Healing the scar? Idealizing Britain in Africa, 1997-2007

African Affairs

Volumn 108, Issue 432, 2009, Pages 435-451

  Gallagher, Julia ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF LONDON   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

FOREIGN POLICY; GOVERNMENT RELATIONS; POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY;

EURASIA; EUROPE; UNITED KINGDOM; WESTERN EUROPE;

EID: 67649419573     PISSN: 00019909     EISSN: 14682621     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/afraf/adp024     Document Type: Article

References (78)

1. For an overview of the various Africa policies launched under Blair, see Tom Porteous, Britain in Africa (Zed Books, London, 2008).
2. For details on funding levels and debt write-off agreements, see HM Treasury, 'G8 finance ministers' conclusions on development, London, 10-11 June 2005' (HM Treasury, 2005; (19 May 2008).
3. All Party Parliamentary Groups, set up by backbench MPs, develop a particular interest in a topic or part of the world. There are 15 APPGs on sub-Saharan African countries or regions (Africa, Angola, Botswana, Ethiopia, Ghana, Madagascar, Namibia, Nigeria, Somaliland, South Africa, Sudan, Tanzania, West Africa Mano River Region, Zimbabwe and the Great Lakes and Genocide Prevention). See Houses of Parliament website, http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm/cmallparty/register/ memi02.htm#al (14 March 2008).
4. Peter Penfold, former High Commissioner to Sierra Leone, at the end of a career in the FCO was able to observe: 'Within the Foreign Office for many years, the two forgotten areas were Africa and South America: They were the backwaters.... Now, credit to Tony Blair, for whatever reasons he really decided to put Africa way up on the agenda.... And as a result, Africa began to get the attention it deserved.' Interview, London, 3 July 2007.
5. International development was given its own department and cabinet minister in 1997, and over the following years, DfID posts in African capitals saw budgets and staff numbers grow to the extent that in many instances they effectively took the lead over the FCO in directing the British relationship with Africa. At the same time, DfID officials felt they enjoyed unprecedented financial and political support: 'A golden age,' as one official suggested. Interview, DfID official, London, 4 May 2007.
6. Tony Blair, 'Speech on Africa, Addis Ababa, 7 October 2004', Downing Street website, (16 March 2006).
7. The title of this article is drawn from Tony Blair's speech to the Labour Party conference in 2001, when he said: 'The state of Africa is a scar on the conscience of the world. But if the world as a community focused on it, we could heal it. And if we don't, it will become deeper and angrier.' Tony Blair, 'Speech to the Labour Party Conference', 2 October 2001, Guardian Unlimited, [13 July 2004].
8. See Zoe Ware, 'Reassessing Labour's relationship with sub-Saharan Africa', The Round Table 95, 383 (2006), pp. 141-52;
9. Rob Dixon and Paul Williams, 'Tough on debt, tough on the causes of debt? New Labour's Third Way foreign policy', British Journal of Politics and International Relations 3, 2 (2001), pp. 150-72;
10. Paul D. Williams, 'Blair's Commission for Africa: Problems and prospects for UK policy', The Political Quarterly 76, 4 (2005), pp. 529-39;
11. Percy S. Nlistry, 'Reasons for sub-Saharan Africa's development deficit that the Commission for Africa did not consider', African Affairs 104, 417 (2005), pp. 665-78;
12. Ian Taylor, 'Advice is udged by results, not by intentions: Why Gordon Brown is wrong about Africa', International Affairs 81, 2 (2005), pp. 299-310;
13. Tom Porteous, 'British government policy in sub-Saharan Africa under New Labour', International Affairs 81, 2 (2005), pp. 281-97.
14. David Chandler, 'Rhetoric without responsibility: The attraction of "ethical" foreign policy', British Journal of Politics and International Relations 5, 3 (2003), pp. 295-316.
15. Paul Cammack, 'Global governance, state agency and competitiveness: The political economy of the Commission for Africa', British Journal of Politics and International Relations 8, 3 (2006), pp. 331-50.
16. See Rita Abrahamsen and Paul Williams, 'Ethics and foreign policy: The antimorries of New Labour's "Third Way" in sub-Saharan Africa', Political Studies 49, 2 (2001), pp. 249-65;
