When Britain returned to Sierra Leone
Dianne Abbott, the British MP for Hackney in East London and the first black woman to be elected to the House of Commons, came under fire a few months back for comments she made on Twitter. In an exchange which she later related to €European Colonisation€, she said that €white people always seek to divide & rule.€
What Ms Abbott's views really are on white people remains a matter of conjecture. What can be said is that her reading of history is inaccurate. The promise of African and Asian independence €" led by Western-educated elites who sought to ferment a nationalism learned from Europe €" has failed to live up to even its lowest expectations.
Far from a panacea, what has followed the end of British administration in many parts of the world is little short of tragic. For the most part, power never really passed to the people of the developing world. Instead it passed to kleptocrats, dynasties and gangsters.
Nationalist leaders have been shrewd at whipping up anti-Western, anti-Commonwealth and anti-British sentiment, in a bid to divert attention from their own feckless mismanagement and plunder of state resources.
Contrary to widespread belief, the UK never primarily governed through hard power. The British are not supermen. There were never enough maxim guns* in the world for a few thousand Britons to govern hundreds of millions of Indians through sheer force alone.
Rather than the flawed belief that the British were so strong and mighty and the rest of the world so weak and feeble that the British could rule with an iron fist, more often than not the British offered protection and support for local chiefs and maharajas.
The rule was often indirect, not direct. For the most part, power was exercised through advisers, agents and commissioners. Often €" such as in the Bechuanaland (now Botswana) €" the British were asked to come in.
Today, there exists an opportunity which so far only the West African country of Sierra Leone has taken up: the old vertical relationship with Britain has evolved into a horizontal partnership with the UK and Commonwealth. Britain has refurbished hospitals, paid civil servants' salaries and offered support in administration, education and infrastructure.
British and Commonwealth officials advise ministers in Freetown, Sierra Leone's capital, as well as supplying the country with much needed material. Sierra Leone now offers free healthcare to all pregnant women and under-five year olds (saving around 1 million lives), is the world's fastest growing economy and has cut corruption for five consecutive years.
In return, Sierra Leone has seen improvements on almost all political and economic indicators. Only this week, a major Sierra Leoneon diamond firm has gone from war booty to an IPO. Unlike the old local leadership, at no point have the British pillaged or plundered the country. The relationship is absolutely voluntary and cooperative.
What is different today is that the relationship is voluntary. The fact that Sierra Leone can tell Britain and the Commonwealth to leave, means they do not feel the need to. It is not just administrators from the UK but other Commonwealth countries, who work with Sierra Leone. It is a horizontal partnership not a vertical relationship. Crucially Sierra Leone now has an input in British and Commonwealth foreign and domestic policy.
If you want hard evidence of the failings of the last sixty years, go to London, Luton, Manchester, Birmingham, Leicester, Dewsbury, Slough, Oldham, Blackburn, Bolton or Bradford. In a situation replicated across the entire developing world, many people have felt compelled to leave behind their friends, family and everything they love.
As much as Ms Abbott may not like to admit it, 99% of her non-white constituents in Hackney have been forcibly displaced from their ancestral homelands by endemic corruption, which created a lack of economic and educational opportunities for them and their children and which could only be found in the West.
Unless Ms Abbott is arguing that the mass of South Asians, Afro-Caribbeans and sub-Saharan Africans who move to Britain €" including her own family €" do not know what is good for them, how can she account for it? The Congolese never moved en masse to Belgium, nor the Jews back to Germany. Why would you move to a land of thieves and thugs who had brutalised you for so long?
Polls in Jamaica, Somalia and Yemen have suggested that a majority of the population wish the Commonwealth would come back in some form of administrative capacity. Remember, that does not necessitate viceroys or economic plunder. It did not in Hong Kong and is not in Sierra Leone.
There is a third way between the old-style colonial government and the isolationism of recent years. Indirect, civil service-led advising, along the lines of the British administration in Hong Kong €" coupled with closer economic ties between the Commonwealth countries €" can be a real way forward for much of the developing world.
The leaders of Nigeria and Pakistan still buy their second homes in the UK, as their people continue to make the UK their home. This is a relationship which transcends skin colour and religion.
Europe, Eurasia, South America and the Islamic Middle East are pointing the way for closer political and economic ties between countries with political and cultural antecedents. The trend for supranationalism is growing. The ethnic exclusivity which historically characterised the nation state seems ever more redundant in a world of porous borders.
In emulation of this trend, many African and Asian countries have sought similar regional alliances. But without common political systems or a shared language, geographic determinism has never served as a good paradigm for international relations. If it was, Pakistan and India would have unified years ago.
The Sierra Leoneon and British military train together and work together on the ground. Commonwealth officials are guiding Sierra Leone away from corruption and towards good governance. They are not attempting a wholesale restructuring of the indigeneous cultures. Sierra Leoneons were sick of the failed policies and corruption of their local leaders, which led to the civil war.
Sierra Leone is at a stage of development where it needs help and is smart enough to ask for it. Sierra Leone is a black, majority Muslim country. Ask yourself this: when did you last hear about an al-Qaeda strike against a Commonwealth official there?
