Living in the shadow of its own past

Long, long ago, when Walt was a schoolboy, every classroom was adorned with a map of the world, courtesy of a chocolate bar manufacturer. The map showed the British Empire -- all the big and tiny bits of it -- in a deep pink. We could see that it was indeed the empire on which the sun never set.

Today the chocolate bar company has disappeared. So has the British Empire, save for a few rocky specks all but lost in huge seas of blue. But the British are still suffering from the impact of having once had a mighty empire, but being the most powerful nation on earth no more.

So says The Economist in an excellent column in this week's print edition.* The legacy of empire is, according to "Bagehot" the tiger under the dining room table, or the Indian elephant in the living room, which informs British attitudes and thinking even today. Bagehot gives three examples.

Why did Tony Blair overcommit his country to the American war in Iraq? "One theory...is that his militarism and messianism, the mix of responsibility and entitlement that he evinced, are part of the inheritance of all post-imperial British leaders."

"Playing Boy Wonder to America's Batman", as historian Linda Colley puts it, is British politicians' only chance of maintaining a global role. Or it could be that they yearn for long-past greatness because of a fear of being emasculated by America.

According to Bagehot, empire is also implicated in Britain's exposure to the great financial debacle of the last 18 months. It is from the days of empire, he argues, that Britons get their commerical habits -- not the most aggressive or businesslike of nations -- and an "overmighty financial sector", preoccupied with foreign deals and insulated to its detriment from the domestic economy.

And of course there is immigration, "the most obvious domestic legacy" of empire. Coincidentally, the Economist prints on the facing page an article headed "This sceptical isle". It points out that according to a recent survey, Britons are less keen on immigration than most people in Europe and North America.

(It may come as a shock to Walt's readers that Americans and Canadians are generally more tolerant than not. Only a third of Canadians, [only?! ed.] have negative attitudes to immigrants and immigration. Americans are apparently not so tolerant, but still less embittered than Brits.)

"Though notionally welcomed by a 1948 act," Bagehot writes, "colonial immigrants caused alarm when they actually turned up." [Stop the presses! ed.] British attitudes have become progressively blacker ever since, in spite of a 1962 curtailment of entry rights and subsequent tightening of various loopholes.

Now Britons worry, rightly, about the beliefs and actions of the children of immigrants venting perceived "grievances [that] have reverberated through the generations". In other words, Enoch Powell was right in everything about the magnitude of the racial disharmony which he foresaw. (Bagehot didn't say that. I did!)

So what is the upshot of all this? Bagehot opines that the British are still in denial. They have yet to deal with the emotional and intellectual fallout of empire. He calls the British -- and he is one of them -- "deluded and yet morbidly disappointed".

What they must do but have not, he argues, is to somehow "overcome this sense of thwartedness and decline, and come up with a notion of Britishness to replace the defunct imperial version."

* This article is available online only to subscribers to the print edition, thus I can't give you a link. Sorry.