We call ourselves Great and see much of our history as glorious, but this rethinking of slavery and colonialism may cast us in a very different light. Perhaps, even, the United Kingdom needs to repent before God of its national arrogance on a global scale. We have been, and are, one of the world’s biggest problems, even while we congratulate ourselves on civilising and leading the world. “Oh, that’s a bit extreme” you say, but come on a bit of the journey I’ve had to go over the last few months.

I’m a PhD economist, am supposed to be able to think and am prepared to be nonconformist, but only now, with the help of my dear friend, Jay Bhattachajee, have I thought properly about the Indian economy, and discover I am an unthinking smug British nationalist.

I love India and Indians. It is a rich culture and the immigrant community have added to British culture in all kinds of ways. But India is poor, with a vast population to feed and look after, and it seems less successful than the other world mass population country, China. It has a per capita GDP less than half that of China. Global warming with sea rise, food, water and other problems will hit it hard. It is a struggling economy.

Great Britain, of course, had an early industrial revolution, led in world trade and brought democracy and modern economics to India, but still that did not help much in development, and there are various theories in development economics as to why Indian development has been slow. Tacitly, the understanding is that without us, Brits, its development has not been as fast as it could have been.

Of course, recently, we have faced the challenge that  much British industrialisation was based on slave wealth. Getting the slave labour of millions free gave us wealth to develop. But slavery was Africa, North and Central America and not India… And then I read this.

“Eminent Indian economist Professor Utsa Patnaik (Jawaharlal Nehru University) has estimated that Britain robbed India of $45 trillion between 1765 and 1938. However, it is estimated that if India had remained free with 24% of world GDP as in 1700 then its cumulative GDP would have been $232 trillion greater (1700-2003) and $44 trillion greater (1700-1950). Deprivation kills and it is estimated that 1.8 billion Indians died avoidably from egregious deprivation under the British (1757-1947). The deadly impact of British occupation of India lingers today 71 years after Independence, with 4 million people dying avoidably from deprivation each year in capitalist India as compared to zero (0) in China.”

Now you assess conclusions like this. First, $45 trillion is big – some 15 years of total Indian and UK GDP – they now have similar total GDPs. Second, the long-term trajectory figure is conjectural, but the flat growth rate during the East India Company era and the Empire needs explaining. The Brits did not seem to do much good. But then the realities stack up. India’s share of global industrial output declined from 25% in 1750 down to 2% in 1900. We deindustrialised them so that they would buy our stuff. It was worse than that. British goods came in without tariffs and Indian manufactures faced heavy taxes; the system was stacked against them. Then, of course, we fixed the cotton market; cheap cotton went to Lancashire and cotton manufactures back to India. We kept Indians in villages. There were a few million who were looking after the rather leisured Brits. There would be little interest in rural or local industrial development. So probably the conclusion is substantially true. Of course, we built the railways, probably with a lot of local help, as the Romans built roads in Britain, to help run the empire, but we must have cost the Indian economy dearly. $232 trillion is too big to think. But what about the underlying reality?

I, of course, like all of us Brits, have an underlying model that British colonialism was benign bringing civilisation and democracy to the world. Now I’ve seen through most of the democracy bit. In Africa we ruled by force, trained native armies, gave colonies independence, sold them arms and soon military dictators were in place. “Democracy” was for the fairies. “Democracy” in India has stayed, but the economy was probably a “servant economy”. They did what we told them. They grew Yorkshire tea. They grew opium to sell to the Chinese. They produced saltpetre for gunpowder and a range of English luxuries. All of the developments which would probably have occurred without a colonial power were ruled out. Control was patronizing. We “gave them” the English language and they did what suited the colonial power, on the East India Company model. So, this conclusion is more than plausible. Of course, I have not even read the book and it is a big topic, but the evidence points one way..

So the conclusion that we were good for the world, good for India, Africa, China, the Middle East, the great benign British white self-congratulation, faces a massive and necessary challenge. We probably robbed India on a scale we cannot easily face. Of course, the picture is mixed, and perhaps the missionary movements, learning the local languages, building hospitals and schools and teaching the ways of Christ did real good, often against the Colonialists, but that is another debate. The main point is that British imperialism, fuelled by Public School arrogance and the elitism of people like Churchill, the “greatest Britain”, is up for deep judgment. We have been, in a full economic sense, a liability, a drain on the world economy for much of our modern history. Remorse does not come quickly. It needs to grow and requires humiliation. Dropping “Send Her Victorious” from the national anthem would be a start. But remorse and repentance, as deep as that of Germany, may be needed if we are not to be hollow, but healed.

