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Sathnam Sanghera explores the ongoing legacy of the British empire on the modern UK.
Sathnam starts by looking at how contemporary racism is rooted in a historic sense of exceptionalism. He uncovers the stories of Sikh soldiers who fought in the First World War only to be disregarded when their service was over - and discovers disturbing parallels with the treatment of soldiers from Commonwealth countries today.
Sathnam starts by looking at how contemporary racism is rooted in a historic sense of exceptionalism. He uncovers the stories of Sikh soldiers who fought in the First World War only to be disregarded when their service was over - and discovers disturbing parallels with the treatment of soldiers from Commonwealth countries today.
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00:04such utter crap you are just another little man terrified of saying anything good about your
00:11benefactors i'm satnam sangera i'm a journalist and writer and for the past three years i've
00:20been researching the legacies of the british empire for my book empire land the intense
00:26and often racist backlash i've received since it's come out has been like nothing else in my career
00:32your morality stinks satnam you are a racist anti-white envied for their massive achievements
00:40our empire is a huge part of our history but it's often ignored even though it lasted for centuries
00:46and made us a world power how the empire was built up my brain the empire isn't a dusty piece
00:52of
00:52history is with us today we just never get to see it for what it really was one of the
00:59reasons my
01:00class has kept power is it closes ranks we don't betray we don't speak
01:08it's shaped our attitudes to race politics and our heritage in ways that we just don't realize
01:16the anti-white hatred in this country which is never addressed is turning people against each
01:21other and as a child of immigrants it's shaped me in ways i'm only now beginning to understand
01:30even if it's a small advert for a crisp brand finally it was just really exciting to feel seen
01:37in this series i want to unearth the ways in which empire is still alive in us because it tells
01:43us
01:43so much about who we are
01:55all right you can do the peppers oh i hate peppers i'll do peppers yeah did you beat that up
01:59we're making
02:00a stir fry during the pandemic i lived with my two nieces jasmine and simran frankly it's hard to know
02:07who was more scarred by the experience what i liked about it is that for the first lockdown them being
02:14here meant i couldn't watch tv so i finished my book and then i realized it was hell them being
02:19around
02:20all the bloody time at one point i paid for you to stay in a hotel didn't i i think
02:24that was yeah
02:25that was a low point to just have time in my own flat oh there's another low point was when
02:31i
02:31discovered we were all on the same dating app yeah i i've never come off a dating app so quickly
02:36in my
02:37life actually you know what that smells nice nobody knows me better than my nieces so i want to talk
02:46to them about how the intense reaction to my book has affected me the problem is the things we find
02:53dehumanizing for some white people are just an interesting intellectual debate okay that's i mean
03:00you've had that feeling haven't you yeah for them they're just like banter and it's but for us
03:05it's really depressing and personal yeah if you get people speaking out about their experiences
03:13you you can find that like white people are quite quick to shoot that down whereas when it comes into
03:18empire and racism everyone gets very protective of their history and it's almost like saying well
03:23what you've experienced is wrong and that's the problem with everything about to do with empire
03:28everything gets very emotional very quickly yeah i've learned how to manage my feelings in public
03:34okay but actually personally i get really deeply upset deeply i could i mean regularly on the verge of tears
03:42you know when this subject comes up with friends yeah i have to change the subject because if it goes
03:47on i would cry i can't talk about it i'm gonna cry i dread bringing up the darker aspects of
03:57empire
03:57because i want to avoid difficult conversations pride and patriotism quickly emerge because empire is seen
04:04as a benign enterprise that brought democracy justice and christianity to many countries in the world
04:14within this great empire which for nearly 400 years has loomed so large in history live 500 million
04:21people under its protection half a dozen nations coexist bound together by indefinable ideas and traditions
04:29symbolized by the crown for it is the empire which includes one quarter of all the land and of all
04:40the peoples of the world that gives to britain its position as a first class power
04:48british empire was a complex unplanned enterprise it started to emerge 4500 years ago when britains
04:56traveled to the far east in search of spices and settled in north america and the caribbean
05:03power grabs in asia and africa followed as britain used military might to overcome millions of people
