LONDON: UK Education Secretary Nadhim Zahawi’s suggestion that children should be “taught the benefits” of the British Empire has been criticized by politicians and the public.
In an interview with The Times on Monday, he said: “My parents fled Iraq because of Saddam Hussain. If you ask Iraqis, before the Ba’athist regime came into office — Saddam’s cronies and criminals — Iraq was left with a legacy of a British civil service system that actually served the country incredibly well for many, many decades.”
Zahawi added: “That’s the sort of thing that children should be learning about, and of course all aspects of Empire — and I think that’s important.”
Zahawi, an ethnic Kurd born in Baghdad, fled the Iraqi capital at the age of 9 with his parents shortly after Saddam seized power.
Diane Abbott, a Labour Party MP and shadow home secretary, tweeted: “Benefits of empire not obvious if you were a colonised people.”
Abbott, whose parents were from Jamaica — which gained its independence from Britain in 1967 — added: “British empire just seized land and resources from the colonies, entire profits went back to Britain and it was all based on a toxic theory of racial superiority.”
Present-day Iraq was taken from the Ottoman Empire after it was defeated by Britain and its allies during World War I.
After more than 10 years of direct rule, London established a monarchy in the country, which had been cobbled together from the three Ottoman-controlled provinces of Basra, Baghdad and Mosul.
Iraq was granted independence in 1932 but maintained close ties with the UK — and was subject to direct intervention — for decades after becoming independent.
Alan Lester, an expert in British colonialism and professor at the University of Sussex, told Arab News that the period of British rule and the years following it were characterized by brutality and repression.
“The education secretary has now joined the equalities minister arguing that the ‘positives’ of the British Empire should be taught to British schoolchildren, as if they haven’t been taught to us all for the last 100 years,” Lester said
He added that the choice of Iraq as a positive example is “striking” given that a rebellion gave rise to “the world’s first major aerial bombing campaign” against Iraqis.
“Few Britons know about it, but it played a significant role in creating the Middle East as we know it today, and helped set the scene for the rise of ISIS (Daesh), now active again,” Lester said.
That campaign, he added, was waged against a coalition of Iraqis opposed to British rule, and the latter resorted to using chemical weapons, killing around 10,000 people.
“This is just one more facet of our empire’s legacies that we choose to overlook when we celebrate our imperial past, and especially when we proclaim its legacy of liberal democracy around the world,” Lester said.
Members of the public also criticized Zahawi’s comments. One tweeted: “Thank Goodness, I haven’t got school aged kids. Now Zahawi wants to educate the kids on the virtues of the Empire … This country is so going backwards, scary and unbelievable.”
Another joked: “Education Secretary Nadhim Zahawi outlines plans to help struggling history teachers by focusing the curriculum on benefits of the British Empire rather than criticisms, potentially reducing workloads by up to 99%.”
Others, however, defended his viewpoint. One tweeted: “And he’s right. As much as this may shock people nowadays, there WERE benefits of the British Empire, and it was by no means the worst European colonial empire.
“A balanced account needs to be taught, focusing only on positives or negatives is propaganda, not education.”
