The Blame of Those We Bettered

This week sees the centenary of the Amritsar massacre, whereby a lesson in British restraint and decency was administered to a crowd of unarmed protesters, at a cost of only three hundred and seventy-nine lives worth counting. The officer in charge was requested to spend more time with his trophies, and Winston Churchill gave a speech in Parliament which must have taxed even his powers of insincerity, proclaiming that the Empire depended on co-operation with the local people. (In 1931, when a re-Torified Churchill attempted to unseat Stanley Baldwin with blood-and-thunder fulminations against the malevolent fanatics of the Congress Party, Baldwin efficiently slapped down the Boris Johnson of the inter-war years by quoting his 1919 speech at him.) Britain's late Head Boy called the Amritsar incident "shameful," presumably because it occurred under a Liberal government; and now Tin-Pot Tessie, gracious as ever if understandably less than sympathetic towards people protesting against deportations, has expressed regret for whatever offence may inadvertently have been caused. Even amid the malarial twitches and shrieks of its pathetic terminal phase; even choking on hothouse rhetoric and belching the diaper stench of Conservatives at bay, the Recrudescent Imperium of Westminster, Gibraltar and the Falkland Islands apologises to no-one.