The ghosts of an unmourned empire: a history and analysis of the place of the British Empire in the...

DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY, CLASSICS AND ARCHAEOLOGY

The ghosts of an unmourned empire: a history and analysis of the place of the British Empire in the history National Curriculum debates 1988-‐2013

16,500 words

Chris Clark

Dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in World History at Birkbeck, University of London

Abstract

In the twenty-‐five years since the National Curriculum was announced an increasingly acrimonious debate has surrounded the history policies. The discussion of the British Empire was peripheral at the start, but is now a major focus in a discussion that has become more polarised. This raises questions over what other public fora there are for discussing this topic, as well as how valuable it is for the debate to be centred around only a small section of the curriculum. There have been varying amounts of political interference in the history curriculum since its inception, with the result that each subsequent set of curriculum orders is, to some extent, made in the image of the governing politicians. This has an impact of the stability and quality of teaching. In the surrounding debates, the press and other commentators have created a series of false dichotomies which are supposed to reflect stresses in teaching practice, but which in reality reflect political historical consensus. Serious public debates over the moral rectitude of empire have not happened, leading to what I call a liminal space for expressions of national identity. In finding the public debate, the primary sources I have used are newspapers, government reports, policy documents and speeches. In addition to surveying the existing historiography of the debates, I also look at New Imperial History, Critical Discourse Analysis, anthropological theories of liminality, and bring in new research in the field of education. The discussion of the British Empire has become a defining feature of curriculum debates recently, and I propose that this is due to the lack of a formal space in which to discuss these matters elsewhere. I look at the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission as a comparison. I also argue that the political interventions are driven primarily by the ideological, political expediencies of those making them, rather than educational good practice.

Contents Argument Introduction: Before the National Curriculum 1-‐5 The first National Curriculum for History 5-‐13 Discourse Analysis 13-‐17 Locating the Nation 17-‐21 Dearing review 21-‐26 New Labour 26-‐30 The Post-‐imperial Liminal Space 30-‐38 Gordon Brown 38-‐42 The Politics of Apology 42-‐45 The 2007 curriculum review 45-‐48 Locating Britain 48-‐54 Conservative government 54-‐60 The 2013 Draft Curriculum 60-‐65 The 2013 Final Curriculum 65-‐67 New Research 67-‐70 Conclusion 70-‐72 Appendices Appendix 1 -‐ National Curriculum 73-‐76 Appendix 2 -‐ Michael Gove, DNA and the British 77-‐78 Appendix 3 -‐ Michael Gove and empathy 79 Bibliography Primary sources 80-‐85 Secondary sources 86-‐89

Introduction: Before the National Curriculum

Before the Education Reform Act of 1988 history teaching across the UK was

decentralized, with no governmental control over curriculum or pedagogy. The

teaching of history had not been publicly politicized precisely because of

decentralization, but both content and pedagogy was conservative in nature. The

‘National Story’ was projected as glorious, heroic, proud, continuous and

uncontentious, while being taught in a ‘high-‐political mould’1, a product of what

Nichola Sheldon sees as an implicit consensus amongst history teachers and

head teachers.2 As a consequence of this deferential teaching style, where

empire was taught, it was not in a self-‐critical or reflective manner. According to

Rothenberg,3 it defined “‘difference’ as ‘deficiency’ and, by building racism,

sexism, heterosexism, and class privilege into its very definition of reality, ‘it

implies the current distribution of wealth and power in society…reflects the

natural order of things’.4

The discomfort felt by the threat of immigration and multiculturalism has been

pooled into discussions of history teaching since. The battle then, as now, was

over national identity, with campaigners for multicultural education in the

1980s branded ‘ideologically unsound’5. Claims were made to cultural, ethnic

and historical continuity, sounding alarm at their perceived loss. David Lovibond

wrote, in The Telegraph in 1984:

1 Haydn, Terry. "History in Schools and the Problem of “The Nation”." Education Sciences 2.4 (2012): 276-‐289 2 Sheldon, Nicola. "Politicians and History: The National Curriculum, National Identity and the Revival of the National Narrative." History 97.326 (2012): p260. 3 Rothenberg, Paul, in Grosvener, Ian. "'History for the Nation'; Multiculturalism and the Teaching of History." Issues in History Teaching. Ed. James Arthur and Robert' Phillips. (London, Routledge, 2000). 148-‐158 4 Rothenberg, Paula, in Grosvener, “History for the Nation” 5 Haydn, Terry. "History in Schools”

Barely a generation ago these islands were occupied by a single people

who, despite the differences of region, background and expectation were

bound by common loyalties and affection, by a shared history and

memory. Thirty years on the English have become 'the white section of

the community' and Britishness is something to be had from the bazaar6

Britain’s history was framed as ‘exceptional’ in the Whig tradition, a spring of

democratic principles and trove of heroic deeds, with the denial of such to other

countries, often portrayed as dangerous, uncivilised or barbarian. Social and

political changes meant that by the 1970s very different models for teaching

history emerged.

In the 1970s Lawrence Stenhouse’s Humanities Curriculum Project took an

innovative approach, based on the notion that the content and teaching methods

of a combined humanities curriculum should be designed around what is

relevant to the lives of pupils, ‘child-‐centred’. His pedagogy emphasised

discussion, research, and promoted students’ own discoveries advocating that

‘history should focus on topics such as family relationships, relations between

the sexes, the position of adolescents in society, problems of war and peace,

racial prejudice, law and order, living in cities and power and ambition’.7

The Schools Council History Project, set up in 1972 to ‘undertake a radical re-‐

think of the purpose and nature of school history’, was even more influential. It

sought to ‘revitalize history teaching in schools and to halt the erosion of

6 Lovibond, David. In The Sunday Telegraph (London) 18 February, 1984, quoted in Haydn, “History in Schools” p23 7 Haydn, “History in Schools” p3

history’s position in the secondary curriculum.’ 8 The project encouraged

contestation as a method of learning, and encouraged students’ familiarity with

concepts and processes including change, causation and empathy.9

The innovations ‘New History’ created a (largely false) distinction between

‘content’ and ‘skills’, with traditionalists favouring content and reformists

favouring skills. The traditionalist camp has been characterized as a dry

accumulation of facts, much of it chosen carefully to emphasise a sort of national

glory. The reformist camp has been characterized by an ignorance of

chronological context, a disregard for facts and having an emphasis on

discussion, the history or other nations, and a flagellating study of our own

nation’s wrongdoings.

By the late 1980s most schools had moved away from the ‘traditional’ pedagogy

and content which characterised the previous decades’ professional approach,

and were including local history, social history, world history, family history and

‘even some Black history and women’s history’.10 New History enabled teachers

to abandon what they knew had been an antiquated ‘imperial’ teaching model by

connecting them as a professional body and creating teaching resources

counteracting a ‘lack of teachers’ expertise, lack of syllabuses and lack of

textbooks.’11 The result was that New History spread widely and facilitated a

move away from British history as the overwhelming focus of study, the

inclusion of a multi-‐perspectival approach, the rejection of a single correct

outcome from class research, and new pedagogical methods. ‘The world was

8 Schools History Project website: http://www.schoolshistoryproject.org.uk/AboutSHP/ last accessed September 2, 2013 9 Haydn, “History in Schools” 10 Sheldon, "Politicians and History” p260 11 Sheldon, "Politicians and History” p262

going to change, it was going to be a better place, there was going to be peace

and love and better history and I expected and hoped to be part of that

movement’12 a teacher told Sheldon, preferring it to the previous model which

many thought ‘boring and useless’.13

Widespread and protracted riots took place in four cities of the UK in 1981,

including Toxteth and Brixton, labelled ‘race riots’, concerning mainly social

deprivation, unemployment and police prejudice. Margaret Thatcher’s

government commissioned a report from a group chaired by Lord Swann, a

conservative peer, concerned with the social and educational roots of racism.

Swann acknowledged the ‘multiracial context in which we all now live’ and

looked to celebrate this rather than deny it.14 The report questioned ingrained

assumptions about what it means to be British, arguing for a dynamic, pluralistic

and flexible definition, ready to ‘absorb new influences’, including those of

Commonwealth and Empire, arguing that ‘this process is irreversible -‐ a legacy

of British history.' It sought out the roots of prejudicial stereotypes in the wake

of Britain’s colonial endeavours, finding that ‘stereotypes of certain ethnic

minority groups can be seen as a legacy of history -‐ from the days of the British

Empire -‐ and as a consequence of the view of other nations and peoples as in

some sense 'inferior', which was until relatively recently promulgated through

the curriculum offered by many schools.15

12 note 40 in Sheldon, "Politicians and History” p265 13 Mary Price, History in danger, History, No. 53, October 1968, 342-‐7 quoted in Haydn, “History in Schools” p3 14 Swann, Baron Michael Swann. Education for all: The report of the Committee of Inquiry into the Education of Children from Ethnic Minority Groups. Vol. 9453. (HMSO, London 1985), p6. 15 Swann, “Education for all” p6

Black history in schools should not just be ‘history as slavery' and references

such as ‘Europeans brought civilisation’ and the use of terms such as ‘primitive’

and ‘savage’ were inherently racist, having imperial overtones.16 He found much

evidence of hybrid identities in ethnic-‐minority youth, meaning it ‘would in our

view be entirely wrong for schools to attempt to impose a predetermined and

rigid 'cultural identity' on any youngster.’17 The most striking of the group’s

suggestions, regarding the teaching of school history, was that:

A pluralist approach to both the national and international dimensions of

history can thus enhance a youngster's perception and comprehension of

the tide of human experience through history, and ensure that his or her

horizons are not limited by an exclusively Anglo-‐ or Euro-‐centric view,

rooted solely in the legacy of Empire.18

Hope that this view would become accepted practice was deflated a few years

later because of Thatcher’s view that British history ‘was a narrative of

advancing progress and imperial greatness, at least up to the end of the

nineteenth century: and she had no doubts that it should be understood in terms

of monarchs and politicians and great events.”19

The first National Curriculum for History

Education Secretary Kenneth Baker ‘personally took on the history challenge,

adopting a particular, indeed almost romantic, interest in the history

16 Swann, “Education for all” p99 17 Swann, “Education for all” p323 18 Swann, “Education for all” P329 19 Cannadine, David, Jenny Keating, and Nicola Sheldon. The Right Kind of History: Teaching the Past in Twentieth-‐century England. (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011) p182

curriculum’20, and saw history as a way to identify and control national identity,

something which came with knowledge of ‘the’ national narrative.21

Through the drafting process of the National Curriculum for history, Baker

repeatedly expressed disquiet, noting that there should be more emphasis on

narrative British history22, and that ‘the curriculum should reflect “the spread of

Britain’s influence for good throughout the world”.’ 23 This position precluded

the possibility of including an open and multi-‐perspectival approach to the study

of the British Empire. At the conservative party conference in 1988, Baker said:

For too long some people have written off our past and have tried to

make us feel ashamed of our history. Britain has given a great many

things to the world. That’s been our civilising mission. Our pride in our

past gives us the confidence to stand tall in the world today.24

Baker’s language (civilising mission, given things) had significant imperial

overtones. In 1988 Baker appointed the History Working Group (HWG) to

develop the new National Curriculum, comprised of teachers, professors, teacher

trainers and civil servants. While there was no clear selection policy, Thatcher

avoided candidates with ‘too much of a connection with new history’25, and the

20 Guyver, Robert. Ch. 9: “The History Working Group and Beyond”, in Taylor, Tony, and Guyver, Robert. History Wars and the Classroom: Global Perspectives. Studies in the History of Education. (IAP, 2012) p160 21 Guyver, Robert. Ch. 9: “The History Working Group and Beyond”, p160 22 Crawford, Keith. "A history of the right: the battle for control of national curriculum history 1989–1994." British Journal of Educational Studies 43.4 (1995): p440 23 Tosh, John. Why history matters. (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008); p125 24 Baker, 1988, in Samuel, Raphael. A Case for National History (Additioal Paper Presented at 'History, the Nation and the Schools' Conference, Oxford) (1990). republished as Samuel, Raphael. "A Case for National History." International Journal of Historical Teaching, Learning and Research 3.1 (2003) 25 Thatcher, Downing Street. p.596. Quoted in Sheldon, Nichola. A History of School History 1988-‐2010. http://www.history.ac.uk/history-‐in-‐education/project-‐papers/school-‐history last accessed September 2, 2013

selection was seen as balanced and sober, Roger Hennessey stating that they

avoided ‘the extremes’.26

Thatcher and Baker clearly wished to reverse the ‘damage’ done to school

history by the SHP and New History, but the influence was deeply felt within the

group27 , and despite being appointed by Baker the group ‘was under no

obligation to follow the minister’s advice – and on the whole, in its final report, it

didn’t.’28 The HWG was subject to significant pressure from many other parties

including politicians, journalists, academics, teachers and professional bodies.

The Right wanted a traditional, chronological narrative of political progress and

national glory. The Left wanted themes from world history and a curricular

acknowledgement of Britain’s ethnic minorities.29

A major drawback to a centrally constituted National Curriculum was the

potential for political interference. Upon reading the interim report, Thatcher

‘was appalled’30 and demanded that British history occupy a larger proportion of

the content. Successive secretaries of state made speeches declaring their

ideological position and preferences (Joseph, 1984; Baker, 1993; Patten, 1994).

Phillips expressed a widely felt regard for the members of the committee for

resisting interference in their process. The Historical Association (HA) had a

crucial role in relaying the concerns of the profession during the drafting and

proposal stages, helping to ensure a balanced report, using the media ‘to run a

26 History in Education Project, Roger Hennessey interview 11 November 2009, transcript. http://sas-‐space.sas.ac.uk/3291/ last accessed September 2, 2013 p11 27 Lom HiEP: interview, Tim Lomas, 30 March 2009. http://www.history.ac.uk/history-‐in-‐education/browse/interviews/interview-‐tim-‐lomas-‐30-‐march-‐2009 Last acceessed, September 2, 2013. p12 28 Mandler, Peter. “History, national life and the new curriculum.” Speech to the Schools History Project, 7th July 2013. http://www.schoolshistoryproject.org.uk last accessed, September 2, 2013 29 Tosh, John. Why history matters. p125 30 Thatcher, Downing Street. p596 in Sheldon, A History of School History

vigorous and determined campaign to persuade history teachers to support the

NC History Working Group's recommendations on the grounds that the political

and public forces outlined above would replace them with something far

worse’.31

The result was widely seen as a compromise, but a moderate and acceptable

one.32,33 Historian Jeremy Paterson stated:

The remarkable thing about the interim report of the National

Curriculum History Working Group is its lack of dogma, its inclusion of a

variety of approaches, and its endorsement of a wide range of subject

matter...The group has taken a stand against the imposition of a single

orthodoxy doubtless to the disappointment of its political overseers.34

The curriculum bore the hallmarks of the New History approach, emphasising

historical skills over rote learning, but appeased the New Right with a guarantee

of more than 50% British history, even if ‘British history’ was not defined. The

HWG maintained its independence despite three Secretaries of State for

Education and two Prime Ministers overseeing its work. Sheldon notes that they

‘also showed a surprising degree of unity in the face of a barrage of press

31 Phillips, Robert. “Contesting the past, Constructing the Future: History, Identity and Politics in Schools”. British Journal of Educational Studies, Vol. 46, No. 1 (1998), p44 32 Broom, Douglas. “The past meets the present.” The Times (London) August 14, 1989 ‘The interim report of the National Curriculum History Working Group was received with uncharacteristic enthusiasm by all but the extremists’. 33 Sheldon. "Politicians and History” p267 “Yet the history national curriculum as it emerged onto the statute book in March 1991 was no revival of the ‘Great Tradition’ in history teaching. It was a typical British compromise.” 34 Jones, Gareth Elwyn. "The debate over the national curriculum for history in England and Wales, 1989–90: the role of the press." Curriculum journal 11.3 (2000): p306

criticism and a lively, not to say acrimonious at times, debate amongst

academics.’35

The British Empire was mentioned in the 1991 curriculum, but only as an

optional extension unit, and consequently one teachers avoided.36 The press

coverage for the history curriculum was far more extensive than for any other

subject. Historian Jonathan Clark wrote in the Times:

We can leave chemistry to the chemists and geography to the

geographers, but history is a national property, and the decisions to be

taken on the history curriculum will be intimately connected with our

national self-‐image, sense of heritage and purpose.37

After the interim report was announced the press spun the details for their

readers. The Times saw the curriculum as determinedly not directed to ethnic

minorities, quoting that the ‘group believes that the existence of an ethnically

diverse population in Britain today strengthens rather than weakens the

argument, for including a substantial element of British history in the

curriculum. That is well said.38

While a predominance of British history did return, there was a very limited

public discussion of the benefits of teaching about the British Empire. Historian

William Wallace, wrote a piece in the Observer:

35 Sheldon, "Politicians and History.” p268 36 see Appendix 1 for curricula 37 Quoted in Jones, "The debate over the national curriculum” p311 38 The Times (London) “Chronology and All that”. August 12, 1989

Must Ministers still share the traditional English view that national

identity is something that Germans and Italians agonise over; we British,

they agree, know who we are. The problem is, we don't… The British

experience in India will not be an easy subject to present, or to avoid; nor

Britain's role in the African slave trade, nor the British involvement in

China, which included going to war to force an anti drug imperial

government to open its doors to British opium traders.

