The changing face of Britain
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On Radio 4’s Broadcasting House on 3 November there was an interesting discussion about the decline of Guy Fawke’s Day, one of the traditional highlights of Autumn, and how this has coincided with the rise of an American cultural import, Hallowe’en. Apparently local councils have cut back on public fireworks displays to celebrate November 5th, but when I was out and about on Hallowe’en I noticed how many people, nearly all under 30, were dressed up for Hallowe’en. There were two main groups: small children trick or treating, and teenagers and people in their 20s wearing garish makeup and revealing clothing, with not a bucket of sweets in sight.
This was symptomatic of one of the biggest changes transforming modern Britain in recent years. We are fast losing touch with the traditions and images of Britain, many going back centuries. Looking around the Tube and people at an All Souls’ Choral Evensong at a local church in South-West London, I noticed how few people were wearing Poppies to mark Remembrance Day. Nearly all were over 60. None were under 30. The two World Wars seem to be receding in our national memory. The regular spraying of vile graffiti on the Cenotaph, again nearly always by young people, is a regular feature of life in the capital today.
When Jeremy Corbyn was Labour leader, his Shadow Cabinet – lest we forget — included Keir Starmer, Lucy Powell, Angela Rayner and John Healey, among others, all now in Sir Keir Starmer’s Cabinet. As the 2019 election approached, Corbyn spoke of how he always watched the Queen’s Speech on Christmas Day — but unfortunately got the time completely wrong. Needless to say, Corbynistas in their 20s didn’t spot the error and if they had they wouldn’t have cared. Again, if you were over 60, you would certainly have noticed, because the Queen’s (now King’s) Speech was for decades a key part of Christmas and anyone of a certain age would have known exactly what time it was broadcast live.
The 19th century Christian hymn “Abide with Me” was sung before the FA Cup Final every year from 1927, led by a famous performer of the time, but in recent years has become less resonant. It is no coincidence that the Last Night of the Proms has become more controversial in recent years. For a long time, it was a fixed part of the music calendar, with popular classics followed by a second half of British patriotic pieces, broadcast live on BBC Radio 3 and BBC TV. There has been increasingly intense debate about whether “Rule Britannia” was still appropriate because of its references to slaves. Leonard Slatkin, chief conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra from 2000 to 2004, was the first of several conductors who wanted to tone down the nationalism of the Last Night.
Recently, there has been talk of changing CBEs, OBEs and MBEs from Empire to Excellence. This is part of taking the Empire out of British culture and history. These honours were founded by King George V during the First World War, at the high point of the British Empire. In 2004, almost a century later, a report entitled A Matter of Honour: Reforming Our Honours System by a Commons select committee recommended phasing out the Order of the British Empire, as its title was “now considered to be unacceptable, being thought to embody values that are no longer shared by many of the country’s population”. The committee further suggested changing the name of the award to the Order of British Excellence, and changing the rank of Commander to Companion (as the former was said to have a “militaristic ring”), as well as advocating the abolition of knighthoods and damehoods. The Blair government, however, decided that the argument for change had not been won, and the matter was dropped. But now twenty years later, it has been revived, in large part because of concern about anything to do with the notion of Empire. Now it will be left to the Starmer government to decide, so we can safely assume the changes will be made.
Meanwhile, Sir Keir Starmer caused some controversy by removing a number of portraits from prominent places in 10 Downing Street, including portraits of Margaret Thatcher, William Gladstone (presumably because of his associations with slavery), Sir Walter Raleigh and Elizabeth I. The last two were replaced by paintings by Dame Paula Rego, one of the great artists of recent years. Tory MPs and The Daily Mail were quick to accuse Starmer of having “a strange dislike of our history.”
The art historian Mark Stocker defended these changes: “Not only is it good for any collection to have its works rotated and rested, but portraits that stare at you, not least when they are found politically uncongenial, (Margaret far more than Bess), can and should make way for other works. The Anglo-Portuguese Paula Rego ranks with Lucian Freud and the younger Peter Doig as among Britain’s greatest recent painters.”
The historian Robert Tombs replied, ‘I have to admit that my artistic taste has not gone much beyond the 1850s.”
What all these changes have in common is a growing sense of indifference to once central parts of British national identity for four hundred years, from Elizabeth I and Guy Fawkes to the First World War and on to Margaret Thatcher. It is no coincidence that some of these are bound up with issues of Empire, war and conquest and a feeling widespread on the Left, and reviled by the Right, that we need to reinvent the British past, a feeling led by a younger generation of schoolteachers and British academic historians.
A reaction to this reinvention of British history has been led by a group of British historians in their 60s and 70s (that age again), led by Robert Tombs. Tombs is the editor of History Reclaimed, a website created by a “group of anti-woke scholars” that opposes what they claim to be censorship of historical texts in universities including Lawrence Goldman, Nigel Biggar, David Abulafia, Zareer Masani, Jeremy Black, and Lord (Andrew) Roberts.
There are two issues here. First, the History Wars, being fought over the identity and continuity of British history, and whether it needs to be reinvented or preserved. This has become increasingly politicised in recent years. History Reclaimed was founded in 2021, claiming, “History has become one of the major battlegrounds in the culture wars that are causing anger and alarm across the democratic world. They are particularly virulent in North America, Australasia and Britain.” Among the central “battlegrounds” are the history of slavery and the British Empire. And second, the growing sense that we are losing touch with once central parts of British history, particular dates and images from Guy Fawkes and poppies to the OBE and portraits of Gladstone and Raleigh, the history of British Kings, Queens, Explorers and Wars.
None of this explains why Hallowe’en should have overtaken Guy Fawkes as a key moment in the British Autumn, or why other annual events have emerged in recent years such as Red Nose Day (1986) and Holocaust Memorial Day, first held in January 2001. What these have in common is that they are all recent additions to the British calendar.
Given how contentious so many of these key dates or symbols have become, it is likely that Holocaust Memorial Day (HMD) will be more controversial than ever next January when people who hate Israel will call for a Gaza Memorial Day or will deface posters for HMD. And given how many ministers in Starmer’s government are keen on gesture politics, it is likely that there will be further controversies in the coming months.
But the larger question is: who will win the History and Culture Wars of which these are just symptoms? The losers, it seems, will be the Church of England and traditional versions of English (sic) History. But perhaps the election of Kemi Badenoch and the unpopularity of Sir Keir Starmer will suggest that our culture is moving in a different direction.
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