Freedom of speech, airbrushing history & historical research
My Fletter in the Guardian (17th Feb) with link to others below.
Richard Evans on twitter has commented far more pointedly than I do below! @RichardEvans36
Plans by the government to appoint a free speech champion for universities and tell cultural institutions that they must not airbrush British history is part of a Tory culture war. It has little to do with history and a lot to do with the Tories striking stances on things they think will win them votes.
At the same time, the ignorance that ministers like Oliver Dowden have about history and what historians do cannot go unchallenged. British history is not some static, unchanging thing. How each generation understands events and which bits of British history are discussed and remembered is subject to change. At least some of that relates to work that historians do to better understand British history.
I would suggest that Dowden reads Sheila Rowbotham’s Hidden from History and Peter Fryer’s Staying Power. Without those foundation texts, the history of women and ethnic minorities would have stayed airbrushed out of the historical record.
Dr Keith Flett
London Socialist Historians Group
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/feb/16/a-free-speech-champion-will-only-impose-tory-values
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