The real legacy of the British Army

Remembrance Sunday intentionally focuses on the two World Wars. The British arms exist either side of both and it's time to focus on the victims of them

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Every year remembrance Sunday encourages Britons to honour the memory of fallen soldiers who have fought for the British Army. Earlier this year former PM Rishi Sunak was roundly criticised for his early departure from an event in Normandy commemorating the 80th anniversary of D-day. It is telling that he actually decided to apologise for this, when you consider how rare it is for high ranking politicians to openly accept wrongdoing. If we cast our minds back a few year’s prior, the U.K.’s support for Captain Tom Phillips who raised a mammoth £38m for the NHS served as another example of the British public’s affinity for military personnel. Britain’s cultural institutions relationship with the military are not as fanatical as their North American counterparts, but we can still expect to see broadcasters of terrestrial networks wearing poppies and football league matches observing a minute’s silence. 

During my school years, remembrance day had a sharp focus on the World Wars. With my schooldays long behind me I cannot confidently claim this is still the case in schools, but watching television gives the impression that “remembrance" is still heavily focused on these two efforts. The British army has existed and operated for centuries prior to and decades post both world wars. This framing is intentional and perhaps best explained through the legacy of Winston Churchill. A 2002 BBC poll saw Brits vote Winston Churchill the nation’s greatest ever Briton. Predominantly for his rousing rhetoric during World War 2. What is lesser known is that prior to parliament’s top job, Churchill had ascended through the ranks after serving as an officer in the second Boer War in South Africa. The same war that in 1901 saw the British army enact concentration camps, which Adolf Hitler later cited as inspirational. Upon his return to the United Kingdom he became Foreign Secretary. During his tenure in this role Churchill sent British Army troops into Liverpool to quash peaceful union strikers, leaving two shot dead. Later on after becoming Prime Minister in the early 1940’s, Churchill oversaw the Bengal famine. In which; fearing Japanese invasion of then “British India”, Churchill opted to stockpile food for defending troops and the bourgeoisie. The rationale was that any eliminating any “excess” food would mean that if Japanese forces invaded, they would be starved. To further ensure this the British administration also exported disproportionate quantities of food to Middle Eastern forces. The result? An estimated 3 million Bengal people died due to malnutrition and disease. Churchill would later refer to Indians as “a beastly people with a beastly religion”. Churchill’s relationship with the military characterised his entire career, so why is that relationship only thought of in relation to World War 2? His personal military exploits and subsequent utilisation of military power are a small microcosm of British military history, but they usefully illustrate the chasm between the full scope of British military activity and what is highlighted in public discourse. 

In recent years people have become more critical of the police’s role is in society. The Black Lives Matter movement, Wayne Couzens’ brutal kidnap, rape and murder of Sarah Everard and the rampant institutional misogyny, homophobia and racism in British policing have led many to realise that the police are the forceful arm of the state to enforce the interests of the ruling class. This is true of the army on the international stage. For example: between 1952 and 1960 around 11’000 Kenyans died during the Mau Mau uprising in which the Kenyan Kikuyu Tribe (known as the Mau Mau) militarised against British colonial rule. It is important to acknowledge that a substantial portion of the violence is reported to be between Africans vying for control of land in the imminent wake of post-colonialism. But the British army’s use of concentration camps and executions were so stark that in 2013 the U.K. paid £19.9m to Kenyan torture victims. This rare accountability was hard fought for against a military institutions that was proven to have gone great lengths to subdue its atrocities. The colony’s then attorney General Eric Griffith-Jones compared camp conditions to Nazi Germany or communist Russia writing "If we are going to sin, we must sin quietly,” to a piece of draft legislation green lighting further torture. 

British soldier’s actions in Kenya since the turn of the millennium have showcased their similarities with British police even more plainly. In 2022 former police commissioner Cressida Dick stepped down from her role in the Met Police’s top job. Her overseeing a culture of misogyny in the Met which she flippantly dismissed as the actions of “a few bad apples” was a driving factor. A year later it was revealed that the Met were investigating over 1600 alleged sexual and domestic violence allegations. One of these bad apples was serving officer David Carrick who turned out to be one of Britain’s most prolific sex offenders. The impunity officers believe they can act with, paired with the powers of intimidation and legitimate threat of violence their position holds is mirrored by soldiers. Earlier this year CNN published an article telling the story of how a British training camp in Kenya had become a hotbed of rape allegations from Kenyan women, who also alleged fathers would routinely abandon their mixed race children. A particularly chilling case was the death of Wanjiru, a 21 year old Kenyan woman whose body was found in a septic tank after she was last seen entering a hotel with British soldiers. The allegedly involved solider faced no charges despite an inquest ruling her death a murder and fellow soldiers reportedly identifying him.

Whatever ones opinions about colonialism and imperialism, it must be acknowledged how they are actually achieved. “Britain” as a global entity does not exist as a malevolent spectre, vaguely wafting in the atmosphere when bad things happen. Disastrous campaigns in Afghanistan, Iraq, air strikes in Syria and recent deadly airstrikes against Yemen (which Houthis claim killed civilians) are carried about by human beings who are part of the military. This is a separate argument to complicity via arms sales. We are talking about tangible examples of British military personnel killing innumerable innocent civilians, on a consistent basis, throughout history until present day. If we are going to remember the lives lost during armed conflict, it should also include the countless global victims of the British state.

Article by Martyn Ewoma