John Bell
Should she have apologised?
If she had been my mother’s child, she would have had to. My mother spared her offspring no embarrassment by sending us to apologise to whatever adult we had offended by name-calling or kicking a ball into their sweet peas.
But what if she is the queen? And what if the possible apology would not have been for a childhood offence, but for colonising an unwilling people, denying them food in a time of famine, and using them as the butt of racist jokes?
There is always an awkwardness about one nation apologising to another. It has partly to do with the perceived necessity to avoid admitting guilt, lest restoration - economic or political - might be required. It also has to do with the fact that many corporate offences happened a long time ago.
If Britain were to apologise to Ireland, should we also apologise to every other former colony? Should we, along with Portugal and Spain apologise to the American descendants of African slaves? Should lowland Scots apologise to highland Scots for their involvement in the Clearances? Should Scotland apologise to England for the Battle of Preston, and England likewise for Culloden? Should protestants apologise to catholics for centuries of persecution? Should men apologise to women for centuries of chauvinism? Should heterosexuals apologise to homosexuals for centuries of discrimination?
If we walk through the corridors of history, where does the apologising stop?
It is perhaps strange that for a religion which sees reconciliation as central to its faith, the Christian Gospels don’t witness much to corporate apology.
Jesus - as a Jewish rabbi - doesn’t apologise to Hittites, Gibeonites, Samaritans and a host of other nations which his genealogical ancestors demeaned, persecuted and murdered.
Was he in denial of his history? Or was it that he recognised that what was done in the past was done when people lived by very different and very dim lights.
The historical sins of our nation’s past were committed when people believed that non-European races were innately inferior, that minority cultures were primitive, that women were naturally subordinate, that gay people were psychologically disordered.
We cannot separate past iniquities from value systems, and from religious beliefs which have long since been discredited. If we still hold fast to these damnable perspectives then we are the most benighted of creatures.
But if these perverse attitudes no longer infect us, then acceptance of and openness to those our ancestors once oppressed has to be our enduring hallmark. Thus reconciliation becomes real.