The bronze statue of Winston Churchill, with the Houses of Parliament in the Palace of Westminster behind.
The British Empire, for which Churchill fought and served, was founded fundamentally on violence, often of an extreme and punitive nature, serving the high ideal of “liberal imperialism”: that England “brought civilisation to the ignorant, and those not ready to govern themselves”. Britain held the mandate for Palestine following the First World War, and for part of this time Churchill was secretary of state for the colonies, as well as later prime minister. Lessons in brutality learned elsewhere in the empire, not least in Ireland, were applied in Palestine to suppress rebellion. This is documented in Legacy of Violence: A history of the British Empire by Caroline Elkins.
The title words are by Seamus Heaney.
kestrelart 
Beautiful painting and I so appreciate this: “The British Empire. . . was founded fundamentally on violence, often of an extreme and punitive nature.” There is a real place for flatly stating the truths that our collective amnesia, the result of centuries of propaganda, too often obscures. The legacy of colonialism is everywhere and always more violence. (And I love Seamus Heaney! 🙂 )
My other post from Monday references the P21 gallery and the We Are Not Numbers collective for Palestinian youth writers. At that exhibition, I bought a book on the intersection of art and language from an art project called languitecture. I’m starting to use that book, page by page, as a focus for reflection and art. The first page was about the Sirocco wind from the Atlas Mountains and took Heaney’s poem Had I Not Been Awake as a trigger for artistic development. The artist read that poem to her grandfather, himself originating from that region in North Africa, as he was nearing the end of his life. She reflected too on his native Arabic tongue and her early distancing and reacquisition of her linguistic heritage. So I had drawn the basics of my picture already from a recent march starting in Parliament Square but developed it in response to her musings and Heaney’s poem.
Also I strongly recommend the book I cite in this post.
Duly noted!