What version of Britain's history and value's ought we to teach them?

The historical orthodoxies we have inherited from the 1890s will not

help our children understand the world of the 1990s.39

Even from Wallace, arguing for a place for learning about the British Empire,

there was an assumption that it is the place of history education to instil national

identity. In The Times, Stephen Kemp wrote that ‘to imply that Britain’s history

is itself an heroic tale risks insulting those ethnic minorities whose forebears

may have suffered under colonial rule.40 A letter of his to The Times was also

printed before the final NC draft, hoping that ‘if a new emphasis on the British

historical contribution does something to dispel this ignorance [of the evolution

of commonwealth from empire], future generations will not only have a more

balanced sense of their own history; they will be better equipped to exert an

informed and constructive influence on the world scene.’41 Professor Hugh

Kearney wrote, ‘a search for a national identity based upon a bogus

triumphalism will alienate more than it persuades, and thus defeat its purpose.’42

39 Wallace, William. “Why the history we are teaching is out of date.” The Observer (London): Oct 22, 1989 40 Kemp, Stephen. “Land Fit for Heroes.” The Times (London) August 16, 1989. 41 Kemp, Stephen. “Letters to the Editor.” The Times (London), August 16, 1989 42 Jones, "The debate over the national curriculum”, p16

Historian, Raphael Samuel, a teacher at Ruskin College, Oxford, wrote perhaps

the most thoughtful piece, to which I will return in more depth later, stating that

‘if only to account for the dramatic effect of immigration, British history should

treat the history of Empire as integral to our island story.’43 His was a position

very rarely discussed in the press during the initial NC debate.

The biggest contribution of New History to the NC was in pedagogy, the

curriculum stating that sound historical approaches ‘assist in identifying, and

thus combating racial and other forms of prejudice and stereotypical thinking’ 44

and the press largely supported these methods, as seen in an editorial in The

Times warning of the danger that overt politicisation was ‘a step down the road

to an official history in the arbitrary selection of facts...Without understanding,

history is reduced to parrot learning and assessment to a parlour memory

game.’45

Gareth Elwyn Jones notes ‘that the newspapers were a moderating influence in a

fraught debate’46 and certainly seemed subdued alongside the withering attacks

from activists and academics supporting the New Right (still mostly played out

in the newspapers), as Roberts writes:

Not only did prominent New Right writers and academics utilize the

media to articulate their views, press coverage of the 'great history

debate' simplified and polarized highly complex arguments over the

subject. Crucially, the debate shifted away from the professional to the

43 Samuel, Raphael. “When our past is all round us, how can we ignore it?” The Times (London), May 19, 1990 44 (DES 1990a: 184); quoted in Grosvener, “History for the nation” p156 45 Jones, "The debate over the national curriculum”, p315 46 Jones, "The debate over the national curriculum”, p317

political domains: History teaching had become subject to consumption

by the public.47

The New Right academics to whom he refers included three independent

organisations, the Centre for Policy Studies (CPS, co-‐founded by Margaret

Thatcher, Alfred Sherman and Keith Joseph 48 , 49 ), the Campaign for Real

Education (CRE), and the History Curriculum Association (HCA, founded by Chris

McGovern and Robert Skidelsky). These three groups all had similar arguments

(and the CPS can be viewed as being a proxy for the views of the Tory

leadership); there exists ‘an identifiable body of historical knowledge that

should be taught to all children’50, knowledge should take precedence over skills

and should be tested, and British history should be concerned with transmitting

a sense of the glory of the nation’s past and building a national identity. They

were deeply unhappy with the final curriculum document, with Sheila Lawlor

and Stewart Deuchar of the CPS calling it ‘a veritable Greek tragedy’.51 The

position of these groups has been described as ‘cultural restorationists’“52 and

were largely seen as being at the periphery of historical academia, ‘a not entirely

representative group of academic historians.’53 The discourse developed by

these New Right apologists has been described as a ‘discourse of derision’54 and I

will examine it also as the ‘rhetoric of exclusion’, and the ‘discursive construction

of fear’.55

47 Phillips, “Contesting the past” p43. 48 CPS website: http://www.cps.org.uk/about/history/ last accessed, September 2, 2013 49 Sherman, Alfred. Obituary. The Telegraph (London) August 28, 2006 50 Crawford, "A history of the right” 51 Haydn, “History in Schools” 52 Billig in Haydn, “History in Schools” 53 Collinson, Patrick. “The struggle for our heritage.” The Times (London), May 07, 1990 54 Crawford, "A history of the right” 55 Richardson, John E. and Wodak, Ruth. 'Recontextualising fascist ideologies of the past: right-‐wing discourses on employment and nativism in Austria and the United Kingdom', Critical Discourse Studies, 6:4, (2009) 251-‐267

Discourse Analysis

Keith Crawford drew ideas from Stanley Cohen’s seminal work Folk Devils and

Moral Panics56, identifying the discussion as a ‘moral panic’ where the ‘folk devils

are social and moral decay and teachers who support a view of teaching about

the past which is based upon what became known as the new history.’57

Teachers resisting restorationist versions of history were thus characterised in

The Express by historian John Vincent, as ‘militants’.

‘Back in the 1970s, when nobody was looking, they wormed their way to

power on the myriad committees that run exams and curricula...Feminist

history, black history, world history, local history; all inspire them…what

they dislike is plain, bread-‐and-‐butter knowledge of the main

developments that made modern society…what they detest above all is a

continuous grasp of the history of England.’58

What Richardson and Wodak call the ‘discursive construction of fear’ is evident

here; the suggestion of subterfuge and conspiracy, ‘worming into power’, when

‘nobody was looking’; the martial metaphor that they are ‘militants’. Exclusion is

evident through this passage; counterposing ‘modern society’ with ‘them [the

militants]’ and ‘what they dislike’; the rejection of blacks, women, the rest of the

world and rejection of value in the study of anything at less than a national level.

This ‘interdiscursivity’59 opposes black, feminist and world history against the

56 Cohen, Stanley. "Folk devils and moral panics: The creation of the Mods and Rockers." (1972) 57 Crawford, "A history of the right” 58 Quoted in Jones, "The debate over the national curriculum”, p311 59 ‘the discursive strategies employed that contain ‘Presuppositions that can be seen as a way of strategically “packaging” information’ and the linguistic means that are drawn

pure unbroken continuity of a mythic English society. There is the strange

implication that history can sometimes not be ‘continuous’, implying that history

was interrupted by immigration. The anti-‐intellectualism is the most surprising

element from Vincent; ‘plain, bread-‐and-‐butter knowledge’ is implicitly set

against evidence analysis, academic discussion and contestation of history.

Trendy, faddish, liberal or new-‐fangled forms of teaching are frequently rejected

by the right-‐wing to accommodate common sense, natural methods. Teachers are

portrayed as socialist conspiritors, desperate to unravel national identity and

dismantle the proud national history, accused of “‘venomous attacks on

historical knowledge'; and of teaching a history which 'leaves our young people

distrustful and confused' and of peddling anti-‐British sentiments and of

supporting 'crackpot ideologies.'"60

This ‘discourse of derision’ proposed by Crawford is a systematic attempt to de-‐

legitimise other forms of teaching, especially those which encourage a reading of

evidence which may lead to a view of history as anything other than contiguous

expression of national or ethnic pride.

Deuchar (of the CPS) argued that ‘the root of our present cultural crisis is the

catastrophic loss of faith in our own civilization which has afflicted just about the

whole of our intellectual establishment’ 61 juxtaposing the ‘intellectual

establishment’ with ‘our’ culture, presenting this as a crisis. The word civilization

is also very telling, a frequent choice for right wing activists, with significant

imperial baggage, implying the elevation of British culture and society over what

upon to realise both topics and strategies.’ Richardson and Wodak “Recontextualising fascist ideologies of the past” 60 Crawford, "A history of the right” p442 61 Quoted in Phillips, Robert. “History Teaching, Cultural Restorationism and National Identity in England and Wales”, Curriculum Studies, 4:3, (1996) 385-‐399

are frequently called barbaric or savage others, and assumes a cultural

coherence and compliance unique to Britain. It acts as a ‘dog whistle’, whether

intentionally or not (Sheila Lawlor wrote in The Telegraph that ‘the National

Curriculum is in danger of turning children into mindless brutes and

barbarians’62). Crawford notes how Deuchar warns of (emphases are mine, not

Crawford’s or Deuchar’s) ‘destructive tendencies within ourselves ... our policy of

throwing our own culture in the dustbin in the hope that the minority

communities will be nice to us and even start being nice to each other is

misconceived'.

Deuchar saw a double threat; minorities (others – homogenised and internally

orientalised63) being uncivilised not only towards us, but to each other as well, in

addition to the assumption that the inclusion of others necessarily means

‘throwing our own culture in the dustbin’. Other New Right writers suggested that

the history we teach our children should elicit ‘a little more honest and

unaffected pride in our national achievement’ and teachers should ‘ram home

the nation's culture'. 64 Wodak, writing about right-‐wing populist parties but

coincident with the language being used here:

Right-‐wing populist parties are bound together by the construction of

common enemies: ‘They’ are foreigners, defined by ‘race’, religion or

language. ‘They’ are elites not only within the country but also in Europe

(‘Brussels’) and on the global level (‘Financial Capital’). But cleavages

62 Quoted in Jones, "The debate over the national curriculum”, p317 63 “Populist movements are based on a specific understanding of the ‘demos/people’, that denies the complexity within any society and assumes an in-‐born homogeneity.” Wodak, Ruth. "Old and new demagoguery: the rhetoric of exclusion." Open Democracy (2011). http://www.opendemocracy.net/ruth-‐wodak/old-‐and-‐new-‐demagoguery-‐rhetoric-‐of-‐exclusion last accessed September 2, 2013 64 (Wilson, 1987, p. 7 and Norman Stone, in Nash, 1990, p. 4) in Crawford, "A history of the right” p.440

within a society, such as class, caste, religion, and so forth, are omitted

from this account; or they are interpreted as the result of ‘elitist

conspiracies’. Right-‐wing populist parties tend to be anti-‐multinational

and anti-‐intellectual: they endorse nationalistic, nativist, and chauvinistic

beliefs, embedded -‐ explicitly or coded -‐ in common sense appeals to a

presupposed shared knowledge of ‘the people’.65

Teachers’ concerns were much more practical, Sheldon found, as the many new

areas of study presented difficulties, there was not enough time allocated to

teach what was required, there were no resources available for the curriculum

and the existing textbooks would be ‘wasted’.

These academic debates around the introduction of the National Curriculum can

be seen as catalysts to more frequent, wider and more polemical discussions of

nationality, identity, empire and the politics of apology, as they increase in

frequency, heighten in pitch and retrench politically in the next two decades.

Few questioned the purpose of school history, as most participants in the debate

implicitly assumed that ‘identity history’ was a primary concern of schools. John

Tosh lists three of the common reasons cited for studying history; history and

heritage ‘address a cultural and emotional desire to belong’66; it can serve ‘as a

means of justifying civic rights, based on a political and shared past’67; and (the

only point on which historians appear to agree) ‘that history provides a training

in the rational evaluation of evidence and argument, on which democratic

65 Wodak, "Old and new demagoguery” 66 Tosh, John. Why History Matters, p24 67 Tosh, John. Why History Matters, p24

discourse depends.’68 While professional historians may not agree on the first

two purposes for history, there is an assumption amongst politicians and policy-‐

makers that these are primary concerns.

Locating the Nation

In Benedict Anderson’s seminal work ‘Imagined Communities’, nations are only

‘imagined’ as the population can never meet, yet as an entity the nation 'is

always conceived as a deep, horizontal comradeship' 69 As socially constructed

entities, nations draw heavily on historical mythical imagery, largely redrawing

it in order to suit a modern need.70

Linda Colley’s 1992 work, Britons: Forging the Nation 1778-‐1837, has had a

profound effect on debates of British national identity. Her defining argument is

that British national identity, and thus the popular imagination of Britain itself,

was defined in counterpoint to an external ‘other’, variously Catholicism, the

French, or the British Empire. In defining the roots of national identity, she also

explains the perceived erosion of it in the late twentieth century. Colley argues

that the idea of Britishness was superimposed onto former, conflicting loyalties,

thus helping to unify England, Scotland, Wales and, for a time, Ireland. Central to

her argument is that empire and Britain are not separable.

While academically invigorating, these formulations of nation and national

identity have been criticised for not recognising the many ways in which the

68 Tosh, John. Why History Matters, p120 69 Anderson, 1983, p.7 quoted in Phillips, “History Teaching” 70 Hobsbawm, Eric, and Terence Ranger, eds. The invention of tradition. (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1983)

‘imaginary’ constructs of identity become real. There is a reaffirming ontology to

them: for the individuals in nations, they exist.

This notion of nation as reality explains why its citizens are sometimes

prepared to die in defence of its cause; after all, the nation has 'for most

of us' (an important qualification) a whole series of things -‐ territory,

language, institutions -‐ which comprise 'unconscious custom' (Scruton,

1980). In a world of rapid change, globalisation, social, economic and

geographical mobility, all combining to create uncertainty and a

multiplicity of new identities.71

When determining the ways in which a nation sees itself as exceptional it is

useful to use Jörn Rüsen’s analysis of aspects of ethnocentricity. Firstly, the

positive aspects of a nation’s history are counterposed to the negative aspects of

others’. Secondly, a nation is conceived as having an unbroken continuity of

development. Thirdly, a nation is seen as central to others’ histories both in time

and space.72 These forms of exceptionalism are present in many arguments for

teaching national history discussed here. In 1994 The Telegraph73 ran a piece

laden with nationalist exceptionalism, noting that Britain is ‘an extraordinary

country’, ‘a beacon to others’, ‘a great civilization, the mother of others’ and ‘a

well spring of the highest achievements’, but certainly not like ‘Croats or Serbs,

who pick the ruins they have created for better days.’ Academics have tended to

resist an exceptionalist history curriculum, as it ‘is much more likely to be taught

in a didactic manner, using transmission modes of teaching where history is

71 Phillips, “History Teaching” p387 72 Guyver, Robert. “More than just the Henries: Britishness and British history at Key Stage 3.” Teaching History, 122 (2006): p67 73 Keegan, J. “History meets its Waterloo when lunacy is in command,” The Daily Telegraph, (London) May 5, 1994

regarded as information’74, whereas politicians have tended to encourage them.

Using a pedagogical model where teachers and students have academic

autonomy has a ‘built-‐in resistance’ (Guyver) to the political interference

inherent in this kind of curriculum. Even when a high quota of ‘British history’ is

demanded, a contested approach to history can remove any political intentions

in a curriculum.

