Back in the Day: How the sun began to set on Britain’s empire

I have covered the main events and people up to the start of the 20th century, and today will show how the collapse of the British empire directly contributed to the growing sense of Scotland being able to contemplate ending the Union. So let me continue with trying to define the 20-plus “primer” things with the format of asking the questions for which our reader needed answers.

When did the empire peak?

Under Queen Victoria and her son, King Edward VII, the British empire reached a scale that we can only look back on and say “how did that happen?”. The answer was a combination of military might and the imposition of British ruling systems on countries across

the globe.

After the defeat of Napoleon’s France and before the arrival of the USA as a military power at the start of the 20th century, Britain had more or less a century of being the global superpower. Only Russia had anything like the size and resources to challenge Britain, but always stayed close to its own territory. Other nations, such as France, Belgium, Italy and Portugal, had imperialist ambitions, especially in Africa, but only the British empire had territories in five continents. Scots were represented in just about every imperial project and, as we have seen, were the workshop of the empire. It really was true that the sun never set on the British empire, and the factories and shipyards of Scotland helped to power that global presence.

As other mini-empires and not-so-mini empires began to collapse in eastern Europe and Asia, it was Russia and Britain which fought it out to take over them. India was the empire’s jewel in the crown and was never seriously threatened by Russia, but the Ottoman Empire bestrode the Middle East, and what became known as the “Great Game” saw the two great powers battle for control of much of Asia. Despite a disastrous war in Afghanistan, Britain triumphed, with the Crimean War in the 1850s being the conflict that settled the issue in Britain’s favour.

By the 1870s, Britain and Russia were at peace, having agreed on which parts of Asia they would control. By 1907, they had even signed the Anglo-Russian Entente, a year before the Entente Cordiale with France, as Germany emerged as the chief threat to these empires.

It is remarkable that up until the First World War, every country that had been conquered or assimilated into the empire remained solidly part of the empire. The invention of dominions – basically the white colonies were allowed to govern themselves while acknowledging British overlordship – was a clever form of devolution which, as every Scot knows, is power retained.

Thus Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and later British India very much remained part of the empire with the British monarch as head of state.

Probably the one time that signified British empire dominance was the period in 1897 when Queen Victoria celebrated the diamond jubilee of her ascension to the throne. The ceremonies to mark the occasion deliberately emphasised her role as Queen Empress, and indeed it was called the Festival of the British Empire. Every empire country was represented and many other allies sent their heads of government or heads of state.

If it could be said that one day was the zenith of the empire, then it was June 22, 1897, when Victoria was carried in a huge procession to a service at St Paul’s Cathedral. She wrote in her diary: “No-one ever, I believe, has met with such an ovation as was given to me, passing through those six miles of streets.

‘THE crowds were quite indescribable and their enthusiasm truly marvellous and deeply touching. The cheering was quite deafening, and every face seemed to be filled with real joy. I was much moved and gratified.”

The propaganda surrounding the jubilee was a reflection of what had been going on in the mass media throughout the empire’s glory days. The press did not peddle a myth, because the empire really was the greatest in size that the world had ever seen.

If truth be told, a great many citizens bought into the whole empire cult, including most Scots. After all, it had enriched a lot of Scottish families and kept many more in a job. Yet even then, the first signs of the empire’s decline was already in evidence. The question of Home Rule for Ireland had dominated British politics for two decades, and there had already been uprisings by the Zulus and Boers in South Africa.

In British politics, the rise of socialism was already under way and, led by Scots such as the Red Clydesiders, ordinary people were beginning to question imperialism and whether Britain could afford its role as the world’s police force. What exacerbated those doubts was war, and very bloody war at that.

The Boer War, more correctly the Second Boer War, was a brutal conflict in Southern Africa from 1899 to 1902 which pitted the huge might of Britain and its colonies against the Boers and their relatively tiny but nevertheless hugely combative forces.

Around 30,000 lost their lives on both sides but Britain also suffered the loss of its reputation, not least for being morally upstanding, when it invented concentration camps. The independent Boer republics were subsumed into the British empire and in 1910 the Union of South Africa became a dominion, but the damage had been done – the British empire was no longer invincible. It was a bloody war, but nothing compared to what was coming.

