• I HAVE never been impressed by apologies from modern leaders of states for the wrongs committed by our ancestors against peoples of the world. Tony Blair’s apology for the UK’s role in the slave trade, was one example.

There is, I think, a good case for reparations. However surely the very least we can do is come clean about how millions of people all over the world were coerced under British rule in a grab for riches.

And that project was retrospectively and falsely endowed with noble intent. Our history syllabus for the young – some themselves descendants of victims of empire – is at best shifty and at worst downright mendacious.

Truth and humility can be great healers.

CT MARKS,
NW1