Culture Wars on Heritage & Birds
Many of the hard right’s culture war end up backfiring. Think of the small boats debacle. They are constantly on the look out for new battlefields though.
This week has seen the RSPB and the National Trust in the line of Culture War fire.
The RSPB tweeted that several Government Ministers were liars for saying they were protecting the environment when in fact they were weakening protections. The RSPB was correct but the inconvenient reality was too much for the Tory media and the criticism was changed to a focus on policy rather than Ministers.
Meanwhile the traditional effort by the self-styled Restore groupuscule to stop the National Trust from telling the realities of the buildings and monuments they are responsible for.
I have only a passing interest in birds- mainly repeatedly filling up the bird feeders in the garden and watching the ensuing bird wars. When it comes to historic buildings I have some professional interest as an historian. I remain particularly interested in what is said, or more often not said, about the changes that Cromwell brought about on numbers of monuments.
The National Trust has done a decent job with limited means of looking at the impact colonialism and the slave trade had on historic buildings. For some time this has been too much for the hard right who mainly go on about cancel culture which they usually see as bad but in this case is goof.
This year’s Restore effort seems to be led by the eccentric hard right figure of Lord Sumpton and is backed by Farage.
Keeping an eye on Farage’s frothings and rantings I’ve never noticed beyond the Union Jack underpants any interest in British Heritage
Ronald Hutton’s Stations of the Sun reminds us that there are a large number of festivals in the calendar, usually religious in origins which feature eating, drinking, Lords of Misrule, disturbances and sometimes riots. Many of them are still celebrated across the country albeit not as robustly as they originally were.
About any of them I have never noticed one mention by Farage so interested is he in our genuine heritage.
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