Thread by @GeorgeMonbiot

Britain is adept at airbrushing its history. We remember the abolition of the Transatlantic slave trade, while forgetting its initiation and perpetuation.
We celebrate the culture of the Raj, white Kenya etc, while forgetting the murder and theft underpinning British colonialism

We know that colonial atrocities were perpetrated by other nations. But the great majority of people in the UK are unaware of the horrors perpetrated, within living memory, by our own government:
theguardian.com/commentisfree/…

To judge by comments on Twitter, many people are determined to remember #EdwardColston's "philanthropy", and determined to forget the origin of the money he spent.
(Philanthropy translates literally as a love of people. Which is not how the slave trade is usually described)

We have airbrushed the brutal racism with which immigrants to this country were - and still are - greeted. We hear ministers insisting this is not a racist nation, as if the #WindrushScandal never happened.

We tell ourselves "it's a US problem", forgetting that BAME people are stopped and searched by the police many times more often than white people, and forgetting the many beatings and deaths in custody.

We conveniently forget why the UK is so rich while other nations are so poor: the seizure and transfer of other people's wealth, that began with colonialism and slavery and continues, by other means, to this day.

It is time to remember. It is time to level with ourselves about our history, our ongoing exploitation of other nations, and the structural racism that persists within our own. There can be no reconciliation without truth.
#BlackLivesMatter