'Great' Britain?
The British Empire dominated and exploited its colonies for centuries in order to strengthen its own economy and sovereign power. The Empire fully dissolved by the 1960s but UK institutions are still entrenched with colonial practise, and as a result oppression remains. So, how 'Great' really is Britain? I recently watched the new season of 'The Crown' - a Netflix drama based on the British Crown. Episode 8 features Margaret Thatcher opposing economic sanctions against the South African government to dissolve the apartheid due to it not being in Britain's economic interests. The events in the episode demonstrate that in the 1980s institutions retained colonial attitudes towards less developed states. Despite South Africa no longer being a British colony, Thatcher still regarded it as a subaltern country, incapable of complying with a bounded sovereign state. She said that Britain did not need to associate with "unreliable tribal leaders in eccentric costume...