a 'hearts and minds' approach to deal with insurgency.
In Kenya they took a more draconian approach.
I'm not sure it helps to make comparisons with other colonial powers - the French in Algeria, the Belgians in the Congo ...
There's a baleful litany of mistreatment and exploitation of native peoples right across the board, the Portuguese, Australia, the USA, the Germans in Namibia and elsewhere, the Dutch in Indonesia ...
None of that excuses any of this, of course.
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Let us with a gladsome mind
Praise the Lord for He is kind.
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mdijon
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# 8520
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Gamaliel:
I'm not sure it helps to make comparisons with other colonial powers - the French in Algeria
Agreed. Even for the French there was quite a difference in outcomes comparing Algeria with Senegal, for instance.
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Freddy
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# 365
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Gamaliel:
There's a baleful litany of mistreatment and exploitation of native peoples right across the board, the Portuguese, Australia, the USA, the Germans in Namibia and elsewhere, the Dutch in Indonesia ...
I agree that this was the general rule. From Columbus to General Custer, white people seem to have this common historic trait.
By contrast, my English grandmother, who was born in the 1880s in South Africa, liked to tell stories of English gallantry during the Boer War. She had a good friend who was Dutch, of the De Beers family. During the war the British came and took possession of everything that they had. But when the war was over it was all given back, with not a thing missing.
Grandma was proud to belong to a country that behaved so fairly in war. ![[Roll Eyes]](rolleyes.gif)
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"Consequently nothing is of greater importance to a person than knowing what the truth is." Swedenborg
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no prophet's flag is set so...
Proceed to see sea
# 15560
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Posted
Any discussion of a war or other is actually not comparable. The difference between that and colonial brutality is that the colonials want to occupy, exploit and have the local inhabitants as second class on a longterm, subservient basis. The Brits wanted to keep control of Kenya. There was no war. The term "cultural genocide" is current in Canads. Probably because we are still doing it.
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mdijon
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# 8520
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Posted
Actually David Anderson's book "histories of the hanged" carries a lot of evidence that the Mau Mau rising was actually a civil war waged among the Kikuyu. The injustices of colonial occupation were the proximate start of the conflict, and the way the British used factions among the Kikuyu led to the civil war, but once the conflict got going the vying for power and influence among the Kikuyu and settling old scores was a major part of it.
There may be a parallel between the 2nd Gulf War leading to the current Sunni vs Shiite conflicts in Iraq and Syria.
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Posts: 12277 | From: UK | Registered: Sep 2004
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ExclamationMark
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# 14715
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Freddy:
I agree that this was the general rule. From Columbus to General Custer, white people seem to have this common historic trait.
[/QB]
That's incorrect. Some white people may have been like that but not all.
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ExclamationMark
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# 14715
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Gamaliel:
There's a baleful litany of mistreatment and exploitation of native peoples right across the board, the Portuguese, Australia, the USA, the Germans in Namibia and elsewhere, the Dutch in Indonesia ...
And on our own doorstep in the UK. It wasn't that log ago that paying farm workers less if they were considered to be "mentally subnormal" was abolished. The tied cottage system - with lesser rights than any other tenants - still exists.
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Gamaliel
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# 812
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Posted
Sure, I don't doubt that, ExclamationMark. It wasn't particularly rural where I grew up but we could walk out into the countryside very easily - either 'up the mountain' or else in the opposite direction out into the rolling countryside towards 'the Middle of Monmouthshire' which was more Anglicised in feel.
Most stories of rural exploitation I heard of dated from the early 1900s and had been perpetrated on the parents of old people I knew, but I'm sure it went on a lot longer than that in more rural areas or out in the Fens and in Lincolnshire and so on.
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Let us with a gladsome mind
Praise the Lord for He is kind.
http://philthebard.blogspot.com
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chris stiles
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# 12641
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by no prophet's flag is set so...:
Do you support your government making reparations and taking responsibility for torture? Has anyone from government apologised yet?
Referring my previous reply back to the OP. I do not consider what the government has done so far to be an apology - essentially they dissimulated until it was no longer possible to do so, at which point paltry compensation was handed out to a bunch of aging individuals, afaict the majority opinion has always been that if they continued to draw things out eventually the problem would go away - which is what they tried to do.
