A bad case of colonial mindset
John Hyland – ‘British Empire brought great benefit to Ireland’ (August 17) – in his eulogy to the British Empire, and the hubris in which he defended the virtues of it, I’m sure raised a few chuckles and frowns across the country. He firstly laments there was support for the British Empire here, which there was to some degree, but neglecting Britain imposed themselves on a large portion of the world without asking for the consent of the natives and if, like here in 1918, the natives made it clear they wanted them out, they were duly ignored and force used, if the British deemed it necessary. He does cite the only colony that did want them to stay. Obviously the circumstances differed with Hong Kong given the alternative was China, and not independence like the countless other colonies who left the empire and never looked back, which he, unsurprisingly, failed to mentioned given he seems to have a bad case of a colonial mindset.
He lists various things such as infrastructural gains under the Empire but ignoring these were paid for by Irish taxpayers and their other colonies that they systemically looted. Ireland stopped becoming a net contributor to the British exchequer in 1911, which Britain duly dumped in 1920, retaining the portion of the country that was responsible for 80 per cent of the economic output on the island. To put that into perspective, Belfast at that time had a higher GDP per capita than even London. It’s a wonder he didn’t mention that Britain built India their extensive railway network. The same India it’s estimated they stole up to $45 trillion USD from and took their overall share of the world’s GDP from 16 per cent to just 4 per cent in 1947 when they left. This doesn’t fit in John’s narrative of Britain lifting their colonies from the slums into prosperity, does it?
It would be easy to list the crimes of the British Empire, of them they are innumerable. I doubt The Irish News would have enough ink to print them all should I have the time or notion to list them. But what has to be stated to apologists of that particular Empire, in short, was it was fuelled by fascism and wanton racism, no different to the type used by the Nazis in their drive to take over Europe. They saw their ‘subjects’ as lesser, and in some cases animals of sorts, which included the Irish, given their caricatures showing us as ape-like creatures in the British media. Their dehumanisation of their subjects made it easier for them to murder, massacre, loot, starve to death, put into concentration camps etc when they were only seen as savages anyway. His assertion that these crimes are only being judged ‘in hindsight’ is archetypal of the arrogance of modern-day apologists for a murdering racist Empire.
To argue the perpetrators of those crimes brought ‘enlightenment’ to anyone and stopped ‘barbaric native practices’ when they practised extreme barbarism themselves illuminates the warped mind found in unionist Ireland to this day.
PÁDRAIG DONOHOE
Greencastle, Co Tyrone
Calamitous consequences
John F Hyland’s letter – ‘British Empire brought great benefit to Ireland’ (August 17) – endeavours to be a riposte to Brian Feeney’s column ‘Starmer wrong on his support for Union’ (August 9), in which Mr Feeney is critical of the British Empire and its rule in Ireland. Mr Hyland challenges this by singing the praises of the Empire, stating for example that “the British Empire brought great benefit to Ireland” and “brought improved prosperity to the colonies”. Really?
May I draw the attention of Mr Hyland to a book referred to in one of Mr Feeney’s previous columns, the excellent Legacy of Violence: A History of the British Empire by Caroline Elkins, Professor of African and American Studies at Harvard University, which thoroughly and comprehensively details accounts of arrogance, cynicism, viciousness, racism, greed, barbarity and lying politicians. Elkins identifies patterns of delay, lies and skullduggery, all to cover up hostility and suffering meted out to insurgents and those who opposed its regimes. She defines how British colonialism, whenever their actions involved unsanctioned violence, would render their lawless behaviour legal by amending old regulations and creating new ones.
The process of legitimising and legalising extraordinary state-initiated violence when established laws proved insufficient for maintaining control surely rings a bell with regard to its handling of the situation here.
Arguably, it is widely acknowledged that the British Empire, whether it pulled out of its colonies due to the erosion of financial and political benefits or stubbornly overstayed its welcome, left in its wake, through the deployment of such things as divide and conquer and counter-insurgency tactics, all manner of political, social, and financial unrest and calamitous consequences.
Mr Hyland’s comment that the British Empire, among other things, brought about “the abolition of slavery” is a bit like praising an arsonist for joining the Fire Brigade after years of amassing vast wealth by lighting fires which caused devastating cruelty and suffering to millions of human beings.
GERRY DEVLIN
Belfast BT7
LGBTQ pride in republican solidarity
It has been spoken about lately that LGBTQ people only started to be open about support for Irish republicanism from the start of the hunger strikes. It goes back before that.Peter Tatchell once told me he received a letter in the early 1970s from an Irish political prisoner in Long Kesh asking to be sent gay liberation education books as the prisoners were discussing liberation struggles from LGBTQ to women’s liberation and other national liberation struggles. It should also be pointed out that the Gay Liberation Front helped and actively organised the march against internment in London in the early 1970s and were active in Irish solidarity campaigns for many years. While I know that republicanism had some issues with older conservatism, that has changed in many ways and the progress and support of social movements by Irish republicanism goes back to 1798 for equality and liberty for all citizens.
As a child growing up in the 1990s the first LGBTQ banner I ever saw was not on a Pride march but on the Falls Road. Many LGBTQ people are extremely proud of the solidarity republicanism has offered us as well as educating us on issues of liberation and equality.
SEÁN ÓG GARLAND
Beál Feirste BT10
Monument of Victorian Belfast
Bernard Conlon is right in stating that the building on the site of the former Assembly Room on the corner of Donegall and Waring Streets deserves to be saved – ‘Save historical heart of Belfast’(August 21) – but he is wrong in thinking that the structure as it now is belongs to 18th century Belfast. As the late Sir Charles Brett’s The Buildings of Belfast makes clear, the exterior of the Georgian building was replaced by Sir Charles Lanyon in the 1840s, when the site was acquired by a bank.
What remained of the elegant Georgian interior designed by Sir Robert Taylor disappeared at the end of the 19th century thanks to new work done by WH Lynn, Lanyon’s partner. What there is today is a monument of Victorian rather than Georgian Belfast.
CDC ARMSTRONG
Belfast BT1