While the path of postmodernism led academics to ruminate over the roots and

place of nations and nationalism in society and our classrooms, historian

Raphael Samuel put forward his own arguments, from the Left, for framing

history around the concept of nation, Britain in particular. Samuel was ‘one of

those to achieve guru status by his authoritative commentary on the reports’75.

His idea of national history, however, was not one to which Margaret Thatcher

would have subscribed. Samuel saw the value in retaining nation as the axis of

study, but wanted British history to recognise the impact of Empire, European

and world connections,76 He understood that identities had changed as a result

of immigration, drives for devolution and closer integration with Europe.

History, whether we like it or not, is a national question and it has always

occupied a national space. Even in teaching of local history it remains, or

ought to remain, an inescapable point of reference. Nor can the history of

minorities escape it, since it is in relations of opposition to majorities

that minorities are defined. 77

74 Guyver, “More than just the Henries” p67 75 Crawford, "A history of the right” p318 76 Raphael Samuel, A Case for National History, p89. 77 Raphael Samuel, A Case for National History, p89.

Samuel showed significant understanding of the conservative position,

recognising the emotional attachment to the nation, that for some it is

‘primordial, a transcendent unity of time and space which connects the living

and the dead with the yet unborn.’ He recognised the close connection between

perceived continuity of national life and shared values, which ‘according to

successive Ministers of Education, it is the duty of school history to impart.’ 78 He

warned strongly, however, against teaching for anti-‐racism, arguing that any

attempt to teach for anti-‐racism would necessarily be one of white supremacy,

casting white students as oppressors and minority students as oppressed,

undermining developments in child-‐centred education since the 1960s. While

anti-‐racism ‘looks both to the colonial past and the institutional present, to

practices as well as to perceptions…as a classroom practice it seems to produce

the opposite of its intended effects, heightening race awareness without offering

any common ground where black and white can meet…’ 79 In this context, the

idea of the nation is ‘diseased’, one which excludes minorities and is, in the

British case, ‘fatally associated with imperialism.’ 80

‘Racism itself, an even more totalising concept – and an even cloudier

one becomes in some sort British society’s original sin, leaving the

indigenous population and the descendants with no other relationship to

the past that that of expiating the collective guilt of their forbears.’81

British history, Samuel argued, should be studied for pedagogic reasons – it is

the easiest to pursue here and offers the most enrichment for everyday life. An

outward looking British history, however, would better serve the students,

78 Raphael Samuel, A Case for National History,p6 79 Raphael Samuel, A Case for National History,. p6 80 Raphael Samuel, A Case for National History,p2 81 Raphael Samuel, A Case for National History,p5

taking account of Britain’s changed position in the world and including the

British Empire and Commonwealth immigration, ‘such a history might consider

Empire in terms of its ‘domestic’ effects – i.e. its repercussions on the native

British. ‘82. His summary argued that a focus on the national was indeed desirable

for many reasons but ‘it would need to treat the British Empire, as integral to

‘our island story’.

Samuel’s argument gained little traction in 1990, and has unfortunately

continued to be ignored in favour of polarising and totalising histories, especially

when discussing race. As Nicola Sheldon says while commenting on Samuel’s

paper ‘one could argue that this debate is still not resolved in the minds of

politicians or historians and this is why the history curriculum in schools

continues to generate controversy.’83

Dearing review

Even as the Conservative government enacted curriculum reforms, many voices

in the party felt they had not been delivered what they wanted by the HWG. In

July 1991, John Major spoke at the CPS, accusing teachers of 'an insidious attack

on literature and history in our schools'84. The unspoken Conservative agenda

had been removing New History from the NC, but it had become too deeply

embedded in teaching practice. But, Sheldon says, this was not ‘any sort of

victory for new history either; instead it turned out to be a typical British

82 Raphael Samuel, A Case for National History,. p7 83 Interview with Michael Gove in Sheldon, “A History of School History” 84 Times Educational Supplement, 13 October 1993, quoted in Crawford, "A history of the right”. pp448-‐449

compromise.’85 The Conservatives were frustrated that by handing decision-‐

making power to the educational establishment, they had lost the momentum of

cultural restorationism86. After teachers boycotted NC testing arrangements in

1993 due to their complexity, Education Secretary John Patten appointed Sir Ron

Dearing to chair a review.87

The Dearing Review of 1993-‐1994 was ostensibly aimed at slimming down a

bloated, prescriptive curriculum and allowing teachers a degree of autonomy.

Keen to influence the group, the Major government appointed two outspoken

right-‐wing activists to Dearing’s history group; Chris McGovern of the CRE, and

Anthony O’Hear, right wing philosopher and writer for Thatcher’s CPS.

McGovern’s explicit statement was that he wanted more British history and less

‘sociological baggage’, meaning ‘social, cultural, religious and ethnic diversities

within the topics’88 . Even The Times considered his appointment strange,

writing that the educational establishment had dismissed him as a ‘crank’89,

suggesting Major’s endorsement of McGovern ‘ought to send a shiver down the

collective spine of the teaching profession'90

As a by-‐product of Dearing’s increase in ‘British history’, and the decrease in

overall content, much world history and local history was lost. While many

conservative commentators, including O’Hear, were satisfied, McGovern was not,

split from the group, and made his concerns public by not only publishing a

85 Waldman, Abby. "The Politics of History Teaching in England and France During the 1980s," History Workshop Journal, no. 68 (2009) p219 86 Attributed to Chitty in Phillips, “History Teaching” p391 87 Waldman, "The Politics of History Teaching" p219. 88 McGovern, Christopher. The SCAA Review of National Curriculum History: A Minority Report (York: The Campaign for Real Education, 1994)p. 3. 89 Times Educational Supplement, 13 October 1993, quoted in Crawford, "A history of the right” pp448-‐449 90 d’Ancona, The Times, 3 October, 1992 quoted in Crawford, "A history of the right” pp448-‐449

minority report, but also airing his opinions in the press. In The Times,

McGovern used familiar language when describing a ‘struggle over what

constitutes British civilisation’, asking readers to ‘pull down the temple of

"political correctness" and to save what we can’. He found all the usual

bogeymen of the liberal elite conspiring, suggesting that their ‘pernicious ideas

about "political correctness"…have invaded our schools’, and even that they

‘walk the corridors, they hang on walls, they litter the curriculum’. McGovern

wanted students to study ‘the stories of kings and queens, of sailors and soldiers,

of imperial expansion, of heroes and heroines’, stating that ‘it is from political,

constitutional and military history that most of our identity is drawn’. 91

McGovern got support from the tabloid press, but was snubbed by the

committee as not having been able to convince the other members of his

position, so making 'mischievous misrepresentations'92.

While the review had increased the amount of ‘British history’ while decreasing

world history, the right-‐wing press represented this as somehow a failure: a

‘disgrace’ that ‘vast areas of our national life are now controlled by fashionable

theorists peddling trendy dogmas’, and the young people would be ‘exposed’ to a

‘correct” approach’.93

In this fashionable lunacy it would be possible for a pupil to grow up

knowing next to nothing about the Gunpowder Plot, Trafalgar, Waterloo

or Winston Churchill. And everything about the experiences of black

peoples in the Americas or the lifestyle of the Ancient Egyptians94

91 McGovern, Christopher. “This history curriculum is bunk.” The Times (London), May 7, 1994 92 Crawford, "A history of the right” 93 The Daily Mail, 5 May, 1994, p. 8 in Crawford, "A history of the right”, p442. 94 The Daily Mail, 5 May, 1994, p. 8 in Crawford, "A history of the right” p442.

Opposition of ‘British’ and ‘black’ or ‘ethnic’ is a recurring interdiscursive theme,

a false dichotomy, in the journalism of the New Right, much of it in The Mail, and

reminds readers of the ‘erosion’ of Britishness that immigrant populations

necessarily bring.

The Telegraph95 ran a piece laden with nationalist exceptionalism, presented

earlier in the essay (‘Serbs and Croats…’) Interestingly, they noted that Britain

has ‘rough passages of which to repent perhaps’, but did not state that these

should be taught. Certainly within the framework of teaching a national history

designed to inculcate pride, this would seem impossible, ’we traduce Britain's

glory if we teach a history which makes us seem just like anybody else’.96

Some voices on the right defended the place of the British Empire in our history,

but with a different focus. William Rees-‐Mogg wrote the following in The

Telegraph.97

Now that the Empire is finished, the gentler aspects of our British nature

have naturally been emphasised. But the Empire is what makes the

history of Britain important, and it was not created by our tolerance or

sense of fair play, but by the determination of our leaders and the

fighting quality of our soldiers and sailors. ..Yet it is wrong to try to de-‐

emphasise the way in which they were won. To do so might well rid us of

the memory of crimes we would rather forget. But it would also de-‐

95 Keegan, “History meets its Waterloo” 96 Keegan, “History meets its Waterloo” 97 Rees-‐Mogg, William. “History as heartless bunk.” The Times (London) Feb 28, 1994

emphasise the courage and self-‐sacrifice which are among the most

admirable qualities of our history.

The Times, whilst basking in the ‘Britishness’ of the curriculum, included a

response from Martin Roberts, headmaster and member of the HA ‘there is no

way that it is in the interests of British schoolchildren in the 1990s not to do a

significant amount of European and world history’98, a similar argument to

Norman Davies’ in the Guardian: ‘There must be something wrong if [pupils’]

studies are limited to 5 to I0 per cent of the span of only a third of one of the 88

sovereign states of the world's smallest continent.’99

A 1995 speech by Nick Tate, Curriculum Advisor, ‘recognised the 'inclusive and

dynamic' concept of English identity [but] nevertheless…seem[ed] to endorse a

restorationist agenda.’100 The press represented his position as further right

than he intended, The Times stating that he was ‘bravely nonetheless trying to

close the gates, even as the barbarians come flooding through’ and that ‘by some

perverse logic, we had to incorporate other cultures in their entirety but could

not be permitted to preserve our own.’101 Indeed, Tate later stated that he was

misunderstood in his defence of British history, and that ‘the rabid support he

received when he called for more British history was more unwelcome than the

cries of opposition’.102

98 Preston, Ben. “Great Britons to star in history lessons.” The Times (London), May 6, 1994 99 MacLeod, Donald. History in the remaking. The Guardian (London) Oct 14, 1997 100 Phillips, Robert. (1996) History Teaching, Cultural Restorationism and National Identity in England and Wales, Curriculum Studies, 4:3, p395 101 Daley, Janet. Teaching our island story. The Times (London) July 19, 1995 102 MacLeod, Donald. “History in the remaking.” The Guardian (London) October 14, 1997

The rhetoric of a ‘proud’ and ‘glorious’ nation, and a ‘common sense’ history was

echoed in other Conservative party ambitions during the Major years, including

the Back to Basics campaign. His administration became embroiled in a series of

sleaze scandals, including love affairs, ‘cash for questions’, the breaking of arms

embargoes to Iraq, and financial corruption, all serving to delegitimise not only

the conservative government’s claims to moral superiority, but also their

assertion that British political history is a proud succession of victories.

New Labour

In the Labour landslide election victory of 1997, David Blunkett was announced

as the first education secretary. In 2000 Jack Straw, Home Secretary, attempted

to define Britishness. Writing in the Observer103, he noted the difficulties in

defining ‘Britishness’, that ‘melding all this into a shared identity was always

going to be a challenge’, and regretted that Labour had left identity politics to the

right, allowing them to claim patriotism as their own. Straw stated that British

history and identity have always been based around immigration, ‘since our

earliest days’. He looked to a value-‐based liberal nationalism to underpin his

formulation of Britishness, claiming ‘enduring British values of fairness,

tolerance and decency are at the heart of the Government's reforms to build a

more inclusive, stronger society.’104 Their reluctance to face the issues of Empire

was due to the conflict an open reading of the past would necessarily bring.

Theirs was exceptionalism dressed as enlightened liberalism.

Blunkett set up a committee chaired by Sir Bernard Crick charged with

developing a citizenship curriculum focussed on civil and human rights, ‘active 103 Straw, Jack. “Blame the Left, not the British.” The Observer (London); Oct 15, 2000; 104 Straw, “Blame the Left”

citizenship’, the rule of law, and the weighing up of sources in media, things

history teachers felt they did. Crick stated, 'of all the other subjects History may

have (should have) the greatest role to play.'105 While this introduced students to

topics not covered in any other courses, it reduced time for other subjects and as

history was not a ‘core’ subject, it suffered particularly badly, and history was

left untouched.

Straw set up the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry in July 1997, to deal with the social

questions around the teenager’s racist murder at the hands of white youths,

chaired by Sir William Macpherson, and tasked with identifying the ‘lessons to

be learned for the investigation and prosecution of racially motivated crime’.106

MacPherson concluded that Britain needed a ‘National Curriculum aimed at

valuing cultural diversity and preventing racism, in order better to reflect the

needs of a diverse society’.107 Anti-‐racism was thus a stated NC aim. Melanie

Phillips, in the Observer, wrote that racism comes from the feeling of

rootlessness in white youths.108 She argued that ‘too much history teaching sets

out to teach everything but British or English history on the grounds that it is

racist and exclusivist’. Phillips laid the blame for racism squarely with 'those

who deprive the working classes of the means to connect with their English

identities’.

These writers also display appalling ignorance of what Britishness or

Englishness are. Englishness is itself polyglot. Far from being monolithic, it is

a culture made up of dissidents. And it gave birth to values which all children

105 Tosh, “Why History Matters” p124 106 Macpherson 1999, p3. in Grosvener I., and Myers, K. ‘Engaging with History after Macpherson’, Curriculum Journal, 12/3 (2001): 275-‐289 107 Macpherson 1999 in Grosvenor, ‘Engaging with History” 108 Phillips, Melanie. “Jack Straw is set to fight racism.” The Observer (London) July 27, 1997

might find desirable: love of liberty, belief in the rule of law, tolerance,

scepticism of authority, robust empiricism. Only by teaching all children

what Englishness is can indigenous white children form a not uncritical but

balanced sense of their own identity, and black children be given the means

to share equally in that culture; and both be taught it is possible to have

several overlapping identities.109

An Ofsted report from 1997 contradicts Phillips’ assertion, stating that ‘in many

schools awareness of the contribution made by other cultures to British

multicultural society is too low’110. These appear consistent with statements

from other reports from this period under New Labour, including the Excellence

in Cities report stating that ‘a good education provides access to this country’s

rich and diverse culture, to its history and to an understanding of its place in the

world.111 It should aid a...

development of pupils’ sense of identity through knowledge and

understanding of their spiritual, moral, social and cultural heritages and

of the local, national, European and international dimensions ... It should

pass on the enduring values of society ... It should develop [pupils’]

knowledge and understanding of different beliefs and cultures (QCA

1998: 4-‐5). 112

Grosvenor and Myers113 describe, despite the “declared commitment to ‘diverse

culture’ and ‘cultural heritages’, how the National Curriculum history introduced

109 Phillips, “Jack Straw is set to fight racism” 110 OFSTED 1997, in Grosvener, “History for the Nation” 111 DfEE 1997: 9, in Grosvenor and Myers, “Engaging with History” 112 Grosvenor and Myers, “Engaging with History” 113 Grosvenor and Myers, “Engaging with History”

in 2000 reflected only minimal change”, and agree with Bage 114 in the view that

‘historical content was still dominated, despite cosmetic disguise, by nineteenth

century visions of elementary schooling and British nationalism’. While there

was some attention paid to ethnic minority figures, this was tokenism. Sherwood

(1998) found that the teaching resources commonly used routinely missed the

contributions of ethnic minority figures throughout many periods of British

history. Siblon, Bracey and Abel report that three-‐quarters of the teachers in

Northamptonshire did not teach the Black British History due to a lack of

resources.115

The curriculum was largely faithful to the one developed by the HWG in the early

1990s, with a balance of national, world and local history116, but no mention of

empire or colonialism. As usual, though, the same arguments were played out in

the press, with the HCA launching an alternative manifesto in a ‘final attempt to

restore to the children of this country their birthright -‐ sense of identity’.117,118

Theresa May, shadow education secretary, joined the debate, adding that

‘teaching our children the history of our country… [gives them] a sense of

national identity, and of what has made this country what it is today.’119.