05:10generating enormous wealth in the process and establishing itself as the world superpower
05:18the empire peaked in the early 20th century but was well into decline after world war ii
05:28would have been a very much for me as a child of immigrants from the punjab the british empire isn't
05:33just a few chapters in a history book but something very much alive and personal that's because one of
05:40his legacies is racism people write to me all the time now saying get back to where you came from
05:52and i
05:53thought i'd take their advice and i've come back to wolverhampton you always know you're back in the
06:00midlands when you see your first personalized number plate with a asian surname s1ngh everyone wants that
06:16we're in park village where i grew up and where my parents first moved when they emigrated
06:21to wolverhampton and lots of my extended family were here too i'm here to meet my brother jazz
06:27i've been intrigued to know what he makes of it because he's not been back here for 30 years
06:36i think we were very typical of lows of punjabi immigrants in that the family bought one house
06:49cheap i mean this was probably a couple hundred quid and everyone lived in that house so they're up to
06:54like 15 people yeah my family are sikhs from india once the jewel in the crown of empire for generations
07:04my ancestors farmed land in the punjab in the mid 60s nearly 20 years after the end of british rule
07:12they came to the motherland to make a new life one of the first to settle was my paternal grandfather
07:21men gus singh he was the patriarch of the family my dad's dad father of 14 kids yeah and he
07:28worked
07:28into his 70s doing hard labor in a foundry he also had no teeth we'd make him a sandwich like
07:34a spam
07:35sandwich then he would dip it in his tea to soften it so he could bite it and i started
07:41copying him
07:41and he would have to do it and he would have to do it and he would have to do
07:41it and he would have to do it
07:43would you be upset if a colored family came to the next door for you i shouldn't be upset but
07:49i shouldn't
07:51really care for it well i've been abroad you see and i've seen how they live
07:58in what way do they differ from that the kind of food they eat the state of cleanliness they keep
08:06brown people weren't allowed to have council houses you know there were protests about it
08:09they weren't allowed to buy houses in posh areas yeah so we bought houses in these slum areas
08:15and then they were accused of creating slums
08:19ghettos like these echoed the conditions of empire
08:24during british rule in india also known as the raj the white colonial elite developed housing
08:30segregation policies to keep the natives away from their neighborhoods
08:35in railways clubs and shops indians were relegated to second-class status
08:41but the british empire didn't start out as willfully racist
08:46there was no template for what began as a haphazard trading enterprise
08:52but after centuries of colonizing other countries and crushing any form of resistance
08:57the british internalized the belief that other races were inferior
09:02that racism and a sense of white supremacy made its way back here to britain
09:10i hate them i can't explain it but something about pakistan makes my blood just crawl
09:19nearby on process street is the first house my parents bought my childhood home
09:25i've got really fond memories of this place but i'm aware that you guys my older siblings probably
09:31didn't generally hated this place and i remember my bedroom in particular had damp all over it
09:37the cockroaches are a massive problem i remember cockroaches were an issue i went to school one day
09:42and uh took my shoes off for gym and there were two cockroaches in my shoes i'm only just realizing
09:48as a grown-up how much racial violence there was all the time yeah and on the way to school
09:52there would always be an issue there'll always be someone threatening you attacking you
09:58i was coming home from school one day and got stabbed in the leg and i came home
10:02and mom was like why have you cut yourself
10:09it's almost normalized wasn't it it's like actually the national front have a presence and we need to
10:15be careful the founder of the national front a far-right fascist political party was ak chesterton
10:23he was a staunch imperialist having previously led the league of empire loyalists a group dedicated
10:29to stopping the dissolution of the empire
10:33i joined the league of empire loyalists because i'm a patriot and i believe that the british empire is
10:40essential for the continued survival of the british people as support for the national front grew
10:46packy bashing became the norm it was pakistan walking down brook lane what kind of things did
10:53you do to her you know not with bottles or nothing like that just fish there were many brutal incidents
11:00including murders there was also a widespread fear of brown and black immigrants arriving in the
11:06motherland and an ignorance about their right to be here
11:18so we used to live here 30 years ago oh yeah and so how long you been here i've been
