SDP Talk with Nigel Biggar. Britain's colonial past - a moral reckoning.
HTML-код
- Опубликовано: 24 сен 2024
- In this episode of SDPtalk, William Clouston is joined by Nigel Biggar, former Regius Professor Emeritus of Moral and Pastoral Theology at the University of Oxford, and author of several books including the Sunday Times bestseller, Colonialism: A Moral Reckoning.
As calls for ‘decolonisation’ echo through our institutions and our fellow citizens are urged to view our history as a source of shame, this timely book offers a penetrating and balanced ethical analysis of the British Empire.
Nigel and William discuss the ethics of British colonialism, admitting the faults and injustices while challenging widely held falsehoods and exploring its positive contributions to the world in the context of its time.
They consider the political and cultural impacts of post-imperial guilt in today’s polarised society and argue that a more honest and nuanced understanding of our history would help to restore national confidence and solidarity.
The SDP is a patriotic, economically left-leaning, and culturally traditional political party.
Website sdp.org.uk/
Join Us sdp.nationbuil...
Policies sdp.org.uk/pol...
Promoted and Published by
R Malyn, Social Democratic Party, 272 Bath Street, Glasgow, G2 4JR
Intelligent, honest and civilised discussion on a sensitive topic. I hope many people get to watch this.
I think the reason we get picked on for slavery is that we admit our wrongdoings. The more we do that, the more we are attacked. Most other nations admit no faults and have no conscience about not admitting their own, often worse brutalities, whilst enjoying pointing the finger at the British. Having rubbed our noses in this for decades now, I think it is time to turn to focus on the benefits of our influence, such as medicine, education, technology, legal structures, prosperity, improved quality of life in many, many ways. Look at Beautiful News to get a bit of relief and see that all the improvements around the world could not have happened if the British had stayed at home. Very good talk picking it all apart.
Bang on here, the admitting of this that and the other began in a spirit of genuine intent, it quickly became a weapon to use against us, truth and lie heaped upon each other over time.
or we are still considered a rich country and they want repararations lol
I think one of the reasons is the elites still think that we are a great power and that we’ve become so tied to American power it’s infected us more than we realise
I’d also add we’ve tied ourselves to America politically and economically culturally
This in my opinion has done damage to us
"...and if you tell that to the young people today, they won't believe you..."
There is a clear distinction between "violence" and military force.
One can debate the merits and demerits of imperial power, but these were brutal and savage lands which, when the British retreated, often reverted to being savage and brutal lands.
Often? Virtually always more like.
And we aren’t brutal and savage ?
1914-19 for starters
@Sean-p3o yes there have been moments, the world would do well to remember that going forward.
@@jumblestiltskin1365Are you speaking for the world as many in the west appear to do at times ?
You ought to travel. It might open your eyes and teach you to be grateful for Western civilisation. @Sean-p3o
I don't understand why people thought former colonial countries would do well when they became independent? Historically that is rarely the case, especially if the former empire was technologically and organisationally superior to those it colonised, look at Britain, after the Romans left, there were centuries of civil wars and invasions, the Britons reverted to tribalism and everything the Romans built was left to rot, it took centuries for Britain to become stable, even arguably up until the union.
Also the British had wanted to leave countries in better shape, but after one country got independence there was a clamour from them all for it which had to be responded to.
@@wendyandrew3707I think there were resource reasons too
If where honest about it
People don’t think similar things could happen to modern day Britain or Western Europe
When I was in South Sudan in 2018 working as part of the UN taskforce with the British Forces, i remember speaking to some of the older sudanese folk that were employed in the compound, one was a elderly teacher who desperately wanted the British to come back and run the place. He had tears in his eyes speaking about it.
Perhaps his ancestors had related to him the supreme sacrifice made by Gordon, in his valient attempt to save the native people of Kartoum.
The evocative portrat of Gordon's Last Stand is in Leeds Art Gallery, where, in recent times, his reputation and even his noble death has been traduced.
I challenged the curator, whose feeble response was " I'm not a great expert like you!"
Unwarranted flattery. But the misrepresentation of the salient facts goes on.
Reprehensible.
