Dr Shashi Tharoor MP - Britain Does Owe Reparations

president and gentlemen ladies of the house i standing here with eight minutes in my hands and this venerable another magnificent institution i was going to assure you that i belong to the henry the eighth school of public speaking that as henry the eighth said to his wives i shall not keep you long but now finding myself but now finding myself the seventh speaker out of eight in what must already seem a rather long evening to you I rather feel like Henry the eighth's last wife I'm more or less know what's expected of me but I'm not sure how to do it any differently he'll perhaps what I should do is really try and pay attention to the arguments that were advanced by the opposition today we had for example two richard ottaway suggesting make challenging the very idea that it could be argued that the economic situation of the colonies was actually worsened by the experience of british colonialism well I stand to offer you the Indian example Sir Richard India share of the world economy when Britain arrived on its shores was twenty three percent by the time the British left it was down to below four percent why simply because India had been governed for the benefit of Britain in Britain's rise for two hundred years was financed by its depredations in India in fact Britain's Industrial Revolution was actually premise upon the deindustrialization of India the handloom Weaver's for example famed across the world whose products were exported around the world Britain came right in there were actually these Weaver's making fine muslin lighters woven air it was said and Britain came right in smashed their thumbs broke their looms in post tariffs and duties on their cloth and products and started of course taking the raw materials from India and shipping back manufactured cloth flooding the world's markets with what became the products of the Dow and satanic Mills of Victorian England that meant that the weavers in India became beggars and India went from being a world-famous exporter of finished cloth into an importer went from having 27% of world trade to to less than 2% meanwhile colonialists like robert clive bought their rotten boroughs in england on the proceeds of their loot in india while taking the Hindi word loot into their dictionaries as well as their habits ah and the British had the gall to call him Clive of India as if he belonged to the country when all he really did was to ensure that much of the country belonged to him by the end of the 19th century the fact is that India was already Britain's biggest cash cow the world's biggest purchaser of British goods and exports and the source of highly paid employment for British civil servants we literally paid for our own oppression and as has been pointed out the wealthy Victorian British families that made their money out of out of the slave economy one-fifth of theof the elites of of the wealthy class in Britain in the 19th century owed their money to transporting three million Africans across the waters and in fact in 1833 when slavery was abolished what happened was that a compensation of 20 million pounds was paid not as reparations to those who had lost their lives or who had suffered or been oppressed by slavery but to those who had lost their property I was struck by the fact that the old Wi-Fi password at this Union commemorates the name of mr. Gladstone the great liberal hero what I'm sorry his family was one of those who benefited from the discomfort staying with India between 15 and 29 million Indians died of starvation in British induced famines the most famous example of course was the Great Bengal famine during the Second World War when four million people died because Winston Churchill deliberately as a matter of written militant policy proceeded to divert essential supplies from civilians in Bengal to steady tummies and Europeans as reserves stockpiles he said that the starvation of anyway underfoot underfed Bengalis mattered much less than that of sturdy Greeks this is Churchill's actual quote and when conscious stricken British officials wrote to him pointing out that people were dying because of this decision he peevishly wrote in the margins of the file why hasn't Gandhi died yet so all notions are the British were trying to do their colonial Enterprise out of enlightened despotism to try and bring the benefits of colonialism and civilization to the mid night it even I'm sorry Churchill's conduct in 43 simply one example of many that gave a lie to this myth as others have said on the proposition violence and racism were the reality of the colonial experience and no wonder there the Sun never set on the British Empire because even God couldn't trust the English in the dark let me take world world 1 as a very concrete example since the first speaker mr. Li suggested these things couldn't be quantified well let me quantify world war 1 for you again I'm sorry from an Indian perspective others have spoken of other countries one-sixth of all the British forces that fought on the walk were Indian 54,000 Indians actually lost their lives in that war 65,000 were wounded another 4,000 remained missing or in prison Indian taxpayers had to cough up a hundred million pounds in that times money India supplied 70 million rounds of ammunition 600 thousand rifles and machine guns 42 million garments were stitched and sent out of India and 1.3 million Indian personnel served in this war I know all this because of course the the commemoration of the centenary has just taken place but not just that India had to supply a hundred and seventy three seventy three thousand animals three hundred and seventy million tons of supplies and in the end the total value of everything that was taken out of India India and India by the was suffering from recession at that time and poverty and hunger was in today's money eight billion pounds in one quantification it's available second world war it was even worse two and a half million Indians in uniform I won't belabor the point but of Britain's total war debt of three billion pounds in 1945 money 1.25 billion was owed to India and never actually paid somebody mentioned Scotland where a fact is that colonialism actually cemented your union with Scotland you know the Scots had actually tried to send colonies out before 1707 they'd all fail them sorry to say but then of course came Union and India was available and there you had a disproportionate employment of Scots I'm sorry mr. Mackenzie has to speak after me engaged in this colonial enterprise as soldiers as merchants as agencies employees and the earnings from India is what brought prosperity to Scotland even pulled Paul Scotland