As I said, I think a true apology would also have to include complete openness as to the scale and scope of the problem and cover-up.
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mdijon
Shipmate
# 8520
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Posted
I think that is a harsh but entirely fair characterization of the response.
At one point there was a stance that the Kenyan Government had inherited the liabilities of the previous colonial administration and therefore they should pay the compensation. I thought that was quite unimpressive.
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ExclamationMark
Shipmate
# 14715
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Gamaliel:
Sure, I don't doubt that, ExclamationMark. It wasn't particularly rural where I grew up but we could walk out into the countryside very easily - either 'up the mountain' or else in the opposite direction out into the rolling countryside towards 'the Middle of Monmouthshire' which was more Anglicised in feel.
Most stories of rural exploitation I heard of dated from the early 1900s and had been perpetrated on the parents of old people I knew, but I'm sure it went on a lot longer than that in more rural areas or out in the Fens and in Lincolnshire and so on.
Into the 1970's in my experience. Possibly longer but I'd moved away by then - anecdotally (in East Anglia), it has never gone away especially amongst the many Eastern Europeans still employed.
Gangmasters are regulated - that they exist at all is a sign of abuse that ould never be permitted in any other industry/circumstances. I don't know any church weeping for that exploitation and abuse.
Posts: 3845 | From: A new Jerusalem | Registered: Apr 2009
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Marvin the Martian
Interplanetary
# 4360
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by chris stiles:
paltry compensation was handed out to a bunch of aging individuals
The "ageing individuals" were the ones actually affected by what had happened. Who else would compensation be paid to?
And do you seriously consider nineteen million quid to be "paltry"?
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Hail Gallaxhar
Posts: 30100 | From: Adrift on a sea of surreality | Registered: Apr 2003
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mdijon
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# 8520
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Posted
For rounding up 1.5M people and interring them without trial and torturing a fair proportion of them I think £19M counts as a cut-price bargain.
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Posts: 12277 | From: UK | Registered: Sep 2004
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Freddy
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# 365
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by ExclamationMark:
quote:
Originally posted by Freddy:
I agree that this was the general rule. From Columbus to General Custer, white people seem to have this common historic trait.
That's incorrect. Some white people may have been like that but not all.
Good point. Yes, most white people are very nice. I am white myself.
But I haven't seen the list of peoples worldwide who rejoice in their history of fair treatment at the hands of the white man.
Maybe that brings up the question of whether any peoples anywhere rejoice in their fair treatment at the hands of any other group or nation. ![[Disappointed]](graemlins/disappointed.gif)
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"Consequently nothing is of greater importance to a person than knowing what the truth is." Swedenborg
Posts: 12845 | From: Bryn Athyn | Registered: Jun 2001
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Sioni Sais
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# 5713
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Freddy:
quote:
Originally posted by ExclamationMark:
quote:
Originally posted by Freddy:
I agree that this was the general rule. From Columbus to General Custer, white people seem to have this common historic trait.
That's incorrect. Some white people may have been like that but not all.
Good point. Yes, most white people are very nice. I am white myself.
But I haven't seen the list of peoples worldwide who rejoice in their history of fair treatment at the hands of the white man.
Maybe that brings up the question of whether any peoples anywhere rejoice in their fair treatment at the hands of any other group or nation.
FWIW the white man himself has hardly been the problem. The establishments and institutions put into place by and for the white man have, IMNSHO, caused all the trouble and tragedy.
Naturally, when an institution has been found at fault, it's very difficult to hold any individuals to account.
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Freddy
Shipmate
# 365
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Sioni Sais:
FWIW the white man himself has hardly been the problem. The establishments and institutions put into place by and for the white man have, IMNSHO, caused all the trouble and tragedy.
Naturally, when an institution has been found at fault, it's very difficult to hold any individuals to account.
Interesting point of view.
So you don't think that individual greed, drunkenness, violence, or the inclination to seek sexual satisfaction outside of marriage, are really the issue?
