How should we remember British History? Opponents of statue-topplers keep quoting the words of my personal hero George Orwell:
Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right. (1984)
Eric Blair (George's real name) gets quoted because his books are brilliant satires of what happens when governments Go Completely Wrong. He'd seen it happen in Stalin's Russia just as much as in Hitler's Germany, and 1984 is a brilliant spoof of post-war Britain ('Airstrip One') with its rationing, poverty, propaganda, and total dependence on the USA during the new Cold War.
But using Orwell to criticise Black Lives Matter is weak- because he also wrote, 'Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.' There's an old saying (wrongly) attributed to Winston Churchill that 'History is written by the winners'. It's cynical, but there's an underlying truth that How and Why we remember something is just as important as What we remember about it- because there's so much spin involved in deciding exactly What gets remembered and passed on. Sellars and Yeatman's '1066 And All That' satirised how old British history schoolbooks said the Romans or the Normans could be a Good Thing of a Bad Thing because they 'gave' us laws or roads or aqueducts (or whatever), building up a developing picture of Britain and its Empire accumulating all these Good Things to become an overwhelming force for good in the world. Unfortunately, a little bit of travel and wider reading shows that not everyone in the world agrees with that idea.
When teaching in Birmingham, I once led an assembly for older children recounting the strange story of the 1879 Battle of Isandlwana, in South Africa. Have you never heard of it? It's the tale of the day a British Army was defeated by a Zulu army (as in the film 'Zulu Dawn'). There are all sorts of comic aspects involving screwdrivers and ammunition boxes that can't be opened in time- but it was a bloody affair, and by the end, the British were wiped out. So why tell it? Because a good percentage of the pupils in that school were of African and Afro-Caribbean origin, and I wanted them to be proud of their roots- and also learn how on the centenary of the battle, members of the modern British Army went back to the site to remember their fighting ancestors, along with the descendants of the Zulu army who fought that day- and celebrate their memory now as friends together in mutual respect.
A couple of days later, a mum came in to see me, her son next to her, all smiles. 'I've just heard about your assembly, and wanted to say Thank You. My boy was full of it when he came out of school.' They were from Zimbabwe, a country with its own history of ethnic and colonial conflicts- but she appreciated her son being shown the broader picture of what happened during the British Empire. Their people had plenty to be proud of, as well.
Many schools use Black History Month to dig out and celebrate the stories of great people, but it can be a bit tokenistic (Dr Martin Luther King Jr, Mary Seacole, Nelson Mandela again). But it's necessary, because so many of these stories weren't told before, and the only way children like myself in the 1960s learned about black people was by watching TV. The History I learned in school was all about a succession of white people doing noble things. Growing up in Surrey, I never saw any black people at all, except when my school ran a trip into the BBC television centre to see Basil Brush being filmed, and the bus took us through Clapham High Street- where we were surprised to see black people out doing their shopping. Wow. For me, that was a first.
So I'm not too bothered about statues falling or being replaced (legally), if it's all part of exploring and teaching a broader history that acknowledges how our ancestors got some things wrong- because that way, there's a better chance of getting other things right in future. The History I learned at school was an inadequate reflection of the country where I was growing up- and there are plenty of fascinating tales waiting to be passed on, if we have the courage to look for them.
And to help that (of course) there's an excellent book about resisting the African Slave Trade too...
![An Enthusiastic Rage: Beginnings by [CK Hudson]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/514vZ7MSaML.jpg)
No comments:
Post a Comment
Any requests of subjects for future posts? No idea too stupid for consideration. And yes, I know I am a bad writer, so don't bother saying that unless you can write something better. But maybe there's a topic buzzing around in your head that you'd like to see covered... because I've got a keyboard here, it's loaded with letters, and I ain't afraid to use it.