Can an apology for historic crimes ever benefit those who suffered? Yes, but only up to a point

While our country hovers on the edge of a historic break with Europe, my attention was caught by what, at first sight, seemed a rather less significant issue: the Tory MP who has inherited a sugar estate in Barbados and is being asked to pay reparations for his ancestors’ treatment of slaves.

But the issues are far from trivial and also go beyond the demands of the Black Lives Matter campaign that slave owners should be dethroned from the respectability conveyed by statues and street names.

Mr Richard Drax, MP for Dorset South – or, more accurately, Mr Richard Grosvenor Plunkett-Ernle-Erle-Drax – was, in my recollection, an impressive looking man of military bearing who, when he opened his mouth, trotted out the English nationalist orthodoxy of the modern Tory party. Immigration? “The country is full”, and so on. But to give him credit, he made no attempt to justify his slave-owning ancestors.

Nonetheless, this very valuable piece of Caribbean real estate wasn’t won in a raffle; it was passed down through the family bloodline, directly, from slave owning ancestors. The inheritors were the families of the slave owners; not the slaves.  

I refer to this story to make a wider point about today’s politics: the politics of identity. In the UK that means “culture wars”: about race, nation, religion, language. And central to it is our history and the myths we have built up around it.

It is easy to mock the arguments about history, whether narrated by imperialistic Colonel Blimps or by those on the dottier fringes of political correctness. I can imagine a Monty Python sketch about aggrieved residents from Essex demanding an apology from the Italian government for war crimes committed by Roman legions.

But there is also a serious argument about historic crimes. When do we recognise them as such? When do we express remorse for the past? When does remorse necessitate restitution? When do reparations have a role?

It is not a coincidence that the major Western country with the best functioning democracy at present is the one which has honestly recognised the horrors of its own past: Germany. New Zealand has also emerged a stronger and healthier country for having recognised the damage to its indigenous people of colonial settlement. South Africa has its problems but averted a probable bloodbath in the 90s thanks to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission at the end of Apartheid.  

By contrast, in our currently dysfunctional democracy, the prime minister’s idea of sustaining optimism is to indulge a ludicrous caricature of our history, reminding us of our collective heroism in the Battle of Britain and the Blitz and the unbroken history of military triumph from Agincourt through Waterloo to D-Day (coupled with reminders of the dastardly Hun and the duplicitous French). Anything uncomfortable is edited out. It is still branded “woke” to remember that Britain’s emergence as the first industrial superpower owed much, not only to brilliant innovators and brave sailors, but to capital accumulated through slavery, piracy, slaughter and large scale drug dealing.

There are many other cases where amnesia causes problems today. The identity crisis which has driven Trumpism in the US has at its heart an inability among white Americans to recognise the legacy of slavery and the myths around the destruction of North American Indian society. In Spain, people are only just coming to terms with their Civil War, over 80 years ago. Belgians do not, even now, appear to recognise one of the most brutal of colonial occupations: theirs in the Congo.  

Meanwhile, modern conflict in the Caucasus is linked to the refusal of modern Turkey to recognise the Armenian genocide a century ago. And some of Western surprise over Chinese assertiveness (in Hong Kong particularly) comes from a blind spot about the “century of humiliation”, from the Opium Wars to the reparations imposed on China after the Boxer uprising.  

Some memories go back even further. The resurfacing of Hindu “nationalism” is justified as a response to atrocities perpetrated by the Mughals after the 13th century, including the building of mosques on top of temples. And in our own country, battles of over 300 years ago are replayed in Northern Ireland as if they happened yesterday.

Beyond recognition of these truths, does remorse and apology help? It may appear insincere, and occasionally ridiculous, to apologise for the crimes of earlier generations. It is also convenient for politicians to apologise for the past crimes of others rather than to apologise for their own, contemporary mistakes. But genuine apologies matter.

David Cameron’s apology on behalf of the UK for the “deeply shameful” Amritsar massacre a century earlier was greatly appreciated by Sikhs. Tony Blair’s “deep sorrow” over the slave trade was rejected as insufficient until he told the president of Ghana that he was truly “sorry”. The apologies to Ireland from Britain’s leaders for what was done under British rule has helped repair a historically blighted relationship.  

German public contrition towards Jewish people and other Nazi victims has rebuilt trust. Australian apologies for the crimes committed against the Aboriginal population has gone some way to establishing mutual respect. The Japanese apologies to China on the occasion of Deng’s visit in 1978 drained some of the poison of hate from wartime memories.

If we were drawing up an apology list there are plenty of other worthy candidates: Indian famines; the Opium trade; Sykes-Picot and the Balfour Declaration; Rhodesia. The problem with these apologies is knowing where to stop. And since they admit wrongdoing, they invite the obvious response that there needs to be some restitution. At present, restitution is a real issue for museums where stolen artefacts make up a sizeable part of the exhibits of great museums in the UK and other Western centres of culture: Nigerian bronzes; the Elgin Marbles; the mummified heads of “savages”. The ethics and practicalities of returning such objects are not straightforward but major museums are now addressing it seriously.

Some restitution has happened through land reform – for example, in Kenya – and through hunting rights reserved to “first nations”, as in Canada.  But while it is possible to compensate the living and their families, as has also happened for Jewish victims of Nazi expropriation, that becomes more difficult with the passage of time and with uncertain property rights.

Reparations have a bad reputation; just look at the Weimar Republic after the First World War. But the principle of reparations for slavery is not outlandish. Indeed, modern aid programmes in former colonies perhaps reflect some sense of retrospective moral obligation among other motives on the part of governments. That leaves questions to answer for those who have personally benefited from the legacy of slavery.

I hope that the recently further-enriched Mr Drax pays some attention to the very polite representations from the Caribbean Community Reparations Commission. He could, after all, donate his inheritance to the island on which it stands and still have plenty of property – including a hefty chunk of British land – left over.