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"Consequently nothing is of greater importance to a person than knowing what the truth is." Swedenborg
Posts: 12845 | From: Bryn Athyn | Registered: Jun 2001
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Rosa Winkel
Saint Anger round my neck
# 11424
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Penny S:
Used them in the Boer War, but I recall having been told in an evening class that something not dissimilar was used in the US Civil War.
Not to excuse the vile behaviour in Kenya and other places. I would like to know at which level in the hierarchy the orders originated, and if any of the lower ranks objected.
The term concentration camp started with the Spanish reconcentrados (reconcentration camps) in Cuba during the 1868-78 and 1895-98 wars. The British used that term for the Boers, as mentioned, followed by the Germans in what is now Namibia. As Domenico Losurdo has pointed out, what concentration camps were later to be more associated with have colonial roots.
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Sioni Sais
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# 5713
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Freddy:
quote:
Originally posted by Sioni Sais:
FWIW the white man himself has hardly been the problem. The establishments and institutions put into place by and for the white man have, IMNSHO, caused all the trouble and tragedy.
Naturally, when an institution has been found at fault, it's very difficult to hold any individuals to account.
Interesting point of view.
So you don't think that individual greed, drunkenness, violence, or the inclination to seek sexual satisfaction outside of marriage, are really the issue?
Yes, they do play a part but to my mind the greater harm was (and continues to be) done by the institutions and those institutions facilitated or at any rate didn't do much to prevent the individual wrongs.
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"He isn't Doctor Who, he's The Doctor"
(Paul Sinha, BBC)
Posts: 24276 | From: Newport, Wales | Registered: Apr 2004
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chris stiles
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# 12641
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
quote:
Originally posted by chris stiles:
paltry compensation was handed out to a bunch of aging individuals
The "ageing individuals" were the ones actually affected by what had happened. Who else would compensation be paid to?
Firstly you are missing off the context of that statement, which was "they dissimulated until it was no longer possible to do so". The point I was making was that the government had delayed and obfuscated to the point where there were few survivors remaining. [and to your point - yes, there was probably a case for compensating more than just those individuals who had been in the camps themselves - including widows, orphans and so on].
quote:
And do you seriously consider nineteen million quid to be "paltry"?
Yes absolutely. It amounted to around £3000 for each individual affected, £3000 pounds for a life blighted by torture.
And as I allude to above, it amounted to a pay off. A true apology would have consisted of letting the truth be heard.
Posts: 4035 | From: Berkshire | Registered: May 2007
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Freddy
Shipmate
# 365
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Sioni Sais:
Yes, they do play a part but to my mind the greater harm was (and continues to be) done by the institutions and those institutions facilitated or at any rate didn't do much to prevent the individual wrongs.
That makes sense.
Just trying to get at what we mean by the institutions.
I think that you are saying that the very fact that the British, American, or whatever, government, mining interest, fruit company, oil industry, etc. was there at all, doing what these companies do for the sake of their own nation, investors and customers, is what causes the problem.
In other words it is the set-up itself, quite apart from the actual good or bad behavior of the individuals involved, that victimizes the locals. Even the most conscientious, kind and well-meaning participants perpetuate the harm.
I'm sure that is right.
My grandmother was very proud that her grandfather was the first British general to train native troops in India. She felt that this was a fine thing to do and reflected well on Britain. I always thought that she was missing the fact that England really had no business to be ruling India in the first place.
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"Consequently nothing is of greater importance to a person than knowing what the truth is." Swedenborg
Posts: 12845 | From: Bryn Athyn | Registered: Jun 2001
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ExclamationMark
Shipmate
# 14715
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Freddy:
quote:
Originally posted by ExclamationMark:
quote:
Originally posted by Freddy:
I agree that this was the general rule. From Columbus to General Custer, white people seem to have this common historic trait.
That's incorrect. Some white people may have been like that but not all.
Good point. Yes, most white people are very nice. I am white myself.
But I haven't seen the list of peoples worldwide who rejoice in their history of fair treatment at the hands of the white man.
Maybe that brings up the question of whether any peoples anywhere rejoice in their fair treatment at the hands of any other group or nation.
My relatives are white. Owing to their social status they had no voice in determining how anyone was treated in other parts of the world. Badly treated by other "whites" themselves they were nonetheless keen to help others - even welcoming German Pow's into their homes in WWII.