11:24here about
11:26about 48 years i guess this area changed a lot in those 48 years yeah there's a lot of people
11:32from
11:32other countries living down there and they don't know where we live it's all totally different
11:38into the way they live you know but i guess people said that about us as well though because
11:42we were the asians were the first immigration group here yeah yeah and now there's a new
11:47immigration they were very friendly and they were always speaking you know what i mean which
11:51which was nice yeah and they were very clean yeah can you understand why we came but i think
11:58like i'm looking for work didn't i yeah but i guess they also came because they were citizens of
12:05empire yeah and that made them citizens of britain so they could come yeah but i think people forget
12:09that sometimes well i'm not really into none of that you see so i don't really understand that you know
12:19what i'm realizing is there was all sorts of macro stuff happening around us which was awful and a lot
12:25of
12:25of it has a long history way back into empire the racism the employment discrimination the housing
12:32discrimination the racial violence the color bar the way we were segregated in this town and that stuff
12:38is taking me an entire lifetime to really understand what was going on
12:52so those whom the gods wish to destroy they first make mad we must be mad keeping up my family's
13:04arrival
13:04in wolverhampton was set against the backdrop of arguably the most famous anti-immigrant speech in british
13:11history it was made by local mp enoch powell his words have haunted me ever since overseas in this
13:21country in 15 or 20 years time the black man will have the whip hand over the white man he's
13:31talking
13:31about the black man having the whip over the white man and that's the imperial image that's a reversal
13:37of the image of slavery and colonialism right enoch powell was an ardent imperialist an ambitious army man
13:44who served out in the raj and dreamt of ruling india as a viceroy white supremacy came naturally to him
13:51he described indians as having an insubordinate nature and a dumb almost animal civility
14:00at this moment 20 to 30 additional immigrant children are arriving from overseas in wolverhampton
14:11alone every week he's talking about immigrant children like me and he was saying our existence
14:19was going to end up with destroying britain it is like washing watching a nation
14:26busily engaged in keeping up its own funeral pyre powell's hostility towards immigrants sent a shock
14:35wave through britain as did his later call for their repatriation that call stood in stark opposition to
14:41the nationality act of 1948 enacted 20 years earlier it granted anyone born in a british colony the rights of
14:50a
14:50british citizen giving over 500 million people the ability to emigrate here
15:00powell's potent anti-immigrant message motivated by a desire to protect the purity of british culture
15:06struck a chord with certain sections of the population at the time
15:14even though he was discredited as a racist many politicians have since recycled powell's anti-immigrant
15:21message sometimes implicitly sometimes explicitly
15:26people are really rather afraid that this country might be rather swamped by people with a different
15:32culture yesterday this poster apparently about immigration unveiled by nigel i'm in wolverhampton
15:40to meet with bill etheridge a former member of the european parliament and now an advisor to ukip
15:45the uk independence party hi bill hi nice to meet you nice to meet you he like me grew up
15:53here
15:55my parents arrived in wolverhampton a few months after enoch powell had made his famous rivers of blood
16:01speech how do you remember that speech and its legacy undoubtedly by our standards of today he was a
16:07racist who had dreadful views about people which are in the past they're prehistoric they are from
16:13not just another century another world and that's gone that's gone as much as the old colonial ethos it's
16:20all gone i don't think he has gone i think it's just found a more polite face i did a
16:26search for
16:26you on twitter this morning because i'm a journalist yeah and uh there's so many messages from people
16:31saying bill etheridge is a racist probably hundreds of thousands of them probably so what do you think
16:36about that i mean i think they're wrong and i think they haven't met me among the material i found
16:42on bill was a photograph of him with the white pen dragons it's a far-right group whose members define
16:49themselves as brexiteers islamophobes white supremacists and imperialists one of his leaders
16:56calls enoch powell their patron and inspiration you spoke at an event organized by the white pen dragons
17:03i think it's a group run by a convicted racist i spoke at an event it wasn't organized by them
17:11they were there at that event as many events when you speak at things doesn't mean that you are the
17:17same
17:18as the bloke stood next to you i guess on your twitter account you look pretty friendly in that
17:21picture with the white pen dragons um yeah well i am friendly with people i'm a friendly guy
