Imperialism, racism, the Tories and education

From London Socialist Historians Group Newsletter 71 (Autumn 2020)

Imperialism, racism, the Tories and education

 The Morning Star (27 September 2020) cites the new UK Department for Education Plan for teaching which instructs schools to ‘not under any circumstances use resources by organisations’ whose publicly stated desire is ‘to abolish or overthrow democracy, capitalism, or to end free and fair elections’. And further, and equally alarming, this covers all resources and is to be enforced ‘even if the material itself is not extreme, as the use of it could imply endorsement or support of the organisation’. 

Of course, the variants and viciousness of capitalism are part and parcel of every colonial and national history, every part of social being, from disease and health to education, to workplace and the criminal law, and much in between. We know a lot about every stage of suffering, at home and in the former colonies due to liberal writers, Quakers, the left and the Communist, publishing extensive details, together ‘modern’ with the sordid and brutal; Cheddi Jagan, for instance, on British Guiana, C.L.R. James on Haiti, H.N. Brailsford and Rajani Palme Dutt on the Indian empire; I want others to read Wadia & Merchant (Bombay 1945), the older literature from South Africa and the empire and in recent times the appalling developments in capitalist plus military regimes: Indonesia, the Philippines, the history of Latin America, the oil producing middle east. 

Publishers, and not only those on left, offer an open door to those who write on ex-colonial and capitalist issues: questions which are upsetting to read; torture, detention of children, illegal rendition, brutal labour contracts, as well as standard works on the need to modify and replace capitalism, not just the dreadful forms of old colonial times, but those right now causing mis-treatment and damage to the environment, the seas, the forests, and to people. These texts make us think. 

Literature for much of the world carries politics and provides balance to everyday life.  Is the Tory Plan to block reading literature which is unsettling about capitalism ? Well, here be a vast library: Doris Lessing on Rhodesia, a Communist who in late 1956 wrote to John Gollan that she now thought of herself as a non-Party Bolshevik: is she included ? How about Stella Jackson, and her father T. A Jackson, with his work Ireland Her Own ? Can I prescribe Leonard Cassini, Music in Rumania ? Anything by Len Doherty who wrote regularly for World News ? E P Thompson’s work on William Morris came out whilst he was still in the Communist Party ? Jack Lindsay whose output straddled the middle years of last century ? Should we include on the allowed literature Ilya Ehrenburg The Thaw, who was not only a Soviet Party member, the early translation was edited by Jack Lindsay ? And while we are considering literature, should the Communist literature published in the Soviet Union be banned ? That’s a lot of novels on the list. 

For school students with relatives in old colonies this Tory Plan restricts access to books likely to encourage interest in how their countries suffered under colonialism. Teenagers want to know about their historical past. Why did the British take over their country ? What were the benefits for conquest: landowning (such as the white highlands), gold (South Africa) silver (the opium trade) trade in general, building railways and ports, tea plantations, labour relations (indentured servants in Trinidad). When the British announced ‘independence’ what form did it take ? Who got the keys to government house ? Palme-Dutt has really basic, easy to read, books on the Indian empire ? Are reprints banned ? This Tory Plan clamps a veil on Asian, Chinese, Indian, Irish and Caribbean studies, impeding knowledge, and banning whole shelves as dangerous. 

School students will also ask about violence. The massacres that took place in the Indian empire, even as late at March 1946 in Bombay, with the Indian navy revolt, and the subsequent shootings, even as far away as Bihar. We also know about fascism, the propensity of capitalists to call in the law and the military. The reach for the gun by settlers in Kenya, Malaya, Ireland; it’s a long list whose omissions would significantly damage the education of our children.

 [Is Keith Flett to be banned, and the London Socialist historians ?] 

Richard Vessey Saville