Cool Britannia.

Our esteemed Prime Minister has been rapping the knuckles of the British tourist industry. He says they must stop selling modern Britain to foreign tourists. The concept of ‘Cool Britannia’ does not meet with his approval. Instead, they should be concentrating on British history and traditions.

Now, let me see, the most significant feature of British history would have to be the Empire, wouldn’t it? Two hundred years of pomp, circumstance, and Pax Britannia. So what should we tell our overseas visitors about the British Empire? The truth? OK, let’s have a list of truths about the conduct of Empire. It involved:

The systematic denigration, and sometimes destruction, of indigenous peoples, their traditions, their religion, and their language.

The presumption of superiority over people whose culture was, in most cases, every bit the equal of ours, and in some, older and more sophisticated.

The officially-sanctioned looting of art, artefacts and other items of value and prestige. Most of them we still have and steadfastly refuse to give back.

The abuse of native people, especially women, by military personnel and colonial officers.

British concentration camps in South Africa during the Boer War, in which many innocent people died.

British forced labour camps in India, in which many innocent people died.

Savage reprisals taken against those who, tired of asking ‘Can we have our country back, please’ and being shoved roughly aside, decided to try direct action as a last resort. These included the Croke Park Massacre in Ireland and the Amritsar Massacre in India. The Irish suffered the longest because Ireland was Britain’s first colony, and nobody ever bothered to correct the spurious, negative propaganda put out by the Norman cleric Gerald of Wales in the twelfth century. And at Amritsar, the people who were carelessly butchered weren’t even armed.

They’re the first seven uncomfortable truths that trip easily off the top of my head. So I wonder why Mr Cameron should be so keen to sell British history. Could it have anything to do with the fact that he’s an Old Etonian (see previous posts ad nauseum,) I wonder. After all, British public schoolboys did extremely well out of the Empire.

Or maybe he’s thinking further back than Empire. Maybe he has the Middle Ages in mind. That was a golden age, if ever there was one, replete with gallant knights in shining armour and spotless surcoats, men who epitomised courage, decency and the chivalric code. Well actually, not really. Courage, maybe, but decency and chivalry? By all accounts they were a bunch of out and out thugs somewhat redolent of today’s inner city, drug-dealing gang leaders. They might have treated their own, high born ladies with a modicum of propriety, but they weren’t so particular about their treatment of the lower orders or the women from conquered territory.

And what about the famous heroes of the Middle Ages? Richard the Lionheart, what about him? Good King Richard, hero of the Robin Hood tales, one of the greatest English kings ever. Oh, right. This was the king who couldn’t speak English, who didn’t regard himself as English, who cared nothing for England save as a power base, and who spent only about six months of his ten year reign in England. Oh, and there was the little matter of his somewhat-less-than-decent acts of genocide in the Holy Land during the Crusades. The whole population of a city slaughtered, just for being there.

How about Robert the Bruce, saviour of Scotland, the man of fortitude who didn’t give up until he’d rightly won Scotland back for the Scots? Well, sort of, I suppose, but he was also the man who invited his rival to a conference in a church, and then stabbed him to death. After that, he went gaily on the rampage in the north and east of Scotland, killing the people, the animals and the crops. He left behind a dead and desolate landscape that remained barren for twenty years. Quite the hero, quite the chivalrous mediaeval knight.

I really wonder why we should be so keen to sell British history to the tourists. Maybe I’m being unduly cynical, but I think I’d prefer to put that stuff behind us and stick with Cool Britannia.