We live in an age of 24 hour rolling news, of breaking news. It is immediate, of the present and it doesnt have much time for the past.
The past can provide context and that can be both complicated and awkward. Rather than just providing an instant judgement on something it might suggest that other factors that happened before must be taken into account.
On the left until 1956, and Khrushchev’s speech on Stalin’s crimes, historians looked at all kinds of important issues, the origins of capitalism, the transition from feudalism to capitalism, what makes a revolution and so on. But many avoided the twentieth century because that meant coming to terms with what was then the Soviet Union and Stalin until 1953 was an expert in rewriting history to fit the current moment.
Eric Hobsbawm at a meeting of the Communist Party Historians Group in the late 1950s argued that it was important to be historians of the present as well as the past.
Michael Rosen has been posting on social media his Tutor dialogues, between the tutor and the King. Below is his latest posted on 6th October. It explains clearly what a history of the present is and why its so important:
Tutor,’ said the King to his tutor, ‘when does history begin?’
‘Good question,’ said the tutor, ‘and the answer is that it begins when we say it begins.’
‘Really?’ said the King, ‘surely there are more objective ways of deciding this.’
‘There may be,’ said the tutor, ‘but we have to think about what we want people to believe.’
‘We do,’ said the King.
‘I mean,’ said the tutor, ‘people are often keen to dig up all sorts of old grievances going way, way back. That doesn’t do anyone any good to go over all that.’
‘Yes,’ said the King, ‘it’s quite unpleasant the way they do that.’
‘So what we do, instead,’ said the tutor, ‘is pick a day and state clearly, “This is when it all began”.’
‘I can see a problem with that,’ said the King, ‘it’ll be only us saying that.’
‘I don’t think you need worry about that, ‘said the tutor, ‘once we’ve named the day, we’ll find that all the scribes will write it in their Annals.’
‘But I’ve heard that there are rebel scribes who dig up stuff that shows that the sort of thing that went on on the day that we’ve chosen as the first day of history, also went on before that day,’ said the King, ‘and what’s more, say these rebel scribes, at those times, it was our side doing it,’ said the King.
‘That’s such a tedious, pernicketty point,’ said the tutor, ‘you can rest assured that everyone will ignore it.’
‘That’s good,’ said the King.
‘It is,’ said the tutor.
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