Brits have nothing to apologise for says Gordon Brown

national | miscellaneous | opinion/analysis Saturday January 15, 2005 23:10 by Barry

British imperialists treated Africans like "savages" -Thabo Mbeki reckons otherwise.

In the middle of his current visit to Tanzania, British chancellor Gordon Brown has claimed that "the days of Britain apologising for its colonial past are over". Some of us may beforgiven for wondering when we ever heard any of these apologies, but I suppose that would be unfair to the chancellor and highly cynical.

Especially when one considers his follow up comment that it was time for Africans to start talking about "the enduring British traditions of liberty and tolerance".

ANC leader Thabo Mbeki, for some strange unearthly reason, isnt highly impressed by the British chancellor. He claims that British imperialists have simply treated the African peoples whose lands they occupied as savages.

Speaking as someone from an area which Britain currently occupies, apparently because we Irish natives are unruly savages Britain has to police, Id settle for a withdrawal rather than an apology for its actions. Maybe Mr Mbeki and myself are just a pair of cynical bastards, unable to appreciate "British traditions of liberty and tolerance". I suppose that must mean we are savages after all.