The controversy led to an annual delay in the development of the project, which was due to begin in June 2021. Home Office officials are considered nervous that any of the proposed material on racial, colonial and empire issues is “extremely controversial”. And urged academics to reduce some of the content. One academic said that civil servants seemed “reluctant to deal with Britain’s violent past as a colonial power” and were more concerned about protecting Home Office officials than feeling “hit” by the march. Staff at Coventry University were assigned to provide the teaching unit last year. The university is estimated to have paid around .000 600,000 to set up a course for the Home Office on Britain’s empire, immigration, race and place in the world. The Home Office pledged to teach its staff about Britain’s colonial and imperial history after an independent review concluded that the Windrush scandal was caused in part by the ministry’s “institutional ignorance and negligence” over race and history. . Subscribe to the First Edition, our free daily newsletter – every morning at 7 p.m. BST Professor Jason Ardey, a sociologist at the University of Glasgow, said he had been contracted to help create teaching material for the course and had expressed concerns about content changes during a meeting in April. “There seemed to be a reluctance to fully deal with how bad Britain was in terms of its role in maintaining the empire and the consequent hangover. It looked as if the material had been disinfected by civil servants and MPs who did not want to deal with the essence of racism. “I felt that we were being asked to engage in historical amnesia,” he said. “I was told the Interior Ministry wanted to omit some information because there was a sense that it could make people feel frustrated.” Before agreeing to take on the contract, Coventry’s vice-president, Professor Paul Noun, was skeptical and said he wanted to make sure it would not be just an exercise. In a letter reassuring academics that the project would be independent, he wrote that he had been assured that “there is a strong commitment from the Home Office to address these challenging and sensitive issues”. Sathnam Sanghera, author of the award-winning book Empireland, a study on the negative legacies of the British Empire, has also been commissioned to provide content for the section, although its ongoing involvement has been discontinued as officials review the material. As part of an “integrated improvement program” launched after the Windrush scandal, in which thousands of people were mistaken for illegal immigrants, the Home Office said it would design a learning and development program to ensure that all existing and new staff learn. for the history of the UK, “including the colonial history of Britain, the history of internal and external immigration and the history of the black Britons”. But the commitment has caused great concern inside. It emerged last month that the ministry had tried to bury a story commissioned by the Home Office as part of the same training exercise, which found that the “deep-rooted racism of the Windrush scandal” lay in the fact that “during the period “From 1950 to 1981, all immigration or citizenship legislation was designed, at least in part, to reduce the number of black or brown-skinned people allowed to live and work in the United Kingdom.” An Interior Ministry spokesman said the launch of the program was now scheduled for “later this year” and would be delivered to staff through a mix of videos, podcasts and online workshop sessions. “This is a unique training program, which we are committed to doing properly. We know there is more to do. “Many people have suffered terrible injustices at the hands of successive governments and we will continue to work hard to provide an Interior Ministry worthy of every community we serve,” he said. The project has been controversial since its inception, and some academics have refused to participate. Gus John, a human rights activist and academic at Coventry University, declined the invitation to contribute to the module, saying: “but to get rid of these policies completely.”
