Yahoo News Al Murray: 'You'll learn nothing' about the British Empire if you only look at it from one perspective
The comedian tells Yahoo UK: 'If anything could be more imperialist it's British people arguing with British people about the British Empire'
For Al Murray looking back on the legacy of the British Empire required more than just his voice, it needed to include voices from those in the communities oppressed by colonialism in order for viewers of his new documentary series to understand the whole picture.
Why Does Everyone Hate the British Empire? is Murray's third Sky documentary series on British history, and the comedian tells Yahoo UK that it was important the show did more than just have historians from the UK speak on the matter because "if anything could be more imperialist it's British people arguing with British people about the British Empire."
"A one size fits all way of looking at the British Empire will probably teach you nothing," Murray says.
"You'll learn nothing. You'll learn nothing about history and how people work and how people operate and how states interact with each other.
"You won't learn a thing if you come at it with one way of looking."Al Murray
Murray reflects on the impact of British colonialism in four countries — India, Jamaica, South Africa and Australia — alongside Anuvab Pal, Chris Daley, Loyiso Gola and Kevin Kropinyeri. Doing so allowed him to convey a more well-rounded picture of the British Empire and how it is viewed today.
Murray, who is a historian as well as a comedian, is particularly interested in the history of World War II but argues that "you cannot explain what happened in the Second World War without knowing what the British Empire was, you just can't."
He explains: "There's no explaining why are the British in Singapore in the first place? Why are they kicked out of Burma? What's going on? Well, because there's a British Empire.
"And unless you know that you can't talk about it sensibly, so it's the thing I'm interested in from that regard too. What is the actual history? Where does it actually sit?
"As well as, what do the people from those countries think? Rather than British people arguing with British people about it.
"If anything could be more imperialist it's British people arguing with British people about the British Empire. I mean, that's kind of the height of imperialism."Al Murray
Murray explains that making the docu-series "just felt like the natural next place to go" after Why Does Everyone Hate the English? and Why Do the British Win Every War? particularly because the subject of the British Empire is such a contentious one.
"The two sides of the argument sort of throw rocks at each other and disagree," Murray says.
"And there's basically everyone else who maybe doesn't know the history or maybe they're not interested or maybe their lives are too busy to be filled with this sort of thing."
Reflecting on the legacy of the British Empire
While Murray's docu-series examines the impact of the British Empire, the comedian makes it clear that it is not the only country to have colonised other countries and is not the only empire, simply the biggest.
"In this country, we beat ourselves up about the British Empire, but everyone had one at some point. Basically, everyone has had one or tried to have one at some point, full stop.
"Since the world began the history of the world is a history of empires rising and falling, and falling and denying they exist, and all those consequences of them."Al Murray
He adds: "The last thing I would ever do is make a programme where I said 'this is what you ought to think.' People have to make their own minds up about how they feel about stuff and the reason I think that is because I want to be allowed to make up my own mind."
What Murray found the most interesting was the ways in which the British Empire took over each country he visited, admitting that every country was "completely different" to each other.
"The story of what happens in India is completely different to happens in Australia, which is completely different to what's going on in Jamaica, which is completely different to South Africa, but they were so different in so many ways," he reflects.
"There's a core thing at the centre of it, which is exploitation and the British state trying to get what it wants, but then going about doing that in lots and lots of very different ways.
"You wouldn't ever do in South Africa what [they did] in Australia, you wouldn't be able to, and the same [goes for] India. So I think that was the thing that I was really struck by."
The continued impact of the British Empire
In each episode, Murray reflects on what happened in one of the country's Britain colonised and how the British Empire was established, as well as the ramifications it has had long after it ended.
"The story in Australia is the one I found hardest, that I struggled with the hardest to be honest because that legacy — how Aboriginal people were treated politically, and the legal obfuscations that were made in order to infer their land was nothing to do with them and that they essentially didn't exist or have any rights — that's still evident," Murray goes on.
"And there's the real proper contrast in Australia, we went to Sydney, which is such an amazing place to visit... but at the heart of it is the question of how was that made, how did that come about?"
In Australia the impact of colonialism can still be felt, as Murray says. On 14 October a referendum voted 'no' over amending the constitution so that it recognised indigenous people and created a body for the First Nations people so they can have their voices heard by the government.
Murray goes on: "We went to the scene of the Appin massacre, which is the year after the Battle of Waterloo, and people celebrate the Battle of Waterloo, this moment where French Napoleonic tyranny was finally wrestled to ground and defeated, and all that.
"But on the other side of the world, a year later, there's tyranny going on in Australia, plain and simple, by the British Army [doing] effectively the same thing."Al Murray
The Appin massacre took place in 1816, and it saw the colonial forces of the 46th Regiment massacre Aboriginal men, women and children and take some as prisoners of war for not submitting to colonial rule.
"I was really hauled up by it," Murray admits. "It made me think about the chronology directly and [I was] made to think about what do these things represent and why do we not know about [it]? Why are we so gung ho about one but not the other?"
"History tends to be the story you tell about yourself, and people like would rather tell good stories about themselves than bad ones. It's human nature, it's as simple as that," he concludes.
Al Murray: Why Does Everyone Hate the British Empire? airs 23rd October at 9:00PM on Sky History.
Read more:
Al Murray interview: ‘People will say I was too soft on the British Empire’(The Telegraph, 9-min read)
Al Murray believes humans are for the 'chop' when it comes to artificial intelligence (Bang Showbiz, 1-min read)