Misrepresenting the spirit of the curriculum, the press reported that no

individuals had been specified, leading to Estelle Morris, Education Secretary, to

state:

114 Bage, 2000, quoted in Grosvenor and Myers, “Engaging with History” 115 Sheldon, "Politicians and History” 116 Guyver, "More than just the Henries” 117 Smithers, Rebecca. Tories protest at history shift. The Guardian (London); Aug 5, 1999; 118 Of course, this wasn’t the HCA’s final attempt to influence the curriculum. 119 Smithers, “Tories protest at history shift.”

It is sheer nonsense to say that every king, queen, hero, battle and

historical date will be eliminated from the national curriculum.…It will

also be compulsory for pupils to develop a chronological understanding

of the events, people and changes in the appropriate period of history.'

Throughout the debates over the content and delivery of the history curriculum

have been implicit or explicit formulations that the teaching will directly affect

the sense of communitas, or national identity of the students. Later in the essay I

will discuss whether this is a valid assumption. What is clear is that many parties

see a lack of a cohesive national identity as a significant problem for modern

Britain, one that has existed only in the post-‐war period. Just as the creation of a

national identity has a self-‐fulfilling ontology, so the perceived lack of one

creates a societal vacuum. It may be useful to view this post-‐imperial British

condition as a ‘liminal space’.

The Post-‐imperial Liminal Space

Arnold Van Gennep developed his theory of liminality to describe rites of

passage in pastoral societies, seeing three stages; pre-‐liminal (separation),

liminal (transition) and post-‐liminal (reincorporation). After Victor Turner (The

Forest of Symbols, 1967), Richard Wilson120 viewed South Africa’s Truth and

Reconciliation Commission (TRC) as a liminal institution. The values of the

Apartheid state were questioned and removed (a metaphorical death, in Van

Gennep’s terms), the TRC suspended the previous social norms, and was not like

the post-‐transition ones either, and social fabric was restored and renewed in a

different state in the post-‐liminal zone. Whatever the view of the country’s TRC, 120 Wilson, Richard. The politics of truth and reconciliation in South Africa: Legitimizing the post-‐apartheid state. (Cambridge University Press, 2001)

and there are many ways in which it did not satisfy the desires of the population,

it served the purpose of establishing wrongdoing, the admission of wrongdoing,

and the acceptance of guilt, declaring that such acts were wrong and had no

place in the new society. Thus it had to be a short process, open to social

inspection, and declarative. Assmann writes:

The TRC in South Africa placed “truth” (rather than justice) in the first

position. It was inspired by the idea of reconciliation and hence by

negotiation, compromise and an orientation towards integration and a

new beginning….they emphasised the transformative value of truth and

stressed the importance of acts of remembrance. “‘Remember, so as not

to repeat’ began to emerge as a message and as a cultural imperative.”121

I find Wilson’s analysis to be very illuminating, and the ‘culture of contrition’

seen in Germany after 1945 could be interpreted in a similar light. The

recognition of guilt in post-‐war Germany relied on the breaking down of

accepted national identities, the metaphorical death of the fatherland. This

undertaking is enormously painful socially and individually, coming with

difficulties and risks. In both the South African and German cases, these periods

of liminal transition were preceded by clear, short periods when wrongdoing

was declared on a unanimous international basis. While the British Empire was

responsible for some atrocious acts, such a consensus was never built, indeed

many residents in Britain and the Commonwealth today still regard it with a

respectful nostalgia.

121 Assmann, Aleida. "From collective violence to a common future: four models for dealing with a traumatic past." In Wodak, Ruth, and G. Auer-‐Borea. Justice and Memory. Confronting traumatic pasts. An international comparison. (Passagen Verlag, 2009)

This liminality has thus been undefined, extended, and painful for post-‐imperial

Britain, and evidence can be seen in language used in the curriculum and

identity debates. Elwyn Jones states in 2010 that ‘the struggle for the history

curriculum in England….was a struggle for English identity in a world in which

imperial greatness had long evaporated.’122 Hugo Young wrote in the Guardian in

1996, ‘to watch the transmuting of Britishness into the worship of nostalgia is a

frightening experience…. The words it brings to mind are retreat, cul-‐de-‐sac,

escape, exclusion, complacency, closed doors: along with more directly political

manifestations such as aggression jingoism and, let's face it, xenophobia.’123

While Linda Colley wrote124, in 1999, that ‘the debate about Britishness is

promoted by the extent of our post-‐war decline…we are no longer kept together

by the need to fight wars, we are no longer all Protestants and we do not have

the self interest of belonging to a massive global empire’, I would argue that the

debate around Britishness is directly hampered by our inability to talk about

empire and that curriculum debates have provided one of very few public fora

for this.

Mick Hume wrote in The Times in 2000, that ‘far from being trapped in a

stereotype of Britishness, people are no longer certain what Britain stands for.

The old identities have crumbled, but nothing has emerged to 'replace them. The

result is a profound sense of confusion and insecurity.’125 In The Mail, in 2004

Simon Heffer wrote: ‘Education was hamstrung first by the suffocating post-‐

imperial guilt of the 1960s and 1970s, which relegated British history and

122 Jones, "The debate over the national curriculum”, p301 123 Young, Hugo. “The eccentric art of being British now.” The Guardian (London) May 30, 1996 124 Colley, Linda, in Okri, Ben. “Who do we think we are?” The Guardian (London); January 20, 1999 125 Hume, Mick. “True Brit?” The Times (London), October 12, 2000

achievement to the margins because of an entirely false and dishonest analysis

of the preceding 200 years.’126 And Andy Beckett wrote, in 2004, in the Guardian:

Gilroy [also] argues that the current pressure on British multiculturalism

has deeper causes. Many Britons, he says, are still unaware of or refuse

to acknowledge the cruelties and injustices upon which their empire

depended. He describes the way in which allegations that the British

tortured and executed Mau Mau rebels in Kenya emerged as a "drip of

embarrassing and uncomfortable information" a full 50 years after the

colonial authorities there declared a state of emergency.’127

There are many reasons why a sense of national identity may have foundered in

the post-‐war period, but ‘selective myopia’ (Mycock, 2009) and ‘cultural

amnesia’ (Gilroy) around accepting a discussion of the impact of the British

Empire on our society, and any serious discussion of right and wrongdoing

during that period, have been primary. Whatever public debate has happened

has largely been focussed around the history curriculum, however polarised and

entrenched.

The Runnymede Trust presented a report, The Future of Multi-‐Ethnic Britain, in

2000, supported by the Labour Party. While the report was concerned with

analysing the current state of multi-‐ethnic Britain and proposing ways to

counter future racism, the press regarded the report as an existential threat to

‘Britishness’. Grosvenor and Myers noted how ‘the reaction of the press was

instructive and vivid testimony to the continuing power of ‘race’ to unsettle the

126 Heffer, Simon. “It's we Brits who need lessons in Britishness.” Daily Mail (London); 27 April 2004 127 Beckett, Andy. “History lessons: British multiculturalism is under attack.” The Guardian (London); December 11, 2004

nation.’128 This defensiveness ran from left to right, the Guardian reporting that

‘British tag is coded racism’129, the Telegraph stating that it is an ‘outrageous lie

that the history, identity and character of the British people is racist’130, and The

Sun denouncing the ‘Curse of the British Bashers’131 Grosvener and Myers noted

that ‘not deterred by the niceties of accurate reporting, however, the national

press vented their fury in vitriolic fashion.’132 Polemicizing such an important

debate necessarily precluded the work it attempted to undertake from being

possible. These ‘outraged reactions impose their own form of censorship.’133

Stuart Hall, one of the commissioners, replied in The Observer a few days later in

response to the accusation that British history be dumped, that ‘it would indeed

be presumptuous to propose writing Britain out of history and, in fact, the report

did no such thing’, noting that ‘belonging is a tricky concept, requiring both

identification and recognition….The binding function of national identity only

works if individuals can somehow see themselves reflected in the culture’ and

asking where the Black and Asian troops were celebrated in the recent ‘Britain’s

Finest Hour’ celebrations. The British identifier has indeed been an increasingly

useful tag for those from ethnic minorities, but in its hyphenated form, as

British-‐Asian or Black British.134

If people from ethnic minorities are to become not only citizens with

equal rights but also an integral part of the national culture, then the

meanings of the term 'British' will have to become more inclusive of their

128 Grosvenor and Myers, ‘Engaging with History” 129 Guardian, 2000, in Grosvenor and Myers, ‘Engaging with History” 130 Telegraph, 2000b in Grosvenor and Myers, ‘Engaging with History” 131 Sun, 2000, in Grosvenor and Myers, ‘Engaging with History” 132 Grosvenor and Myers, ‘Engaging with History” 133 Grosvenor and Myers, ‘Engaging with History” 134 The Observer (London) “A question of identity.”; October 15, 2000

experiences, values and aspirations. Otherwise Britain will be a

multiethnic, monocultural society, which is a contradiction in terms. 135

A frequent clarion call for the centralised imposition of a national identity is that

it acts as a safeguard in the event of total war, even in the age of a standing, more

to do with the appeal to a mythic communitarian past than rooted in reality.

Michael Gove, then a journalist at The Times, wrote, in 2000:

Everywhere it can, Labour progressively effaces the symbols and reality

of national sovereignty. Because Britain has not had to live with the

mortal threat Israel has faced since its inception, the erosion of our

national foundations seems less perilous to us than it must to Hazony.

But when the next call on our national capacity for collective sacrifice is

made, as it has been throughout history, what will we find? What. indeed,

will be left?136

Indeed, multiculturalism is presented as a national threat in itself throughout the

discussions of immigration by the populist right wing. Frequent allusions to

natural disasters are made, many referring to floods, attacks, and streams with

the intention of setting up a mental association with a fear of the indefensible.137

Many commentators have seen, in school history, the mechanism for defending

Britain from homegrown terrorism since the 9/11 and 7/7 attacks. History, it is

said, can provoke a patriotic response to fight a common enemy, all to often an

135 The Observer (London) “A question of identity.”; October 15, 2000 136 Gove, Michael. “Killing the State on the battlefield of ideas.” The Times (London), November 07, 2000 137 “The metaphorical use of “vacuum”, joins with exaggerated talk not only of “streams” flowing into Europe, but “masses of floods” to denote a natural catastrophe defying control, against which it is implied other countries (such as Austria) will have to defend themselves.” Wodak, "Old and new demagoguery”

ill-‐defined homegrown ethnic minority. Indeed, left-‐wing historian Marika

Sherwood went as far as to say:

It is not surprising to me that MI5 believes that ‘Al-‐Qaida [is] recruiting

teenagers to attack targets in Britain’. It does not take a mastermind to

conclude that when the ‘education’ issues outlined above are coupled

with the prevalent racism, some young people will be turned against this

country.138

Her position that more ethnic minorities must be visible in school history was

presumably not what The Times was suggesting in its leader in 2007:

The fear that immigration has led to separated communities is

widespread. The July 7, 2005, bombings in London have heightened the

salience of internal social divisions. Multiculturalism is increasingly

regarded as a model that has failed. Research such as that for the recent

British Social Attitudes survey reveals that national identity in Britain is

weakening. School is obviously the place to inculcate Britishness.139

So the stakes were high, and the expectations placed on school history

enormous. Not only was school history asked to find a common identity to which

all could subscribe without contest, forming an alliance which would resist any

invading army, but also it had the more urgent job of preventing domestic

terrorism. The dilemma was well put by Hugo Young in the Guardian, in 2000,

before the terrorist threat was made local. Talking of William Hague, he said

138 Sherwood, Marika. In, So Where Are We Today. "Miseducation and Racism." Ethnicity and Race in a Changing World: A Review Journal (2009): p45 139 The Times (London) “School Britannia”; January 26, 2007

On the one hand the British are uniquely strong, their history especially

to be admired, their political system a wonder of the world, their

national character proof against the alien hordes. On the other hand‚

apparently, their national identity is so fragile that it faces imminent

destruction at the hands of foreigners…140

The Times, in 2003, inadvertently draws out an interesting point while

discussing the need for a collective identity against the threat of 9/11 recurring,

warning that the ‘Wahhabis of Saudi Arabia…take the Islamic injunction against

worshipping images very literally and are trying to return Islam to a mythical

state of original purity.141 The irony of using a restorationist history to steel a

proud nation against the attacks of idealists invoking mythical purity seems lost

on Alexander Stille.. The Economist provided some much needed balance shortly

after the 9/11 attacks:

Does it matter if schoolchildren get a selective picture of their country's

past? Yes. At its best, history enables people to understand the world

better. Just possibly, that may make them act better, too. At its worst,

history allows people to see the past as they wish to see it, not as it was.

Children who are taught that the past was a series of glamorous national

triumphs will find it hard to explain to themselves how it is that Britain is

not top dog any more

140 Young, Hugo. “What is Britishness? Tories dream while Labour defines.” The Guardian (London) March 28, 2000 141 Stille, Alexander. “Don't Let the past Turn into History.” The Times (London) January 1, 2003

…it might also be useful to reflect on national failure and humiliation….

about the history of British or French imperialism in, say, the Middle

East. Might that shed some light on the world's current troubles?142

Gordon Brown

From 2005 Gordon Brown made a number of speeches defining his view of

Britishness, effectively announcing his bid for national moral leadership:

The days of Britain having to apologise for its colonial history are over.

We should talk, and rightly so, about British values that are enduring,

because they stand for some of the greatest ideas in history: tolerance,

liberty, civic duty, that grew in Britain and influenced the rest of the

world.143

Brown’s exceptionalism saw British values as a ‘golden thread’ through history.

Left wing journalists also attempted to find an expression of national identity in

these terms, with Michael Ignatieff finding Britishness in ‘parliamentary

democracy, rule of law; fairness and decency.’144 The Economist saw cracks in

Brown’s argument, noting wryly that ‘It takes a deft reading of history to show

that the sweep of the past 2,000 years has led precisely to the values of New

Labour’s third term.’145 A poll by YouGov for the CRE found that this vision of

national identity was true for 61% of non-‐whites, and only 27% of whites,

142 The Economist. (London) “Britain's glorious past. History lessons: Nations can learn as much from failure as from success.” November 1st, 2001 143 Brogan, Benedict. “It's time to celebrate the Empire, says Brown.” Daily Mail (London) January 15 2005 144 Ignatieff, Michael, in Okri, Ben. “Who do we think we are?” The Guardian (London); Jan 20, 1999 145 The Economist (London); “Gordon’s History Lesson”. January 21, 2006

suggesting that Brown’s desire for values-‐based identity was far from universal.

The article went on to suggest that the teaching of history ‘(including the

awkward imperial bits)’ would be a good catalyst for national cohesion.

In the Mail, Melanie Phillips said that in the past immigrants ‘eagerly assimilated

Britishness from an education system which understood that its mission was to

transmit British culture.’146

For decades now, our governing and intellectual classes have been

consumed by a sense of shame about this country. With the loss of

Empire came not only a collapse of national role but also an exaggerated

guilt about Britain's record of colonialism. 147

She went on, saying ‘with large scale immigration, that guilt developed into a

full-‐blown attack on the nation itself’, as ‘schools stopped teaching children

British political history, and taught about slavery instead.’

In The Times in 2004 Gove professed his admiration for ‘Whig history, a story of

a sturdy island people who possess a "distinctively English individualism”, while

choosing to endorse Crick’s statement that Empire ‘often brought more regular,

acceptable and impartial systems of law and· order than many had experienced

under their own rulers, or under alien rulers other than European'’148 Curiously,

in the same article he supports Crick’s decision that ‘there is no old-‐school

146 Phillips, Melanie. “No, you can't manufacture a sense of national pride.” Daily Mail (London); 21 January 2005 147 Phillips, M. “No, you can't” 148 Gove, Michael. “Steering a coherent middle way through the course of history.” The Times (London), December 16, 2004

insistence on listing each king and queen in tum’, something he contradicts fully

when in office. In ‘The Empire Strikes Back’, 2005, Gove wrote:

The Empire's role in ending conflicts, replacing arbitrary rule with the

rule of law, closing down slavery, replacing the oppression of subject

peoples by their neighbours with fairer structures, promoting economic

modernisation and dispensing justice is duly and fairly recorded. The

Empire has been allowed to strike back.149, (he mentions empathy too,

see note)150

Not everyone was sure that contrition over empire needed to end. In fact Paul

Gilroy, writing in the Guardian in 2005, finds no evidence of it, instead

suggesting a liminal space.

