Richard McMillan on Churchill, British values and colonialism

On the one hand, schools are required to promote ‘British values’, namely democracy, tolerance, respect, individual liberty and the rule of law, while on the other hand, British institutions such as the British Empire and key figures such as Sir Winston Churchill are under attack as never before.

Such a situation is concerning. While no one would dispute that the values listed as ‘British’ are worthwhile, it is far from clear that they are uniquely British, as they can be found beyond our shores.

The danger of labelling them as ‘British’ is that children can all too easily believe that this is exactly what they are.

Current views of our past are similarly fraught with problems and say more about ourselves than about the past.

Richard McMillan can understand why pupils get confused with British values (Image: St Anthony's School for Boys)

Sir Winston Churchill was one of the 20th Century’s greatest statesmen, standing alongside Mikhail Gorbachev, Ronald Reagan, Pope John Paul II and Nelson Mandela, and yet his statue in Parliament Square is fenced off to prevent it from being desecrated.

It is not in dispute that Churchill held views that even in his own time were regarded by his colleagues as both repugnant and ridiculous.

One colleague was so struck by Churchill’s callous response to the Bengal Famine of 1943 that he stated that he could see no difference between his views and those of his antagonist Adolf Hitler.

But this is the key point: Churchill, unlike Hitler, did not design and implement a war of annihilation. And the British Empire, of which Churchill was so ardent a champion, cannot simply be written off as an evil enterprise.

Like most forms of human endeavour, the British Empire was a complex mix of good and bad.

It has also passed into history and cannot be resurrected. It should be neither a source of shame nor a source of pride.

Where we read about slavery, genocide and economic exploitation, we should rightly be judgemental; by the same token, where we read about infrastructure, impartial administration, education, irrigation and much else besides, we should be inspired.

These developments may well have occurred without colonial expansion but they were part of the colonial project and should be something to celebrate rather than condemn.

Today, there is no agreement among commentators about whether the developing world’s undoubted problems have been made worse or better by colonialism.

The modern world has been shaped by the colonial encounter: we need to engage with its legacy and not shut it out of our minds.

• Richard McMillan is academic in residence at St Anthony’s School for Boys, Hampstead.