Reflect on good of the Empire, says race report author
BRITAIN should “reflect on the good of the Empire”, the lead author of a contentious race report has said in his first public event defending it.
Dr Tony Sewell, an education consultant, was commissioned by the Government to investigate race disparity in British society and last month concluded: “We no longer see a Britain where the system is deliberately rigged against ethnic minorities.”
The report also said that Britain should be “a model for other white majority countries” because of the success of its ethnic minority population in education and the economy. The UK could become a “beacon” for the rest of the world, it added.
The review, published by the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities, led to claims of a “whitewash” and outrage from MPS, charities and organisations. The UN working group on human rights called it “reprehensible”.
At a virtual event by the Policy Exchange think tank yesterday, Dr Sewell’s first public event since the publication, he reiterated his calls for a national curriculum that includes a
“retelling” of the slave trade that would “reflect the good and the evil of Empire”.
The report called for schools to respond to “negative calls for ‘decolonising’ the curriculum” with a Making of Modern Britain teaching resource to “tell the multiple, nuanced stories of the contributions made by different groups that have made this country”.
Marsha de Cordova, Labour’s equalities spokeswoman, said this was “one of the worst bits” of the report and “put a positive spin on slavery and empire”.
Dr Sewell responded: “I did say that there is a new story [to be told] about the Caribbean experience which speaks to the slave period, not only being about profit and suffering, but how, culturally, African people transformed themselves into a remodelled African Britain.
“This sentence was vilely misrepresented as a glorification of slavery – it’s the complete opposite. We wanted not only to speak of the inhumanity of slavery, but how African people retained their humanity and resisted slavery.”
He added: “No glorification of slavery there please. It’s [about] telling a story of a people that are strong, and leads us right to where that culture is now, and that’s why you can have a strong culture of black Caribbeans because those people managed to retain that. The public culture of Britain is rich, diverse – a mosaic of different traditions. Each intricate segment tells its own unique story. But step away and you see that they are each a part of an overall chronicle which binds them together and gives them all a new meaning.
“It will also reflect the good and the evil of empire that their legacy has given us, and also shows us and shows the children penny by penny, how that slave period built modern Britain. We’re not going to shy away from that.”
The Government will respond to the report’s recommendations in July.