Jallianwala Bagh Massacre Debate
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David Hanson
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Jallianwala Bagh Massacre
David Hanson Excerpts(5 years ago)
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Several hon. Members rose—
David Hanson (in the Chair)
I have eight hon. and right hon. Members who wish to speak. The Front-Bench speakers have to be called at 3.30 pm, so we have 40 minutes, which allows four to five minutes maximum per Member.
Imran Hussain (Bradford East) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on all the work she does as chair of the all-party parliamentary group for British Sikhs. I join her and others in calling for an outright apology. It is frankly shocking that we have not had that, after a number of calls for it in Parliament. Does she agree that we need a further apology for the findings of the Hunter commission, which concluded that General Dyer committed a “grave error”? It was not a grave error; it was a massacre of innocent men, women and children, and we need an apology.
David Hanson (in the Chair)
Order. I say gently to hon. Members that interventions must be short. A significant number of Members wish to contribute to the debate, so there are only four to five minutes each. The longer Members speak in interventions, the shorter that time will be.
Preet Kaur Gill
My hon. Friend raises a good point about the Hunter commission, which I am sure the Minister heard.
Regrettably, the massacre came within months of the end of the great war, in which tens of thousands of turban-wearing Sikhs from Punjab had sacrificed their lives for our freedom in Europe. The formal apology should include the victims of the massacre, their families and descendants, the people of Punjab and, given the location, timing and identity of the massacre, the worldwide Sikh community. That is the least that the UK Government can do on the 100th anniversary of the Amritsar massacre. Will they take this opportunity finally to do the right thing?
That is not enough. The apology should mark the start of learning of teaching our children about the massacre in history lessons in our schools and learning about the context of the British empire, which through imperialism and colonialism had exploited and subjugated people around the world. According to polling in 2017, 44% of people were proud of Britain’s history of colonialism, and YouGov polling in 2014 showed that nearly half believed that countries were better off for having been colonised. The Amritsar massacre was not the only brutal act carried out, and we need to teach our children about it, the shared history that it creates and the backdrop of what the Commonwealth is and means. In that, children will learn where they came from and why they are where they are today.