B illionaire Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s recent claim that Britain is being “colonised” is a spectacular inversion of history. It completely ignores the centuries in which Britain projected itself across the globe through piracy, conquest, extraction, violence, and law — shaping the very migration patterns he now complains about. As David Lammy famously said during the Windrush scandal: “We are here because you were there.” Lammy's remarks captures perfectly, what Ratcliffe’s argument refuses to confront: Britain’s global footprint created the modern, multicultural Britain he now derides.
Empire was not a cultural exchange, it was dominion and brutal domination. From the 17th century onward, Britain expanded its sphere of influence through slavery, forced labour, piracy, and the systematic extraction of wealth from Africa, Asia, the Caribbean and the Americas. Millions of Africans were transported into chattel slavery to fuel Britain’s economy. Caribbean plantations were built on kidnapping and coercion, British privateers and priates plundered with state approval. And across the empire, Britain drained resources while entrenching poverty in the places it freicely ruled. These were not accidents of history. They were deliberate state projects, with the blessing of Parliament and the Monarchy.
Ratcliffe’s framing collapses further in the face of Britain’s record in Asia. India was brought under British control through war, annexation and the crushing of resistance. Famines under colonial rule killed millions across the Indian subcontinent, while Britain extracted wealth on a scale economists describe as one of the largest transfers in human history. In China, Britain fought the Opium Wars to force open Chinese markets to British narcotics. The result was not only humiliation and destabilisation for China — it also led directly to Britain seizing Hong Kong.
That legacy is still with us today. When the UK introduced the Hong Kong BN(O) visa route, it did so explicitly because of Britain’s historical role in Hong Kong and its promise to the people of that region in the early 1980s, before Britain handed back territory to China in 1997. Modern migration from Hong Kong is not random. It is a direct consequence of Britain’s imperial actions in the 19th century. Across the Commonwealth, from the Caribbean to Africa to the Pacific, British rule was imposed through brute force, not through consent.
British soilders rounded up Kenyans into concentration camps in the 1950s
The story is the same in Africa. In the 1950s, Kenyans who demanded independence were met with mass detention, horrific torture and collective punishment. The Mau Mau uprising was not a fringe rebellion; it was a population demanding the right to govern itself. Britain responded with forced labour camps, systematic abuse, executions and the rounding up of entire communities. Decades later, survivors won compensation after a UK high court case exposed the brutality of the colonial regime. This is the historical record not a matter of opinion.
Kenyan nationals who were brutally tortured by British soldiers took their case to the high court in cenrtal London.
When Caribbean citizens arrived in post‑war Britain to rebuild the country, they did so as subjects of the empire, they had British passports. Their presence was not just the tail-end of “colonisation”. It was the fulfilment of Britain’s own legal and moral obligations, they were citizens of the UK State. The Windrush scandal, where lawful residents were detained, deported or denied rights, showed how quickly Britain forgets the responsibilities created by its imperial past. Lammy’s words still echo because they are true: “We are here because you were there.”
Meanwhile, Ratcliffe sells himself as a patriot while being tax‑resident in Monaco, a move widely reported as allowing him to significantly reduce his UK tax obligations to the tune of more than £4 billion. That is his legal right, but it raises a simple question: who gets to define patriotism, those who contribute to Britain, or those who relocate from Britan to avoid doing so?
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Ship Away - Windrush board game - by Patricia Jones
Migration into Britain did not appear out of thin air. It is inseparable from colonialism, or to quote David Lammy “inextricable” from centuries of aggressive British expansion, the movement of people within the empire, the economic and political structures Britain built overseas, the promises Britain made to its subjects, and the legacies of conflict, extraction and imposed rule. To claim Britain is now being “colonised” is to erase the empire Britain created and the responsibilities that flow from it.
If Britain had not gone out into the world, the world would not be here. That is not ideology. It is history and remains a deeply rooted fact.
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