The vanished empire is essentially unmourned. The meaning of its loss

remains pending. The chronic, nagging pain of its absence feeds a

melancholic attachment. [Britain has] a resolutely air-‐brushed version of

colonial history in which gunboat diplomacy was moral uplift, civilising

missions were completed, the trains ran on time and the natives

appreciated the value of stability.

These dream worlds are revisited compulsively. They saturate the

cultural landscape of contemporary Britain. The distinctive mix of

revisionist history and moral superiority offers pleasures and

149 Gove, Michael. “The Empire strikes back.” The Times (London); February 05, 2005 150 Gove also denigrates the use of ideology and empathy in the classroom. An instance of Gove’s own use of empathy in interpreting history and national identity is evident in appendix 3.

distractions that defer a reckoning with contemporary multiculture and

postpone the inevitable issue of imperial reparation. 151

Seumas Milne, in Le Monde Diplomatique, supported this analysis more

explicitly:

What modernity and [fair play, freedom and tolerance] have to do with

the reality of empire might not be immediately obvious. But even more

bizarre is the implication that Britain is forever apologising for its

empire or the crimes committed under it …. nothing could be further

from the truth. There have been no apologies. Official Britain put

decolonisation behind it, in a state of blissful amnesia, without the

slightest effort to come to terms with what took place.152

For Milne, Empire was built on ‘genocide, vast ethnic cleansing, slavery,

rigorously enforced racial hierarchy and merciless exploitation’ and quotes

historian Richard Drayton to support his argument:

‘We hear a lot about the rule of law, incorruptible government and

economic progress -‐ the reality was tyranny, oppression, poverty and the

unnecessary deaths of countless millions of human beings…the British

national school curriculum has more or less struck the empire and its

crimes out of history.’

151 Gilroy, Paul. "Why Harry’s disoriented about empire’." The Guardian (London) January 17, 2005 152 Milne, Seumas. "Britain: Imperial Nostalgia'." Le Monde Diplomatique (English edition) (2005)

Milne calls not for national guilt, but recognition and education. While Brown’s

speeches catalysed the most frank and open debate about imperial legacy yet

seen in British newspapers, the effect was deeply polarising and ultimately he

mobilised only the voters least likely to vote for him – the right wing. His appeals

to centre-‐right voters also included using the phrase ‘British Jobs for British

Workers’ in 2007 and 2009, a line first used by the BNP.153 Madeline Bunting,

writing in the Guardian on the anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade,

asks readers to remember the Bengal famine, the Hola camp and the opium

trade with China.

The abolition of the slave trade is a painful reminder of British imperial

history, which we have, incredibly, managed to largely forget….We too

easily overlook how empire was a linchpin to British national

identity…"Fair play" is one of the fondest of British delusions; it rests on

a very partial reading of history.’154

The Politics of Apology

When, in November 2009, Gordon Brown apologised for Britain’s historical

practice of shipping orphaned children to Australia and other colonies,

commonly called the ‘home children’, the media response from the right

generally questioned the need for an apology. Melanie Phillips stated that

‘Governments don't pass down their sins to their successors. A country cannot

be held responsible for a policy introduced by a government some eight decades

153 Prince, Rosa. “Gordon Brown defends 'British jobs for British worker' phrase.” The Telegraph (London); February 5, 2009 154 Bunting, Madeleine. “Don't overlook the impact of empire on our identity.” The Guardian, (London); January 1, 2007.

previously.’155 Phillips wanted to both have and eat her Victoria sponge, having

been at the forefront of demanding that schools teach history to promote

national pride, which is timeless, but denying that national shame can carry over

a generation. In the Spectator, Rod Liddle criticised Brown:

It is the quintessential example of the modern apology; a politician who

is not remotely contrite apologising for something for which he had not

the vaguest responsibility and for which, therefore, he cannot be

blamed.156

However, Gordon Brown remained resolute on his position regarding the British

Empire. Where Paul Gilroy has said Britain is in a ‘post-‐imperial melancholia’

and Colley has said ‘the idea that we should spend our time now wallowing in

post-‐imperial guilt is profoundly misplaced’, the effect of this period of history

on British identity is of vital importance.

Returning to the theme of liminality, I suggest that the point of apologies is

twofold, one individual and one social. For the oppressed it is a chance to be

heard and to be recognised as having been oppressed. For the oppressor, and

others, it is a chance to restate social values in a changing world. By continually

denying any culpability for the wrongs committed under the British Empire,

Britain denies itself the possibility of addressing the central issue causing the

‘history wars’. Andy Mycock said, in 2009:

155 Phillips, Melanie. “I'm sorry, Gordon, but if you must apologise, what about the things that ARE your fault?” Daily Mail (London) November 22, 2009 156 Rod Liddle. “Say you’re sorry -‐ but never apologise for anything you’ve actually done.” The Spectator (London);18 November 2009

But although such apologies may not be able to redress history or

compensate those affected, they are a statement of intent in the drawing

of a line between the past, and the present. They are public statements

that ratify the re-‐interpretation of the past, thus raising expectations of

citizens for a more inclusive, moral and just future. They underline the

progressive nature of a national society, suggesting citizenship and

identity are fluid, progressive and aspirational not fixed, regressive and

enduringly bigoted. Saying sorry highlights that debates about identity

and history can be important emancipatory responses to injustice,

encouraging a process, which if managed sensitively, can encourage

empathy, grief, responsibility and ultimately some form of

reconciliation.157

Thus the liminal space would be exited, and society would integrate the apology

into its moral fabric. In this way an apology, or at least an addressing of the issue,

acts like Charon’s Obol, the coin preventing the souls of the dead being stranded

by the river Styx, a mechanism for passing from one state to another. The event

for which Brown apologised was different from the empire in a number of ways;,

it impacted a limited number of people, those people were British and went only

to ‘Anglosphere’, and many were still alive when the apology was made.

Richardson and Wodak argue that the political media often “utilise myths ‘to

provide new “sanitized” narratives which cover up ruptures, war crimes and

conflicts which have occurred in the past’. Just as serious, the past may not be

merely sanitised in political discourse but ignored completely – literally,

157 Mycock, Andy. 'Sorry seems to be an easier word': Brown and the politics of apology. Open Democracy. 30 November 2009. http://www.opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/andy-‐mycock/sorry-‐seems-‐to-‐be-‐easier-‐word-‐brown-‐and-‐politics-‐of-‐apology last accessed, September 2, 2013 http://www.opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/andy-‐mycock/sorry-‐seems-‐to-‐be-‐easier-‐word-‐brown-‐and-‐ politics-‐of-‐apology

consigning it to the history books.”158 Melanie Phillips went on in her article to

say that Britain should not apologise for the Atlantic slave trade as ‘the whole

point was that Britain was the country that led the drive to abolish it.’159

Historian Piers Bredon attempted to balance the positive and destructive effects

of empire, whilst noting it’s insurmountable difficulties, and came to the

conclusion:

“All balance sheets require interpretation; but it seems clear that, even

according to its own lights, the British Empire was in grave moral deficit.

This should come as no surprise. Britain’s conquests were necessarily

violent and its subsequent occupations were usually repressive. Imperial

powers lack legitimacy and govern irresponsibly, relying on force,

collaboration and propaganda.”160

The 2007 curriculum review

In January 2007, Sir Keith Ajegbo published a governmental report, requiring the

KS3 curriculum to attend to ‘cultural, ethnic and religious diversity’, specifically

through the citizenship curriculum, but Ajegbo asked that this be studied

‘through the lens of history’.161 As a consequence, the 2007 curriculum review

required a study of ‘the impact through time of the movement and settlement of

diverse peoples to, from and within the British Isles’, with a the study of

diversity threaded through the teaching of history. Studying the Atlantic Slave

158 Richardson and Wodak, “Recontextualising fascist ideologies of the past” 159 Phillips, Melanie. “I'm sorry, Gordon, but if you must apologise” 160 Brendon, Piers. "A Moral Audit of the British Empire: how we can arrive at a fair judgement of the benefits of the Empire for those who enjoyed-‐or endured-‐its rule." History Today 57.10 (2007): 44 161 Ajegbo, Keith, Dina Kiwan, and Seema Sharma. "Curriculum review: diversity and citizenship." London: Department for Education and Skills (2007)

Trade within the framework of the Empire represented a marked shift from

previous Conservative and Labour curricula. Sheldon characterised this

reworked curriculum as emphasising a ‘moral role of History (like in the 1960s)

but with a new ‘humanitarian agenda” 162. Critics of the curriculum saw it as

fragmented and over-‐prescribed, what MP Gordon Marsden called a “‘Yo Sushi’

experience of historical understanding, ‘with students gobbling titbits as they

come round on the module conveyor belt, but able to make little connection”163

The HA reported that some teachers avoided sensitive and difficult mandatory

topics in the classroom and some teachers did not see them as necessary in ‘all

white’ schools. 164 John D. Clare, textbook writer and teacher, wrote many

textbooks on the end of empire, decolonisation and New Commonwealth

immigration (including ‘A Nation of Immigrants’) for KS3, and said:

‘These [books] are selling appallingly, but actually they’re some of the

best books I’ve ever written … they allowed me to address some really

hot potatoes through the medium of history…. You study the Windrush

period, and then, out of that, you look at what’s happening now.… I’ve

tried to do it in a responsible manner which allows children to come out

at the end of it with the opportunity to have formed some sensitive,

sensible conclusions, based on facts and based on the history.’165

While Marika Sherwood praised the ‘great advance’ of the inclusion of these

topics in the curriculum, she questioned the practicalities of implementing the

162 Sheldon, "Politicians and History” 163 Guyver, “More than just the Henries” p16 164 Cannadine et al. The Right Kind of History, p201 165 Clare, John D. interview with Nichola Sheldon. http://www.history.ac.uk/history-‐in-‐education/browse/interviews last accessed 2/9/2013 p29

changes.166 Concerned over the reduction in time for history lessons, the lack of

teacher training and the lack of up-‐to-‐date resources for these areas, she noted

that many of the recommended books were out of print when the report was

published.

The press response was characteristically divisive. A leader in The Times

reported that studying immigration, Empire and the Commonwealth, and using

discussion groups as methods of teaching, ‘is highly selective history delivered in

a lightweight fashion’167, and stated that it ‘will plainly do nothing to redress the

fact that many white pupils are already complaining, as the report notes, that

they have no feel for where they come from’. In another leader a week later

Britishness is addressed:

Britishness is to be found in Britain's history and shared values, which

must include pride in assimilation as well as respect for mutual privacy.

To celebrate these qualities is not crude nationalism, but the essence of a

civilisation to which past generations of immigrants have subscribed

willingly. It is time for the civilised to stand up and be counted.168

The Mail finds the loss of British icons the direct result of the new focus on

slavery and Islam.

Winston Churchill no longer merits a mention after a drastic slimming-‐

down of the syllabus to create more space for "modern" issues…The only

166 Sherwood, "Miseducation and Racism." 167 The Times (London) “School Britannia”; January 26, 2007 168 The Times (London) ”Terror and Identity.” February 1, 2007

individuals now named in guidance accompanying the curriculum are

anti-‐slavery campaigners Olaudah Equiano and William Wilberforce.169

Pupils aged 11 to 14 will also study the history of the British Empire and

its impact on those overseas. Colonial rule in Africa and the empires of

Islam in Africa are also topics suggested by the Qualifications and

Curriculum Authority.170

Locating Britain

A central concern in these debates has been the question of what is determined

to be ’British history’. Keith Robbins finds that:

How ‘Great Britain’ is perceived in historiography entails engagement

with… world, empire, continent, nation, region, and locality. Its essential

locus has been complex, fluid and contentious.…. There was scarcely a

corner of the world with which the British did not have some form of

contact – whether as explorers, soldiers, sailors, missionaries or

merchants. 171

For Robbins, the world and empire had become part of the ‘mental furniture’ for

Victorians172 , and from 1850-‐1950, empire was central to British identity,

169 Clark, Laura. “Schools told to dump Churchill and Hitler from history lessons.” Daily Mail (London) July 13, 2007 170 Sims, Paul. “Black history to be taught as part of school curriculum amid fears Churchill will be side-‐lined in lessons.” The Daily Mail (London); August 27, 2008 171 Robbins, Keith. “The ‘British Space’: World-‐Empire-‐Continent-‐ Nation-‐Region-‐Locality: A Historiographical Problem”. History Compass 7/1 (2009): pp66-‐67 172 Robbins, “The ‘British Space” p67

marginalized since.173 Mycock, McAuley and McGlynn agree, stating that ‘this

myopic focus on what Kumar terms the ‘inner Empire’ of Great Britain has, in

our opinion, truncated contemporary understandings of Britishness as an

identity.’174

Bill Schwarz states that while the colonial empire no longer exists, mentalities

formed during Empire do. In Britain decolonisation happened on newsreels,

elsewhere, but the process of decolonisation as a mental process, or as a social

extraction, have been largely ignored. Schwarz believes that ‘during

decolonization and in its aftermath, a consciousness of being white intensified

for a significant number of indigenous Britons.’175 Internal orientalism that

accompanied immigration from the commonwealth has been an important part

of defining post-‐war Britishness. According to Schwarz, West Indians coming to

Britain at the time of the Windrush ‘were juridically British, regarded

themselves as British, and regularly expressed enthusiasm for diverse aspects of

the civilization of the British’176 and experienced a cultural dislocation, having

been denied a ‘British’ identity, it being re-‐formed against their ‘otherness’. West

Indian communities had a noticeable influence on British culture, what Schwarz

calls the ‘creolization of aspects of the metropolitan culture’, saying the ‘cultural

forms of the periphery moved to, and subsequently transformed, the centre.’177

In his seminal work of cultural studies, Subculture, Dick Hebdige describes a

‘phantom history’ in which a constant dialogue is maintained between

173 Robbins, “The ‘British Space”p69 174 Mycock, Andrew, James W. McAuley, and Catherine McGlynn. Britishness, identity and citizenship: the view from abroad. Vol. 2. (Peter Lang, 2011) p1 175 Schwarz, Bill. "‘Claudia Jones and the West Indian Gazette’: Reflections on the Emergence of Post-‐colonial Britain." Twentieth Century British History 14.3 (2003): p266 176 Schwarz, ‘Claudia Jones and the West Indian Gazette’ p.267 177 Schwarz, ‘Claudia Jones and the West Indian Gazette’ p.272

indigenous and immigrant musical styles, resulting in new form. Indeed the

music of ‘Cool Britannia’ upon which Tony Blair vacuously traded can be seen to

be a direct result of those transnational musical trades. Schwarz also locates the

British conception of civilization in the experience of colonization; ‘Particularly,

it was in Britain ‘overseas’ that the work was done which ensured that the

deepest values of the British came to be encoded as the special preserve of the

white race.’178 Schwarz is careful not to overplay his hand, however, saying many

other elements and histories go into forming a national historical consciousness,

and that ‘decolonization is only one of the many inchoate histories of post-‐

colonial Britain.’179

Locating empire in the post-‐imperial is a growing speciality within New Imperial