I find it hard not to take great exception to your blanket condemnation of white people, particularly when the oppression was mediated through the actions of a very few. Yes Churchill and Eden, I do mean you.
[ 25. August 2016, 21:12: Message edited by: ExclamationMark ]
Posts: 3845 | From: A new Jerusalem | Registered: Apr 2009
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Freddy
Shipmate
# 365
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by ExclamationMark:
I find it hard not to take great exception to your blanket condemnation of white people, particularly when the oppression was mediated through the actions of a very few. Yes Churchill and Eden, I do mean you.
I apologize. You are so right that blanket condemnations do no one any good.
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"Consequently nothing is of greater importance to a person than knowing what the truth is." Swedenborg
Posts: 12845 | From: Bryn Athyn | Registered: Jun 2001
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mdijon
Shipmate
# 8520
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Posted
I'm sure I've heard several times that British workers went on strike in support of the Indian Independence movement during one of Gandhi's visits, although I can't find any reference to it searching online just now.
The labour party and the British press rallied to the cause of Kenyan independence. In fact "Britan's Gulag", the title of Elkin's book, was taken from a (?Telegraph?) headline that did much to pressurize the government to withdraw from Kenya. Amazingly even Enoch Powell spoke movingly in favour of Kenyan independence during the parliamentary debate.
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Posts: 12277 | From: UK | Registered: Sep 2004
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MrsBeaky
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# 17663
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Posted
I am a child of the colonial era having lived in Kenya whilst my father commanded a British regiment stationed there.This was post Mau Mau but in the run up to independence there were a few hairy situations.
On one occasion my father refused to follow instructions from London as it would have led to loss of civilian life. He bravely talked down a group of Kenyan mutineers by standing in front of his vehicle, alone and completely unarmed. He was appalled by what he'd been ordered to do.
Fast forward to now. I've just finished four years as a mission partner in Kenya and encountered a whole range of reactions to the colonial legacy.
Many people can see the positives (schools, hospitals etc) and are able to forgive the horrors- one of them is a good friend of ours and his father suffered atrocities in one the Mau Mau camps. I was astonished at the grace that so many people were able to extend.
Other people from that era and also their descendants are still angry and whenever we were in dialogue with them my husband and I would listen to their stories and apologise on behalf of our ancestors.
There are many valid claims for recompense. There are also as another of our Kenyan friends (a priest) would tell you many people with an eye to the main chance who would love to cash in on anything coming their way regardless of the validity of their claim.
Yet another Kenyan friend of ours would tell you that what was perpetrated post independence by Kenyans upon Kenyans was sometimes far worse than in colonial times- I always felt that we hadn't helped with what we'd modelled during those years and that the powerful had gone on to replicate our own colonial behaviour.
So in summary, this is very, very complicated. It requires hours of listening, a willingness to own behaviour and apologise and finally wise people to discern validity and then to administrate any plan for recompense.
It's not a quick fix situation and will require a long term commitment to seeing justice done and the building of healing and reconciliation and in all honesty I'm not sure how many of us are really up for that!
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http://davidandlizacooke.wordpress.com
Posts: 693 | From: UK/ Kenya | Registered: Apr 2013
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Freddy
Shipmate
# 365
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by MrsBeaky:
So in summary, this is very, very complicated. It requires hours of listening, a willingness to own behaviour and apologise and finally wise people to discern validity and then to administrate any plan for recompense.
Thank you for that description and summary. What a thing to have lived there in the 1950s!
My own experience is with West Africa, specifically Ghana, Togo and the surrounding countries. In forty years of visits and friendship with numerous Ghanaians and other West Africans I have encountered very little feeling at all about the colonial era. By the 1970s, when I arrived to live in Togo for several years, the British were well out of it in neighboring Ghana, and there seemed to be few broad based feelings of animosity about them.
Somewhat in contrast, the French were frequently reviled at Togolese political rallies and by government communications. This did not seem to extend, however, to many specific demands, or reference any particular misconduct. But the Western presence in Togo was so low key that you seldom saw whites at all.
