One-sided history
Sir: M.A. de A Brandao is right (Letters, 6 September) to draw attention to the brutality of the Germans and Japanese in the second world war, and he is probably right to assert the comparatively honourable conduct of British troops in Greece in 1945. However, his thinking demonstrates a onesidedness that is all too common in Britain today. We may have been fighting the evils of fascism, but this did not stop us from committing evils ourselves. Take for example the failure of the British government to release readily available food stocks to alleviate the Bengal famine in which between a million and two million people died. Also, being on the right side in 1939-45 should not make us blind towards the many examples of brutality, racism and greed that characterised much of Britain’s imperial policy (Delhi in 1857, Kitchener’s internment camps in South Africa, and Amritsar in 1919 to name but a few). It is right that our schools educate children about the honourable role Britain played in defeating Hitler, but it is wrong
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