#CamFest Speaker Spotlight

Professor Stuart Ward is professor of British Imperial History at the Saxo Institute, University of Copenhagen, talks about his new book Untied Kingdom in Untied Kingdom: a global history of the end of Britain on 22nd March 7-8pm.

Why does your research matter?

The fate of Britain has seemingly hung in the balance for decades, subject to countless studies and confident predictions of its inevitable demise. Few countries have been subjected to such constant critical scrutiny or come so close to the brink of dissolution. The ‘end of Britain’ must surely count as one of the burning issues of our times, yet it has become so familiar that we tend to lose sight of the gravity of the situation. My research is designed to shake this complacency and reframe the question in a whole new light.

What inspired you to write the book?

Living in London back in the early 2000s, I was struck by the wave of books, articles and press speculation about the future of Britain and Britishness. These were the early years of the devolved parliaments in Scotland and Wales, and the debate was almost entirely inward-looking – focussing on the internal political pressures prizing the Four Nations apart. Having grown up in Australia at a time when older British allegiances were in rapid decline, it occurred to me that there was much more to the “Break-Up of Britain” than the inner dynamics of the United Kingdom. It was around that time that I started thinking about how you might write a global history of the end of Britain. But it would take many more years (and thousands of air miles) before I was able to pull all the pieces together.

Do you think the way the UK media views current events, including Brexit, is too narrow and not seen in a broad enough sweep?

I think it errs on both sides of the ledger, in the sense that there is a lot of parochial coverage of current affairs (which you will find anywhere), but there is also a tendency to assume that what happens in Britain must have world-wide ramifications – a habit of mind inherited from former times. Brexit is an obvious example, not least the scramble for “Global Britain” as the natural corollary to leaving the European Union. Unlike the situation more than half a century ago when any number of countries and cultures had a stake in Britain’s global posture, no one in the 21st century talks about Global Britain – except Britain. But the irony is completely lost on its advocates.

How do you think Britain has been coping with the end of empire? Is it in denial?

You often hear that Britain has airbrushed the empire from the public purview – in schools, in popular culture, in civic awareness generally – but you hear it so often that you have to wonder. Try googling “Brexit” and “Empire” and you will be flooded with public commentary about the ever-presence of the imperial past in British public life. But Britain is, of course, many peoples of diverse persuasions, and it isn’t hard to find large swathes of popular ignorance and profound indifference toward the empire’s historical legacies. It is this ingrained resistance that compels progressives to draw so much critical attention to the nation’s sordid historical record overseas. So “coping” with the end of empire has taken the form of a polemical battleground between rival dispositions, allowing little room for measured judgement or nuanced reflection.

Is there anything that is unique about the way the UK is dealing with it compared to other past empires?

Many of the familiar features of Britain’s imperial reckoning are also present elsewhere. Debates about prominent statues and monuments, school curricula, “decolonising” structural barriers to inclusion and public apologies for historical wrongs, can also be found in France, Holland, Belgium and even Germany (despite the limited scale of the actual German empire). But the sheer extent of the British empire means that its afterlife looms perhaps larger than anywhere else in Europe. There is anecdotal evidence that movements like Rhodes Must Fall – which originally migrated from South Africa to the UK – moved subsequently to other parts of Europe in the wake of its high visibility in Britain. In other words, it isn’t just a matter of comparison – perhaps more a case of mutual entanglement.

What do your students in Denmark make of what is happening in the UK?

I encounter a lot of bafflement about the recent political volatility of a country that many Scandinavians regard as a beacon of unruffled stability – keeping calm and carrying on. Some of the recent occupants of 10 Downing Street were a source of deep fascination because of the way they departed from the perceived mould. But increasingly, I find interest is waning. Britain has charted its course out of Europe and all eyes are fixed on the real trouble raging in Ukraine.

Will the departure of Nicola Sturgeon make any material difference to the future of the UK?

In the short term it surely must. Despite more than 10 years of SNP electoral success, the anticipated poll surge for independence eluded Sturgeon to the very end. The lack of an obvious successor only compounds the problem, with Starmer’s Labour waiting in the wings to capitalise on the situation. But over the longer term I think Sturgeon’s departure will only register as a minor stumbling block. The forces of disaggregation have been building over a much longer timeframe and will not easily dissipate. A more likely scenario is a period of political ambivalence and volatile polls – rather than a return of the old emotional investments in a unitary Britishness.