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Big Ben
Between the 1950s and 1970s, colonial governments across the British Empire systematically destroyed thousands—possibly millions—of records related to war crimes, torture, and racial discrimination. This operation, known as "Operation Legacy," is not a conspiracy theory but a well-documented historical fact. Astonishingly, it was highly effective.
India gained independence in 1947, and in the lead-up to that event, British officials were so busy burning documents that there was a "pall of smoke" over Delhi. Just before Malaya gained independence in 1957, truckloads of documents were incinerated in Singapore. In Trinidad and Tobago, the colonial governor was advised to dump crates of records into the sea. During the Suez Crisis, a reporter observed that the lawn in front of the British embassy in Egypt was “ankle-deep” in ash from burned documents.
Records were also destroyed in other colonies, but not everything was lost. Some documents were hidden rather than burned. For instance, before Kenya's independence, 307 crates of papers were secretly flown out of the country to a facility in Buckinghamshire. These records were kept out of the official classification system, making them inaccessible to Freedom of Information requests. This act was illegal under British law, and the documents remained hidden until they were revealed in 2011. Today, they are available at the National Archives in Kew for public viewing. These documents exposed the colonial government’s use of torture during the Mau Mau Uprising in Kenya, with Britain ordering the destruction of anything that might "embarrass" the country.
Many British people are unaware of these dark chapters in their empire’s history. A 2020 YouGov poll revealed that a third of Britons still believe the British Empire was "something to be proud of" and that it left the colonized countries "better off." Remarkably, a quarter of respondents expressed a wish for Britain to still have an empire.
Big Ben
Between the 1950s and 1970s, colonial governments across the British Empire systematically destroyed thousands—possibly millions—of records related to war crimes, torture, and racial discrimination. This operation, known as "Operation Legacy," is not a conspiracy theory but a well-documented historical fact. Astonishingly, it was highly effective.
India gained independence in 1947, and in the lead-up to that event, British officials were so busy burning documents that there was a "pall of smoke" over Delhi. Just before Malaya gained independence in 1957, truckloads of documents were incinerated in Singapore. In Trinidad and Tobago, the colonial governor was advised to dump crates of records into the sea. During the Suez Crisis, a reporter observed that the lawn in front of the British embassy in Egypt was “ankle-deep” in ash from burned documents.
Records were also destroyed in other colonies, but not everything was lost. Some documents were hidden rather than burned. For instance, before Kenya's independence, 307 crates of papers were secretly flown out of the country to a facility in Buckinghamshire. These records were kept out of the official classification system, making them inaccessible to Freedom of Information requests. This act was illegal under British law, and the documents remained hidden until they were revealed in 2011. Today, they are available at the National Archives in Kew for public viewing. These documents exposed the colonial government’s use of torture during the Mau Mau Uprising in Kenya, with Britain ordering the destruction of anything that might "embarrass" the country.
Many British people are unaware of these dark chapters in their empire’s history. A 2020 YouGov poll revealed that a third of Britons still believe the British Empire was "something to be proud of" and that it left the colonized countries "better off." Remarkably, a quarter of respondents expressed a wish for Britain to still have an empire.