As a Brit, I pride myself that I am from my country and I recognise that I practically won the genetic lottery to be able to live and breathe in this country, rather than a place where basic human rights are violated every single day. I take on the fact that unlike others who suffer great amounts of loss and tragedy daily, I am able to speak freely about the issues that concern me, am able to receive an education to prepare me for later life and to use products that I consider necessities but others would call luxuries.
Throughout history, Britain has been at the forefront of colonisation and empowerment of their own country. At one point, Britain had colonised nearly 90% of the world’s countries, leaving only 22 out of 200 to not have been invaded. Britain built an Empire which glorified itself, raising it to a standard almost god-like, which was to not be tampered or tainted in any way, shape or form. The invasion of these countries in periods of history like The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade or The East India Company has left the countries that Britain supposedly “civilised” in underdevelopment and has impacted them, usually for the worse.
It is thought to be that at the time of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade, 12 million African people were forced onto slave ships and taken to plantations to work, decreasing the population by double estimated that it could’ve been today and replacing African cultural goods with European ones, causing many cultures to die out. Once the abolition movement was passed in Britain in 1807, Britain wanted nothing to do with Western African countries in regards to slavery, causing economies to be severely underdeveloped and a rift between citizens, and left them to fend for themselves.
This is just one example of this, even though this type of behaviour is a consistent trend that Britain has continued, with the Iraq war or the Rwandan genocide for example, which left 800,000 people dead while Britain ignored the threat of the event happening.
We as a country continue to sing proudly a song which highlights just how celebratory we are of our nation’s past, even though the majority of us would rather forget the times we have influenced and impacted the world with turmoil and be uneducated about the history of our country in order to be patriotic of said country.
This symbol of patriotism includes lyrics such as ‘These nations, not so blest as thee’ and ‘Britons will never be slaves’ which in light of the historical background Britain has taken part in, this seems extremely oblivious to the atrocities we have carried on our shoulders and raising the British culture onto a high pedestal for everyone to see, even going as far as to reference God and immortality to indoctrinate the British public and the people who serve under it’s name.
With recent events like Brexit and Trump spirally politics into an unknown stratosphere, for both the UK and countries alike it is a time for reflection and insight into both individuals and the nation as a whole rather than continuing the path we have created of ignoring the unrest we have created and praising our more divided than every before country. The UK need to be able to understand these events we have caused and utilise our knowledge to create new bonds between the world that have now been fractured, or worse broken.
Now is not the time to fall back into our old traits, it is past a time where we can ignore the glaring issues our political climate has but rather a time to move forward, as one truly United Kingdom.
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