Oliver’s Army

Our ex-Culture Secretary misses the point of history…again.

Oliver’s Army – no words in Mr Churchill’s ear

Our one-time culture secretary Oliver Dowden is now the chair of the Conservative Party – which in recent times has been a sort of anteroom for ministers who are about to be jettisoned, so perhaps we should not worry too much about what he had to say in his first speech to an adoring party conference.

I think that would be a mistake. Just because he is no longer in charge of our cultural life, we shouldn’t ignore the tone behind Oliver’s peroration in Manchester. I am particularly interested in one bizarre passage. Every year there’s a favourite buzzword or two designed to tickle the tummy of the party faithful. This year, its ‘woke’ and ‘cancel culture.  In time-honoured fashion, ministers don’t have to explain what either of these things are, they just have to mention them and at once, they have the audience bridling. Then he added this:

“Because in my previous role (as Culture Secretary) I saw first-hand the damage those campaigns can do to our institutions. That is why we must be robust in empowering them to stand up to this bullying.”

Dowden of course, will know a bit about this bullying – having dragged the leaders of our top museums into his office to give them an earwigging about the removal of statues or busts and reminding them of the imminent arrival of a government spending review. Dowden is an unlikely candidate for the part of the gang boss sitting on the desk of a museum director and admiring a Ming vase while speculating how accidents can happen to even the nicest objects. But he stepped up to the role so well he has been awarded the job of getting the Government re-elected.

Dowden’s speech goes on to say that we must also “defend the interests of taxpayers who ultimately fund them.” Here he takes a leaf from the populist primer in making sure that the people you are complaining about are placed ‘outside’ the acceptable norms. It seems that those folk who complain about our adulation of historical figures stained by their support of slavery are not taxpayers. Which is a new one on me. Apparently, you simply have to write to HMRC and let them know you want to see explanatory plaques placed on statues of notable slave traders and you are absolved of having to pay any income tax or VAT. Who knew? Certainly not those we saw on our television screens dragging poor Edward Colston into the river. This act instantly made them non-taxpayers whose interests need not be defended. Whereas those who write letters to the National Trust to have a go at the Secretary General of that organisation, which is not actually taxpayer funded, can be sure that their ‘interests’ will be defended by the government.

And what are these interests which need to be defended by a vigilant government. They are to “to keep our national heroes like Nelson, Gladstone and Churchill in the places of honour they deserve.” This is an interesting take on historical understanding. It seems that once you have attained a place of honour, nothing must be allowed to sully or change that adulatory position.

Now I don’t know about you, but I thought the purpose of studying history was to learn stuff about the past. Historians sweat mightily at great cost to their eyesight and electricity bills to pour over papers and documents to uncover new facts or insights on all sorts of subjects from the British Empire to the Cold War. But it seems that there are exceptions to this rule. Nelson, Gladstone and Churchill are apparently not up for any kind of study lest we accidentally dislodge them from their ‘places of honour’. I am often struck by how fragile the conservative (small c) view of history is. Their belief in their historical heroes can’t withstand any kind of serious challenge.  If you discover as the result of reading a book, or even a plaque below a statue that Churchill or Gladstone held racist views or that Nelson was a vocal supporter of slavery, then such a revelation will be so damaging to the status of our heroes, that we might not give them the adulation ‘they deserve.’

Such knowledge may indeed be damaging to the hitherto unsullied nature of our national heroes, but apparently, in the Oliver Dowden world view, the lack of it is not detrimental to education. Learning stuff, new stuff, challenging stuff is the whole point of our education system. And learning history, as my old teacher used to point out, was valuable because it challenged accepted myths and made us think a little more. And we needed to think if we were to understand the world. My history teacher was no woke warrior – he ruled the classroom with a rod of iron and had a nasty habit of punishing latecomers by pulling the miscreants up from the floor by your sideburns (it was the 1970s), But he was absolutely spot on about the destructive results of relying on myths rather than history.

I come from a place, Northern Ireland, which is perceived as suffering from a surfeit of history. Not at all, it hasn’t enough history in the sense of real examination of what went on the past. What Northern Ireland has is an excess of national myths. Nationalists comfort themselves in the Gaelic ones, unionists in the British ones. The real story of what happened in this island is obscured beneath a thick coat of legends. These legends are exclusive – the other ‘side’ has no real part in them – except as demons and evildoers.

Catholic schools in general, served up Irish history as a tale of great men who fought the English occupier, from Brian Boru to Patrick Pearse. We weren’t allowed to think of the 900-year relationship between Britain and Ireland as anything other than a heroic tale of endless sacrifice and defeat.  Conversely, my Protestant neighbours were encouraged at school to see their part in the story as one of endless striving and eternal vigilance against a devious foe, determined to sever their link with England.

You can see how this ended up as the triumph of mutual misunderstanding, too often shading into loathing, and every now and again, bursting into violence. The last two hundred years are marked by this cycle – the 30 year ‘Troubles’ are but the latest episode.

So, by all means, let us perpetuate the British ‘mainland’ myths – that our great men are unsullied by any flaws, that we need not know about their historical contexts, nor should we trouble ourselves with the views of their opponents of the time, nor the arguments in which they took sides.

Let us burnish our own legends and serve them up in schools, museums, historic houses and other tourist attractions. Let our children and young people wallow in their ignorance, for fear they might be ‘contaminated’ by some contrary view. It can only end well.