Sometimes War Costs are calculated by trying to add up figures of national income but they rarely see the full picture, because the real changes are so complex. A big danger is that GDP figures might make an American person’s income twenty times more important than an African person’s, which would obviously be false. This study uses a number of important economic indicators – economic disruption, working years, deaths and injuries, property destruction and market failure to guesstimate the overall costs. All assessments need sober judgements and will be approximate but they give us some idea of the full costs of war, something that is actually not much considered. The topic is far bigger than this study. We have estimates of the cost to the US of its Middle East Wars of $6 trillion or more, but no-one to my knowledge has attempted to estimate the cost to Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, etc of the wars they have had visited on them. The real costs are almost impossible to value. So here is an attempt to weigh the WW2 costs through these intermediaries

ECONOMIC DISRUPTION.

The Second World War lasted six years, though states entered and left it at different times. But six years of disruption is quite a reasonable figure. The USSR and the US were preparing long before they entered and for a year or two afterwards several countries were completely stunned by the destruction. Japan was attacking China from 1937. Assessing disruption is difficult. Many people work and produce mainly to live, but for a long time trade, housing, property, towns, cities, arts, education, culture, sport, holidays, clothes, furniture, literature, much media and other areas of normal life partly mainly shut down through War. There are two caveats. First the United States was less dominated by the War than the main other belligerents, and it depends on whether you focus on population or GDP as to the weight you give it. I prefer population. Second, South America and Africa (away from North Africa) were possibly les affected by the War initially.  Moreover, the big recession in world trade had started with the Great Depression, so the cutting of trade was not a simple consequence either. The public figures on this are not very helpful either. They are poorly collected in most countries. Many would feel their lives were on hold for much of the War. Others would get on with life in the circumstances, doing different things.

The guesstimate here, taking into account the things that ceased, the diversion of resources to the War, the things that were not possible because of War and the closing down of economic and wider activities that went on, is that 60% of the normal economies of the world were disrupted for six years. This figure is chosen because of the vast areas of ordinary life which were closed down, the populations of the USSR and eastern Europe, China, India and East Asia who were made homeless, on the move, facing fairly total disruption, famine and forced labour, weighed against the areas where disruption was smaller. Notice, disruption is what it says, the things that cannot happen because of war. For what it is worth, that comes out at 3.6 years of world economic life lost.

WORKING YEARS.

Another line of approach is to consider the work and labour loss during and after the war.  Of course, the real loss, inestimable in value was the loss of persons, but we are undertaking to sift out economic impacts.  It was not just the immediate loss of labour in the War, devastating though that was. Through deaths and other processes it affected the world economy for over a quarter of a century. Two countries were especially affected – the USSR and China – something not really understood in the West. . The USSR lost at least 25 million of mainly young people and China 8-14 million. So, let us categorize the main areas of loss. Obviously, these are crude estimates, but in each case, there are reasons to suspect they are underestimates.

First, troops were fighting during the War rather than doing normal sustenance work.  In different countries there were some 70 -80 million troops serving for different periods between 1939 and 1945 when each state joined and ended the War. We take a five-year average. We estimate this at 350 million troop years of diverted labour (5 times 70m). Because they were diverted from learning other skills than killing people which they had to pick up later, we add another 20 million years. They were usually young workers entering the work training period. This gives 370 million overall, and this is additional to the disruption, though linked to it, because it was usually other states troops who caused national disruption. This was an absence of work which often women and the old tried to remedy.

They were backed up by those helping the War Effort, or those on the Home Front as it was sometimes called.  Those involved in the “war effort” – weapons, troop equipment, admin, transport – rather than the ordinary business of living are difficult to estimate. In Britain a third (13m) of the civilian population (40m) was engaged in war work in 1944. Other countries would probably be more labour intensive and Britain was fighting in North Africa and Italy between Dunkirk and D Day.  This was about three per member of the armed forces. Assume worldwide war effort workers at three per fighting person, and it amounts to 210m times 5 or 1, 050 million years. Another tranche of work surrounds perhaps 30 million worldwide who were working for, say, two years on average before the war on weapons and other war related work. In Germany and the USSR it was going on from 1933 on a considerable scale, similarly in Japan, and the Spanish Civil War was seen as a testing ground for munitions and bombing. Add in Britain, France, Italy and other countries preparing, and we have a further 60 million years of war work, probably an underestimate.   

In total this is roughly 1,480 million years. The world population at the time was 2.3 billion. The world population-employment ratio is usually something under a half, but that tends to be paid employment and possibly more were “subsistence” employed. So, it seems reasonable to take 60% employment as reasonable. This means an additional economic loss of over a year’s world-wide economic activity.  

DEATHS AND INJURIES.

