The Rise and Fall of the British Empire (104 page)

The issue of Hong Kong’s future is about more than the last act of imperial disengagement. Governor Patten and his supporters have put forward classic imperial arguments involving a duty towards Britain’s subjects. Their adversaries claim that such moral responsibilities are a luxury which modern Britain cannot afford. Career diplomats, who have spent their lives dealing with China, believe that muted sycophancy is the best approach to Peking, which, if offended, might harm British trade or worse.

In the past fourteen years, variations on the view that commercial considerations are always paramount have carried great weight within Thatcherite circles in the Conservative party. While making much of herself as a global champion of democracy, Mrs Thatcher has not shrunk from currying favour with autocrats, most notably King Fahd of Saudi Arabia and the sheiks of the Persian Gulf, all of whom are customers for British-made weaponry. What might be called the policy of guns before principles led her government to grovel to the Saudis in 1982 after they made a fuss about a television film,
Death of a Princess.
By contrast, Mrs Thatcher dealt sharply with a loyal ally, the gallant and humane King Hussain of Jordan, when he chose to tread cautiously after his powerful neighbour, Iraq, invaded Kuwait in 1990. The moral imperative which lay behind the Falklands War did not extend into other areas of foreign policy.

Another moral issue emerged during the debates over the future of Hong Kong. This was the question of whether large numbers of Hong Kong Chinese should be admitted to Britain. The 1948 British Nationality Act had extended British citizenship to subjects in all the colonies. As it passed through the Commons, the steamer
Empire Windrush
docked at Tilbury and four-hundred West Indian immigrants came ashore. Like the English, Scots and Irish who had crossed the Atlantic in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, they had left poverty behind them and come in search of prosperity.

The years which saw the dissolution of the empire witnessed the last of the great migrations it had made possible. From 1948 onwards large numbers of West Indians, Indians and Pakistanis and smaller numbers of West Africans, Maltese and Cypriots settled in Britain. The flow of immigrants gathered pace in the late 1950s and early 1960s and continued after two acts of 1962 and 1968 which were designed to restrict it. This is not the place to discuss the consequences of this shift of populations for Britain, which, by the 1970s had become a multi-racial society, even though the bulk of the new arrivals had settled in London, the Midlands and the decayed industrial towns of northern England. Reactions to this demographic change have been mixed and often, as they had been towards the Irish in the nineteenth century, violent. Old imperial attitudes played their part in determining how the immigrants were received. Imperial ideas of racial superiority led to condescension or even contempt, but at the same time benevolent imperial paternalism dictated that blacks and Asians should be treated decently and fairly. How the immigrants, their children and grandchildren fare will depend ultimately on the moral sense and flexibility of the British people.

The story of the rise and yet-to-be-completed fall of the British empire suggests that they once had both qualities in abundance, as well as ruthlessness and rapacity. A superficial glance at Britain’s imperial past can lead to the conclusion that the last two were always in the forefront, but this is misleading. Britain’s empire was a moral force and one for the good. The last word should lie with Nelson Mandela, recalling his schooldays in Natal in the 1920s:

You must remember I was brought up in a British school, and at the time Britain was the home of everything that was best in the world. I have not discarded the influence which Britain and British history and culture exercised on us. We regarded it as the capital of the world and visiting the place therefore had this excitement because I was visiting the country that was my pride … You must also remember that Britain is the home of parliamentary democracy and, as people fighting against a form of tyranny in this country, we look upon Britain to take an active interest to support us in our fight against apartheid.

Few empires have equipped their subjects with the intellectual wherewithal to overthrow their rulers. None has been survived by so much affection and moral respect.

Bibliography

Abbreviations

Sources

Unpublished

India Office Library

Letters and Papers Military and Political

Imperial War Museum

Papers of Air-Marshal Sir Harold Lydford

Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives

Papers of Brigadier-General Sir James Edmonds

National Army Museum:

Anon (Private of 5th Dragoon Guards and 11th Light Dragoons), Memoirs

Brigadier-General Sir Archibald Eden, Diary

Lieutenant William Fleming, 45th Regiment, Letters

Private John Mitchell, 58th Regiment, Memoirs

Surgeon Pine, Diary

Private J.C. Rose, 2nd Rifle Brigade, Papers and Diary

Major Stockwell, Diary and Papers

National Library of Scotland:

Papers of General Sir George Brown

Colin Campbell, ‘Voyage of the Unicorn’

Papers of Admiral Sir Alexander Cochrane

Papers of Admiral Charles Graham

Papers and Diary of Field-Marshal Lord Haig

Papers of Major Alexander Murray

Papers of George Murray

Letters of Charles Cochrane, 4th Regiment (in Stuart-Stevenson Papers)

Papers of the Marquess of Tweeddale

Public Record Office:

Rhodes House Library, Oxford

Papers of Captain Abadie

Scottish Record Office:

Clerk of Penycuik Papers

Dalrymple Papers

Dundonald Papers (Sudan Diary and Letters of Captain Lord Cochrane)

Logan Hume Papers

Lord Loch Papers

Lieutenant Colin MacKenzie, Letters

Lieutenant Stewart Mackenzie, Letters

Captain John Peebles, 42nd Regiment, Diary

General Robertson, Letters and Papers

Published

Magazines and Newspapers:

Africa; The Anti-Jacobin; Asiatic Journal; Blackwoods Magazine; British and Foreign Review; Coburn’s United Service Magazine; Contemporary Review; Daily Express; Daily Graphic; Daily Herald; Daily Mail; Daily Telegraph; Edinburgh Review; Foreign Affairs; Fortnightly Review; The Graphic; Harpers; Illustrated London News; Imperial Commerce and Affairs; The Independent; Journal of the Royal Africa Society; The Listener; London Magazine; Manchester Guardian; Morning Post; National Geographic Magazine; National Review; New Statesman; Nineteenth Century; Nineteenth Century and After; The Observer; Picture Post; Private Eye; Quarterly Review; Review of Politics; Round Table; Saturday Review; Spectator; Sphere; Standard; Sun; Sunday Times; Time; The Times.

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———,
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