Sir, Sathnam Sanghera (“Who decides what’s a balanced view of the British Empire?”, Times2, Mar 22) claims that creating a moral balance sheet for British colonialism is a fool’s errand. He then tries to do just that. Historians (including many at Cambridge, where we both studied) have indeed sought over the past few decades to create a far more sophisticated and global understanding of the issues involved, including taxonomies of racism.
If Sanghera wants to advocate something genuinely new, perhaps he’d welcome more emphasis on comparative imperialisms, including other Europeans, the Seljuks and Ottomans, the Mughals, Tsarist and Soviet Russia, Meiji and Showa Japan and the Burmese monarchy. Personally I would also like to see far more attention paid in schools to Byzantine, Central Asian, Persian and Islamic history — in all of which remarkable progress has been made since the 1970s. That way we could all profit from a better understanding of the linked complexity of all histories.
Sir John Jenkins
Matfield, Kent
Sir, Successive governments have failed to incorporate basic facts about colonialism into school lessons. To check this claim, readers only have to ask their children, grandchildren (or even their peers) what they know about the Royal African Company, the East India Company or the Opium Wars. Knowing the basics is a matter of national maturity. As with our human selves, self-awareness depends on acknowledging and understanding all past actions, however we feel about them now.
In services of commemoration we say “Lest We Forget”. The same pledge can (and should) be made to people who were colonised or enslaved, and to their descendants who live with the legacy. Neither does it advance historical understanding to make subjective judgments about whether the British Empire was good or bad. Sanghera is right: such judgments will inevitably be shaped by our relationship to that history and what we were taught (or not taught) about it.
Corinne Fowler
Professor of colonialism and heritage, University of Leicester; director of “Colonial Countryside: National Trust Houses Reinterpreted”
Sir, Kemi Badenoch is right to argue that children should learn the positives about the British Empire as well as the negatives. I grew up in colonial Kenya and have long since wearied of people who weren’t there telling me that I’m wrong about the British in Kenya when actually they are the ones who don’t know their stuff. Sathnam Sanghera implies that the majority of imperial historians are ignored and vilified as “woke” by the Conservative government. What about all the historians who are howled down if they try to point out the benefits that the British brought to the Empire?
Nicholas Best
Author of Happy Valley: the Story of the English in Kenya
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Sir, Sathnam Sanghera’s response to the equalities minister’s remarks simply echoes the consensus among historians of the British Empire like me. History is not about judging and balancing “good” and “bad” aspects of the past, it is the disinterested pursuit of various truths about that past, no matter how uncomfortable they may be and no matter whether they reinforce or undercut certain versions of British patriotism.
Professor Alan Lester FRHistS
University of Sussex
RUSSIA’S VETO ON THE UN SECURITY COUNCIL
Sir, Roger Boyes is correct to highlight the harm done by Russia’s veto powers as a permanent member of the UN security council (“Biden’s timidity is making Putin stronger”, Mar 23). Russia’s ability to block Putin facing trial at the International Criminal Court (ICC) is as absurd as it would have been for Hitler to have had the power in 1944 to veto trials of Nazi leaders at Nuremberg.
Putin should be given a choice: accept ICC jurisdiction now for his crime of aggression as well as war crimes and crimes against humanity — all to be tried as soon as possible — or be removed from the UN security council. The public, whom the law, lawyers and law-givers such as the UN serve (not the other way round), now understand Russia’s veto power for what it is. Putin’s manifest crimes must be denounced clearly and be tried. It is the least, sadly also the most, the law can do for Ukraine’s victims.
Sir Geoffrey Nice QC
Lead prosecutor at the trial of Slobodan Milosevic at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague
Sir, Peter Gibbs (letter, Mar 23) hits the nail on the head when he says that “the only way to stop [Putin] is to show such force now that the Russian army resiles from certain elimination”. As matters stand Putin will almost certainly prevail, and there will be a further consequence that has not yet been mentioned, namely that sophisticated UK weaponry will fall into Russian hands. This will further strengthen Putin in the future. When Ben Wallace said that there was a whiff of Munich in the air, he was wrong: it is a malign stink. Your leading article (“Credible Deterrence”, Mar 23) compounds the appeasement by championing military aid instead of military intervention. It emptily threatens that the use of chemical weapons by Putin must “not go unpunished”. How?Laurence Factor
Stanmore, Middx
Sir, Surely deterrence means that malign action is prevented, rather than allowed to happen and then punished afterwards?
Sierra Hutton-Wilson
Evercreech, Somerset
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Sir, Putin will continue until his objectives are accomplished. Will he take Kyiv? As Roger Boyes observes, he’ll think about it and when he’s ready he’ll let us know. President Biden wishes to avoid World War Three. Not participating in a war does not mean it’s not happening. We in the West need some leadership.
