Trevor Phillips was defending the Oxford professor whose article sparked an academic backlash

A leading race relations campaigner has defended the consequences of colonialism, saying that the empire made Britain a diverse and multiracial modern nation.

Trevor Phillips said he had no personal reason to make a case for colonialism, given that the first years of his life were spent in a brutal state of emergency in British Guiana, with friends and family locked up for sedition. He said, however, that its outcomes should be continually re-examined.

Nigel Biggar called for a balanced reappraisal of colonial history TOM PILSTON/THE TIMES

Mr Phillips was defending Nigel Biggar, the academic who has ignited controversy with an article in The Times entitled “Don’t feel guilty about our colonial history”, in which he called for a balanced reappraisal of the past.

Mr Biggar, a Regius professor of theology at Oxford, is leading a five-year project