History. Antionette Burton stated that ‘Victorian culture... cannot be understood

outside the ambit of empire, imperial power and its constitutive impact’, and has

developed strong cases for changing the model of outward centre-‐periphery

cultural transaction and the centrality of ‘nation’ in analysis. Burton strongly

rejected Ferguson’s ‘whitewashed’ version of imperial superiority, connecting

modern social and political incidents to the imperial legacy, including the

murder of Stephen Lawrence and 9/11. As Edward Said has said, historians of

the west can no longer exclude ‘Empires and the imperial context’ in their

history writing. Attempts to reframe our views of empire and Britishness have

not filtered down to the political level. New Labour did not discuss

Commonwealth when defining Britishness, rather promoting ‘enlightened

patriotism tied to a post-‐empire UK citizenship’180. He states that ‘an essential, if

often undefined, part of the ‘problem’ is the integration of immigrants from the

178 Schwarz, ‘Claudia Jones and the West Indian Gazette’. p.279 179 Schwarz, ‘Claudia Jones and the West Indian Gazette’ p.266 180 Mycock, Andrew. "British citizenship and the legacy of empires." Parliamentary Affairs 63.2 (2010): p340

imperial periphery into British political and cultural life’, saying ‘a common

shortcoming of proponents and critics of new ‘Britishness’ is the persistent

neglect of the legacy of the British imperial past.’181 Mycock argues that efforts to

define a nationalised UK citizenship and identity have been hampered by an

ignorance of the ’pluralist dynamics of empire’ extended into the post-‐imperial

era182, that imperial legacy undermines a purely national identity, leading to

ambiguity and ‘selective myopia’ when attempting to use history to legitimise a

national identity. For Mycock, the orientalisation of imperial subjects and slaves

emphasised the ‘core attributes of an ethnicised and racialised national-‐imperial

Anglo-‐Britishness.’183

A discrete and nationally bounded identity was never articulated in the UK

because it was, to start with, a multi-‐national state. And while the empire

distributed rights and responsibilities differently, it attempted to determine a

common imperial nationality. As the British withdrew, slowly and without

planning, from the colonised countries, a discrete UK citizenship was called for,

as a way to restrict immigration from other areas in the commonwealth. Created

out of political necessity, not ideological purity, it ‘hollow[ed] out

Commonwealth citizenship instead of substantively defining British

nationality.’184

Mycock sees citizenship test, introduced in 2004, as implying that immigrants

from both the commonwealth and elsewhere ‘hold different values, and need re-‐

educating, and that a good way of doing this is the instruction in history’. This

instruction is not one where a discussion of values takes place, and the candidate

181 Mycock, "British citizenship and the legacy of empires” p340 182 Mycock, "British citizenship and the legacy of empires” p340 183 Mycock, "British citizenship and the legacy of empires” p343 184 Mycock, "British citizenship and the legacy of empires” p344

is deemed fit for citizenship after memorizing enough knowledge about the

democratic practices, cultural attributes and history of Britain. This resonates

strongly with the view that testing knowledge of pupils in history classes will

necessarily result in a group of enlightened citizens willing to sacrifice

themselves to the national good. That this is ludicrous is evident in the David

Cameron’s appearance on the David Letterman evening show in the USA, and

pointed out by Ruth Wodak.185 When asked questions from the citizenship test,

Cameron was unable to correctly identify the composer of Rule Britannia or state

what Magna Carta stood for. Clearly then the requirements for both recognition

of belonging and self-‐identification are much deeper, more complex and far less

easily reduced to a test of knowledge. Mycock states that ‘it would appear that

the government believes that post-‐war immigration from the Commonwealth

and elsewhere is tied to a dilution in citizens’ ascription to British values.’ 186

If the effects of immigration and empire started to become a focus of academic

research and argument, the same was not as true of the teaching of history in

schools. Even when specified in the curriculum, there has been indifference or

resistance to teaching it. For Kevin Myers the policy of assimilation ‘into an

English way of life’ present until the 1970s became ‘synonymous with a racist

education policy and practice,’187 and the starting point for development of these

kinds of education were often social ‘challenges’ or ‘problems’ of integration. In

the narratives of policy goals and governmental efforts to meet these challenges

‘immigrant and minority groups may feature…but they often do so in the guise of

185 Wodak, Ruth. "Dis-‐citizenship and migration: a critical discourse-‐analytical perspective." Journal of Language, Identity & Education 12.3 (2013): 173-‐178. 186 Mycock, "British citizenship and the legacy of empires” p349 187 Myers, Kevin. “Immigrants and ethnic minorities in the history of education”, Paedagogica Historica: International Journal of the History of Education, 45:6, (2009) p802

social unrest; protesting, rioting and as the victims of racism or prejudice.’188

Minorities are often presented as having an ‘independent ontology that can

simply be described’: attempting to find ‘the’ British-‐Pakistani community, or

identify ‘Muslim community leaders’ makes the assumption of a continuing

inter-‐generational separateness and continuity. Myers says that ‘the postcolonial

epoch requires not simply new additions or slight amendments to the national

stories of Western societies, but a rethinking of historical practice itself.’189

Guyver mentions that ‘teaching a rounded history of the rise and fall of Britain’s

empire has often been regarded as too complex or divisive in our multi-‐ethnic

classrooms.’ 190 The extent to which pedagogical practices in schools are

commensurate with the stated aims of politicians and policymakers is a

neglected area of interest. A carefully designed curriculum can specify content,

but the professional practices of history teachers, influenced heavily by the SHP

since the 1970s, have always found room for what Goalen calls ‘border

pedagogy’. This is a commitment to demystification, including the reading of

texts ‘that both affirm and interrogate the complexity of their own histories . . . to

engage and develop a counter discourse to the established boundaries of

knowledge.’191 These border crossings happen daily in other areas of children’s

lives, without the considered mediation of history teachers, and the commitment

of the original NC to ‘the idea that historical truth, knowledge and certainty can

be subject to rigorous analysis… has the potential to help children see through

the banality of press headlines and may make them fully appreciate the nostalgic

or nationalistic imagery in films.’192

188 Myers, “Immigrants and ethnic minorities in the history of education”, p805 189 Myers, “Immigrants and ethnic minorities in the history of education”, p810 190 Guyver, “More than just the Henries” p15 191 Phillips, “Contesting the past, Constructing the Future,” p50 192 Phillips, “Contesting the past, Constructing the Future,” p50

Conservative government

In 2010, Gordon Brown’s low popularity, weariness of the New Labour project,

and the economic crisis gave rise to their biggest electoral defeat since the

1930s. While new Prime Minister, David Cameron, was regarded as too liberal by

the right of his party, his pronouncements on history education do not bear that

out.193 ‘History should be taught properly in schools as a way of teaching

immigrants what it means to be British’ reported the Mail, going on that

‘national identity had been deliberately weakened by constant attacks on the

nation's culture’, according to Cameron.194 He adopted an approach which both

‘celebrated our positive achievements at home and abroad’ but which should

also ‘teach children about concepts such as the rule of law, free speech, freedom

of the individual and parliamentary democracy’, with ‘proper’ methods.

Interestingly, he added that we should not ‘gloss over all the things we are not

entirely proud of, but we should at least celebrate the many positive things

Britain has achieved both at home and abroad’.

The politics of his Education Secretary, Michael Gove, are much more easily

located, partly because he has a more defined ideological stance on issues, but

also because he generated a significant body of journalism in a long career

writing for The Times as seen earlier in this paper, when he denied the need to

apologise for empire. In 1999 (see Appendix) Gove stated that DNA evidence

proves that the story of the British is essentially as an undisturbed island race,

193 Cameron, David. “Proud to be British.” Conservative Home. July 10, 2009. http://conservativehome.blogs.com/platform/2009/07/david-‐cameron-‐proud-‐to-‐be-‐british.html#more last accessed 2/9/2013 194 Morgan, Benedict. “Proper history should celebrate our nation's success says Cameron.” Daily Mail (London) June 6, 2007

making it hard ‘not to associate the freedoms we enjoy with the establishment of

a secure British identity’195. Gove’s correlation of an ethnicised geography with a

secure identity is a common refrain in identity politics. Phillips states that

‘crucial in the process of creating a 'natural' link between people and place in

this respect is the force of rhetoric which cultivates feelings of 'naturalness';

here the rhetorical device of emphasising cultural distinctiveness is vital.’196

Guyver asserts that in order to include all citizens ‘the ethnic moorings of

national belonging need to be exposed and replaced by criteria that have nothing

to do with whiteness. Or as Gilroy puts it, “the racial ontology of sovereign

territory” needs to be recognized and contested.’s197

Positioning himself on the right of the Conservative Party, Gove ensured

considerable support in the right-‐wing press, being lionised by the Mail even

before taking office. In 2009, Melanie Phillips called school history ‘bleak indeed’

and ‘alarming’ due to an ‘unbreakable cartel’ of professors of education,

possessed of ‘preposterous anti-‐education ideas’. 198 These had ‘fill[ed]

prospective teachers' heads with ideological mumbojumbo’ and Gove, the ‘class

act’ intended to ‘break their power’. Interestingly the way he was to do this was

by scrapping the QCA and appointing only experts he trusts, something sure to

save the curriculum from being a ‘destructive ideological tool.’

Where a few years earlier Gove had praised Sir Michael Crick for not reverting to

the out-‐dated practices of rote-‐learning, in 2010 he was quoted in the Mail,

195 Gove, Michael. “Who are the British?” The Times (London) October 28, 1999 196 Robert Phillips “History Teaching”, p387 197 Guyver, Robert. "Towards a definition of protocols when embedding the national and the civic in a history curriculum." Southern African Review of Education 15.1 (2009): 63-‐78. 198 Phillips, Melanie. “At long last, a class act who might just save our schools... if his party lets him.” The Daily Mail (London); October 12, 2009

saying ‘most parents would rather their children had a traditional education

with children sitting in rows, learning the kings and queens of England’ adding

that ‘Guilt about Britain’s [Empire] past is misplaced.’199

At the Hay Festival on May 30th 2010 Niall Ferguson launched a campaign to

‘tackle the 'crisis' of children's ignorance’200 and was asked by Gove, from the

floor, to help develop the curriculum. Later in the year, while saying ‘this

trashing of our past has to stop.’201Gove also asked Simon Schama to help, who

dutifully toed the party line by making immediate suggestions of pupils’

ignorance, as captured by the Mail: ‘History pupils missing out on 'vast tracts' of

our past, warns Simon Schama’202.

A major concern expressed over Gove’s approach was that he did not set up an

independent group, rather just chose ‘celebrity’ historians with strong public

profiles. The Guardian noted fear at ‘the prospect of the planned new national

curriculum being shaped by advice from the education secretary's handpicked

committee of experts and then implemented by his own department. Not much

room for dissent or argument there.’203. A recurring theme of the National

Curriculum in history is that it has consistently been used to mark out political

territory and in my analysis Gove knew exactly which issues to highlight, and

how to energise his political base whilst simultaneously provoking a reaction in

the left-‐wing press. He was not disappointed.

199 Faulkner, Katherine. “Children will learn poetry and monarchs of England by heart under Tory plans” Daily Mail (London); March 6, 2010 200 The Daily Mail (London) “Academic calls for history to be compulsory in schools as pupils think subject is 'just Hitler and Henry VIII'” May 30, 2010 201 The Daily Mail (London) “TV historian Simon Schama to bring UK history back to British classrooms.” 6 October 2010 202 Clark, Laura. “History pupils missing out on 'vast tracts' of our past, warns Simon Schama.” Daily Mail (London); November 10 2010 203 Baker, Mike. "Gove takes control of the curriculum'." The Guardian (London); June 24 2010

On June 10th, Seumas Milne warned of Ferguson’s approach to Empire,

suggesting that his appointment ‘might have been expected to cause uproar.’204

However, he went on to say that the disconnection of chronology was a genuine

problem, and Gove and Ferguson were right to address it. A stronger narrative

was indeed needed, but ‘as Colin Jones, president of the Royal Historical Society,

puts it, the question should be: "Which narrative?" If Britain had genuinely come

to terms with its imperial history, no senior politician would have dared suggest

celebrating it or mobilising apologists to sanitise its record for schoolchildren.’205

The British Empire was, after all, an avowedly racist despotism built on

ethnic cleansing, enslavement, continual wars and savage repression,

land theft and merciless exploitation. Far from bringing good

governance, democracy or economic progress, the empire undeveloped

vast areas, executed and jailed hundreds of thousands for fighting for

self-‐rule, ran concentration camps, carried out medical experiments on

prisoners and oversaw famines that killed tens of millions of people.

For Milne rehabilitating Empire is ‘a poisonous fantasy’. The New Statesman

pursued a similar line, adding that ‘the Tories have fundamentally

misunderstood the entire purpose of history. History, properly taught, should

lead young people to question and challenge their cultural inheritance rather

than simply "celebrate" it.’206 The article drummed up fear about Michael Gove’s

intentions, and abilities, noting how Hitler and Chairman Mao used school

204 Milne, Seumas. “This attempt to rehabilitate empire is a recipe for conflict.” The Guardian (London); June 10, 2010 205 Milne, Seumas. “This attempt to rehabilitate empire is a recipe for conflict.” 206 P Penny, Laurie. “Michael Gove and the imperialists.” New Statesman, (London) June 10, 2010

history as an ideological tool of social control, calling it ‘part of a broader

political discourse that seeks, ultimately, to replace the messy, multivalent web

of Britain's cultural inheritance with one "big story" about dominance and

hierarchy, of white over black, west over east, rich over poor.’

Ofsted reported, in 2011, that overall history was very well taught at KS3, but

suffered from a fragmented curriculum and too little contact time. It also stated

that ‘the view that too little British history is taught in secondary schools in

England is a myth’, a finding completely ignored by the press. The Telegraph said

that ‘children are growing up ignorant of British history’207.

In November 2011, Michael Gove himself wrote in the Mail that he admired the

Victorians for their ‘civilizing mission which it was their moral duty to discharge’

a ‘natural and uncomplicated thing, the mark of civilization, to want to spread

knowledge’. 208 In another Mail article, Dominic Sandbrook alludes to the

liminality of national identity, describing a ‘nation that often seems confused and

adrift, uncertain of its role since the end of empire and the rise of devolution’ and

describing the ‘metropolitan liberals’ who, ‘since the Sixties, have been engaged

in a gigantic post-‐imperial cringe.’209 They have been ‘apologising for alleged

crimes of the British Empire; who shudder to see the flag of St George’, and

Sandbrook asked Gove to ‘teach our national story from start to finish in a clear,

accessible way’. In the end Gove asked three high-‐profile historians to develop

the curriculum, Niall Ferguson, Simon Schama and David Cannadine, who had

previously summarized the intractability of the situation thus:

207 in Mandler, “History, national life and the new curriculum.” 208 Gove Michael. “We must return to traditional teaching values” Daily Mail (London) 25 November, 2011 209 Sandbrook, Dominic. “Why we should be proud of being Little Englanders.” Daily Mail (London), July 30, 2011

As is often the case, there seem to be two irreconcilable views: those who

want the history syllabus to stress national endeavour and achievement,

and those who want it to recognise the failings and blemishes which

invariably besmirch any country's historical record.210

While Cannadine was not a TV historian, and had not attempted to build a public

profile, the other two conducted their discussions of curriculum content in the

press, often in conflict with each other, usually denigrating current teaching

(Ferguson calling it ‘junk history’ and Schama describing it as ‘absolutely dire’

and ‘a farce’211), and with empire as a polarising concern. Whatever curriculum

was subsequently prescribed would thus support of undermine one of their

positions, creating a ludicrously high-‐stakes academic feud. Gove ultimately

ended up appointing Schama to lead the discussions, dubbed the ‘history tsar’ by

the press.

In appointing Ferguson and Schama, Gove signalled that his primary motivation

in developing the history curriculum was political. He chose the most high

profile historians, in a public way, and allowed them to play their discussion out

in public, not concerned with professional good practice or the involvement of

the educational establishment. Gove traded on the profile of Ferguson and

Schama to burnish his reputation as a resolute, active resurrector of traditional

values, ‘proper’ teaching and national glory.