I worked with a lad from South Sudan for many years, and he said the same.
He loved Maggie Thatcher 😆
Of course the mainstream is biased. You should not seek to mitigate that grave offence by suggesting that that is because it is subject to "a filter.""
When he retired, after working for the BBC for 53years, John Humphrys stated that: "The BBC is institutionally biased: liberal-left, politically correct and biased against Brexit; and I'm glad to have escaped the thought police."
QED.
A good & important discussion; though it's a shame that the critique by the Right of Churchill & 20th century British foreign policy was dealt with less respect & nuance than the Anti Imperial arguments made by openly anti British bigots & communists.
Reminder:
The children of Native Britons will be an official minority in the English schooling system within 11years.
The English Nation to be rendered a minority in their homeland in a mere few decades, once the demographic hammer head of the Boomer generation has passed.
All Britons in the Isles, not just the UK to be a minority some short years after that.
The lie of mass migration being carried out for it's economic benefits has now been officially exposed by the OBR, (despite their efforts to still obfuscate the truth by comparing Immigrant workers' Economic Impact to that of All Britons - including children, the retired & disabled).
So why does even this party assert that giving native Britons of the UK demographic & cultural security is offensive & beyond the pale?
It IS an existential issue & we are rapidly approaching a point when self defence calculus applies.
Mere Civic Nationalism permits conquest & ethnic cleansing via the attempted bureaucratic deception that notations on official paperwork have magically changed the reality of ethnic people of foreign extraction on the ground into Britons as Native as those with roots here a millennia or several deep.
This can only end badly.
@@jumblestiltskin1365 No, not only; it could end well for most concerned, (just not the current traitors & insidious ingrate interlopers), but the longer reality is ignored & denied the harder it is to make it happen & so less likely it will.
Churchill ran he’s country into the ground
Col Macgregor Ret
Geo-political pressures also played their part in the expansion of empire particularly in relation to the wars with the French throughout the 18th century. If we hadn't colonised those territories the French most certainly would have done with huge consequences for our own safety and security.
Excellent discussion. Thoughtful and historically grounded in fact, not fashion. Thank you both gentlemen. Vote SDP!
It would be good to change the discourse to deflecting the well hammered accusations and asking about other empires of recent times or asking where would the people of previously colonised countries be today if no European had set foot on their soil. How did they used to treat their neighbours, women and children pre colonisation? How was their health? Did they eat well?
Can the SDP have a policy on commonwealth trade, family and defence by working together we are all safer and prosperous
'What have the British ever done for us?' ask the world.🤔
'Aside from fellow Europeans, what have the world ever done for us?' ask Brits.😉
'We taught you empire,' retort the Middle Easterners and Africans.😁
'We took your empire, and then made you free,' answer Brits.🤩🇬🇧
Human Duality and Power
Tucker should have interviewed Col Macgregor Ret re Churchill
Interesting that Traditional Conservatives are now being called far right
People like Col Macgregor Daniel Davis Tucker want America to follow George Washington’s advice and not that of Radical Imperialism
The roots of Churchill bashing lie in the fact that some people view the disastrous interventions in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya etc as being grounded in the belief that we are always the good guys because we fought the Second World War and liberated Western Europe. I certainly was brought up with that point of view and of course as regards the liberation of France, Belgium, Holland, Denmark, Norway etc, it was true. However when I went to join the British army in 2004 - a year after the invasion - and met young officers in the mess at Warminster who quite obviously had been through a very difficult time and spoke of losing half their men in the first two months, I suddenly discovered that everything I had been told about that situation was wrong. That was my introduction to the fact that the media represents powerful interests rather than disseminates the truth.
This realisation has led critics from both the Left and Right to retrospectively damn every British / American foreign policy decision as being motivated by the same cynicism. They - especially the Right - want to destroy what they call the "boomer truth regime" (itself a nod to the resentment stoked both by Tories like David Willets and embittered Remainers towards older people who have accrued property and pensions which are increasingly out of reach for younger people or who voted for Brexit).
