National Heritage; Cancellation or Curation?

I read a splendid essay by the Curatorial Director of English Heritage, Anna Eavis.?In it, she observes how history has rarely been out of the headlines since 2020.?Dry as dust??Not a bit of it.?Tearing statues down from high plinths where they have remained undisturbed for centuries and daubing the statues of other controversial figures with tasteless paint appear to have become national pastimes.

But she makes the point that we ought not to seek to erase what happened years ago, but rather that we ought to engage with it; not in a mood of post-modern melancholy but in a critical manner, by looking at previously unexamined areas of the past that others had to ignore or sought to leave out of their final editions of their research.

If we look at Cecil Rhodes, we can readily identify him with the Imperialism that characterized British activity in South Africa.?Yes, he knew about the Jameson Raid, a covert attempt to de-stabilize the authority of Paul Kruger.?That cost him his job.?But even he often disapproved of how Britain was behaving, at times, in that area.?Who knows of how he took one look at the appropriation of land that belonged to a tribe, a move undertaken by others on behalf of the British government??He bought the land from the government with his own money and gave it back to the tribe from whom the land was taken, and ensured it would remain in their possession in perpetuity.?How does that sit with his reputation for Imperialism?

The article makes it clear that today’s historians simply do not believe history can be reduced to a simple narrative of good and bad things done.?A constant circulating activity of research and interpretation is necessary to question and evaluate the evidence.?The example of Sir Arthur Harris is cited as a controversial figure in WW2.? He had orders from the War Cabinet to plan the raids that reduced, by firestorm, the cities of Dresden and Hamburg to dust.?This event had Dmitri Shostakovitch in a fit of apoplectic misery and this comes through in his Eighth String Quartet.?But who knows that after WW2 it was Russia that insisted nothing be done to re-build Dresden because they wanted a permanent reminder to all postwar generations that the western allies executed a singularly barbaric act on a city of incredible beauty??More people are becoming acquainted (thankfully) with what the Russians did to East Germany after WW2. Soviet soldiers were under instruction to rape all German women they encountered between the ages of 16 and 60 twice. So should we include Russia in the group of nations that conduct singularly barbaric acts??Of course we should.

The Slave Trade is included in the essay and there is an illustration of the Port of Liverpool in 1779, twenty-eight years before the Abolition of the trade was enacted.?There is also a reference to Brodsworth Hall, and the essay points out that the family who owned it made a large profit from this trade but, is it widely known that a long tradition of antagonism to the trade had existed for as long as the trade itself??I doubt it.?Is it widely known that Slavery may well have been abolished by the very first American Constitution but for the objections of two states who stated that it was necessary for economic survival? I doubt that as well.?The Founding Fathers and the first states of the Union could not agree so, it was not abolished.?That, as they say, is democracy for you.?Is it widely known that the Slave Trade in Britain was already dying, for the simple reason that the slave buyers in Liverpool were forcing prices down, reducing the profit of the slave captains to a point at which they could no longer continue??No, and that is because such features of this activity have to be unearthed from study.

How should we see the Slave Trade today??The answer is all around us because slavery has NEVER been eradicated and Britain has a Modern Slavery Act.?Would the same people who tore down the statue in Bristol act in the same vitriolic manner against modern slavery??I doubt it for the simple reason that the statue, and what it represents, is an easier target.?Take on the modern slavers of today and there would be a strong possibility that permanent and disabling injury or death may ensue.?

The essay closes with the refreshing statement that English Heritage will never seek to ‘cancel’ the past.?I for one am grateful for the simple reason that we need constant instruction about ourselves and the possibility that we are capable of great acts as well as dreadful atrocities.

Once, it was the done thing to decapitate people and stick their heads on spikes.?Translate that to the 20th century and events on a housing estate called Broadwater Farm in 1985 and most of us are (rightfully) shocked out of complacency.?Even now, some of us do not appear to have a problem with that.?Our history is there to remind us that we should.??