BOOK REVIEW

In this important new book, Ian Cobain offers a fresh appraisal of some of the key moments in British history since the end of WWII.

THIS carefully written and well-researched book takes deadly aim at the official version of modern British history. During our school years, we are taught that we are a decent and tolerant nation, and that the state does not assassinate its opponents, use torture or commit atrocities. Ian Cobain argues that this picture is both complacent and untrue, and he provides chilling evidence and testimony that the British state has routinely committed appalling crimes. Many of them, he argues, have been fought in wars well away from the public eye.

How many people know, for instance, that it was Britain – not the French or Americans – who launched the Vietnam conflict, airlifting the entire 20th Infantry Division of the British Indian Army to Indo-China in 1945 with orders to suppress a Vietnamese attempt to form their own government?

Who knows, too, about the four-year-long war fought by the British in Indonesia in the Sixties, or the decade-long counter-insurgency campaign in Oman on the Arabian Peninsula?

Cobain methodically calculates that British forces have been engaged somewhere in the world every year since at least 1914. Between 1949 and 1970, Britain initiated 34 foreign interventions. No other country, not even Russia or the United States, has such a record.

Yet, for the most part, British people are blithely unaware of any of this. Cobain argues that the reason for their ignorance is a culture of national secrecy more thoroughgoing than that of France or the U.S. He shows that the brutal Oman war went unreported for many years. And when wars did get reported, it was by tame journalists passing on doctored version of events.

Many of these events and wars also remain a mystery to historians. Cobain proves the British authorities have arranged the suppression – or destruction – of documents that portray Britain in a bad light. Thousands of incriminating files have been incinerated or dumped at sea, while others remain hidden in secret archives.

Cobain calls this “an extraordinary ambitious act of history theft”. He maintains “the British state of the late 20th and early 21st century was attempting to protect the reputation of the British state of generations earlier, concealing and manipulating history – sculpting an official narrative – in a manner more associated with a dictatorship than a mature and confident democracy”.

The author explains that the problem is getting worse because of recent legislation pushed through by the Coalition enabling suspects to be tried in secret courts, meaning that defendants do not even know the charges being made against them. The real reason for much of this secrecy, suggests Cobain, is not to ensure justice, but rather to protect the reputation of intelligence officers complicit in crimes such as torture and rendition.

Cobain is an honest and accurate reporter, but there is one serious criticism of the book. It does not give enough voice to the Whitehall figures whose job it is to fight terrorism and make sensitive decisions about British foreign policy.

They have the grave and very difficult task of ensuring atrocities are not carried out on the streets of Britain – and, in recent years, they have been successful in this vital and largely thankless task. Their need to work in secret is all too understandable.

Whilst we have nothing in our recent history comparable to the appalling atrocities committed by the French in Algeria, or the Belgians in the Congo – let alone the mass murders of Stalin, Mao or Hitler – most Britons should continue to believe that we live in a fair and honest country.

Nevertheless, Ian Cobain has written an important book which deserves to change the way we see our recent past. It warns us against complacency, and exposes why we should challenge what we have been taught from a young age.

–     The History Thieves by Ian Cobain is published by Portobello for £20.