Thatcher and the sons of empire

A preferred book café here in Singapore is just a medium stroll from our apartment.

Along the route is Killiney Road with its old-style shop houses that are now a range of eateries where you’ll find French pastries, Taiwanese porridge or Malaysian Rendang. Just past these houses is the cul-de-sac of Dublin Road, which has the most elegant houses that even wealthy Singaporeans would envy.

What caught my attention on a recent visit to Hong Kong are the prominent place names held by Jardine and Matheson. Both of these “gentlemen” earned vast fortunes shipping opium into China in the 19th century. William Jardine who died in 1843 as the Right Honourable MP for Ashburton in Devon was for almost his entire career a drug baron. He made his fortune as a “commercial agent” for opium shipped out of Bengal into China. It was in 1839 that Lin Zexu, under orders from the emperor, confiscated and destroyed the opium in the Cantonese warehouses of Jardine and Matheson when all the trouble started. Jardine appealed to Lord Palmerston to send gunships to put manners on the Chinese “barbarians”. His proposal was given approval and support from parliament and Queen Victoria.

British gunboats pounded Canton and other ports along the coast as they demanded compensation for the confiscated drugs. After months of mayhem and massacre, the British also claimed Hong Kong island. The profits of the opium trade increased through the 1840s, but not enough to satisfy the greed of the British traders, so they provoked a second war in 1856. It was between the two opium wars that the great Famine struck Ireland. It was the view of Charles Trevelyan, in charge of famine relief, that “God sent the calamity to teach the Irish a lesson”. During the worst years of the Famine 1845-47 when 1.5 million perished and same number were forced to emigrate, Ireland was actually a net exporter of food.

There is a truism that history is written by the victors. On the day of Margaret Thatcher’s funeral, it is interesting to recall that she was strongly opposed to the return of Hong Kong. Fresh from her victory in the Falklands, she landed in Peking in September 1982. It was made clear to her that she could either negotiate or in two years the Chinese would make unilateral decisions on Hong Kong. Deng Xioaping insisted that the Union Jack would be lowered on Hong Kong and, for Thatcher, gunboat diplomacy was not an option here. Maybe it’s the post-colonial equivalent of the Stockholm syndrome but the number of Union Jack T-shirts on view in both Singapore and Hong Kong is striking. More than likely it is the soft power of “cool Britannia” coming from Beckham or Danny Boyle. Even in the West Brit stronghold of Killiney, Dublin, if a man were to go about wearing the Union Jack on his shirt it would cause a frisson. Now try wearing the ‘Butcher’s Apron’ on a T-shirt in the West Cork rebel stronghold of Inchigeelagh and your safe passage back to wherever you came from is not guaranteed.

So when they lower Thatcher down there is no call for jubilation as the war is long since over and to the victor the spoils. We won’t remember her good friend in Pinochet or the terrorist in Mandela. We won’t remember the needless dead on the Belgrano or the Maze hunger strikers.

Let us rather remember Thatcher alongside those noble sons of empire — Jardine, Matheson, Raffles, Trevelyan and Rhodes — and may all their righteous good deeds be cleansed in the sewers of imperial history.

Shane Minogue

Mount Sophia

Singapore