The many questions surrounding the treatment of the Gurkhas seem to be getting more and more publicity. Do they deserve to live in Britain? On a certain level that is the long and short of the argument. But there are bigger issues at play here.

Like Zimbabwe, and the unfortunately renewed troubles in Northern Ireland, this is just one more aspect of the colonial period coming back to haunt modern Britian. Or to put it another way, it's just one more example of the way the powers that be take the piss badly.
 

Of course in modern, 21st century Britain it is not the job of young people to (sometimes literally ) pay for the wrongs of their grandfathers. It would be great to be able to move on and not have to think about these horrible things from the past. But it’s the denial that anything was wrong that makes it impossible to do that. The disparity between the image that Britain wants to project and the truth about its history is bigger than the panic about swine flu.

Debates have raged in columns, blogs and letters pages but it's strange where you find things laid bare. While watching, of all things, an episode of South Park at the weekend the issue was brought home when the cartoon depicted an old school army major nicknaming the mission the segregated black regiment was about to undertake: 'Operation Certain Death.'

The joke unearths a rarely recognised fact about both World Wars. The soldiers from the old Empire, mostly black and Indian, had the hardest, most dangerous, missions of all. They were seen as the most dispensable. These episodes in history need to be rewritten with a quickness.

I have three uncles who fought in the second world war. Many, many years ago Churchill went to St.Lucia to glad hand the natives. My uncle refused to go and wave a union jack like shit was all good.

Joanna Lumley's tireless campaigning on behalf of the gurkhas kind of represents progessive opinion in this country. I mean, first and foremost it obviously represents her as an individual but you know what i mean. On the other hand there are those who think things are just fine and can't quite work out what all the complaining is about.

"They knew the conditions when they signed up," is just one of the arguments heard most often. Does this excuse the fact that the conditions were exploitative and generally messed up? Secondly, the main reason such a career path was interesting in the first place was because joining the army was one of few options open to them in a Nepal recovering from the colonial era. If these parts of the world hadn't been economically exploited for hundreds of years would such an option be attractive in the first place? Check the record of the British East India company and their involvement in the region in the 19th century. It's pretty messed up and indicative of the way Britain has behaved all over the world.

Sure, some Gurkhas, perhaps lots of them, will have been unfortunately stupid enough to swallow all that rubbish about helping out the mother country. But for most it was about getting by. Perhaps needless to say, they were paid less than their white counterparts. The main reason that nothing will ever happen is that it will simply cost to much for Britain to officially right its past wrongs. And after last week's budget such reocognition is even further away than ever. But even if that wasn't a concern, the political will isn't there either. Our current prime minister famously said that Britain should stop apologising for colonialism ( which apology is he talking about?) If that isn't bad enough, it was revealed at the weekend that the man most likely to be our next prime minister ( please God no!) was quite happy to accept an all expenses paid trip to Apartheid South Africa. He was then cynical enough to, as Tory leader, engineer a meeting with Nelson Mandela in order to cover his back for when the news came out, as he knew it eventually would.
 
Words: Russell Myrie
Photo: Provided by Flickr user BinaryApe