In her novel Beloved, through its examination of America’s violent and brutal history of chattel slavery, Toni Morrison warns against the forgetting of painful pasts. If a society is to ‘come to terms with its own raced history’, painful memories must be ‘“re-membered”… [or] they will haunt the social imagination and disrupt the present’. Catherine Hall, writing almost 20 years ago, warned European societies against discarding ‘uncomfortable memories of colonialism’, and emphasised the ‘need to do some “memory work” on the legacy of Empire’. Britain’s drastic manoeuvre away from the EU is intricately connected to its imperial history, one that it has long refused to confront and acknowledge for the brutal legacy that it is. Britain’s unaddressed and unredressed colonial past haunted the recent EU referendum and prophesied its outcome, writes Nadine El-Enany.
Recent policy soundings suggest that the British government wishes to strengthen economic ties with Commonwealth countries in lieu of its fast-deteriorating relationship with its European neighbours. This is an ironic turn of events considering the historical context of Britain’s entry into the EU in 1973. Its membership followed decades of post-war decline and ensuing indecisiveness about whether to jettison its economic dependence on ailing Commonwealth markets, and with it any prospect of a lasting imperial role for Britain, in favour of joining the European Economic Community (EEC). Britain’s imperial nostalgia has long fed its extreme discomfort at its place as, formally, an equal alongside other EU Member States, rather than first among equals, as was its pride of place in the Commonwealth. The decision to join the EEC coincided with the closure of Britain’s borders to people from its former colonies. The explicit target of these controls was people racialised as non-white. Post-war immigration control was intricately connected to the ebb and flow of Britain’s imperial ambitions and attachments. The British Nationality Act 1948 had rolled out British citizenship to encapsulate Britons together with all nationals of independent Commonwealth countries and those of British colonies – a status which included a right to enter and remain in Britain. This granting of British citizenship to Commonwealth citizens was principally an attempt to hold together what remained of the British Empire. British politicians accepted migration of non-white people from the New Commonwealth countries into Britain as a trade-off, an unfortunate but necessary byproduct of maintaining the relationship between Britain and the Old (white) Dominions. Although the British Nationality Act prompted the establishment of some employment recruitment schemes targeted at New Commonwealth migrants, it is significant that post-war labour shortages were primarily addressed through the facilitation of (white) European labour.
Brexit is intricately connected to Britain’s unaddressed and unredressed imperial past
The principal beneficiaries of the British Empire’s system of citizenship were Britons, who could move and settle throughout the Commonwealth pursuant to sponsored emigration facilitated through agreements with Australia, South Africa, New Zealand and Canada. Despite the legislators’ lack of enthusiasm for non-white immigration from the colonies, the 1948 Act’s provisions had the effect of facilitating the arrival of around 500,000 people racialised as non-white in Britain. These arrivals and those who followed were not only exercising rights granted to them under the law, but were also escaping economic hardship and an absence of employment opportunities, along with other dispossessive effects of slavery and colonialism. Post-war arrivals from Jamaica, for example, were leaving a country profoundly marked by both the transatlantic slave trade and colonialism. By the time Britain colonised Jamaica in the seventeenth century, the country’s ‘indigenous peoples had already been wiped out by the Spanish, and [it] was populated mainly by enslaved Africans and white settlers’.
It was not until 1962 that the Commonwealth Immigrants Act brought all Commonwealth citizens formally under immigration control. The exceptions were the (majority white) citizens who had been born in Britain or Ireland, or who held a British or Irish passport issued by either one of these governments. The Act was designed to restrict the entry of non-white people. In the late 1960s, Britain saw an increasing number of East-African Asians enter the country, many of whom possessed a British passport issued by Kenyan authorities. This movement followed the introduction of policies discriminating against Asians in Kenya by President Kenyatta. The 1968 Commonwealth Immigrants Act further narrowed the exceptions to control. Rights of entry were limited to Commonwealth citizens born in Britain, or with at least one parent or grandparent born or naturalised in Britain. That the effect of the 1968 Act was to discriminate on racial grounds exposes the hypocrisy and conceit in the British government’s position. The Act ‘created “second-class citizens” who did not have immediate right of entry into Britain even though the only passports they had were British’. The British not only bore much of the responsibility for the divisions in Kenyan society pursuant to their colonial exploits, but also the presence of Asians in Kenya. Although Asians had lived in East Africa for centuries, the majority arrived as labourers and traders following the expansion of the British Empire over the area. In general, the Act had wide cross-party support, despite its severe consequences for Asians whose lives and futures depended on escaping persecution in Kenya.
