London Diary: Clive statue an ‘affront’ to India–UK ties

Tourists passing by the British foreign office in London’s Parliament Street can’t miss the towering statue of Robert Clive, aka Clive of India — a hated figure not only in India but also among liberal Brits because of his rabid racism and his role in causing the Bengal Famine of 1770, believed to have killed up to 10 million people.

This statue of the man, described as an ‘unstable sociopath’ by the historian William Dalrymple, was designed by John Tweed in 1912. Critics say it is “a shocking piece of sculpture” and an eyesore. Adding insult to injury is a side panel showing small figures of Indians seemingly cheering him on.

From time to time, there have been calls for it to be pulled down — most recently during the 2020 campaign against monuments that celebrated controversial colonial-era figures. The Conservative Party government at the time rejected the demand.

Five years later, a new campaign is underway, led by senior Labour peer Baroness Thangam Debbonaire who has warned that its depiction of “subservient Indians” is damaging relations with India.

“It’s not helpful for our current relationship with India and it is deeply unhelpful to see India as a country that Britain civilised,” she said recently at the Edinburgh International Book Festival.

“I’m not sure that a statue of Clive should really have any place outside the foreign office. India had a thriving engineering industry in the 17th century, it knew about mineral extraction, there had been incredible technological advances, it knew about free trade before free trade rules were ever written.

“That was closed down by an extractive colonising force. But what is pictured on that statue is tiny, tiny little Indians who are subservient and incidental to their own national story and then a great big Clive,” she said.

Others have echoed her stance and called for the statue to be pulled down. Will a Labour government be more responsive than its empire-struck Tory predecessors?

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Appeasing Netanyahu, UK style

Just days after deciding to recognise the Palestinian state and banning the export of arms to Israel, Britain’s Labour government decided to appease an angry Tel Aviv by banning the campaign group Palestine Action under the Terrorism Act. This means that anyone taking part in any event organised by Palestine Action is treated as a terrorist and faces a jail term of up to 14 years.

On 9 August, more than 500 protesters, including many old and infirm, were arrested for joining a rally in London against the genocide in Gaza. As they await trial, there has been widespread criticism of the ban, including from those who don’t always approve of the group’s tactics.

The Times, a sharp critic of Palestine Action, described the ban as a ‘political misstep’. An editorial titled ‘Wrong Proscription’ read: ‘It was unwise from the outset to ban Palestine Action, a disorderly group of ideological vandals, when other bona fide hostile military groupings, like the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, remain un-proscribed under British law. The dubious decision to elevate Palestine Action to the rank of groups such as Hamas and al-Qaeda risks lending unearned legitimacy to the perception that pro-Palestinian political speech is being curbed’.

Commentators said that arresting elderly people for “merely holding placards and doing no harm was a waste of police time and achieved nothing”.

“Whether those holding the placards achieved anything is a matter of opinion, but taking (away) their right to do so is, in my opinion, very dangerous,” pointed out Christine Rogers, a regular reader of the news.

Meanwhile, Conservatives who have previously condemned ‘cancel culture’ and the silencing of alternative political views in a liberal democracy have been condemned for their deafening silence over this ban.

That’s politics, stupid.

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Brits say no to more immigration

As the immigration debate gets hotter by the day — with the xenophobic Reform Party led by Nigel Farage of Brexit fame rapidly gaining public support — a new poll has revealed that nearly half of Britain wants a moratorium on immigration and would support mass deportations of recently arrived migrants.

As many as 45 per cent of all Britons support ‘admitting no more new migrants and requiring large numbers of migrants who came to the UK in recent years to leave’. This was backed by 86 per cent of Reform UK voters and 27 per cent of both Labour and Liberal Democrats voters.

According to Matthew Smith, head of data journalism at YouGov polling agency, the poll also revealed that much of the hostility is based on a ‘simple misconception’ of the scale and nature of immigration.

While a third believed the number of illegal migrants entering was ‘much higher’ than the number of legal ones, 47 per cent of respondents believed immigration to the UK was primarily illegal.

And, finally, a view from Kolkata on the Clive statue row, courtesy Angus Neill, a Times reader:

Sir,

‘I live in India, where no one loses sleep over a statue outside the foreign office in London. History is full of figures like Clive of India, and the world isn’t short of them now. Remove them from sight if you must, but don’t imagine they, or their kind, disappear. We ignore them at our peril.’