17:28can i be brutally honest please there's no way for me to know what's in your heart
17:33i ultimately can't know what you believe but my worry is that what you show is that white supremacy
17:42has become mainstream and you're a very affable guy and yet it's quite possible you have some
17:47horrendous views of the kind that i grew up around in the 80s you can believe me or not believe
17:51me and
17:51i can't persuade you one way the other but i've been as open and honest with you as i possibly
17:55could be
17:59bill letharage was pro-brexit so were the majority of british voters
18:05some felt brexit would liberate britain from eu regulations others that it would end mass immigration
18:12from europe i think it also came from a sense that our greatness as a nation which came from empire
18:18had
18:19been lost you can see this in the language politicians used to support brexit we cannot be
18:27a colony of the european union which also served to stoke nationalistic fervor and let's make sure
18:35that june the 24th is independence day for britain thank you very much
18:45this nationalistic streak hasn't gone away
18:49in early 2021 the mayor of penzance was targeted with racist abuse
18:55she'd ordered a line of union jacks on the promenade to be taken down because they'd not
19:00been authorized by the council someone had put them up to celebrate britain's official exit from europe
19:10i'm not interested in the rights and wrongs of putting up flags but in why race entered the debate
19:16because five months later mayor nicole broadhurst says the abuse hasn't stopped
19:22i got a phone call yesterday from devon and cornwall police there'd been swastikas and black c-u-n-t
19:29you
19:29should die uh written on road signs it's made me very frightened done a lot of crying done a lot
19:36of
19:36shouting perhaps there you go what did they say put the flags back up really yeah i got thousands of
19:43messages telling me that i was going to be killed i should be thrown off the end of the pier
19:49and they
19:49should call me up the flagpole instead of the flag do you think there's a connection between the flag
19:54and empire definitely the flag symbolizes greatness to some people and they are unhappy with the fact
20:02that we are no longer great britain in that way we don't always punch above our weight we're not in
20:07charge of the world anymore so what's your heritage i'm british i was born here my mom's from trinidad
20:13my dad's from sweden my mom came over in 68 to train as a nurse she came because she was
20:19asked to
20:19come and it was her duty to come she still talks of this as the mother country
20:25despite the racial abuse nicole is running again in local elections this week
20:33the police have told her not to canvas alone so she's joined by her partner aaron
20:40did you follow the story about nicole and the the flags and the promenade that's right i did i did
20:45see it on social media i was a bit disgruntled really because the country needs to get behind this
20:50national sort of identity thing we still have this issue with foreign
20:58settlers you're talking about immigration and immigration basically yeah because we are only an
21:02island and there's only so many you know places that you can put houses and put people hello
21:09probably upset a lot of people having flags up but it's england we can't go to their place and take
21:14their flags down that's why they're coming in doing it were people upset the flags were taken down
21:18because they were taken down by a black mayor who's an immigrant in their eyes yeah that's what
21:24probably peed everyone off yeah the white yeah definitely yeah taking the flags down because
21:28obviously it's not white hello there's no neat link between brexit and flags and racism but when
21:38you talk to people all those things seem to occur emotionally in the same space and i think for a
21:45lot
21:45of people they are equated i think these emotions can be explained by empire our sense that we're
21:53exceptional so we don't need anyone else our patriotism that seeps into nationalism
22:01and worst of all our racism an echo of imperialist enoch powell who believed brown and black people
22:07were inferior so why don't we see empire in all these things
22:20this is another really vicious letter why do you sound so vindictive it belittles you it was the british
22:27all-white benefactors who created india satnam you are a racist anti-white envied for their massive
22:37achievements there's still a lingering sense that people like me should be grateful for all that
22:41empire has done the same examples come up all the time they abolished famines irrigated millions of acres
22:51it was those with the patronizing western eyes who saved your ass created greatest railway system in the
22:58world the railways were built for the british they weren't built as a gift for the indians they were
23:04built to get goods out of the country they were built for the military and far from abolishing famine
23:11british rule exacerbated it during the bengal famine of 1943 when up to three million indians died