American cartoon of John Bull (England) as an Imperial Octopus (Public Domain).
As Britain closed its doors to non-white Commonwealth migrants, it turned towards Europe in search of opportunities for economic growth – first applying to join the EEC in 1961, and ultimately becoming a member on 1 January 1973. However, Britain maintained its distance from the EU political project, in particular as far as migration control was concerned. Its obsession with its island status and the perceived advantages this brings in relation to security and border control has long plagued its relationship with the EU. While Britain grudgingly accepted the principle of free movement of EU citizens, it insisted on maintaining control of its borders wherever it could. Britain never joined Schengen, and not only continues to exercise border controls in relation to EU nationals, but also has a flexible opt-out from EU law on immigration and asylum – which it has consistently exercised to opt into restrictive measures that further strengthen its capacity to exclude, and out of those aimed at enhancing protection standards. In view of this, Britain’s decision to depart from the EU primarily over the question of immigration and border control demands scrutiny. The Leave campaign argued that exiting the EU would allow Britain to ‘take back control of its borders’ and would ‘make Britain great again’. The referendum debate was eclipsed by the topic of migration, and not exclusively that of European citizens. The epitome of the Leave campaign’s scaremongering about migration was perhaps the moment Nigel Farage unveiled a poster depicting non-white refugees crossing the Croatia-Slovenia border in 2015 along with the slogan ‘Breaking Point’.
Brexit is not only an expression of nostalgia for empire, it is also the fruit of empire
The terms on which the EU referendum debate took place are symptomatic of a Britain struggling to conceive of its place in the world post-Empire. Present in the discourse of some of those arguing for a Leave vote was a tendency to romanticise the days of the British Empire, a time when Britannia ruled the waves and was defined by her racial and cultural superiority. Brexit is not only an expression of nostalgia for empire, it is also the fruit of empire. The legacies of British imperialism have never been addressed, including that of racism. British colonial rule saw the exploitation of peoples, and their subjugation on the basis of race; it was a system that was maintained through the brutal and systematic violence of colonial authorities. Imperial nostalgia is sometimes combined with ‘a reluctance to see contemporary British racism as a product of imperial and colonial power’. The prevalence of structural and institutional racism in Britain today made it fertile ground for the effectiveness of the Brexit campaign’s racist and dehumanising rhetoric of “taking back control” and reaching “breaking point”. The Brexit and Trump victories have resulted in the legitimisation of racism and white supremacy to an unprecedented degree. A week prior to the referendum, pro-immigration Labour MP Jo Cox was brutally murdered by a man who shouted ‘Britain first’ as he killed her, and who gave his name in court on being charged with her murder as ‘Death to traitors. Freedom for Britain’. Since the referendum, racist hate crime has increased by 16% across Britain, and peaked at a 58% rise in the week following the vote. Weeks after the referendum, Arkadiusz Jóźwik was beaten to death in Essex, having reportedly been attacked for speaking Polish in the street.
Britain’s impending departure from the EU now sees it turning once again to the Commonwealth. It is no coincidence that Nigel Farage expressed a preference for migrants from India and Australia as compared with East Europeans, and has advocated stronger ties with the Commonwealth. Theresa May, in her speech on the government’s plans for Brexit, referred to the Commonwealth as being indicative of Britain’s ‘unique and proud global relationships’, and declared it was ‘time for Britain to get out into the world and rediscover its role as a great, global, trading nation.’ It is telling that the Old Dominions [Australia, South Africa, New Zealand and Canada] ‘were Britain abroad, what was called – in the jingoistic heyday of imperialism – “greater Britain”’. Economic policy is being oriented towards a revival of Commonwealth ties, in a manner that patently ignores the brutal reality of the British Empire. This ignorance was aptly captured in MP and Secretary of State for International Trade Liam Fox’s statement last year in the run-up to the referendum that ‘The United Kingdom is one of the few countries in the European Union that does not need to bury its 20th century history’. Paul Gilroy has observed that the tendency to romanticise colonial times – ‘this embarrassing sentiment’ – manifests itself today in ‘an unhealthy and destructive post-imperial hungering for renewed greatness’. The hankering after the halcyon days of empire was expressed in a tabloid headline following the referendum: ‘Now Let’s Make Britain Great Again’. This slogan, taken from Trump’s presidential election campaign, has since become popular among those who backed Brexit.