17. David Slater and Morag Bell, 'Aid and the geopolitics of the post-colonial: Critical reflections on New Labour's overseas development strategy', Development and Change 33, 2 (2002), pp. 335-61.
18. Rita Abrahamsen, 'Blair's Africa: The politics of securitization and fear', Alternatives 30, 1 (2005), pp. 55-80.
19. On the influences on Blair and Brown, respectively, see Anthony Seldon, Blair (Free Press, London, 2004);
20. Richard Dowden, 'Gordon Brown and Africa', Africa Policy Forum (11 December 2008).
21. In 1964 Harold Wilson said:'The Labour Party is amoral crusade or it is nothing.' Quoted in Mark Phythian, The Labour Party, War and International Relations, 1945 2006 (Routledge, London, 2007), p. 1.
22. The theme appears regularly, from the debates around the abolition of the slave trade to late colonialism as a way to save Africa, and more recently the Live Aid approach. See, for example, James Ferguson's discussion, Global Shadows: Africa in the neoliberal world order (Duke University Press, Durham, NC, 2006), pp. 1-23.
23. Christopher Clapham, Africa and the International System: The politics of state survival (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2002), p. 87.
24. Achille Mbembe, On the Postcolony (University of California Press, Berkeley, CA, 2001), p. 4.
25. Ibid., p. 2.
26. Valentin Y. Mudimbe describes the history of the Western approach in The Idea of Africa: African systems of thought (James Currey, Oxford, 1994).
27. The 18th and 19th century fascination with travellers' accounts of Africa is also notable. See David Livingstone, Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa (John Murray, London, 1912)
28. and Mungo Park, Mungo Park's Travels (Henry Frowde, Hodder and Stoughton, London, 1916).
29. Isaiah Berlin, The Crooked Timber of Humanity: Chapters in the history of ideas, ed. Henry Hardy (Pimlico, London, 2003), p. 24.
30. Interview, Malcolm Moss, MP (Conservative), Chair, APPG on Botswana, London, 6 February 2007.
31. Interview, Chris Mullin, MP (Labour), Minister for Africa, 2003-5, London, 21 March 2007.
32. Interview, Claire Curtis-Thomas, MP (Labour), Chair, APPG on the Mano River Region, London, 14 March 2007.
33. Interview, John Austin, MP (Labour), Chair, APPG on Ethiopia, London, 19 February 2007.
34. This view was reinforced by many of the British officials I met in Abuja and Freetown, where there were national elections in 2007. These were described as competitions about personality, competence, or progressiveness rather than ideology. Interviews with British officials in Abuja and Freetown, July-August 2007.
35. Such depictions echo cultural explanations of African politics. See Jean-Francois Bayart, Stephen Ellis, and Beatrice Hibou, The Criminalization of the State in Africa (James Currey, Oxford, 1999);
36. Patrick Chabal, and Jean-Pascal Daloz, Africa Works: Disorder as political instrument (James Currey, Oxford, 1999).
37. Interview, FCO official, London, 27 April 2007.
38. Interview, House of Commons researcher, London, 23 January 2007.
39. Interview, FCO official, Freetown, 6 August 2007.
40. Interview, Baroness Jenny Tonge (Liberal Democrat), Spokesperson on International Development, 1997-2004, London, 17 May 2007.
41. Interview, John Bercow, MP (Conservative), Spokesman on International Development, 2003-5, London, 23 April 2007.
42. Interview, John Austin, MP (Labour), Chair, APPG on Ethiopia, London, 19 February 2007.
43. Interview, Jeremy Corbyn, MP (Labour), Chair, APPG on Angola, London, 31 January 2007.
44. Interview, Tony Worthington, London, 26 June 2007.
45. Ibid.
46. Interview, FCO official, Freetown, 6 August 2007.
47. Interview, Peter Penfold, High Commissioner in Sierra Leone, 1997-2000, London, 3 July 2007.
48. Interview, Myles Wickstead, Head of the Commission for Africa Secretariat, 2004-5, London, 27 June 2007.
49. David Marquand characterizes Blair's wider political approach and style as driven by the belief that rational discussion would achieve consensus, and eschewing notions of politics as inherently conflictual. Instead, Blair's followers adopted the approach that there 'is one modern condition, which all rational people would embrace if they knew what it was. The Blairites do know.' David Marquand, The Progressive Dilemma: From Lloyd George to Blair, 2nd ed. (Phoenix Giant, London, 1999), p. 226.
50. Interview, Clare Short, MP (Lab our), Secretary of State for International Development, 1997-2003, London, 6 June 2007.
