The Home Office has been accused of spouting 'arrant nonsense as it tells staff a third of Britain's population once consisted of migrants.
A GB News investigation can reveal the Home Office is attempting to educate staff on historic migration levels.
Its diversity training claims that while “Many people think that migration to Britain started with the arrival of the HMT Empire Windrush in 1948” in fact “Immigration to the UK has a far longer history”.
The training continued: “Historians argue about the start of migration, but we know that during the Roman Empire in Britain (43-410), up to one third of people living in Britain were migrants.”
However, historian Rafe Heydel-Mankoo told GB News the claim is “arrant nonsense”.
Migrants aboard a small boatPAHe said: “The foreign born / migrant population of Roman Britain was closer to 3% of the population. This is a clear attempt to advance the myth that Britain has always been a nation of immigrants.”
Home Office civil servants were also shown a video called “The beginnings of Racist Ideology” in which it was claimed “The modern idea of racial identity seems to have started in Portugal in the sixteenth century”.
The claims were made in official Home Office online diversity training focussing on “Britain's migration and colonial history”.
Mr Heydel-Mankoo slammed the lecture, saying: “This module is an appalling piece of historically ignorant, agenda-driven propaganda rooted in a contempt and loathing for Britain and the West.”
“Indeed, when Portuguese merchants and explorers first arrived in Japan, the Japanese referred to them as barbarians and depicted them as monkeys.”
“The Japanese attempted to draw superior racial distinctions between themselves and others long before they encountered Western concepts of racial science,” Mr Heydel-Mankoo said.
The historian continued: “Anti-black racism in the Arab world has existed for well over 1,000 years, in large part due to the Islamic slave trade, which saw millions of Africans enslaved and brought to the Muslim world. Whilst the Koran is silent on race, in practice, sub-Saharan Africans were regarded as the lowest and most detestable slave strata.”
Home Office staff have been accused of "wasting time" on diversity GettyThe lecture is “recommended for all staff” and features various criticisms of the British Empire.
The news comes after GB News revealed that Home Office diversity training asks civil servants to think of three diversity initiatives every day, and offers “trigger support” if staff read about slavery.
The Home Office claimed the Empire “was able to maintain colonial and imperial domination for many centuries over other countries”, describing “The first and most obvious reason for this was its military might over the colonies”.
The lecture continued: “Second, the British Empire dominated its colonised people. Slavery is one of the most brutal examples of this.”
The module fails to mention Britain's role in ending the slave trade, which historians estimate freed 100,000s of Africans from slavery.
The training also said: “According to [the historian Marika] Sherwood, the British hid their racism by masking it with a new national ideology: that of 'beneficent imperialism'”, described as “the idea that British imperialism and colonialism was a humanitarian mission, educating the world and helping it to be as civilised as the UK”.
The Home Office video on the history of racism ends with: “In summary: Understanding these aspects of Britain's colonial history helps you to recognise how much British society was shaped by the British Empire.”
Robert Bates, Director of Research at the Centre for Migration Control, told GB News: "Outlandish Home Office claims that Britain has always been a nation of immigrants are a sign of the complete capture of the department by Left-wing politically motivated activists."
"They are at pains to convince us that mass migration is a fact of life rather than an aberration of the last twenty years."
He continued: "The numbers we are currently seeing are grave and without historic precedent. Sadly this modern experiment has upended a well functioning high-trust society of common dreams into a land that’s increasingly fractured."
A Home Office spokesperson said: “We keep our diversity and inclusion policies and programmes under constant review to ensure they meet the needs and priorities of the department and our people.”
“This learning was produced with a range of experts including psychologists, behavioural scientists, sociologists and historians from outside the Home Office.”
