It might be fair to say that to take part in such a ceremony is to demonstrate a psychological as well as a moral affliction. Mr Hawkins and his friends were lucky to meet such benevolent recipients of their apology tour as the largely bemused Gambians in front of whom they thrust themselves. Not everybody is so benign before the Western habit of self-flagellation. Many years ago, during one of the not infrequent breakdowns in peace talks between the Israelis and the Palestinians, a journalist was interviewing Yasser Arafat in his offices in Ramallah. Towards the end of the interview one of Arafat’s male assistants came into the Chairman’s office to announce that the American delegation was here. Wondering whether he had stumbled upon a scoop the journalist asked the Chairman who the Americans in the next room were. ‘They are an American delegation who are doing a tour of the region to apologise for the crusades,’ said Arafat. Then he, and his guest, burst out laughing. They both knew that America had little or no involvement in the wars of the eleventh to thirteenth centuries. But Arafat, at any rate, was happy to indulge the affliction of anyone who believed they had and use it to his own political advantage.

The desire to continue to feel yourself guilty arguably finds its end point in modern European liberal societies: the first societies in human history who, when they are hit, ask what they did to deserve it. For unassuageable historical guilt carries over into the present. It makes Europeans the guilty party even when they actually are hit, or worse. Several years before the latest surge in the migration crisis a left-wing Norwegian politician called Karsten Nordal Hauken (a self-described ‘feminist’, ‘anti-racist’ and heterosexual) was brutally raped in his own home by a male Somali refugee. His attacker was subsequently caught and convicted with the help of DNA evidence. After serving his sentence of four and a half years the attacker was scheduled for deportation back to his native Somalia.