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"Consequently nothing is of greater importance to a person than knowing what the truth is." Swedenborg
Posts: 12845 | From: Bryn Athyn | Registered: Jun 2001
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betjemaniac
Shipmate
# 17618
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mdijon:
Amazingly even Enoch Powell spoke movingly in favour of Kenyan independence during the parliamentary debate.
The "Rivers of Blood" speech was such a notorious error that it has become almost the only thing anyone knows about him (and, to be clear, that's no one's fault but his own).
However, if that's the low point of his life and shines a light into his soul (absent the argument that he was issuing a pessimistic warning that he was naive enough to not appreciate would be a call to arms for nutters), then the Hola Camp speech is one of the finest moments in post war parliamentary history, and deserves to be remembered as such.
For the record, even in the 1940s Enoch Powell was arguing that Indian independence logically meant we had no right to be anywhere other than the British Isles and should withdraw from the empire in its entirety.
The point of his Hola Camp speech essentially boils down to "a man is a man is a man" and we can't treat people by different standards according to who they are - the standards we want to be treated by as Britons are the only possible standards by which to calibrate our treatment of others.
I've always thought that there's an air of John Stuart Mill about Powell (Mill famously said he'd been raised to be a dessicated calculating machine). Powell had a tendency to see the world with (what he saw as) a relentless logic and act and speak accordingly. To his own detriment and to the detriment in particular of race relations in the Woverhampton speech. But on other occasions, he soared to the heights.
That's not in any way to defend him, but just to round out the picture of a deeply odd man.
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And is it true? For if it is....
Posts: 1481 | From: behind the dreaming spires | Registered: Mar 2013
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Marvin the Martian
Interplanetary
# 4360
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mdijon:
For rounding up 1.5M people and interring them without trial and torturing a fair proportion of them I think £19M counts as a cut-price bargain.
What would you say is a fair price? Can any price be fair for such a thing?
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Hail Gallaxhar
Posts: 30100 | From: Adrift on a sea of surreality | Registered: Apr 2003
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Marvin the Martian
Interplanetary
# 4360
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by chris stiles:
Firstly you are missing off the context of that statement, which was "they dissimulated until it was no longer possible to do so". The point I was making was that the government had delayed and obfuscated to the point where there were few survivors remaining.
They were wrong to do so. But ISTM that they have now accepted that they were wrong to do so.
quote:
[and to your point - yes, there was probably a case for compensating more than just those individuals who had been in the camps themselves - including widows, orphans and so on].
Perhaps. I wonder if their claim was discussed during the meetings that were held about it?
quote:
quote:
And do you seriously consider nineteen million quid to be "paltry"?
Yes absolutely. It amounted to around £3000 for each individual affected, £3000 pounds for a life blighted by torture.
It's a bit more once you factor in the difference in cost of living. But even then, what would you say is a fair price to have paid?
quote:
And as I allude to above, it amounted to a pay off. A true apology would have consisted of letting the truth be heard.
Which part of the truth do you think is still being silenced?
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Hail Gallaxhar
Posts: 30100 | From: Adrift on a sea of surreality | Registered: Apr 2003
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Sioni Sais
Shipmate
# 5713
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
Which part of the truth do you think is still being silenced?
Principally that in files long destroyed. HMG is rather good at that.
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"He isn't Doctor Who, he's The Doctor"
(Paul Sinha, BBC)
Posts: 24276 | From: Newport, Wales | Registered: Apr 2004
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Gamaliel
Shipmate
# 812
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Posted
Backing up a bit, whilst I don't for a moment doubt what EM says about the treatment of indigeneous rural workers in the UK up to very recent times - and the current issues around low-paid and often exploited workers from Eastern Europe and elsewhere in Lincolnshire and so on ... I'm not sure what churches weeping and wailing about that could achieve.
Yes, I think churches should be involved with social action and the alleviation of unjust conditions - and that would apply to the current state of play with gang-masters in Lincolnshire and things like zero-hours contracts and so on - but I'm not sure how bewailing what happened to agricultural workers in the past helps anything today.
I'm not saying we ignore that or air-brush it out, but I'm not sure how far it gets us.