Deaths. There were 70-80 million war-related deaths in WW2. Most of the armed forces who died and those in Concentration Camps and other massacres were young. It seems reasonable to conclude that 70 million times 20 years of later working life was snuffed out by the loss of these people. Obviously, the age distribution around the world was distorted by this missing generation, and 20 years seems a reasonable, or under, approximation of the work loss. This comes out at a further 1,400 million work years. Given parents and teachers had invested their time in bringing up these usually young people, a token 70 million times 2 years is added on. It could easily be three or more. This gives the total loss of work before and after the war through deaths at 1,540 million years. We take this at another year’s work loss of economic activity.

Those injured amount to some 25 million. The range of injuries vary greatly, but many of them were debilitating in terms of work and cost the work of others in care and medical support. If we guesstimated four years of work loss for each of them it would be almost insulting, but that we do. That is a further 100 million work years. In addition, there were those suffering trauma. It was different from the “Shell shock” of WW1, but the traumas of Concentration Camps, bombing, invasion and war slave labour were deep and especially in the USSR and China were almost incalculable. We call it PTSD now and recognize the costs more. We even understand secondary PTSD as a further cost. Again, we guesstimate a two year work and healthy living loss for a hundred million people, a further 200 million work years. This amounts to, say 20% of a world economic year. This is 1.2 years of economic destruction through death, injury and trauma, actually spread over the next twenty or thirty years.

THE DESTRUCTION AND DAMAGE.

Thus far, we have not calculated the damage and destruction caused by the War. It was, of course, the first great bombing war.  Bombs of all types were used systematically to destroy ships, railways, roads, bridges, dams, factories, ports, cities and towns. The scale of this destruction varied from country to country and with the state of the War. London was bombed and Dresden was bombed, but so too were Stalingrad, Rotterdam, Hamburg, Milan, Turin, most Polish, Soviet, Chinese, Japanese and many other cities. Britain dropped about 1.3 million tons of bombs and the US one and a half million tons. Germany, the USSR and Japan also bombed heavily and the explosions destroyed efficiently. They were aimed at high value targets. In the case of Japan and many German cities where wood was used extensively burning multiplied the effect. Then, of course, there were Hiroshima and Nagasaki. France which experienced moderate destruction –  a description which is almost obscene – estimates its destruction at three years of GDP. That is, it would take three years of economic activity in the whole economy, aside eating and a few essentials, to restore all that was destroyed to full working order. In some locations old buildings were lovingly restored, while in others, like Rotterdam, a new conception of city centre was developed. For example, the cost of rebuilding cities, towns, factories, roads, infrastructure in the devastated countries is nearly inestimable. Workers slaved to recreate the pre-war housing stock for decades. I remember having seen the poor quality of some Eastern European housing decades later and judging that this was “Communist” housing, but then realising with shame exactly the challenge of building housing for a vast population without Marshall Aid to survive east European winters after the devastation in 1945. The destruction was epic. Perhaps the three year GDP guess will do for the overall impact of war damage. In the USSR, Poland, China, Japan, Germany and elsewhere it was far more. Areas which were really hit faced an awesome task which was one of the taken-for-granted but most outstanding achievements of the late 40s and 50s.  So, the further waste was to throw away three years of the world economy in destruction of infrastructure, housing, cities and factories. It is notable that the United States, the one major country to avoid this kind of destruction, suddenly jumped in 1945 to being half of the total world economy in terms of GDP, and its wealth was suddenly unrivalled.

MARKETS, TRADE, GOVERNMENT EFFICIENCY.

The business of economics – markets, trade, sea transport, distribution, the efficiency of tools, logistics, trust in trading relations and many other factors are deeply damaged by War. Obviously, a lot of merchant shipping was sunk. Other bulk transport systems required months or years of work. Harvesting, storing, moving, refrigerating food was difficult and rationing was practiced through beyond 1950.  International trade was depressed. Marshall Aid was only introduced in 1948, three years after the end of the War because trade was so stifled, and the USSR was excluded from it in an act of spitefulness against the state that had done most to defeat Hitler. The organisation of government in economic life was destroyed in Germany, Italy, Eastern Europe, China (which then had a destructive Civil War), Japan and many other states. For a number of years external control operated until national governments were able to reform. It seems reasonable to assess this as another year of world economic loss.

FIRST COUNT THE COST.

There were other costs to war. The activity of War, although among the Allies it was bent to destroying Fascism, was destructive, as all war  activity is destructive.  Even Churchill said the War could have been prevented as late as 1935-6 and certainly it could have been prevented at the 1932 Geneva Disarmament Conference if the Hoover proposals had been accepted by Britain. But instead we entered the great War waste. Here the estimate is that WW2 cost 9.8 years of the world’s full economic activity, nearly four years longer than the duration of the War itself, a tenth of the century. The generation of the blighted years has died or is dying. They knew something of the waste directly. Seeing it at a distance is more difficult, and this figure merely conveys something of what it was. Understanding how to end war is necessary, for we have long been building towards another big one. Count the cost. The words of Jesus warn us.