51. See Rhiannon Vickers, The Labour Party and the World: The evolution of Labour's foreign policy, 1900-51, 2 vols., vol. 1 (Manchester University Press, Manchester, 2003).
52. The exception was South Africa, where economic interests did exist and were allowed to take precedence by the Conservative government over the imposition of economic sanctions on the Apartheid regime. For critics - many of them in the Labour Party - this was a blatant example of British selfishness being promoted over what was right and good, and a symbol of the moral decay ofthe government. The approach was rejected by Robin Cook when he became Foreign Secretary. See Robin Cook, "Foreign Policy Mission Statement - Speech at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, London, 12 May 1997," Guardian Unlimited: www.guardian.co.uk [14 December 2005].
53. IMF, Direction of Trade Statistics (annual values): http://www.imf.org/external/np/sta/index.htm;
54. Office of National Statistics, UK Trade Figures, tables F1, F13: http://www.statistics.gov.uk/downloads/theme_economy/Mm24JanO8.pdf, (22 March 2008).
55. Policy towards South Africa remains exceptional, characterized by greater complexity and acknowledgement of political content than the rest of sub-Saharan Africa.
56. Officials from the World Bank, as well as many advising Blair, suggested that the system was a waste of Tanzania's limited resources. See Porteous, Britain in Africa, p. 127.
57. Ibid., pp. 127-9.
58. Interviews with DfID and FCO officials, Abuja, July 2007.
59. Interview, FCO official, London, 1 May 2007.
60. Interview with Chris Mullin, MP, Minister for Africa, 2003-5, London, 21 March 2007.
61. Interview with Owen Tudor, head, International Department, Trades Union Congress, London, 8 May 2007.
62. Interview, Chris Mullin, MP (Labour), Minister for Africa, 2003-5, London, 21 March 2007.
63. Interview, Tony Lloyd, MP (Lab our), Minister for Africa, 1997-9, London, 10 July 2007.
64. Malcolm Moss, MP, believes that the 'strong connections' Britain has with many African countries derive from the movement for the abolition of the slave trade and the creation of Sierra Leone as a colony for resettling freed slaves. Interview, Malcolm Moss, MP (Conservative), Chair, APPG on Botswana, London, 6 February 2007.
65. Interview, Tony Lloyd, MP (Lab our), Minister for Africa, 1997-9, London, 10 July 2007.
66. Interview, Myles Wickstead, London, 27 June 2007.
67. An untypically undiplomatic example came from British High Commissioner to Kenya, Edward Clay, when in 2004 he accused unnamed corrupt officials of behaving 'like gluttons' and 'vomiting on the shoes' of donors. See http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/389697.stm [18 December 2008].
68. Interview, Myles Wickstead, London, 27 June 2007.
69. See Michael Kargbo, British Foreign Policy and the Conflict in Sierra Leone, 1991-2001 (Peter Lang, 2006).
70. Interview, Peter Penfold, 3 July, 2007, London.
71. Michael Kargbo, a Sierra Leonean academic who has written about the British military engagement, described his first meeting with Penfold: 'I didn't know him before I went to London. So he walked through the door and what I saw was this colonial officer. And I said, okay, straight away, that's what we're dealing with... He would say there's a substantial part of the population that would want to be re-colonized by Britain. So he had a sort of confidence that what he did was very powerful.' Interview, 4 August 2007, Freetown. Indeed, Penfold himself told me: 'If you went to these countries in Africa, they were very proud of their colonial past, particularly in a country like Sierra Leone. Many Sierra Leoneans would say their downfall started on the day of independence.' Interview, London, 3 July 2007.
72. Interview, Sierra Leonean who worked for the FCO, Freetown, 11 August 2007.
73. Ibid.
74. Interview, DfID official, London, 4 May 2007.
75. See e.g. Commission for Africa., Our Common Interest: Report of the Commissionfor Africa (London: Commission for Africa, 2005).
76. Interview, Chris Mullin, MP (Labour), Minister for Africa, 2003-5, London, 21 March 2007.
77. Mark Duffield, Global Governance and the New Wars: The Merging of Development and Security (Zed Books, London, 2002).
78. Interview, Chris Mullin, MP (Labour), Minister for Africa, 2003-5, London, 21 March 2007.