I mean, whilst it's been fascinating - in a grim kind of way - to learn how my brother-in-law's brother's primary research has corroborated his mother's almost folk-tale style account of how her father, as a young man, had been beaten up by troops sent to quell the riots in Tonypandy in 1910 - even though he only had one arm (due to a mining accident) and wasn't participating in the rioting and looting himself - I'm not sure what would be gained by churches making a big deal out of that.
That doesn't diminish what happened, but I'm not sure what could be gained if churches were to make a big deal of it.
In the case of the industrial unrest in the South Wales coal-field in 1910/11 there was a dark side to it in that Jewish families and businesses were targeted by some of the rioters - so these things are rarely clear-cut good guys versus bad guys things.
Although the issue, as Sioni Sais has indicated, is more to do with institutionalised problems and injustices rather than what this, that or the other individual got up to.
I can see how some restitution could be made to individuals in Kenya and elsewhere but not sure what could be done in the case of agricultural workers exploited in the UK - unless we were to find all their descendents and families and compensate them in some way - but that ain't going to happen.
It's a bit like the conditions in old-fashioned mental asylums. When my mother first worked in the mental health sector in the 1970s there were still people who were shut away in institutions because they didn't fit in for whatever reason, or they'd been unmarried mothers or even because their families wanted them out of the way for whatever reason - even though there was nothing particularly 'wrong' with them mentally as it were.
She can tell of instances of perfectly 'sane' people who'd been shut away and who'd become institutionalised and gone mad because they were incarcerated in hospitals and asylums surrounded by people who were mentally ill.
People who'd been shut away like this in the 1930s and 1950s were still alive in the 1970s - even though the regimes and modus operandi in these places had changed markedly during the later '60s and early '70s.
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Let us with a gladsome mind
Praise the Lord for He is kind.
http://philthebard.blogspot.com
Posts: 15997 | From: Cheshire, UK | Registered: Jul 2001
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mdijon
Shipmate
# 8520
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mdijon:
For rounding up 1.5M people and interring them without trial and torturing a fair proportion of them I think £19M counts as a cut-price bargain.
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
What would you say is a fair price? Can any price be fair for such a thing?
That would explain why criminal justice systems don't bother with long sentences for murder or rape charges, since nothing could really be fair compensation for the murder or rape.
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mdijon nojidm uoɿıqɯ ɯqıɿou
ɯqıɿou uoɿıqɯ nojidm mdijon
Posts: 12277 | From: UK | Registered: Sep 2004
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mdijon
Shipmate
# 8520
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
Which part of the truth do you think is still being silenced?
quote:
Originally posted by Sioni Sais:
Principally that in files long destroyed. HMG is rather good at that.
Well also at the time that the "apology" was being made HMG was sitting on files that would have shed more light on what actually happened and vindicated some of the more contested accounts made by Elkin and others.
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mdijon nojidm uoɿıqɯ ɯqıɿou
ɯqıɿou uoɿıqɯ nojidm mdijon
Posts: 12277 | From: UK | Registered: Sep 2004
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no prophet's flag is set so...
Proceed to see sea
# 15560
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Gamaliel:
Backing up a bit, whilst I don't for a moment doubt what EM says about the treatment of indigeneous rural workers in the UK up to very recent times - and the current issues around low-paid and often exploited workers from Eastern Europe and elsewhere in Lincolnshire and so on ... I'm not sure what churches weeping and wailing about that could achieve.
It might be good to know what the victims think about that. Notwithstanding that apologising is not the same as "wailing and weeping", language into which it is easy to read dismissiveness along the lines of "let bygones be bygones". These things cast long, long shadows:
[quote]Keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty; visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children's children, unto the third and to the fourth generation. -Exo 34: 7[quote]
Posts: 11498 | From: Treaty 6 territory in the nonexistant Province of Buffalo, Canada ↄ⃝' | Registered: Mar 2010
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Marvin the Martian
Interplanetary
# 4360
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Sioni Sais:
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
Which part of the truth do you think is still being silenced?
Principally that in files long destroyed. HMG is rather good at that.
If the files have been destroyed then how do you propose the government should go about letting that truth be heard?
