London Socialist Historians Newsletter
Autumn 2021
Socialist Historians and the Culture Wars
The Tories are continuing to prosecute the Culture War with the appointment of Nadine Dorries as Culture Secretary. This issue of the Newsletter rounds up a number of the interventions the LSHG has made in some particularly high profile instances.
Dorries first act as Culture Secretary was to nod through the destruction of the Dorman Long Tower on Teesside. A monument or statue to the steel industry and steel workers on Teesside it was grade 11 listed by Historic England but that didn’t bother Dorries.
In a war tactics and strategies can vary. The Government’s aim is to invent a layer of people it calls ‘woke’ and in reality promote their history over ours. Hence statues of slave traders must stay at all costs, while the Dorman Long Tower must go.
Dorries predecessor as Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden had pursued a slightly different strategy along the lines of ‘retain and explain’. He oversaw a policy that no statue or monument should be moved or taken down. He claimed he preferred new statues to be erected but in fact during his tenure as Minister none were.
It might be argued that much of this is simply a distraction launched by the Tories while they get on with bashing the working poor.
However it is also something that seeks to establish and dictate exactly what British history is or is not. That is reflected not just in statue wars but in terms of persistent interventions by Tory politicians into what history is taught in schools and Universities.
Labour has had very little to say on this, not least because its clear that the current leader Starmer is not a history man. It is however a task that socialist historians need to address and dispute rather than leave the field to Tory propagandists.
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