210 Quoted in Guyver, Robert. “The role of government in determining the school history curriculum: lessons from Australia.” History and Policy (London), 14 April 2011 http://www.historyandpolicy.org/papers/policy-‐paper-‐120.html last accessed, September 2, 2013 211 Haydn, Terry. "History in Schools and the Problem of “The Nation”." Education Sciences 2.4 (2012): p277

The 2013 Draft Curriculum

When Gove leaked the draft curriculum (topics included ‘Britain and her

Empire’ 212 ) in January 2013, Milne, in the Guardian, attacked Gove as a

‘destructive ideologue’ and a ‘walking disaster-‐zone of chronic political

incompetence’.213 Particular attention was paid to the inclusion of ‘Clive of India’,

with the consequence that ‘Imperial barbarity is largely airbrushed out and

we're left with what the historian Richard Evans damns as "regression to the

patriotic myths of the Edwardian era"’. John Prescott, former Deputy Prime

Minister, wrote in The Mirror ‘from the Saxon invasion to the arrival of West

Indies immigrants on the Windrush, the UK has a rich and multi-‐coloured history

that should be celebrated.214

Where usually the Mail was the home of righteous indignation at the lack of a

cohesive ‘British’ narrative, this time it was The Mirror taking up the mantle,

lamenting that ‘Gove has taken his red pen and crossed out a host of icons from

the Victorian era’ including Isambard Kingdom Brunel, Florence Nightingale and

Queen Victoria herself, with shadow education spokesman Stephen Twigg

quoted as saying ‘We need to ensure children get the full facts about our past,

not some narrow view of history.’215

The rest of the press coverage focussed on two issues: the sheer amount of

prescribed events, facts and detail to be covered and the tone of the language

212 See appendix 1 213 Milne, Seumas. “Michael Gove is not just a bungler, he's a destructive ideologue.” The Guardian, (London) February 12, 2013 214 Prescott, John. “Michael Gove needs a history lesson.” Daily Mirror (London); January 5, 2013 215 Daily Mirror. (London) “We are not amused: Queen Victoria era "airbrushed from history lessons".” February 5, 2013

used, suggestive of a view of Britain’s past as purely celebratory and bombastic.

With one notable exception.

As the debates became increasingly bitter, and the tone shrill, The Guardian

opened up its pages to Niall Ferguson, defending Gove, saying ‘this national

curriculum isn't perfect, but it's a major improvement.’ Ferguson went on to

attack David Priestland and Richard Evans, saying ‘if you want a perfect

illustration of how depressingly narrow, resolutely insular and politicised

Oxbridge historians can be, read these two.’216

The response of academics was no less robust. Senior professors and leaders

from the British Academy, Royal Historical Society and the HA penned an

unprecedented open letter to the press asserting that the programme of study

was far too narrowly focussed on British history. Their main concern, however,

was the secretive and politicised way in which the draft was produced ‘without

any systematic consultation or public discussion with historians, teachers or the

wider public. The contrast with the practice of the Conservative government of

the late 1980s when it drafted the first national curriculum is striking.’217

While there were a couple of Black and ethnic minority British figures stated in

the curriculum Dan Lyndon-‐Cohen described the inclusion of figures such as

Seacole a ‘pyrrhic victory’ and tokenistic, suggesting that this was a ‘‘dramatic

reversal of the hard fought gains that were achieved in the 2007 national

216 Fergusson, Niall. "On the teaching of history, Michael Gove is right." The Guardian (London), February 15, 2013 217 D’Avray et al, 12 February 2013 http://www.theguardian.com/theobserver/2013/feb/16/history-‐curriculum-‐letters last accessed, 2 September, 2013

curriculum’.218 The focus on diversity had been removed, and the first reference

to black people in the curriculum was through the study of slavery, with no

context. The reference to Empire was written as ‘Britain and her Empire’ and in

the context of Gove’s overtures to Ferguson and his public disavowal of the need

for an apology for empire, it was clear that this emphasis contributed to a deep

sense of mistrust around the Education Secretary’s motives. Comparing Gove’s

draft to the 1991 curriculum, Sheldon notes that ‘Mr Gove's curriculum has none

of these subtleties’.219

On March 19th, one hundred professors and lecturers of education wrote a letter

to The Independent warning of the dangers of Gove’s proposed curriculum, that

is ‘consists of endless lists of spellings, facts and rules’ and that it ‘betrays a

serious distrust of teachers’. This position was reflective of the general mood of

many teachers, as seen on teaching website forum posts which were incredulous

at the prospect of teaching ‘concepts of nations and nationhood’ to six-‐year-‐olds

in the KS1 curriculum.220

Gove’s startling response in the Mail denounced a majority of the body of his

profession in the press in the Mail article: ‘I refuse to surrender to the Marxist

teachers hell-‐bent on destroying our schools’. 221 In McCarthyist tones he

218 Lyndon-‐Cohen, Dan. “A Response to the Proposed National Curriculum in History.” February 24, 2013. History Workshop Online. http://www.historyworkshop.org.uk/nationalcurriculum/ last Accessed: August 12, 2013 219 Sheldon, Nichola. “Back to the past for the school history curriculum”. History and Policy (London) February 2013. http://www.historyandpolicy.org/opinion/opinion_105.html last accessed September 2, 2013 220 Journal of Victorian Culture Online: Why Too Much History is Bad History: The Proposed History Curriculum -‐ Lucinda Matthews-‐Jones. February 22, 2013 – comments http://myblogs.informa.com/jvc/2013/02/22/why-‐too-‐much-‐history-‐is-‐bad-‐history-‐the-‐proposed-‐history-‐curriculum/#comment-‐2183 -‐ accessed September 10th, 2013 221 Gove, Michael. “I refuse to surrender to the Marxist teachers hell-‐bent on destroying our schools.” The Daily Mail (London) 23 March 2013

described teachers as ‘militants’, ‘guilty men and women’ who ‘deprived a

generation’, ‘work by stealth’, and ‘drew gifted young teachers away from their

vocation and instead directed them towards ideologically driven theory’, calling

them Marxists, living on a red planet.222

Confrontation between Gove and teachers reached fever pitch when union after

union declared no confidence in the Secretary of State, including the ordinarily

moderate ATL, whose members made comments such as ‘no teacher with a

shred of integrity will teach history with a political bias in the classroom’ and

that ‘getting 100 [academics] to sign up to a letter against you takes a special

kind of talent.’ 223 When Gove stepped up to the lectern at the National

Association of Head Teachers’ conference in May, not only did he suffer another

vote of no confidence, but he was booed and heckled by the normally restrained

Head Teachers, forcing him to admit he was having ‘second thoughts’ about his

history review, and admitting that there would be changes.224 The NAHT is

‘hardly a hotbed of dissent’, noted the TES, adding that it is ‘a singular

achievement on the part of the minister to provoke a conference hall full of head

teachers to behave like rowdy fourth-‐formers’.225

222 Gove’s assertion that ‘survey after survey’ revealed ‘disturbing historical ignorance’ was subject to a Freedom of Information request which revealed that these surveys appeared to be from UKTV Gold, a cable TV channel, and Premier Inn, a hotel chain. The Telegraph castigated Gove for demanding rigour whilst showing no use of it himself. Holehouse, Matthew “Michael Gove wants greater rigour in schools” Telegraph Blogs. May 13, 2013. http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/matthewholehouse/100216557/michael-‐gove-‐wants-‐greater-‐rigour-‐in-‐schools-‐perhaps-‐he-‐should-‐stop-‐using-‐uktv-‐gold-‐for-‐his-‐statistics/ last accessed, September 2, 2013 223 Garner, Richard. ‘Jingoistic and illegal’ – what teachers think of Michael Gove's national curriculum reforms. The Independent. (London);12 June 2013 224 Daily Mirror. (London) “Michael Gove jeered and heckled by head teachers at hostile conference.” May 18, 2013 225 McQuillan, Martin. “Enemy of promise.” The Times HES (London), 13 June 2013

It became quickly apparent that whatever kind of process Schama, Ferguson,

Cannadine and Gove had attempted was a failure, with Schama distancing

himself from Gove’s curriculum draft, saying at the Hay festival that it was

‘insulting’ and too focussed on ‘how Britain influenced the world’. ‘History is not

about self-‐congratulation’, Schama said, it’s ‘meant to keep the powerful awake

at night and keep them honest’.226 He suggested that none of the assembled

teachers and historians ‘should sign up to it until we trap Michael Gove in a

classroom and tell him to get on with it.’227

More than 100 history teachers sent a letter to the Independent stating that they

considered the draft curriculum illegal on the grounds that it breached the

government’s duty to void ‘partisan political views in the teaching of any subject

in the school.’228 They particularly disliked the ‘jingoistic’ way in which Gove and

Cameron approached history, talking of ‘our island story in all its glory’ and

portraying Britain as a ‘beacon of liberty for other to emulate’. Sameer Rahim,

writing in The Telegraph, requested that ‘empire itself is still given ample space’,

suggesting that in discussion of the mixed fortunes of former colonies, including

America, India and the Middle East, empire would provide great insight, and

recognising that ‘the places in the world where the empire has left its imprint

are in little danger of forgetting the past – they are still living it.229

226 Furness, Hannah. “Hay Festival 2013: Don’t sign up to Gove’s insulting curriculum, Schama urges.” The Daily Telegraph (London); 31 May 2013 227 Ellis, Mark. “Michael Gove’s new history curriculum is ‘insulting and offensive, blasts SImon Schama” The Daily Mirror (London); May 31, 2013 228 Garner, Richard. “‘Jingoistic and illegal’ – what teachers think of Michael Gove's national curriculum reforms.” The Independent. (London); June 12, 2013 229 Rahim, Sameer. “Simon Schama on Michael Gove.” The Telegraph (London); July 2, 2013

The 2013 Final Curriculum

In July 2013 a new curriculum was published, including the following topics:

• ideas, political power, industry and empire: Britain, 1745-‐1901;

• challenges for Britain, Europe and the wider world 1901 to the present day

• ‘Clive of India’ was removed before the final version

In the Guardian, Richard Evans celebrated its lack of jingoism, making the point

that ‘propagating inaccurate myths about alleged British victories is no way to

create a solid national identity’, and that national identity is not something the

government should be attempting to control.230 He posed the question:

We also have to ask what kind of national identity we want. Do we want

a narrow, partisan, isolationist national identity where foreigners and

immigrants are regarded with hostility or suspicion, other countries

treated as inferior, and triumphalist historical myths are drummed into

our children?

In a paper for History and Policy, Guyver noted that Gove achieved his aim of

tightening the chronology of the KS3 curriculum, but had to make considerable

adjustments in that process, wisely taking the considerations of professional

bodies, academics and teachers into account.231

230 Evans, Richard J., 'Michael Gove's history wars', The Guardian (London) 13 July 2013 231 Gu Guyver, Robert. Mr Gove's new history curriculum: top marks or could do better? History and Policy. July 2013 http://www.historyandpolicy.org/opinion/opinion_121.html last accessed, September 2, 2013

The Mail, on the other hand, focussed exclusively on the fact that Winston

Churchill had been restored to the curriculum ‘as schools are told to teach

history properly’, and ‘ordered to teach children about Britain’s history’,

ignoring and misrepresenting the real educational and political implications of

the chastening U-‐turn Gove was forced to make.232 This supports my assertion

that though Gove may have made many changes, he achieved his aim, making a

claim to be rightful leader of the right of the Conservative party, an ideological

purist. Indeed, after Gove had been denounced so strongly by the unions and

professional bodies, Melanie Phillips, in the Mail, wrote that ‘more than any

government minister in recent memory, Mr Gove has grasped the point about

Britain’s truly dire and terrifying educational decline’.233 Being denounced by the

left-‐wing is a badge of honour for someone of Gove’s politics. Phillips described a

‘pernicious culture of low expectations and ideological fads’, named the ‘obvious’

role of education as the ‘transmission of knowledge’, and lamented ‘watching the

progressive dismantling of the story of Britain — which was all of a piece with

dismantling the very identity of Britain through mass immigration’. Gove, by

allowing the issue to become so polarised and entrenched, reaffirmed his values

and made the debate about him. Had he allowed teachers, academics and civil

servants to direct the curricular change, this opportunity would have eluded

Journalists or professionals did not miss that this debate was more about politics

than education. The Mail reported in 2009234 that MPs were calling for ministers

to be stripped of power over the curriculum, and the Independent queried

232 Shipman, Tim. “Lessons on Churchill: Winston back on the curriculum as schools are told to teach history properly.” The Daily Mail (London); 6 July 233 Phillips, Melanie. “The more abuse Mr. Gove gets from the teachers, the more you know he's right”. The Daily Mail. (London) 20 May 2013 234 Clark, Laura. “Ministers should be stripped of their powers to set national curriculum, say MPs.” The Daily Mail (London); 2 April 2009

Gove’s dismantling of the QCDA, asking ‘who will decide the curriculum now?’.235

School Leadership Today made a strong case for curriculum control to be taken

out of the politicians’ hands.236

The move to abandon the proposed new curriculum by the coalition

government is synonymous of the very problem that lies at the heart of

our education system….the education of our children is far too precious

to leave to the inclinations and yo-‐yoing of entrenched political

positioning….would it not be better if education policy in this country

was entrusted to an independent board of the most highly respected

professors, researchers, head teachers and teachers?

New Research

Since the NC was announced, Politicians, journalists and most of the public have

assumed that students’ attitudes and identities are heavily influenced by the

content and pedagogy of history teaching in schools. When students were asked

about their perceptions on the purpose of learning about history in school,

Haydn and Harris note that ‘there were very few comments which mentioned

‘patriotism’ or suggested that history might contribute to pride in being British

or loyalty to the state.’237 Grever, Haydn and Ribbens also note that students

express strong support for learning about the ‘dark pages’ of the past, ‘warts and

all’ over a sanitised or heroic version, seeing the Slave Trade as an example of

235 Smithers, Alan. 'So, who will decide on the curriculum now?' The Independent (London); 3 June 2010 236 White, Gavin. “Can Political Interference Ever End?” School Leadership Today (London) December 23, 2011 237 Haydn, Terry, and Richard Harris. "Pupil perspectives on the purposes and benefits of studying history in high school: a view from the UK." Journal of Curriculum Studies 42.2 (2010): 252

this.238 Fewer than half of the students they surveyed thought that ‘a common

history creates mutual bonds’, falling to just over a third in groups of ethnic

minority students. 239

There is evidence (240,241,242) from all of these studies that students from ethnic

minority backgrounds express their identities as hyphenated, and while the

expression of these identities varies a lot, they are frequently national for

indigenous students and religious for those with family from the Indian sub-‐

continent.243 Grever et al warn against imposing a canonical national history on

students, that they are not tabula rasa, and that ‘they may be resistant or

indifferent to crude attempts at socialisation, which may even be

counterproductive.’244

‘...the idea that the imposition of a national school history ‘canon’ will

necessarily improve social cohesion is an unproved or even unexamined

assumption. Grever warns of the ‘instrumentalisation of the past in the

service of national ideology.’245

The polarising politics of curriculum change is problematic when applied to

school history. Hawkey and Prior note that the tendency to see ‘history in binary

terms of heroes and victims or villains resonates with Egan’s (1997) ideas about

238 Grever, Maria, Terry Haydn, and Kees Ribbens. "Identity and school history: The perspective of young people from the Netherlands and England." British Journal of Educational Studies 56.1 (2008): p84 239 Grever et al, "Identity and school history”, p85 240 Haydn and Harris. "Pupil perspectives” 241 Grever et al, "Identity and school history”, p84 242 Hawkey, Kate, and Jayne Prior. "History, memory cultures and meaning in the classroom." Journal of Curriculum Studies 43.2 (2011): 231-‐247. 243 Grever et al, "Identity and school history”, p89 244 Grever et al, "Identity and school history”, p91 245 Grever et al, "Identity and school history”, p91

how adolescents’ thinking develops as well as popular teachers’ pedagogical

‘heroes and villains’ approaches when teaching interpretation in history.’246

There has been an implicit assumption throughout these debates that

adolescents’ identities are formed and reliable, and that they respond to the

teaching of history in a rational, deductive way. This ignores many of the

theories of developmental psychology written since the late 1960s by such

authors as James E. Marcia. In the adolescent years, students often form their

identities through resistance to accepted social norms, what Marcia calls

‘negative identity’, and they are frequently in a state of ‘identity diffusion’.247

Many of their fundamental identities, political, gender, sexuality, are in a state of

flux during these years. The expectation that identity formation happens in

adolescents on a predictable and rational path is absurd, and building a history

curriculum around such an assertion is not only foolhardy, it is potentially

counter-‐productive and destructive. As Grever et al note, ‘in their zeal to use

school history for some civic purpose, politicians and policymakers might end up

with less rather than more.’248

Taylor and Collins question the assumption of a marked social impact associated

with history education, saying there is no evidence for this. In their studies of

three western democracies, they find no evidence that bouts of social disorder

have any relation to the teaching of history, indeed ‘research findings appear to

show that the impact of history education, whether traditionalist or progressive,

246 Hawkey and Prior. "History, memory cultures and meaning in the classroom.” 247 Marcia, James, E. “Development and validation of ego identity status,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 3. (1966) pp. 551-‐558. 248 Grever et al, "Identity and school history”, p91

is not lasting and is not directly linked to social action.’249 With specific reference

to the wish to teach ‘traditional’ history, they suggest that in

…. history education and its contexts in the late 1960s and 1970s …

history was still largely taught as a series of static canonical narratives

but the level of socially disruptive contentious politics in the society at

large was high. That being the case, our contention is that there is very

little point in policy-‐makers continuing to propose politically engineered

revisions of history education as an antidote to civil discord without

further evidence-‐based and detailed understanding of how history

education actually functions as a social and political agent in modern,

multicultural societies.250

Conclusion

In the quarter of a century of the National Curriculum a consistent assumption

has been that history classes are a primary place for developing a national

identity in students. This position is incompatible with fundamental historical

practices, as contesting a proud national history necessarily involves researching

the more shameful parts. ‘If history was uncontested, it would fail to provide the

materials for critical debate on the social issues of the day’ (Tosh)251 Fair play,

freedom and democracy are not the fundamental hallmarks of Empire.

