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Tag Archives: british empire

Should we make it policy to apologise for historical UK atrocities?

By Dean Moore | Mon 12th September 2016 - 12:31 pm

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The Transatlantic Slave Trade, famine in India, Social Darwinist programs across the globe (which included racial science influencing policy and creating what were effectively concentration camps for indigenous peoples in Australia and in South Africa during the second Boer War) and the destruction of the city of Benin – the United Kingdom is far from an innocent player on the international stage.

Even in the modern age, our hands are not exactly clean. Churchill openly endorsed eugenics and now-illegal warfare (saying in one letter that he saw no issues with “giving the natives a sniffle”, regarding biological weaponry). We engaged in the War on Terror and this year official government figures have shown that we are the second biggest arms dealer in the world, having sold two-thirds of our weaponry to the destabilised Middle East.

Our history, though sometimes a progressive one, is drenched in human rights abuses across the planet. Of the 196 countries in the world, only 22 have not experienced an invasion led by the British.

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged reparations | 49 Comments

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