The rhetoric of ‘making Britain great again’ is entirely divorced from an understanding of British colonial history – including the country’s recent imperial exploits, which have destabilised and exploited various regions and set in motion the migration of today. In the absence of an acknowledgement of the racism, violence and brutality of British colonialism, and its ongoing dispossessing effects, imperial nostalgia can fester and work in harmful ways. Paul Gilroy notes that ‘[t]he appeal of being great again was central to Mrs Thatcher’s premiership, particularly after her South Atlantic triumph, but it did not vanish with her. It has endured and mutated and emerged again as one significant element that propelled a largely reluctant country to war against Iraq in 2003’. The ‘desire’ for ‘renewed greatness’ thus ‘feeds Britain’s vicarious investments in US preeminence’, the calamitous result of which was the violent and premature deaths of nearly half a million Iraqis. Britain’s commitment to its close relationship with the US has gained new vigour in the wake of the vote to leave the EU. British Prime Minister Theresa May, wary of the notion that Britain might have set itself adrift through its vote to leave the EU, isolating itself from centres of global power, is working to ensure that post-Brexit Britain is firmly aligned with the new Trump administration.[38] Britain’s rose-tinted view of its imperial history, and its refusal to recall and confront the reality of the British Empire and its legacy of racism, haunted the EU referendum, foretelling its outcome and casting Britain into an uncertain and dangerous future.
An extended and fully footnoted version of this blog post was part of an IPR series focused on the rise of racism and the far right. This post represents the views of the authors and not those of the Brexit blog, nor the LSE.
Dr Nadine El-Enany is Senior Lecturer in Law at Birkbeck University of London‘s School of Law.
Anyone reading this article who didn’t know different, would think that Britain and America were unique in empire building and ill treating other people in the past.
Strange how the authors of these sorts of articles are so selective.
In my opinion that is not at all what the article expresses. Simply that Brits are one of the few who are not educated to feel ashamed for parts of their history, both in the 19th century and before. I guess its one of the rights that comes with emerging on the victorious side in most conflicts. I think most nations or peoples would have behaved the same in a similar situation. However, that does not mean that it is not a problem.
Vvans – Which Nationalities are taught to be ashamed of their past?
That’s why we apologize for everything and anything. I’m sure the Dutch are not taught fully of their murderous past in the East Indies.
That is certainly true!
Let me try to elaborate why I am inclined to agree with this article, and what I perceive to be the difference between the UK (and perhaps US) and some other countries.
Still today, the defence of the empire and its sovereignty over its colonies is used as a legitimate reason to justify those atrocities. Even today the naval race between the UK and the German empire is considered a provocation from the Germans to the British, as if the latter have some divine right to rule the oceans. And it is also acceptable to be openly proud of the imperial past, in fact I would even argue it would by unpatriotic not to be.
In contrast, while I will not argue that citizens from other countries are also proud of some questionable parts of their history, it is not at all politically correct to do so openly. To name an example, once the Dutch prime minister Jan Peter Balkenende was talking about Dutch entrepreneurial spirit and referred to the ‘Dutch East Indies’ company, and he received a lot of criticism. I can count numerous incidents where the same occurred in Spain when one referred to their past in Latin America. Meanwhile, similar statements about the British Empire can be said on British television, often without any consequences.
I think the German naval build up was not a provocation but a direct challenge in which Britain had to respond. I have a German friend who works in Britain (Boeing in Gosport), who once said to me that she is proud of Germany (rightly so), and was not guilty of the past, because she was not part of it, and did not do it. She is also proud of German history (she is no NAZI). I read other articles in which it is said that Brits aged 50 and lower really have no memory of Empire and no interest. But maybe why The British Empire is still mentioned is because it was so big, dominated and shaped the modern world like no other. No one has a hankering for an Empire, especially when it was so draining. Big, like many companies, is not beautiful.
Brexit has little to do with a colonial legacy. Notably, the vast majority of the political and business class voted and campaigned against Brexit. They favoured remaining in Fortress Europe, an organisation that can rightly claim the mantle ‘Eurocentric’. Not only does the EU favour intra-European (mainly white) migration over migrants from Africa and Asia (including former colonies), but it also enforces trade rules that discriminate against former colonies.
The article argues that the sentiment to ‘take back control of its borders’ is part of a legacy of colonialism. But who should have control of a nation’s borders? The principle of sovereignty was championed in the context of anti-colonial struggles in the past. It is a universal and democratic principle – if undermined in one context, then whither the sovereignty of former colonies too? Indeed, many of the conflicts that have devastated former colonies were justified precisely on the basis of the undermining of sovereignty.
