As he prepared to leave Amritsar, the Cameron explained why he had decided against issuing an apology. "In my view," he said, "we are dealing with something here that happened a good 40 years before I was even born, and which Winston Churchill described as 'monstrous' at the time and the British government rightly condemned at the time. So I don't think the right thing is to reach back into history and to seek out things you can apologise for.
Well, yeah. The best reason for Cameron not apologizing is that no one would have believed him, especially since he was there on a trade mission. Also, if British PMs started aoplogising for our many misadventures during the lively history of the Empire, they'd never be able to stop. Every time they got on a plane they'd have to go through a briefing document on some forgotten incidence of rapine or slaughter and practice pulling weepy faces.
Maybe what we should try for is an apology, but a kind of 'cynical realist appreciation' of past misdeeds. "Dudes, we had a little bit too much fun that afternoon, but let's face it, there's nothing like a massacre to give a righteous independence movement a good kick up the arse. And now here we are, talking turkey and no hard feelings. Ah, is that my martini made from freshly squeezed baby tears? Why, so it is!"
Anyway, it’s also worth pointing out that British opinion on the massacre was not monolithic, and that Dyer had a lot of support from within the Conservative Party in particular and from that part of the UK population which happened to be governing India at the time. In Kipling’s words, Dyer was ‘the man who saved the Empire.'
There are a couple of odd similarities between then and now: a Conservative/Liberal government in London and a conservative versus reactionary split on the right, now embodied by the Kippers. I can’t bring myself to look, but I bet there’s some grumbling over in the British fever swamp about ‘apology tours’ right now.
Anyway, Cameron then went off to the Golden temple, where I’m sure his hosts were too polite to mention Udham Singh.
What we need is a Department of Retrospective Responsibility. The civil servants would trawl the histories of the home nations for atrocities, beginning, shall we say, with Sir John Hawkins selling a bunch of (stolen) slaves in S. Domingo in 1555, and draft suitable apologies following one of half a dozen EU approved templates (not many member states who wouldn't need to participate in this). The Secretary of State could then fly to the appropriate country and formally deliver the apology.
Demands for apologies for atrocities prior to 1550 would be the responsibility of a Minister of State, while incidents involving road accidents in which nobody was seriously hurt could be delegate to the PUSS.
Posted by: chris y | February 21, 2013 at 09:49 AM
That's a very Old Britain approach, chris. Surely it would be better to set up a website with canned podcast apologies, sorted by country, and delivered under studio conditions by the relevant minister? So if you woke up one morning feeling particularly angry about the Battle of Magdala, say, you could simply navigate to apologies.gov.uk/africa/ethiopia/c19/embarrassingly_onesided_defeats/nutters/magdala.htm, and listen to the Minister of State being appropriately contrite to you personally.
More likely, though, is a PFI, under which Capita will undertake to provide a minimum of 25,000 outsourced apologies per year, delivered by convincingly regretful and Equity-carded spokesmen, in exchange for a flat fee.
Posted by: ajay | February 21, 2013 at 12:00 PM
"Dudes, we had a little bit too much fun that afternoon, but let's face it, there's nothing like a massacre to give a righteous independence movement a good kick up the arse. And now here we are, talking turkey and no hard feelings..."
Swap "dudes" for something suitably British and Imperial and that sounds rather Harry Flashman. (Who, IMHO, would make a fine Ambassador-at-large for this sort of thing.)
Posted by: Barry Freed | February 21, 2013 at 01:07 PM
"I've been asked to express the British government's sincere apologies for the deaths of... hang on a minute, Your Excellency, your face looks familiar... did your mother used to work in Calcutta by any chance? Bengali girl, junior shippin' clerk, huge bumpers? She did? Gad, there's a coincidence..."
Posted by: ajay | February 21, 2013 at 01:29 PM