is a profound confrontation with one of the most shameful periods of European history
is a profound confrontation with one of the most shameful periods of European history" ("Darkness still visible", Review, 5 May). In a small way, he offered the Indian equivalent of the BBC World Service: the finest, most credible form of national propaganda (if only the Foreign Office would see it that way).In India, a lot will be made of Gopal Gandhi's new posting. His grandfather was the Mahatma, and it was in South Africa as a young lawyer that the Mahatma first grew concerned with social justice. You may remember the scene in the Attenborough film Gandhi where he is evicted, because he is the wrong colour, from a first-class railway compartment It certainly happened and Gandhi was certainly angry. Part of his anger, however, stemmed from the fact that he then had to share a carriage with Africans. I can't now remember exactly the words of his complaining letter to the railway company, but I think they included "kaffirs" and "Godless in their nakedness".
I don't point this out to denigrate Gandhi; he was a great and rare man. But he was also a Victorian whose experience until then had been of two very class-divided and colour-conscience countries, Britain and India. Sainthood is always a tricky status.ON Friday Tony Blair outlined his vision of a richer Britain defined by decency, hard work and fairness Let's hope so But here is a worrying statistic. In the past 20 years Britain has earned about pounds 150bn in North Sea oil and gas revenues. It used to earn about pounds 12bn a year; it now earns pounds 3bn a year; in 10 years' time it will be pounds 2bn a year Who would want to be a British politician?. Last Thursday the Daily Mail, which in now-forgotten times was rather pro-European, crowned its conversion to Europhobia with a full- page editorial listing "twelve reasons why we won't be celebrating Europe Day". The European Union, the Mail told us, was responsible for unemployment, terrorism, negative equity and war in Bosnia.
It had stolen our fish, our gallon and our inch and it had designs on our pound, our double-decker bus and our three-pin plug. The proceeds of these felonies had been used to line the pockets of fraudulent Eurocrats and to subsidise Greek peach- growers, Tibetan yak farmers and Viennese prostitutes. For these and other reasons, the starry flag of Europe would not be run up the Daily Mail pole. Over the past few months the Conservative press has been full of such stuff, and yet this is Neanderthal politics, no better than name-calling and beyond all argument. Did anyone expect the Mail to celebrate Europe Day? Yet there were ample reasons for celebration. And here are 12 of them. 1) European unity is good for peace. Before the EEC was founded, Germany and France had gone to war three times in a century, leaving many millions dead across dozens of countries.
On the latter two occasions Britain was involved and it, too, suffered terrible casualties Now war between member countries is unthinkable 2) It is good for democracy. Before they joined, Spain, Portugal and Greece were dictatorships. It is unthinkable now that a member country should not be a democracy 3) The Empire has gone and we are no longer a superpower. Britain could not, conceivably, stand alone and have any clout in world affairs. The US and the EU would dwarf us, as (in different ways) would Russia and Japan 4) Europe is our natural partner. Historically, culturally and socially we have more in common with the other west European nation states than anyone else This is something we can make use of.