out of poverty now that India is no longer there no wonder the bonds are loosening now we've heard other arguments on this side there's been a mention of the railways well let me tell you first of all as my colleague the Jamaican High Commissioners pointed out railways and roads were really built to serve British interests and not those of the local people but I might add that many countries have built railways and roads without having had to be colonized in order to do so they they were designed to carry raw materials from the hinterland into the ports to be shipped to Britain and the fact is that the Indian or Jamaican or other colonial public their needs were incidental transportation there was no attempt made to match supply to demand for mass transport none whatsoever instead in fact the Indian Railways were built with massive incentives offered by Britain to British investors guaranteed out of Indian taxes paid by Indians with the result that you actually had one mile of Indian Railway costing twice what it costs to build the same mile in Canada or Australia because there was so much money being paid in extravagant returns Britain made all the profits control the technology supplied all the equipment and absolutely all these benefits came as private enterprise British private enterprise at public risk Indian public risk that was the railways as an accomplishment we're hearing about aid I think it was it was it was again sir richard ottaway mentioned british aid to india let me just point out the British aid to India is about 0.4% of India's GDP the government of India actually spends more on fertilizer subsidies which might be an appropriate metaphor for that argument if I may point out as well if I may point out as well that that as my fellow speakers from the proposition that pointed out there have been incidents of racial violence of loot of massacres of bloodshed of transportation in India's case even of one of our last Mughal emperor yes maybe today's Britons are not responsible for some of these depredations but the same speakers appointed with pride to their foreign aid you're not responsible for the people starving in Somalia but we give them aid surely the principle of reparations for what is for the wrongs that have been done cannot be denied it's been pointed out for example the dehumanization of Africans and the Caribbean the massive psychological damage that has been done the undermining of social traditions of property rights of the authority structures of these societies all in the interests of a British colonialism and the fact remains that many of today's problems in these countries including the persistence in some cases the creation of racial and ethnic and religious tensions were the direct result of the colonial experience so there is a moral debt that needs to be paid someone challenged reparations elsewhere well I'm sorry Germany doesn't just give reparations to Israel it also gave reparations to Poland perhaps some of the speakers here are too young to remember the dramatic picture of Chancellor Willy Brandt on his knees in the Warsaw Ghetto in 1970 and there are other examples there is italy's reparations to libya there's Japan's to Korea even Britain has paid reparations to the New Zealand Mallory's so it's not as if this is something unprecedented run harder that's going to somehow open some sort of nasty Pandora's box no wonder professor Lewis reminded us that he's from Texas there's a wonderful expression in Texas that summarizes the arguments of the opposition all hat and no cattle now if I can just quickly and look through the other notes I was scribbling while they were speaking there was reference to democracy and rule of law let me say with the greatest possible respect you can it's a bit rich to oppress enslave kill torture maim people for 200 years and then celebrate the fact that their democratic at the end of it we were denied democracy so we had to snatch it seized it from you with the greatest of reluctance it was considered in India's case after 150 years of British rule and that too with limited franchise yes indeed all right I don't think that needs needs contradiction not for me at any rate but if I may just if I may just point out I think the arguments made by a couple of the speakers the first speaker mr. Lee in particular conceded all the evil atrocities of colonialism but essentially suggested that reparations won't really help they won't help the right people they be used as a propaganda tool they'll embolden people like Mr Mugabe it's always nice how in the old days you know I'm sorry to say that the the people of the Caribbean used to frighten their children into behaving and sleeping by saying Sir Francis Drake would come after them that was a legacy of that effect now that now it's Mugabe will be Lesley this is the new sort of Sir Francis Drake of our times the fact is the fact is very simply sir that we are not talking about reparations as a tool to empower anybody they're a tool for you to atone for the wrongs that have been done and I I am quite prepared to accept the proposition that you can't evaluate put a put a monetary sum on the kinds of Horrors people have suffered certainly no amount of money can expiate the loss of a loved one as somebody pointed out there you're not going to be able to figure out an exact amount but the principle is what matters the fact is that to speak blithely of sacrifices on both sides as an elegy was used here a burglar comes into your house ransacked the place stubs his toe and you say what he there was a sacrifice on both sides that I'm sorry to say is not unacceptable is not an acceptable argument the truth is that we are not arguing specifically that vast sums of money need to be paid the proposition before this house is the principle of owing reparations not the fine points of how much is owed to home which should be paid the question is is there a debt does written all reparations as far as I'm concerned the ability to acknowledge a wrong that has been done to simply say sorry will go a far far far longer way than some percentage of GDP in in inform in the form of of aid what is required it seems to me is accepting the principle that reparations are owed personally I'd be quite happy if it was one pound a year for the next 200 years after the last 200 years of Britain and India thank you very much you

Channel: OxfordUnion

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Keywords: Union, Society, University, Debates, Debating, Interview, Oxford Union, Oxford Union Society, Dr Shashi Tharoor MP, colonialism

Id: f7CW7S0zxv4

Length: 15min 29sec (929 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 14 2015