Now there is a case for arguing that WW2 was disastrous for Britain. We were exhausted and near bankrupted by it - and if you view that it was fought to defend the British empire, which in the case of Churchill was a prime motivation, it clearly failed. It was also ruinous for Europe and the ultimate winners were America and the Soviet Union (the latter making a mockery of the notion that it was fought purely for freedom and democracy). There are other analyses which argue that Hitler opposed international finance and was far sighted enough to see what it would do to the West.
However, what this analysis forgets is that the British Foreign Office looked at Hitler's offer of an alliance and rejected it because they knew that if he succeeded in conquering the Soviet Union and all its resources, he would be unassailable on the continent and would, to coin one of the Greek myths, "save us to devour us last". It also forgets that he planned to enact the Hunger Plan, to starve Eastern Europe and Russia to death and repopulate its fertile lands with Germans. Likewise in Russia they are silent about Stalin's plan to invade Europe while the Germans were fighting in the West - and conveniently forget that they invaded Poland when they were in alliance with the Nazis - because this undermines the morality of the Great Patriotic War.
So basically what's happening is the world we live in is changing at a rapid rate, its current systems are producing enormous dissatisfaction and the response to that by some is to seek to destroy what they believe are its ideological / historical underpinnings. Which is rather like what the "anti racists" are doing with their attacks on European colonialism.
What I would urge anyone concerned by the latter to do however is to look at who is funding those attacks because while they may be carried out by people nominally on the Left, the actual impetus comes from extremely powerful financial interests which are playing divide and rule and which are NOT "liberal progressive" but who seek to strip Europeans of their identity and make them cogs in the neoliberal globalised machine.
I think your starting from the wrong place 1939-45
1914-19 was the real catastrophe and people like Churchill are culpable
"I think a curse should rest on me - because I love this war. I know it's smashing and shattering the lives of thousands every moment - and yet - I can't help it - I enjoy every second of it." - Winston Churchill
Written to a friend during 1914-19
Try getting a British Public to fight on Germanys side in 1939 after the slaughter and disillusionment of 1914-19
Your also assuming that Germany could have held onto its gains even if Stalin had fallen
The real catastrophe was 1914-19
Id seriously look at the role radicals like Churchill played in pushing/cheering Britain into that stupidity
British 'interventions' in Afghanistan were fiascos, whcih was why were didn't cross the border in our last confrontatipn in 1919. The arrogant Yanks and Russians ignored this lesson from history and got a well deserved caning. Why we got dragged into the American invasion is a mystery to me - there were no British interests involved and we wisely kept clear of the American invasion of Vietnam which ended in tears.
Just find the CURE... find real Chris all suffer hopefully will end for moment time... cycle of black magic will return back...that horror will grip again humanity...🥸 Whom unknown...
That Empire happened in phases with its different attitudes is very important to remember and what was happening around Europe and the world at various times
I would add though when you have Western Elites in Europe saying we are the garden the world is a jungle then it is a revealing attitude
Or American Elites saying That America is The Indispensable Nation
I have major issues with both attitudes and our competitors are using this to there advantage
The West does have a Superiority Complex (both on the left and right)
Peter Shore favoured Autarky over Radical Liberal Economics
Re why Churchill left the Conservative Party for The Radical Liberal Wing of the Liberal Party
I’m assuming The SDP supports Neo Conservative and Neo Liberal Western Policies for Western Hegemony Then ?
Maybe the definition of slavery not the same.. maybe Napoleon slavery more to capture enemy soldier... probably not like this British...🥸
What racial...my question was..are you still remember..who and whom.. minority & majority was...when your leader say(long time ago) our country will be name Britain....
Britain wrecked itself in the space of approximately 50yrs by fighting wars it couldn’t afford
America is doing the same thing in the space of 30yrs
Col Macgregor Ret
Fortunately, I am morally superior to you, and so you should accept what I say.
Ok boomers
WHY no one spoke about Britain a bankrupt country after world war2... Yankee send a bill...to pay...🥸
21 million if not wrong... British..have ate money problem...🥸
Old school video they put on RUclips about politics British thing...odd about it none of this only talk about spending not expand...see the results today...they call it slow growth...🥸
Every thing ,any head of country get good results because two things honest and responsibility...this two things will move forward...not like London already get nickname clean drugs money of the world...🥸...