A film director with a Grammy on the mantelpiece has forced open the creaking doors of Whitehall’s memory. The subject: Biafra. The target: his own grandfather. The result is a political tremor that is only just being felt.
Westminster is used to historical inquiries. They land like damp squibs. This one is different. It has the scent of a personal crusade. The director, whose name is still being whispered in the Lobby, has secured access to previously closed files. The UK government has rolled over. A quiet agreement was reached. No fanfare. No press release. Just a nod from the mandarins.
Why? Because the request was legally watertight. The director’s legal team exploited a loophole in the thirty-year rule. The Cabinet Office blinked. They saw no political upside in a fight. A court battle would be a circus. Better to hand over the papers and hope the story fades.
It won’t.
The Biafran war is a scar on Nigeria’s psyche. Three million dead. Starvation as a weapon. Britain’s role remains murky. Labour’s Harold Wilson was in power. His government supplied arms to the federal side. The official line was neutrality. The reality was complicity. These files will test that narrative.
The director’s grandfather was a Biafran soldier. The director wants to know if his family’s tragedy was compounded by British policy. That is a dangerous question. It goes to the heart of how the UK wields soft power. Or, in this case, hard power with a soft veneer.
Sources inside the Foreign Office are nervous. One described the mood as ‘guarded’. Another used a more colourful phrase involving a ticking bomb. The archives are vast. The director has a team of researchers. They will find something. They always do.
Backbenchers are beginning to circle. A Labour MP with a large Nigerian diaspora constituency has already tabled a question. The Shadow Foreign Secretary is watching. Expect the timeline to accelerate.
This is not just a film project. It is a reckoning. The Grammys are a global stage. The director has access. He has money. He has a story. And he has the full weight of a curious public behind him. The UK’s historical accounting is about to face its sternest test since the Mau Mau case.
The game is on. The files are open. The ghosts are stirring. The only question is what they will say.