*the most powerful and advanced hand-held weapon of the late 19th and early 20th centuries
What Ms Abbott's views really are on white people remains a matter of conjecture. What can be said is that her reading of history is inaccurate. The promise of African and Asian independence €" led by Western-educated elites who sought to ferment a nationalism learned from Europe €" has failed to live up to even its lowest expectations.
Far from a panacea, what has followed the end of British administration in many parts of the world is little short of tragic. For the most part, power never really passed to the people of the developing world. Instead it passed to kleptocrats, dynasties and gangsters.
Nationalist leaders have been shrewd at whipping up anti-Western, anti-Commonwealth and anti-British sentiment, in a bid to divert attention from their own feckless mismanagement and plunder of state resources.
Contrary to widespread belief, the UK never primarily governed through hard power. The British are not supermen. There were never enough maxim guns* in the world for a few thousand Britons to govern hundreds of millions of Indians through sheer force alone.
Rather than the flawed belief that the British were so strong and mighty and the rest of the world so weak and feeble that the British could rule with an iron fist, more often than not the British offered protection and support for local chiefs and maharajas.
The rule was often indirect, not direct. For the most part, power was exercised through advisers, agents and commissioners. Often €" such as in the Bechuanaland (now Botswana) €" the British were asked to come in.
Today, there exists an opportunity which so far only the West African country of Sierra Leone has taken up: the old vertical relationship with Britain has evolved into a horizontal partnership with the UK and Commonwealth. Britain has refurbished hospitals, paid civil servants' salaries and offered support in administration, education and infrastructure.
British and Commonwealth officials advise ministers in Freetown, Sierra Leone's capital, as well as supplying the country with much needed material. Sierra Leone now offers free healthcare to all pregnant women and under-five year olds (saving around 1 million lives), is the world's fastest growing economy and has cut corruption for five consecutive years.
In return, Sierra Leone has seen improvements on almost all political and economic indicators. Only this week, a major Sierra Leoneon diamond firm has gone from war booty to an IPO. Unlike the old local leadership, at no point have the British pillaged or plundered the country. The relationship is absolutely voluntary and cooperative.
What is different today is that the relationship is voluntary. The fact that Sierra Leone can tell Britain and the Commonwealth to leave, means they do not feel the need to. It is not just administrators from the UK but other Commonwealth countries, who work with Sierra Leone. It is a horizontal partnership not a vertical relationship. Crucially Sierra Leone now has an input in British and Commonwealth foreign and domestic policy.
If you want hard evidence of the failings of the last sixty years, go to London, Luton, Manchester, Birmingham, Leicester, Dewsbury, Slough, Oldham, Blackburn, Bolton or Bradford. In a situation replicated across the entire developing world, many people have felt compelled to leave behind their friends, family and everything they love.
As much as Ms Abbott may not like to admit it, 99% of her non-white constituents in Hackney have been forcibly displaced from their ancestral homelands by endemic corruption, which created a lack of economic and educational opportunities for them and their children and which could only be found in the West.
Unless Ms Abbott is arguing that the mass of South Asians, Afro-Caribbeans and sub-Saharan Africans who move to Britain €" including her own family €" do not know what is good for them, how can she account for it? The Congolese never moved en masse to Belgium, nor the Jews back to Germany. Why would you move to a land of thieves and thugs who had brutalised you for so long?
Polls in Jamaica, Somalia and Yemen have suggested that a majority of the population wish the Commonwealth would come back in some form of administrative capacity. Remember, that does not necessitate viceroys or economic plunder. It did not in Hong Kong and is not in Sierra Leone.
There is a third way between the old-style colonial government and the isolationism of recent years. Indirect, civil service-led advising, along the lines of the British administration in Hong Kong €" coupled with closer economic ties between the Commonwealth countries €" can be a real way forward for much of the developing world.
The leaders of Nigeria and Pakistan still buy their second homes in the UK, as their people continue to make the UK their home. This is a relationship which transcends skin colour and religion.
Europe, Eurasia, South America and the Islamic Middle East are pointing the way for closer political and economic ties between countries with political and cultural antecedents. The trend for supranationalism is growing. The ethnic exclusivity which historically characterised the nation state seems ever more redundant in a world of porous borders.
In emulation of this trend, many African and Asian countries have sought similar regional alliances. But without common political systems or a shared language, geographic determinism has never served as a good paradigm for international relations. If it was, Pakistan and India would have unified years ago.
The Sierra Leoneon and British military train together and work together on the ground. Commonwealth officials are guiding Sierra Leone away from corruption and towards good governance. They are not attempting a wholesale restructuring of the indigeneous cultures. Sierra Leoneons were sick of the failed policies and corruption of their local leaders, which led to the civil war.
Sierra Leone is at a stage of development where it needs help and is smart enough to ask for it. Sierra Leone is a black, majority Muslim country. Ask yourself this: when did you last hear about an al-Qaeda strike against a Commonwealth official there?
*the most powerful and advanced hand-held weapon of the late 19th and early 20th centuries
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