249 Taylor, Tony, and Sue Collins. "Behind the Battle Lines of History as Politics: An International and Intergenerational Methodology for Testing the Social Identity Thesis of History Education." Education Sciences 2.4 (2012): p210 250 Taylor and Collins, “Behind the Battle Lines of History as Politics.” p215 251 Tosh, John. The pursuit of history: Aims, methods, and new directions in the study of modern history. (Pearson Education, 2002) p200

Children could be proud of a country unashamed to shine a light on less glorious

chapters of its past, one which does not write ethnic minorities out of its history,

something Britain has not had the confidence to try.

Under each government of this period, politicians’ attempts to change teaching

practice have been doomed from the outset, as the professional practice of

teaching history has a philosophy and developmental trajectory of its own,

outside their control. Cannadine and Sheldon also find evidence that teachers

avoid difficult or politicised parts of the curriculum. The curriculum itself has

always ended up being centrist and moderate, something with which teachers

are comfortable. In addition, there is recent evidence suggesting that the claims

that history affects social cohesion have been vastly overblown, and more

research is needed in this area.

Another touchstone of the debate is the assertion that history teaching is in

crisis, with frequent claims that students do not know their own national history,

something Cannadine et al address by recalling that “at the tenth annual meeting

of the Historical Association, held in London in January 1916, Miss Spalding

noted that there was ‘a grave tendency amongst grown up people to be shocked

that children did not know all that the grown ups thought they ought to know’,

and little has changed in the intervening decades.”252

Politicians’ attempts to control the curriculum have consistently been more

about political posturing than educational practice (sound or otherwise), more

so in history than any other subject, as seen particularly clearly through the very

public political machinations of Michael Gove.

252 Cannadine et al. The Right Kind of History, p228

What has changed is the place in the debate for the British Empire. It was a

subject barely mentioned twenty-‐five years ago, now the axis around which

most other KS3 changes are debated. As the debate has become increasingly

polarised, it has served as the primary social forum for discussions about

empire, a lightning rod for a previously elusive debate.

While the prospect of leaving the liminal space Empire has left are remote, at

least in these debates we see more frequently the stranded ghosts of Britain’s

‘unmourned’ empire.

Appendix 1 – National Curricula The National Curriculum for History March 1991 • The Roman Empire; • Medieval Realms: Britain 1066-‐1500; • The Making of the United Kingdom: Crowns, Parliaments and Peoples 1500-‐

1750; • Expansion, Trade and Industry: Britain 1750-‐1900; • The Era of the Second World War Supplementary unit suggestions included, • The British Empire and its impact in late 19thC, Source: DES History in the National Curriculum (England) (HMSO, March 1991) summarized at http://www.history.ac.uk/history-‐in-‐education/browse/other-‐data last accessed September 2, 2013 The National Curriculum for History 1995 (Dearing Review) • Medieval Realms: Britain 1066-‐1500; • The Making of the United Kingdom: Crowns, Parliaments and Peoples 1500-‐

1750; • Britain 1750-‐ circa 1900; • The Twentieth-‐century World; • An era or turning point in European History (e.g. the Crusades, the French

Revolution); • A past non-‐European society (e.g. Imperial China, India under the Mughal

Empire; • indigenous peoples of North America; Black peoples of the Americas 16th-‐

early 20thC). Source: DfES History in the National Curriculum: England (HMSO, 1995) summarized at http://www.history.ac.uk/history-‐in-‐education/browse/other-‐data last accessed September 2, 2013 The National Curriculum for History 1999 • Britain 1066-‐1500; • Britain 1500-‐1750; • Britain 1750-‐1900; • A European study before 1914 (a significant period or event); • A world study before 1900 (a study of cultures, beliefs and achievements of

an African, American, Asian or Australasian society); • A world study after 1900 (twentieth-‐century world, including the two World

Wars) Source: DfES/QCA History: The National Curriculum for England (HMSO, 1999) summarized at http://www.history.ac.uk/history-‐in-‐education/browse/other-‐data last accessed September 2, 2013

The 2007 National Curriculum for History Revision to Key Stage 3 • British History: The development of political power from the Middle Ages to

the twentieth century; • the different histories and changing relationships of the peoples of England,

Ireland, Scotland and Wales; • The impact of the movement and settlement to, from and within the British

Isles; • Changes in lives, beliefs, ideas and attitudes of people in Britain and factors

which have driven changes (e.g. technology, economic development, war, religion and culture)

• Trade, colonisation, industrialisation and technology, the British Empire and its impact in Britain and overseas, the slave trade, resistance and decolonisation.

• European and World History: The impact of significant political, social , cultural, religious, technological and/or economic developments and events on past European and world societies;

• The changing nature of conflict and cooperation between countries and peoples and its lasting impact on national, ethnic, racial, cultural and religious issues, including the two world wars and the Holocaust and the role of European and international institutions in resolving conflicts.

Source: QCA History: Programme of study for key stage 3 and attainment target (HMSO, 2007) summarized at http://www.history.ac.uk/history-‐in-‐education/browse/other-‐data last accessed September 2, 2013 The February 2013 Draft National Curriculum for History for Key Stage 3* *This list is unedited as none of the extension units were listed as optional, therefore this would have been the mandatory curriculum The development of the modern nation • Britain and her Empire, including:

o Wolfe and the conquest of Canada o Clive of India o competition with France and the Jacobite rebellion o the American Revolution

• the Enlightenment in England, including Francis Bacon, John Locke, Christopher Wren, Isaac Newton, the Royal Society, Adam Smith and the impact of European thinkers

• the struggle for power in Europe, including: o the French Revolution and the Rights of Man o the Napoleonic Wars, Nelson, Wellington and Pitt o the Congress of Vienna

• the struggle for power in Britain, including: o the Six Acts and Peterloo through to Catholic Emancipation o the slave trade and the abolition of slavery, the role of Olaudah

Equiano and free slaves o the Great Reform Act and the Chartists

• the High Victorian era, including:

o Gladstone and Disraeli o the Second and Third Reform Acts o the battle for Home Rule o Chamberlain and Salisbury

• the development of a modern economy, including: o iron, coal and steam o the growth of the railways o great innovators such as Watt, Stephenson and Brunel o the abolition of the Corn Laws o the growth and industrialisation of cities o the Factory Acts o the Great Exhibition and global trade o social conditions o the Tolpuddle Martyrs and the birth of trade unionism

• Britain's global impact in the 19th century, including: o war in the Crimea and the Eastern Question o gunboat diplomacy and the growth of Empire o the Indian Mutiny and the Great Game o the scramble for Africa o the Boer Wars

• Britain's social and cultural development during the Victorian era, including: o the changing role of women, including figures such as Florence

Nightingale, Mary Seacole, George Eliot and Annie Besant o the impact of mass literacy and the Elementary Education Act.

The twentieth century • Britain transformed, including:

o the Rowntree Report and the birth of the modern welfare state o ‘Peers versus the People’ o Home Rule for Ireland o the suffragette movement and women's emancipation

• the First World War, including: o causes such as colonial rivalry, naval expansion and European

alliances o key events o conscription o trench warfare o Lloyd George's coalition o the Russian Revolution o The Armistice o the peace of Versailles

• the 1920s and 1930s, including: o the first Labour Government o universal suffrage o the Great Depression o the abdication of Edward VIII and constitutional crisis

• the Second World War, including: o causes such as appeasement, the failure of the League of Nations and

the rise of the Dictators o the global reach of the war – from Arctic Convoys to the Pacific

Campaign o the roles of Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin

o Nazi atrocities in occupied Europe and the unique evil of the Holocaust

• Britain’s retreat from Empire, including: o independence for India and the Wind of Change in Africa

• the independence generation – Gandhi, Nehru, Jinnah, Kenyatta, Nkrumah • the Cold War and the impact of Communism on Europe • the Attlee Government and the growth of the welfare state • the Windrush generation, wider new Commonwealth immigration, and the

arrival of East African Asians • society and social reform, including the abolition of capital punishment, the

legalisation of abortion and homosexuality, and the Race Relations Act • economic change and crisis, the end of the post-‐war consensus, and

governments up to and including the election of Margaret Thatcher • Britain’s relations with Europe, the Commonwealth, and the wider world • the end of the Cold War and the fall of the Berlin Wall. Source: The National Curriculum in England, Framework document for consultation. KS3 History. (Department for Education, London, February 2013) The July 2013 National Curriculum for History Key Stage 3 • the development of Church, state and society in Medieval Britain 1066-‐1509 • the development of Church, state and society in Britain 1509-‐1745 • ideas, political power, industry and empire: Britain, 1745-‐1901 • challenges for Britain, Europe and the wider world 1901 to the present day

(including a study of the Holocaust) • a local history study • the study of an aspect or theme in British history that consolidates and

extends pupils’ chronological knowledge from before 1066 • at least one study of a significant society or issue in world history and its

interconnections with other world developments Source: National curriculum in England. History programmes of study: key stage 3. (Department for Education, London, February 2013)

Appendix 2

Michael Gove, DNA and the British*

*This is an expansion of an argument in the essay. I consider it supplemental. While it doesn’t add anything to the direction or weight of my argument, I consider it interesting, so am including it. In 1999 Michael Gove reviewed a Norman Davies book, The Isles: A History, and manages to completely misrepresent the thrust of Davies’s argument.253 Gove first acknowledges the dysphoria around identity, noting that ‘there is little sense that the United Kingdom is, any longer, a nation at ease with itself’, but sees in the book reasons to be ‘impressed by the durability of British difference.’ The story he chooses to use to support this assertion went as follows:

The Canyon Cave Man was discovered in 1903 and his rest was further disturbed in 1996 when his bones were subjected to DNA testing. As The Times reported, "to the astonishment of the scientists, a close match was found between Cheddar Man and a 42-‐year-‐old history teacher at the King Of Wessex Community School in Cheddar Village". This was no accident of history. As Davies points out: 'The old idea that Britain's island race was the sum total of numerous massive invasions, from the Mesolithic relations of Cheddar Man to the Celts, Romans, Saxons, Vikings, Normans and Angevins who all but obliterated their prehistoric invaders has been under attack for many years. It is now virtually untenable."…The family history of the "island race” is a story of continuity. In his closing chapter, Davies quotes from a pamphlet by the Commission for Racial Equality that declares, "most people in Britain today are either immigrants or the descendants of immigrants". It is hard, after reading Davies, not to associate the freedoms we enjoy with the establishment of a secure British identity. And it is reassuring to recognise that our identity’s security springs from its durability, that our face in the mirror, and Burford's on the front page, is the portrait of our past.

Gove’s gift to his reader, the possibility being a member of a territorially-‐bound, ethnic, archaic ancestry, is dependent on the face reflected in the mirror looking like ‘us’ (being white). If that one precondition isn’t met, then presumably the reader is not entitled to a ‘secure British identity’ or the freedoms that go with it? His idea of Britishness is entirely rooted in race. He bases his argument on a number of dubious genetic leaps of faith. Firstly he is basing his argument on the DNA of just one man. Presumably the scientists took more samples, but only one was a close match? He also expounds the ‘British’ identity out of thin air. His argument could just as easily be used to defend a strong Cheddar Gorge identity from those across the Severn Estuary in Newport or an English identity against a

253 Gove, Michael. “Who are the British?” The Times (London) October 28, 1999;

British one. Not only are the (white) British ‘different’, but that is an impressive feature. While there is support for the idea that each single previous wave of immigration has contributed less than 5% of the DNA in the gene pool, the combination of these must at least present a difficulty when arguing for. 254 This conservative argument for assimilation is also felled by a reading of the things considered to be ‘British history’ in a traditional reading of the term. The Norman Conquest is not a break with our ‘unbroken history’, just as we are comfortable calling the Viking invasions and the Roman conquest British history. It seems that what we are not happy calling ‘British’ is the immigration of colonial subjects in the post-‐war period; this is a group needing a re-‐orientation on what it is to be British. This period of immigration is by far the most pronounced in the history of Britain, with 16.2% of the population in 2010 being either first-‐generation immigrant of their descendants.255 Not only did many of these immigrants feel British, or a close bond with Britain before they came, something doubtful for the Romans, Vikings or Normans, but they came in quantities sure to affect the nature of our national historical consciousness determining identity. These are all strong arguments that the history of Empire and post-‐colonialism is the history of Britain.

254 Wade, Nicholas. "A united kingdom? maybe." New York Times (2007), March 6, 2007 255 http://www.migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/briefings/immigration-‐population-‐and-‐ethnicity-‐uk-‐international-‐perspective 17th April 2013 last accessed September 3, 2013

Appendix 3 Michael Gove and empathy Michael Gove has been one of the right-‐wing commentators who has ridiculed the use of empathy as a valid historical tool in class. Michael Gove, 2005:

After a period when history has been taught with an emphasis on empathy. ideology and a narrow focus on isolated periods, it is refreshing to plunge back into the great sweep of a nation's entire story.256

Here is an article written by Gove in 1998 that seems to make very good use of empathy to understand the social ethnic marginalization when he saw Scottish secession as a probability.

It was during the 1996 European Championships that the red bars of the flag of St George emerged from the protective embrace of the Union Jack to flutter from a thousand cabs. Seeing its stark colours made me feel much as I imagine the Saracens did when they saw it on Crusaders' breasts. Scared. Like a Russian soldier left behind in Central Asia after the collapse of the Soviet Union, I saw myself as an alien. When I first saw the English flag painted on a fan's face, I knew it was the marking of a tribe of which I could never be part. Instinctively, I regretted this; I felt it was supplanting a British identity which was tolerant. plural and rooted in shared institutions. I detected a raucous, exclusive and ethnic tinge to this new nationalism I thought our shared island story in Britain was a seductive narrative. Valour and compassion, the Few and the National Health Service, were values and episodes woven into the fabric of a Union Jack….I pray that the English nationalism of my Tory friends will be stilled by an appeal to shared traditions.257

256 Gove, Michael. The Empire strikes back. The Times (London); February 05, 2005. 257 Gove, Michael. “The English are right: let Scotland go.” The Times (London), June 30, 1998

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The ghosts of an unmourned empire: a history and analysis of the place of the British Empire in the...

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