So, for a short time, world-wide, we are sober and can address ourselves because of Coronavirus. We have tried to preserve life, especially the lives of the old and weak, because we should. Billions of us have re-organised our lives quite drastically to protect one another. We know all lives are important, including our own. The Commandment: DO NOT KILL is obvious. We have seen millions of people doing good to others – care, risking their own lives and providing what is needed, and it is right.

Yet, we live with War. It has killed hundreds of millions. The United Nations has asked for a global ceasefire so refugees and war torn people can survive. But we still do war and arms around the world. We know bombs, guns and missiles kill on vast scale. We know, and back this industry, whether we are in the US, China, Russia, France, Iran or Brazil. We back this industry that only kills and destroys with money, government support and ideology. The Secret Services look out potential conflicts. The best it offers is sweat, blood and tears, and if necessary, nuclear war. All this, because we do not heed, at the beginning, DO NOT KILL.

But we can stop it. We can disarm the world to preserve life, as with Coronavirus. The virus is not really our fault. Militarism is. All states cut military spending and weapons by 20% a year and it’s all gone in five years. We don’t fight or need to fight. We don’t need deterrents, or defence, because the world is disarmed. Technically it is easy both to do and police, far easier than making war machines. It saves trillions, cuts world-wide global warming by 10%, ends much world poverty, gives us fifty million new workers, prevents a similar number of refugees, and we can all be friends. What a wonderful world it can be. Start the process and sign this in less than a couple of minutes:

https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/300818

Simply because it is the Prime Minister, we have to address the words. I use the Guardian’s account. The prime minister expressed optimism the UK was “making progress in this incredible national battle against coronavirus”. Aside his optimism when he has just recovered, it is not “incredible”, but actual, not “national” but international and not a “battle”, because we are fighting no-one. It is coronavirus and “progress” is containing the virus; it is not progress engendered by the Government. It is a discipline being practised round the world by those who can. There is the rhetoric, but it is not real.

He said the country was mourning “every day those who are taken from us in such numbers, and the struggle is by no means over” but he argued progress was being made “because the British public formed a human shield around this country’s greatest national asset – our NHS”. Yes, we are mourning, and obviously the struggle is by no means over. Who is saying that it is, when hundreds die each day? But what of the human shield? Of course, it is another false war analogy. The NHS is fighting no-one, and we are not putting ourselves between the arrows and the protected NHS. We are not heroes. We are making heavy demands of the NHS staff against a background of real cuts for a decade under the label of Tory austerity leaving them short of resources. Is the NHS our greatest “asset”? Notice the business word. There is a deal planned with the United States to allow greater US market access to its provisions. UK private companies have increasingly participated in it on the basis of profit and the private-public finance initiatives under Major and Brown have and will cost the cost the NHS some £80bn overall and 2% of the annual NHS Budget. So increasingly the NHS has been forced to operating for profit, not love. The rhetoric is empty.

Johnson said he had seen the pressures the NHS was under after seven days in hospital, including three in intensive care. And he had witnessed the “personal courage not just of the doctors and nurses but of everyone: the cleaners, the cooks, the healthcare workers of every description, physios, radiographers, pharmacists”.  Of course, more than a quarter of all doctors and 16% of nurses are immigrants, not exactly welcomed by the Tories. The Conservative Manifesto under pressure from Labour for the failings of the past, promised 50,000 new nurses in this Parliament, from where? 30,000 NHS workers are on zero hours contracts. This is hardly a deeply affirmed workforce, until now, when they save Johnson’s life.

He goes on. “That is how I also know that across this country, 24 hours a day, for every second of every hour, there are hundreds of thousands of NHS staff who are acting with the same care and thought and precision as Jenny and Luis,” he said. “That is why we will defeat this coronavirus and defeat it together. We will win because our NHS is the beating heart of this country. It is the best of this country. It is unconquerable. It is powered by love.” Ignore, every second of every hour. No. It is not “winning”. It is caring for the sick and dying. It is powered by love, ordinary neighbour love, the Second Great Commandment. It is an extension of Jesus’s parable of the Good Samaritan, where need comes before profit. But love has not been funded. But the Conservative Cabinet includes those who are paid £1000 an hour while others are paid £10 an hour, and the Government is run by those who love money. So, the rhetoric is there, but, at present it has nothing in it.

It may be a genuine change of heart, Christian repentance. If so, it will require an apology to Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party. It will include the recognition of failings in the early months of the Pandemic. It will recognize that we are nothing special. It will involved a recognition of the needs of all, not just Prime Ministers, in addressing sickness, poverty, homelessness and refugees. It will involve a radically different kind of politics for all, the politics of love and not money, a total re-ordering of the Conservative Party since Thatcher. Johnson was recently given over three quarters of a million pounds by his friends, according to the Register of Members interests. His friendship network has now widened.