Professor Chris Easingwood
Wilmslow, Cheshire
DEFENDING OLIGARCHS
Sir, While it is right the horrors in Ukraine prompt fundamental questions about relations between the UK and Russia, it is dangerous to seek scapegoats and single out British lawyers (“Oligarchs’ Privilege”. Mar 21; letters, Mar 22). The reason UK law firms engaged with Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union was because that was the direction of successive British governments as well as of business.
Thirty years of national policy have been reversed in a matter of weeks, and rightly so. Our law firms have responded quickly to the invasion. All Russian offices of the largest British law firms have closed or been separated from the parent firm. These matters should not be conflated with strategic lawsuits against public participation — the use of our defamation, privacy and data protection laws to stifle public scrutiny of wrongdoing. There is a good argument for reform, which is backed by many lawyers. Meanwhile, our profession is highly regulated and there is a clear framework of accountability overseen by the Solicitors Regulation Authority.
Stephanie Boyce
President, Law Society of England and Wales
Sir, I think we would all agree with Christopher Coltart QC (letter, Mar 22) that everyone is entitled to a fair hearing. The problem, as reported in your paper, is the large fees charged by solicitors/barristers when acting for those people who are suing journalists, authors and publishers. This is tilting the “scales of justice” unfairly. Perhaps the public’s belief in fairness would return if those law firms mentioned in your paper undertook all future work of this type “pro bono”.
MEJ Watson
Watford
DRIVE TO BRING REFUGEES TO UK
Sir, Further to your report “Home office visa delays shameful, says Labour” (Mar 23), many of us are frustrated at the process involved in homing a refugee family, and not only on the visa front (I have yet to find any guidance on how to settle them in and the steps to be taken when they arrive). There is the small but vital question of car insurance. My potential family have full Ukrainian driving licences and we are fortunate to have two cars. Neither insurer is prepared to provide cover for them as “named drivers” because of a lack of previous UK residence. Phoning around has not produced any solution: it seems that “any driver” policies are a thing of the past. The insurance sector needs to come up with a suitably inexpensive answer — and fast.
Gerald Russell
Weybridge, Surrey
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FUNDING COSTS AND THE POST OFFICE SCANDAL
Sir, You report that £46 million out of the £57.75 million damages paid out by the Post Office went to cover the claimants’ funding costs (“Bonuses of Post Office bosses could be reclaimed in Horizon compensation scheme”, news, Mar 23). This shows a serious defect in our system. Where individuals of modest means need to borrow to vindicate their rights, justice demands that the loser should contribute to the resulting costs, especially where its aggressive tactics have caused those costs vastly to increase. The Post Office had to pay its victims’ reasonable legal costs. It should have been required to pay their necessary funding costs as well. Curiously, our law of damages already recognises the obvious justice in this: in 2003 the House of Lords ruled that claimants could recover finance costs if they needed credit after an accident. Our law is both incoherent and unjust in treating the necessary costs of funding litigation differently.
Ben Williams
Charlton, Wilts
NATURE OF GRATITUDE
Sir, Alice Thomson is right that Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe has no need to express gratitude for her release (“True generosity doesn’t require gratitude”, comment, Mar 23). Rather, it is the British people who should thank her and her husband for reminding us what decency, courage, loyalty and fortitude look like. After years of self-serving nonsense from politicians and elements of the royal family, most of us had forgotten these precious qualities.
Barry Smith
Shaftesbury, Dorset
EAR OF GRAIN
Sir, It was interesting to read of a modern version of the ancient “shibboleth” test being used in Ukraine (Notebook, Mar 21). A pity, then, that Emma Duncan mangled its biblical origin: it was not “the Jews” (an anachronistic term) who were at odds with “their enemies the Ephraimites” but a particularly nasty internecine quarrel between two tribes of Israel, the Gileadites (representing the tribe of Manasseh) and the Ephraimites. Further, it was the Ephraimites who could not say “shibboleth” but pronounced it “sibboleth” not the other way round, as Judges 12: iv-vi shows.
Timothy Reynolds
Cranleigh, Surrey
AITCH OR HAITCH?
Sir, On the vexed question of how to pronounce the letter H (letter, Mar 23), I have used the following to clarify the matter for students across the decades: “Aitch hates being called haitch”, of course said with sufficient emphasis on the “aitch”.
Irena Milloy
Histon, Cambridge
VOLUME OF NOISE
Sir, Further to the Thunderer by Jawad Iqbal (“There can never be any justification for hitting a child”, Mar 22), my mother was the disciplinarian to me and my five siblings but would delegate any smacking to our father. On such occasions he was inclined to play the cunning softie with his study door tight shut, knowing that our mother was straining to hear from the hall. I can’t recall my particular wrongdoing but 70 years on I remember the “punishment”. Taking a volume from his bookshelf he quietly told me to make an “aagh” sound each time he slapped it on his thigh. He then gave me the book to return to its place. The title was: You Have Been Warned.
David Newth
Dulverton, Somerset