23:19the british prioritized feeding the army and didn't send relief quickly enough
23:28so why do so few people know these facts how are they able to ignore one of empire's central legacies
23:35racism which is imported to britain and can be seen in the ideology of the far right
23:40and within controversies like the flags in penzance
23:45it's partly because damning evidence is so rarely seen
23:49in the early 1920s the indian movement for independence took off
23:54this rare piece of film from 1923 shows how those early freedom fighters were treated by their
23:59colonial rulers and by indians loyal to the british
24:09you realize that when actually the peaceful resistance started the british didn't like it
24:16you know they responded with violence
24:21you can see the british officers there are laughing
24:26this is the power of film isn't it this is this is incredible to watch
24:33official evidence was also destroyed in the chaos that followed indians independence in 1947
24:41flames of disorder spread through many parts of new delhi
24:47a witness talked about there being a pool of smoke over delhi because so many documents were being
24:52burnt so you can just imagine how much more we would know about the dark side of empire if the
25:00british
25:00hadn't deliberately concealed the evidence instead of damning evidence for decades the british public
25:09were entertained with newsreels which painted a positive view of empire
25:15millions upon millions all together under the flag upon which the sun never sits
25:24many of the so-called glories of empire were reinforced in schools even today britain's role in the abolition
25:32of slavery tends to get emphasized while its role in the slave trade gets far less attention
25:37so when we're confronted with the bare facts it's truly shocking
25:53hello alex i see you've had a baby yeah the writer alex renton recently discovered a family
26:01archive that has radically changed the image he once had of his scottish ancestors
26:06they were slave owners so scotland likes to see itself as a victim as being colonized by the english
26:15though it was involved massively in empire massively and i think we the same sort of willful willful
26:22amnesia as has happened across britain and we're resisting waking up to it and the fact that the
26:28legacies of it are still pertinent and potent today
26:42alex has spent the past few years looking at documents that relate to the plantations
26:46that his family owned for over 100 years in jamaica and tobago this is an inventory made when my six
26:57times great uncle james ferguson who'd gone out to tobago and started this plantation in the 17th
27:03century and bought 78 african people and it starts with the land the 300 acres and then we get into
27:10the
27:10lists of slaves this is the first thing i saw really that made me actually feel like vomiting
27:17which is you get right down to the end and it says children and there are five children on the
27:21plantation and it gives their values so billy's 25 pounds johnny's 10. and then to put that into context
27:29you get the very next line next entry the stock horse mules cows and a horse is worth four times
27:37the price of a child yeah wow
27:42however you figure it and talk about how things were different then and so on
27:46this is the basis of it these were human beings treated children treated as farm animals
27:53rape is clearly habitual and and clearly undertaken even with by white men there with white wives there
28:06the punishments are unbelievably savage they're chopping people's limbs off to watch them bleed to
28:12death or burning them to death alive things like that in front of their friends
28:18sadism is kind of encouraged and it goes worse i mean there are there are sorry
28:32my ancestors who i was brought up to respect were doing things that were clearly immoral on another level
28:41what do you think they would make of you talking about it now i think they would be utterly appalled
28:46one of the reasons my class which is the class that's ruled britain for 300 years
28:53has kept power is it is it closes ranks we don't we don't betray we don't speak to outsiders
29:04did part of you just want to hide this away and not face up to it
29:09there's never a question i knew it was important because slavery's not over the story of british
29:16caribbean slave and transatlantic slavery is not over we're still living the after effects and the
29:21legacies of it it's just amazing to hear a white person of his social class say those things because
29:33until now they've been very defensive it's all about how actually we abolished slavery the belgians did
29:39it worse but here's someone saying you know what we were knee deep in slavery and i think he's very
29:46brave i think he's inspiring i think his story has the potential to change the national narrative
29:55about slavery which is an incredible thing meeting alex has also reinforced my feeling that empire
30:02continues to affect how we behave our ignorance about our involvement in slavery makes us blind to
30:10its legacies and our nostalgia about empire makes us reluctant to face them
