CAMBRIDGE LETTER
Looking within
BILL KIRKMAN
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There is a lot of questioning happening on some of the fundamental aspects of British society.
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There has been widespread media coverage of the 60th anniversary of India’s independence in the United Kingdom. Interest on the part of people of my generation, who can remember the event, is of course not surprising, but it has in fact spread
much wider than that. As one would expect, much of the coverage has focused on the move from British rule — the beginning of the end of empire — but it has been presented against the background of the current economic and international strength of India. Readers and viewers have been encouraged to take a realistic rather than a nostalgic approach to India.
One concomitant of the “looking back at history” element of the coverage has been that it has provoked questioning of the process and timing of Partition. Could it, should it, have been handled better? Could a different approach by the British have avoided the appalling death toll?
Reaching balanced judgments on major events and issues obviously requires a measure of historical perspective. Judgments made as things happen are inevitably likely to be partial and subject to change on reflection.
With that caveat, it is interesting to see how in the U.K. there is currently much questioning of quite fundamental aspects of our society. I would not claim that this has been driven by re-examination of our historical role in the Indian sub-continent. That would be imputing too much to coincidence. Whatever the reason, however, the questioning is certainly going on.
New findings
Let me take just a few of many examples. The first is an exploration of social progress in an 18-month project launched by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. In support of it, the RSA (Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce) has invited its members to reply to a questionnaire about Social Evils. The invitation asks: “Would your list of Social Evils include violence, poverty, addictions to drink, to drugs and gambling, or human trafficking? Over a century ago the famous philanthropist Joseph Rowntree included all of these in his personal hit list”.
A second example is concern about the major problem of young offenders, at a time when our prison population is higher than it has been for generations. A report by the resettlement project, Reset, and the charity, Rainer has declared that about 80 million pounds a year could be saved by providing better support to young offenders leaving prison. Reset, a pilot project which ended in June, and the charity Rainer, argue that pressure on youth offending teams and the prison system results in young people being released some distance from their home communities, often without an effective resettlement plan in place.
Two months ago the Howard League for Penal Reform condemned the treatment of children in young offenders institutions — an issue which has made headlines on many occasions in recent years.
(Interestingly, the RSA asked readers of its Journal to vote on the issue of the criminal justice system’s treatment of young offenders, following an article published in June. To the question: Is the U.K.’s criminal jus
tice system reasonable in its treatment of young offenders, 24 per cent voted yes, 76 per cent voted no.)
Constitutional debate
Alongside major social issues of this kind, there is a constitutional debate going on about the relationship between different parts of the United Kingdom, a debate which appears to be gathering momentum in a way that would have been unthinkable a decade ago. The latest manifestation has come in the formulation of plans by Scotland’s (minority) Scottish National Party government for a referendum on Scottish independence — in spite of opposition by the other main political parties. Launching a “national conversation”, Scotland’s First Minister, Alex Salmond, leader of the SNP, said no change was no longer an option.
Of course a “national conversation” is a long way from an actual referendum, but the fact that it has been launched is certainly of political significance.
Sixty years ago, the British recognised that the independence of India and Pakistan was important for the U.K. as well as for the newly independent States. That recognition was imprecise. We knew it was important, but were not sure what the effects were likely to be. As Dean Acheson, the United States Secretary of State in the 1940s put it: “Great Britain has lost an empire and has not yet found a role”.
Predictions of where current political and social questioning will lead would inevitably be equally imprecise, but that does not mean that we should be in any doubt that they are significant.
Bill Kirkman is an Emeritus Fellow of Wolfson College Cambridge, UK. Email him at: bill.kirkman@gmail.com
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