Most people’s idea of the Great War is usually confined to the trench warfare on the Western Front, but there were many more theatres than that – Italy, Turkey, the Balkans, Russia, Africa, the Middle East and what is now Iraq and Iran all saw heavy fighting at one time or another. The war in some places carried on until 1920, and by its end millions were dead.

It was very much an imperialist venture, and Britain and its allies did eventually prevail with the assistance of soldiers from across the empire and the USA. As is well known, Scotland suffered disproportionately more casualties than other parts of the empire, and coupled with the rise of Labour and the trades unions, particularly on Clydeside, the whole empire ethos began to be seriously questioned.

This was nowhere more so than in Ireland, where the Easter Rising of 1916 was suppressed by judicial murder which in turn only inspired more Irish people to take up the cause for independence.

The Great Depression of the 1930s was another nail in the coffin for the cult of empire, for if Britain could not look after its own people, went the reasoning, what was it doing trying to maintain an empire?

The whole question of Britain and what to do with its empire can be reduced to the personal conflict between two men. Once was the arch-imperialist Winston Spencer Churchill and the other was Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, also known as Mahatma Gandhi.

THE latter was an Indian lawyer who used the tactics of non-violence to successfully campaign for independence for his country,

which was achieved in 1947, the largest loss of population from the empire ever.

Churchill vehemently opposed Gandhi and Indian independence in the 1930s, arguing India was not a nation at all and that losing the jewel in the crown would see the collapse of British rule elsewhere.

Gandhi had all the winning arguments, however, and his tactics and philosophies were to be followed by other countries wanting out of the empire, though some countries such as Kenya saw very violent uprisings, and equally violent suppressions, in the fight to end colonial rule

Churchill was quite happy to use Indian troops and those of many Empire countries in the Second World War, which I personally believe was the last great hurrah of the empire. Churchill acknowledged it played a crucial role in the Allies’ victory, yet he could not see it was going to have to be dismantled and replaced with a commonwealth of nations which is far from perfect but retains some loyalty to Britain.

Britain did not lose the empire. It merely gave control back to the nations which formed it. Depending on how you analyse their status, some 62 countries have become independent of the empire, and many Scots have played roles in the UK divesting itself of that empire.

There are still a few overseas territories and dependencies, but the empire ceased to exist in the last decades of the 20th century. No country has ever asked to rejoin it.

Nor is it surprising that the rise of Scottish nationalism post-dates the empire’s collapse. For the empire cult was a unifying factor for Britain and now it is no more.

As soon as the Union is over, there will be de facto no British anything, never mind empire At the moment we are stuck in a union of inequality. If, however, the Secretary of State for Scotland Alister Jack’s pronouncement last week that it could be up to 40 years before there is another independence referendum “granted” by the Westminster Government is correct, and if Boris Johnson and his like continue on their way to a No-Deal Brexit, attacking devolution – and creating a new “British Together” brand that utterly reeks of wretchedly clinging to the past – then unless we regain independence we will indeed be a colony of England, the last country of the empire.

Here is an indubitable fact. At no point did the Scottish Government or the Yes Scotland organisation make it a matter of policy that the 2014 referendum was a “once-in a-generation” event. The phrase principally came from a remark by Alex Salmond, but he was saying it the context of encouraging Yes voters to turn out, not stating it as a policy. Indeed, the Edinburgh Agreement signed by the UK and Scottish governments made no such statement.

This is what it did say: “The two governments are committed to continue to work together constructively in the light of the outcome, whatever it is, in the best interests of the people of Scotland and of the rest of the United Kingdom.” And then came Brexit …

The Unionist parroting of the “once-in-a-generation” phrase is indicative of how terrified they have become of a second independence referendum. History shows us what happens to those who would deny democracy – and that’s week-old history. Donald Trump’s humiliation after he denied the democratic outcome of the US presidential election is what will happen to Johnson, Jack and the others who will still deny Scotland’s right to have a second independence referendum even if the pro-independence parties win a large majority in next May’s Holyrood election.

If the Tories do deny a Section 30 referendum, then Scotland will be shown to be the last English colony, and we, the Scottish people, will act accordingly.

Just as I have shown that Scotland had an integral part in the establishment, development and collapse of the British empire, so do I want us in Scotland to realise what our history means – that we were an independent nation and in the great course of world history, many nations have lost their independence and regained it again. It is time for us to regain the nation, and in doing so, we will make history.