The article asserts that: ‘The Brexit and Trump victories have resulted in the legitimisation of racism and white supremacy to an unprecedented degree’. Leaving aside the popular conflation of Brexit with Trump (and with all things bad frankly), there is little evidence for this, and certainly not for Britain being in any way exceptional within Europe. The EU’s own surveys (EU barometer) show that the UK is (within Europe) relatively positive with regard to non EU migration, and around average in its positivity for EU migration (figs that in fact were recorded as a little more positive post Brexit than before the vote). The spike in reported hate crime has, thankfully, subsided. Elsewhere in Europe racist parties threaten to win elections, whilst here the far right remain marginal.
In opposing racist attacks and the portrayal of migrants as less than human in parts of the press, it does not help to falsely associate Brexit with a longing for Empire, racism and with reaction. It was a demand to leave the EU, with many features, most of them rather more contemporary, related to the EU itself and the distance so many feel between themselves and the political structures that govern their societies.
Great piece. The shared sovereignty demanded by the EU is not something that has ever sat well with the British psyche precisely because it is a relationship that can only exist between equals. And as you point out “Britain’s imperial nostalgia has long fed its extreme discomfort at its place as, formally, an equal alongside other EU Member States, rather than first among equals”. I have raised this with a number of people, including “remain”-oriented journalists and it is precisely on this point that their commitment to Europe finally yields. They simply cannot let go of their sense of national exceptionalism, which comes along with a thoroughly unreliable view of the nation as tolerant and welcoming. Self-awareness, of course, is rare enough in individuals, and practically unheard of in nations. The challenge for Britain is that its national conversation is dominated by a media organisation, the BBC, which has lost much of its editorial confidence and has been reduced to curating the self-image of the nation and its cultural consensus. As such, its remit to inform and educate have become increasingly dormant, sublimated in projects that look back rather than forward.The nation is not only Remembrance-addled but addicted to memories that are increasingly unhelpful.
There is no such thing as shared sovereignty. You cannot be a bit sovereign. This idea was made up by and for the Germans.
During the 20th century, Britain has evolved as the winner of the European power struggels that had been brewing since the 18th century. All other countries (except Switzerland and Sweden) experienced major national disruptions.
Due to this victorious outcome, British nationalism might have been frozed in time and could nowadays still be most similiar to it’s pre-1914 state, compared to most other EU countries.
The opposite on the scale is Germany: Due to its catastrophic history during the 20th century, nationalism has largely transformed into some sort of pan-Europeanism. By seemingly giving up nationalism, we (Germans) try to feel “great again” without having to put in the ugly old way “Germany first”.
Ironically, such an outward-looking approach to nationalism seems to have a tremendous competitive advantage in the multilateralism of the 21th century, while after many national victories, Brexit-Britain may have ultimately defeated itself.
A solution could be a new scientific initiative in all countries: What is the best way to preserve which aspects of identity in a globalizing world?
Complete nonsense. I voted for BREXIT precisely because I hate empires and want my Country to be free, fully independent and sovereign. But that is what this eu is, it is a dictatorial empire and supporters of eu are in denial about this. The supporters who long for this are in effect, new age imperialists. France and Germany in particular long for this, as they feel it will bring back some former glory. Don’t try and twist this around for longing empires and such like. The times I look back at British history for inspiration are in great achievements in industry, engineering, and social changes for the better. That has nothing to do with strutting across the world, empires and the rest of it.
That said, there is nothing wrong in wanting to become a top country again, but doing through wanting this eu empire is being shown for what it is. Especially when it is at the expense of others, as in past empires.
We, Asian do not view Brexit as nostalgia for the self-importance of British Empire but a natural step towards democracy, which is often taken for granted by many European.
Well said
I’m Asian too, and I beg to differ – from the part of Asia that I’m from (I have no idea which part you’re from), Brexit has largely been viewed negatively by the general public. Simply put, Asia is so big and I do not think that you (nor I) can speak for all Asians.
The big reasons in why I voted leave are to do with being sovereign and not just a Dominion that was sort of independent within this empire.Also rules like public procurement rules that are killing future investment in UK industry, like a new viable dynamic UK shipbuilding sector which eu (or rather other eu nation state countries) would not want to see: http://www.civitas.org.uk/content/files/IdeasForEconomicGrowth5vFULL.pdf and: http://www.civitas.org.uk/content/files/EUStateAidProcurement2.pdf.