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British Empire is Back; Official

Auguste | 28.12.2001 17:24

Last year, a controversial posting on this site suggested British imperial power was re- emerging. According to Newsweek magazine (03; 12; 01), which usually reflects the USA offical outlook...

"The Ghost of Gladstone Stalks the World Stage".

(Prof W R Mead sees the good side of the British empire)

"Tony Blair's global diplomacy is rooted in the 19th century, when Britain was a superpower * and India was under its rule...
Britain was one of the most fervently christian societies of its day, its foreign policy was founded on universal principles of human rights*...
So too for Tony Blair, visibly descended from this liberal tradition... humanitarian interventions for human rights and economic development based on free trade for the sake of the poor; if there are main themes in Blairs diplomacy, they are these, just as under Gladstone %...
Slavery was abolished, in Britain and its colonies in 1833. But because it still flourished in the USA,... to British policymakers of the day, this was not merely a humanitarian scandal... it also BLOCKED AFRICA FROM PEACEFUL COMMERCE [My emphasis]...
For most of the [19th century], the largest single fleet in the British navy was dedicated to to the supression of the slave trade. Ports were blockaded; suspicious ships were
stopped on the open seas...
We can hear the echo today, when Tony Blair calls (as he did in Davos) for preferential tariff concessions to poor countries. When he supports American interventions, in support of universal standards of human rights, He is following the trail that Britain blazed when it was a global superpower*...
The return to foreign- policy themes from Britains imperial past is not just nostalgia. .. Blair seems to believe that Britain can rediscover just such a role..."


*Anachronistic terms. These were not used in the 1800s.

% Gladstone, yes, but he fails to mention Henry Temple Palmerston, Foreign Secretary, and blatant consolidationist of imperial power

Auguste

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On Great Britain as an international power

28.12.2001 18:06

"It is a notorious and undeniable fact that we--that is, our Governments--are, with few exceptions, hated and feared by almost all other Governments, especially those of the Great Powers. Is there no cause for this? Surely we know there is ample cause. We have either annexed or conquered a larger portion of the world than any other Power. We have long claimed the sovereignty of the sea. We hold islands and forts and small territories offensively near the territories of other Powers. We still continue grabbing all we can. In disputes with the powerful we often give way; with the weak and helpless, or those we think so, we are--allowing for advance in civilisation--bloody, bold, and ruthless as any conqueror of the Middle Ages. And with it all we are sanctimonious. We profess religion. We claim to be more moral than other nations, and to conquer and govern and tax and plunder weaker peoples for their good! While robbing them we actually claim to be benefactors! And then we wonder, or profess to wonder, why other Governments hate us! Are they not fully justified in hating us? Is it surprising that they seek every means to annoy us, that they struggle to get navies to compete with us, and look forward to a time when some two or three of them may combine together and thoroughly humble and cripple us? And who can deny that any just Being, looking at all the nations of the earth with impartiality and thorough knowledge, would decide that we deserve to be humbled, and that it might do us good?"
--from 'Practical Politics,' The Clarion (London), 30 September 1904

Alfred Russel Wallace

Blair confimed his amibitons in an odd remark

30.12.2001 17:10

at a recent party conference.

He referred to the previous century as a 'century of decline'. Unfortunately, the dimwits of the Labour party failed to notice that this was a repudiation of offical Labour history, a white-wash where its benificent influence has, supposedly, made the 20th century one of progress.
Whoops, Tony's bias is showing. He really wants the empire back, i fear...

London reader