30:25it's a nostalgia i once shared and explains why i only confronted the darker side of empire as an adult
30:32as a boy i went to our godwara our temple three times a week and helped to serve food among
30:40sikhs loyalty to
30:42the british and to the idea of empire was not uncommon i think our close relationship with
30:54the british once our colonial masters goes back to the very particular role we played for them in empire
31:00sikhs have long seen themselves as warriors but the british supercharged that sikh identity creating a
31:07bond that endured the most shocking event for the british was the mutiny where laws of indians defied
31:15the raj and certain groups to the british side and the sikhs were amongst them and that made them
31:22fetishize us and they suddenly decided that not only not only were we loyal but we were the martial race
31:27you know that we were physically perfect the army began producing handbooks explaining why we had the
31:35right for zeke to be fighters in this kind of almost arian way the indian mutiny of 1857 when thousands
31:45of ordinary indians rose up against colonial rule was brutally suppressed by the british with the help of
31:52sikh soldiers in some villages all adult men were shot and indian rebels were burned alive or strapped to
32:00cannons and blown apart so they would be denied proper funeral rights their deep loyalty to the british
32:08saw sikhs sign up in huge numbers when the first world war broke out although they only formed two
32:14percent of the population sikhs made up twenty percent of the british indian army
32:25i've come to brighton to explore whether the sikhs loyalty to the british was repaid copies of indian
32:31soldiers letters have survived thanks to the wartime censor's office this is from a rifleman called
32:38anar singh rawat when we reached the german trenches we used the bayonet and blood was shed so freely that
32:47we
32:47could not recognize each other's faces the whole ground was covered in blood there were heaps of
32:53men's heads and some soldiers were without legs if i get killed it does not matter and so many of
33:02my
33:02brethren have been slain
33:10during the war the royal pavilion here in brighton was turned into a hospital for wounded indian servicemen
33:21well imagine if you're an indian soldier and you you're waking up after an operation you're off your
33:27face and morphine and you see this
33:34for many this would have been their first experience of life in britain
33:38everything was done to accommodate them including separate kitchens and worship areas
33:42for each religious group
33:46this is a photograph of a really young looking soldier it looks like i did at 11 frankly
33:52he's in a wheelchair so i suspect he's had a serious injury and there's a guy who's lost a leg
33:59so it really upsets me that you can be that young and get that injured fighting for a country that
34:04colonized you and i wonder whether they thought that their sacrifice would be remembered
34:11the difference between the way indian soldiers were treated here at the pavilion
34:15and how indians were treated out in empire just doesn't add up
34:22so i'm meeting historian dr yasmin khan at the site of one of the other brighton hospitals
34:29the pavilion is the place where the indians are shown off and it's a kind of propaganda tool
34:38because they want to send a message back to india and they want to keep the recruitment stream
34:42rolling so that more men join up and come out this building kitchen hospital had been a workhouse
34:51so it's a very different feel to it the kitchener was run by an old army man colonel seaton who'd
34:59served out in the rash and brought his prejudices back home dr khan has a copy of one of his
35:06original
35:07reports about the hospital the confinement of nearly 600 indians within the hospital was no easy matter
35:14the walls were supplemented by barbed wire palings but further precautions against breaking out were
35:19necessary and it says here 377 soldiers have been punished 209 have been fined and 57 and kept in cells
35:30so it's a hospital but it's also a sort of prison isn't it yeah exactly in addition to the confinement
35:37these soldiers suffered i'm horrified to discover that colonel seaton even banned white female nurses
35:45i think it is a sense that white nurses really shouldn't be touching the bodies of these brown injured
35:51men it would be totally scandalous if any relationships developed between the nurses and the men
36:00the women's and the women's and the women's and the women's and the women's and the women's and the women's
36:01i guess you know these people are fighting for a country that's colonized them and in return they're seen as
36:07sex pests
36:08basically it's quite difficult to face up to that
36:14the royal pavilion blurs the truth of what happened to wounded indian soldiers in britain
36:21and it feeds once again a nostalgic view of empire
36:32This view is reinforced at the Kshatri Memorial,
36:35where the Indian soldiers who died in the Brighton hospitals were cremated.
36:39The memorial was built in their honour in 1921 on the South Downs.
36:44But like the Royal Pavilion, it doesn't tell the whole story.
