According to today’s Guardian, students in the UK have been calling for “decolonised curriculums” since 2017.
Here’s Mani Desai, a Reader at the University of Cambridge:
“What’s important to hold at the core of all of these discussions is the need for Britain… to really grapple with the colonial legacy….I think there’s something about the word colonial that people are allergic to.”
What jumps out at me is Desai’s reference to people being allergic to the word colonial. Remember Anna Lo, late of this parish, once a member of the Alliance Party? She made a reference to NI being “a British colony” and the roof just about fell in. Unionist outrage knew no bounds. We were equal partners in a unit called the United Kingdom, how dare she make such a charge.
Except that it’s true. Anyone reading the history of Ireland in even the most cursory way will see that Ireland has for centuries been a colony of England/Britain. Attempts to rebel against colonisation were repeatedly crushed. The native language and culture were seen as primitive and replaced by the English language and culture. Irish people were taught to see what was Irish as second-best, even backward.
A century ago, the Irish people in a peaceful election opted for rule of Ireland by Irish people: the Black and Tan war promptly followed. Eventually the twenty-six counties were allowed to govern themselves, while six counties in the north were kept within British jurisdiction. Statues, buildings, streets, buildings all have British names, lest we forget what we are: a colony.
If there’s a need to revisit the past and see how figures that were and are revered were actually part of the repression of black people within the British Empire, it would similarly make sense for us to consider the reality of British jurisdiction in Ireland and its treatment of Irish people.
But show me the unionist politician who’ll concede that the north-east of Ireland is essentially a modern-day colony, and I’ll give you £50.
Comments are closed.