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Chronicle to hide the torture of Mau Mau shows how Britain is to acquire a true post-imperial mature

History teaches us that the rule can bring out the worst in people. In Britain, we applaud the "civilizing mission" of our imperial past, but less pleased to recognize the violence and brutality that so often surrounded our imperial enterprise. It is time they were more honest.

As a nation growing British Empire memories are deceptively warm, wrapped in a warm glow of paternal benevolence and sepia. The British Empire, so the story goes, made a step towards a world primitive and wild. Education, hospitals and improve health, steamboats, railroads and the telegraph - these are the tools of the empire, given to colonized peoples for trade and British governance gifts

We are proud of this imperial legacy, pointing down on the achievements under other European powers - France, Italy, German, Belgian and Portuguese - whose empires are considered as different haplessly poor management, the brutal exploitation and coercive perverse. British Empire was better than all the other historians like Niall Ferguson, Andrew Roberts and James Lawrence assured us, why bother?

concerns became all too evident last week in a groundbreaking decision by the High Court: Justice McCombe ruled that the UK government has a case pending in relation to allegations of systematic torture and ill-treatment of held during the Mau Mau rebellion in Kenya in early 1950.

long been known that Kenya was a dirty war and bad things happened. However, the extent of abuse is revealed today is truly alarming. Documents in the light from the catalog of Mau Mau court over 400 separate charges of abuse, covering all aspects of British security and administrative services in Kenya at this time.

and issues raised are far from trivial. Of the four top Kenyan plaintiffs brought this case, both were victims of castration, alleged to have been beaten and left for dead on a slab in the morgue, and another was the victim of repeated sexual abuse - all acts made in English of "interrogation" of suspects against whom no crime had been proved.

in Kenya has long been outraged by the British can not refuse to recognize that these things happened. The sense that Britain tried to deny Kenyans their own history by removing the documents and hide in the bowels of the Foreign Office over 50 years has only deepened those feelings. It will air on the high court in early next year when Kenya's case will be heard in its entirety. It will be very uncomfortable for the Foreign Ministry, which tried to prevent this matter to court -. And for many in the British political establishment remains in denial about the reality of our imperial past

And this is a story in Britain, we should all be more familiar with who we are. We must begin in our schools. Although the history of the British Empire is now available for students of GCSE and Advanced levels that are rarely taught. As history has been reduced in our schools, the system of courses has come to resemble fast food - family problems, hastily thrown together with ingredients known: eating comfort. It can be good our students are much more likely to meet the Americans in Vietnam, or the Russian Revolution, who are on the British Empire?

At university level, we can do much better than us. The history of British imperialism should be part of the teaching of British history today, part of the explanation of how Britain has become the company is in the 21st century. British students know how we lost an empire, as they need to understand the place of former colonies in the modern world. We have much to do with this challenge.