THE HISTORICAL APOLOGY

I see that our beloved leaders have been apologising for our imperial past again, despite the fact that nobody living today had a great deal to do with the things that they’re apologising for on our behalf, or that anyone living here has actually asked them to do so. Still, a wrong done is a wrong done, and, whilst we can never turn back time and change any of what happened, I suppose it’s nice for the descendants of those who had the wrong done to them to feel that it’s been acknowledged.

Not that it changes much. Those who benefited from those outcomes can’t be forced to roll back time and change their history, any more than the victims can be resurrected, allowed to live their normal lives, and perhaps produce a dynasty of unborn people who might also have changed the world. So we can only be sorry for what other people did, and hope that enough of us have learned from history for similar errors of judgement not to be made ever again.

Some hope…

Time, of course, or at least “future time” as well as being a great healer is also a mass of variables. If you could go back to the dawn of life on this sad planet and drop the marble of life into the maze of history, the ball might bounce through different “flip-flop” doors in the maze and there’s nothing at all which guarantees that you’d get human beings out at the end of it.

The problem is, however, that if you think about what’s going on in just one second of this human construct we call “time” and changed just one tiny aspect of what is happening – BAM!! – right now, the ripples would be felt throughout future history and perhaps humanity’s marble would go in a completely different direction as it fell through the “flip-flop thingy” of eternity.

And then, I suppose we ought to ask how far back must our apologies go…? English history is stained by the blood of many wrongs committed, although many “rights” were also achieved because of its dominant position in the world. Many of our closer neighbours would attest to our brutal history and some still resent it even in these enlightened times. Much of our Tudor wealth came from raiding Spanish galleons, although they themselves were up to no good and it was really the fortunes amassed from their pirate’s raiding and pillaging that our pirates were stealing.

Of course, the national psyche was shaped by our occupation by the Romans two thousand years ago, and centuries of living in fear of Viking raiders, so you could argue that we are who we are because of them and ask you to re-focus all your requests for apologies in the direction of Italy or Denmark.

Then again, since 1066, England has essentially been an occupied nation anyway since the Normans crossed the Channel and nabbed our country from right under the eye of King Harold, so anything that has happened since then is pretty much  the fault of the invaders and occupying powers.

In other words, it’s all the fault of the French.

Hmmm… I may be onto something, there… This notion somehow sits rather well with the English way of life, when you think about it. Historically, and perhaps sometimes with pretty good reasons, we’ve quite enjoyed blaming our various European neighbours for many of our ills. Perhaps, if I were a politician, I might seize this idea and take it up as a rallying cry, because it would be a popular sentiment even if it does quietly forget Agincourt and the rather helpful alliances we had with France during the vast conflicts of the last century.

“Just blame the French!” - getting politicians votes almost since voting was first thought of…

And there was me hoping that we could learn from history…