Telegraph’s Culture Wars on the British Library resumes
Most have probably gathered that things aren’t going well for Boris Johnson & Co. again but if you had missed that further evidence has now appeared. The Telegraph has re-opened a front on the Tory Culture Wars.
This time its the British Library the culture warriors have in their sights.
In August 2020 the paper was to be found complaining that the Library had a BLM policy. In fact most large UK institutions, major companies and sporting bodies do. Its just the Tory Party that doesn’t.
The British Library should lose its taxpayer funding over “divisive” activism that promotes Black Lives Matter and Labour causes, MPs have said after documents were unearthed by the Telegraph.
Daily Telegraph 23rd August 2020
Now the Sunday Telegraph (25th April) has discovered that the Library plans to add brief descriptions to the items its holds so people can see how and when they were acquired. This is very much in line with best practice these days but it is all too much for the Telegraph
The Canterbury Tales could be relabelled by the British Library to include references to previous manuscript owners’ links to the slave trade.
The library will amend labels in its public-facing collection of priceless literary artefacts as part of an anti-racism project launched following the Black Lives Matter protests, according to internal documents.
New information for all 210 items in the Treasures collection – which also holds Shakespeare’s First Folio – will explain how each item was acquired, staying whether they were “taken, captured, seized, looted” or otherwise obtained.
The British Library has issued a statement which in a matter of fact way underlines what it is actually doing:
https://www.bl.uk/press-releases/2021/april/misleading-coverage-in-the-sunday-telegraph
Just wait until the Telegraph finds out that both Marx and Lenin had readers tickets in the old Library Round Reading Room
Leave a Reply