36:50These are the people whose mortal remains were committed to fire here.
36:55Anork Lal, Shankar Singh, Bhag Singh.
36:58You know, this sounds like my primary school register.
37:02It's all the Sikh names. They feel really familiar.
37:14I guess it makes me feel like a lot of British Empire does it in that
37:18it's a beautiful thing that enough British people cared to build this.
37:22But at the same time,
37:27there were a load of Imperial Brits who didn't give a fuck.
37:42Indian soldiers are hardly alone.
37:45We now know that as many as 350,000 Imperial troops,
37:49largely from East Africa and Egypt,
37:52may not have been commemorated on any memorials.
37:56The Kshatri is clearly the exception, not the royal.
38:00That's the thing people say on Remembers Day.
38:02We will remember.
38:04But we don't, do we?
38:05We remember some of them.
38:07We don't remember all of them.
38:11We've neglected to tell the full story of our Imperial troops,
38:15and prefer to bathe in nostalgia,
38:18fuelled by propaganda like the Royal Pavilion
38:20and exceptions like the Kshatri Memorial.
38:24When we don't face the truth,
38:26we end up repeating the same mistakes.
38:39A fleet of canoes comes out from the Fijian harbour of Suva
38:43to greet Her Majesty,
38:44who the islanders look upon as their highest chief.
38:47Fiji, a collection of over 300 islands in the South Pacific,
38:51became a British colony in 1870 under Queen Victoria.
38:55Passing among the scores of craft,
38:57each packed with waving Fijians...
38:59The visit of Queen Elizabeth in 1953
39:01on her coronation tour
39:02remains a significant event in the country's history.
39:07The Queen moves forward to accept a bouquet of welcome
39:09from three-year-old Mai Kainona,
39:11the daughter of a Fijian chieftain.
39:13With great solemnity,
39:15Mai makes the ancient Fijian courtesy,
39:18a sign of greeting for the lady Fijians call their little white queen.
39:22Meanwhile, at Albert Park,
39:24thousands have come to pay homage to Her Majesty.
39:27There, the Queen was greeted with the ultimate form of respect,
39:31silence,
39:32before receiving gifts from Fijian chiefs,
39:35including highly prized well's teeth.
39:40The Fiji islanders who voluntarily gave their land to Queen Victoria
39:43receive a pledge from Queen Elizabeth
39:45that she will constantly watch over their welfare
39:48and pray for their prosperity in the years to come.
39:55The Queen's visit cemented the colony's loyalty to the crown,
39:58and even though it became independent in 1970,
40:02that loyalty remains.
40:04Fiji provides more soldiers to the British army
40:06than any other Commonwealth country.
40:13Foxy Thokunasiga was one of those soldiers,
40:16and his son Joe plays rugby for England.
40:22Foxy and Joe, father and son,
40:24Yeah.
40:24You joined the British armed forces as a Commonwealth soldier.
40:29I served 14 years for the Queen,
40:31so I'm still proud that I served with the forces.
40:36No, no, no, no!
40:37We were born to be soldiers.
40:39That's what they say.
40:40Why did you join?
40:42Well, British forces is regarded highly back home.
40:45I've got a lot of my mates that have grown up
40:48who have joined the army,
40:48and what they say is like,
40:50oh, we represent the Queen,
40:51so that's kind of a big thing.
40:54Where did your soldiering take you?
40:57Iraq, Bosnia, Afghanistan, the Falkland Islands.
41:03I've got a few friends who've got killed back in Afghanistan,
41:07the Fijians.
41:08It's, uh...
41:11It's sad.
41:12It's, uh...
41:13It is, really.
41:16Commonwealth soldiers and their families
41:18have the right to remain in Britain
41:19once they've served for four years.
41:22However, the army neglected to tell soldiers like Foxy
41:26that they needed to submit citizenship applications
41:28and pay thousands of pounds for the privilege.
41:31As a result, many lost their right to work, benefits,
41:35and health care,
41:36while others were deported or ended up homeless.
