Jallianwala Bagh Massacre

Emma Reynolds Excerpts

Tuesday 9th April 2019 Westminster Hall

[Emma Reynolds (Wolverhampton North East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hanson. I congratulate the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) on securing this timely debate. As we approach the centenary of the Jallianwala Bagh massacre I also thank my parliamentary neighbour, my right hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton South East (Mr McFadden), for organising a letter to the Government asking them to issue an apology. That letter and today’s debate demonstrate the strength of cross-party concern and support for such an apology.

The horrific events of 13 April 100 years ago in Amritsar, when thousands of innocent people were killed or injured on the orders of a British officer and at the hands of British soldiers, are a source of deep pain among the British Indian community, particularly the Sikh community. I know the strength of feeling among my own constituents in Wolverhampton about the atrocity.

On that April afternoon in 1919, people came to the Jallianwala Bagh in Amritsar, the Sikh holy city—home of the Golden Temple, the holiest site for Sikhs—for a peaceful gathering during Baisakhi, the most significant Sikh religious festival. The crowd was unarmed. They were in an enclosed space, a walled garden, with only a few entrances. Thousands of people were crammed into a space that Churchill later described as

“considerably smaller than Trafalgar Square”.—[Official Report, 8 July 1920; Vol. 131, c. 1729.]

Therefore, when the firing began they were trapped; there was nowhere for them to escape to. Many of those present were women and children.

The gathering presented no threat to British troops. It was a peaceful gathering. As many hon. Members have mentioned, no warnings were issued, and there was no order for people to disperse. Instead, the British commander had the exits blocked and ordered his soldiers to fire into the crowd. As the hon. Member for Harrow East so eloquently described, the firing did not stop until the soldiers ran out of ammunition, and the bullet holes in the walls are visible to this day.

The official inquiry concluded that 379 people were killed that day, with many more injured, but many sources dispute those figures and claim that the death toll was much, much higher. It is important to remember that that massacre came after hundreds of thousands of Indians had fought alongside British troops in the first world war. At the time of the massacre, Winston Churchill, the then Secretary of State for War, described the atrocity as a “monstrous event” that was

“without precedent or parallel in the modern history of the British Empire.” —[Official Report, 8 July 1920; Vol. 131, c. 1725.]

I welcome the fact that David Cameron, when he was Prime Minister, visited the site in 2013 to pay his respects. He called the massacre a “deeply shameful event”, but stopped short of making an apology. Now is the time for the Government to go much further. The Mayor of London also visited the site in 2017 and asked the Government to make an apology. The journalist Sathnam Sanghera who comes from Wolverhampton—he grew up in Park Village in my constituency—has recorded a documentary about the Amritsar massacre that will air this Saturday on Channel 4. In a recent article, he put his finger on it when he wrote:

“As a country, it’s about time we invested some emotional energy into facing up to what happened in Britain’s name.”

I hope that the Government will recognise the strength of cross-party support in today’s debate and in the letter organised by my right hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton South East. I hope that the Government, if they cannot do so today, will see fit to issue a formal apology, perhaps later in the week of the actual centenary. As my right hon. Friend said, it should not take 100 years to say sorry, but it would certainly be better late than never.