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Hail Gallaxhar
Posts: 30100 | From: Adrift on a sea of surreality | Registered: Apr 2003
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Marvin the Martian
Interplanetary
# 4360
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by mdijon:
quote:
Originally posted by mdijon:
For rounding up 1.5M people and interring them without trial and torturing a fair proportion of them I think £19M counts as a cut-price bargain.
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
What would you say is a fair price? Can any price be fair for such a thing?
That would explain why criminal justice systems don't bother with long sentences for murder or rape charges, since nothing could really be fair compensation for the murder or rape.
I note you haven't answered my first question: what would you say would be a fair price/sentence?
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Hail Gallaxhar
Posts: 30100 | From: Adrift on a sea of surreality | Registered: Apr 2003
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Gramps49
Shipmate
# 16378
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Posted
I had a friend who identified as Mau Mau. He was a young boy when his village was attacked by British troops and he was shot in the leg. He said the village was defenseless. Sammi eventually became the head of a university counseling program in Kenya but as long as I knew him he still had PTSD issues.
While this thread has talked about Kenya and India, I think Britain has to acknowledge the history of oppression in Ireland as well.
Then too, there is the oppression of Palestinian peoples by the Israelis. The Israelis continue to violate the human rights of people in the occupied territories. All of this has happened because of the support of the US and the tacit backing of members of the EU--Britain again included.
Yes, I know the history of the US with Native Americans is not one to be proud of. Even today there is a confrontation between the Lakota Nation and the US over a pipeline that the US has permitted to go through Lakota land without the approval of the tribe.
You would think, though, we should learn from our common history and not repeat these mistakes over and over again.
Posts: 2193 | From: Pullman WA | Registered: Apr 2011
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mdijon
Shipmate
# 8520
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
I note you haven't answered my first question: what would you say would be a fair price/sentence?
A million each would be good. Of course the UK government doesn't have 5B dollars. We should at least heading towards 100k per victim. 3k each is derisory.
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mdijon nojidm uoɿıqɯ ɯqıɿou
ɯqıɿou uoɿıqɯ nojidm mdijon
Posts: 12277 | From: UK | Registered: Sep 2004
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Gamaliel
Shipmate
# 812
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Posted
Gramps49, what makes you think the British haven't acknowledged our poor colonial record in Ireland?
We do that all the time.
I've seen some bloody stupid accusations levelled by Americans on that score - that Britain deliberately started the Potato Famine, for instance. Really? One could just as easily claim that the US did as the blight seems to have arrived on US ships - and perhaps the British also started the contemporaneous Potato Famines in Belgium and Germany too ...
Now, clearly the British government of the time did very little of any value to alleviate the problem - but it's not true that they didn't try.
Some clown I encountered online even insisted that Cromwell had personally massacred 30,000 Irish people in Drogheda - despite the fact that there were nowhere near that number of people in the town at that time.
None of which diminishes Britain's poor record in Ireland nor lets Cromwell off the hook for the massacre - some 2,500 or so of the garrison (many of them English rather than Irish) and perhaps 700 to 800 civilians.
Yes, the Anglo-Norman and later English and subsequently UK suppression of the Irish was appalling. No-one pretends otherwise.
And as you've said yourself, it's not as if the US has a clean record. Not only with the indigenous peoples but also in the way it's interfered with lots of other places around the world - be it Chile, Nicaragua and all sorts of other places where its poked its nose in.
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Let us with a gladsome mind
Praise the Lord for He is kind.
http://philthebard.blogspot.com
Posts: 15997 | From: Cheshire, UK | Registered: Jul 2001
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Freddy
Shipmate
# 365
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Gramps49:
You would think, though, we should learn from our common history and not repeat these mistakes over and over again.
The mistakes will be repeated until the sense of "otherness" is gradually washed out through the long process of globalization that the world is experiencing.
An older gentleman once explained to me that in some parts of the world the cultural differences in the past were so extreme between Europeans and locals that they simply could not be overcome.
Those days are long gone. People everywhere are really very similar, and there is every reason to believe that the old prejudices will someday disappear as well.
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"Consequently nothing is of greater importance to a person than knowing what the truth is." Swedenborg
Posts: 12845 | From: Bryn Athyn | Registered: Jun 2001
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