41:40I wasn't aware of, uh, the procedure, uh, when I left the army,
41:46until, uh, Joe went on one of the World Cup training camps in Italy,
41:52and then he came back,
41:53and he was, uh, informed by the immigration department
41:56that, uh, I am here illegally.
42:02You're representing England.
42:04Yeah.
42:05Your father has fought for this country.
42:08Yeah.
42:08And...
42:09you have uncertain residency.
42:11How did you feel when you found that?
42:13I felt like, should I be playing for England if this is the case?
42:17Our family's dedicated pretty much our whole life
42:20around the British Army and serving the Queen.
42:22You kind of feel like, oh, it was just all a waste of time.
42:25That's very sad to hear, because we should be proud
42:28what your father's done of what you're doing in sport.
42:34I don't want to use the word, but it's like, uh,
42:37you've been used by the Empire.
42:42Foxy now has the right to remain,
42:44but many other soldiers who serve the British
42:46are still bringing legal cases and campaigning for fair treatment.
42:54His experience reminds me of the unjust treatment
42:57of the Indian soldiers who were wounded in World War I
42:59and ended up in places like Brighton.
43:02It's history repeating itself.
43:12It's a big day.
43:14It's the, uh, first waltz match open to the public.
43:17But more importantly, it's the first time
43:19I'm ever going to a waltz match with my brother.
43:22Wolverhampton Wanderers fans had such a reputation for racism
43:25in the 70s and 80s.
43:27I mean, some of them were known for wearing KKK hoods to matches,
43:31and on match days, my mum generally wouldn't let us out of the house
43:34because of the fear of skinheads and the National Front and so on.
43:38It continued in the 80s and 90s.
43:40I mean, football hooligans was a byword for racist behaviour.
43:51How you doing? You well?
43:53This history means my brother Jaz is a bit nervous
43:55about coming to the first Wolves match since lockdown ended.
43:59But I'm hopeful.
44:02Football has made a concerted public effort to stamp out racism.
44:07Here in Wolverhampton, the team now has a diverse fan base
44:11with an enthusiastic Punjabi supporters club.
44:18There's a great atmosphere in the stadium.
44:20But the mood sours when the players take the knee
44:23to protest racism in Britain.
44:33It's encouraging that they take the knee,
44:36but also quite depressing because there's quite a lot of booing.
44:40Some people boo because they think taking the knee
44:42expresses support for what they claim
44:45is the Marxist Black Lives Matter movement.
44:48Others see it as a meaningless, time-wasting gesture.
44:52But for me, the booing shows that most people
44:54don't think racism is a problem in Britain.
44:59You find these crowds more scary than I do
45:03because you don't come to these matters?
45:05I can't relate to it, I don't.
45:06I think you still got that fear that we had in the 80s?
45:09Yeah.
45:09You showed them kicking your head in.
45:12Yeah, getting chased after a night out.
45:14Yeah.
45:15Yeah.
45:16It's a bit depressing, isn't it?
45:22To be honest, I'm feeling quite depressed
45:24because there was a load of boos when the players took the knee.
45:28And then Rio Ferdinand, who was commentating on the match,
45:31got a load of monkey chants directed at him.
45:33It's amazing to me that you can be one of the few fans
45:36to get a ticket for the first game of the season
45:39where there's a crowd and you can dedicate it
45:42to doing monkey chants at a black person.
45:47It was the same with the Euros in the summer of 2021.
45:51The country rallied around our multicultural team
45:54when they were on the up, but when they lost,
45:56it was a different story.
45:59For some people, you're British when you win,
46:01but you're black when you lose.
46:05It feels to me that we're stuck in an endless cycle,
46:09making the same mistakes, having the same debates
46:11and never finding a path forward.
46:14I don't think we'll ever move on
46:17until we face up to our imperial history.
46:32Monday night at 8.30, a brand new dispatch is unearthed
46:35the truth about electric cars
46:37and whether now's the right time to go green
46:39amidst the recent petrol shortages
46:40and price hikes.
46:42And it's an altogether different supercharger tomorrow
46:44half six in the F1 highlights
46:46direct from the Los El International Circuit
46:48and the Qatar Grand Prix.
46:50Channel 4 is at the movies next in X-Men Apocalypse.
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