Britain’s relationship with history “is unfit for its own sake” .
David Olusoga, the writer and announcer, told school leaders that Britain often saw its history as “recreational … a place to go for comfort, a place to make ourselves feel good about ourselves.” “, which leads to ignorance about the history of his empire, and to immigration scandals like Windrush.
“We are becoming, perhaps we are, a nation for which the history we have and the relationship with the prevailing history is not appropriate for its purpose,” Olusoga told the Birmingham conference.
“If the story is a soft play area, there is no place for stories to tell how we all came to these islands together, because these stories cannot be enjoyed only as recreation, they cannot always be heroic.
“And so for decades, we’ve been in the habit of not including these stories, and we do it so well that we don’t even realize the trick that’s being done. It’s like a completely perfected conjuring trick, so no one can see the hand game.
“We are comfortable with the history of abolition, but we are not comfortable with the two and a half century history of the slave trade that abolition required. We are comfortable talking about Indian railways, but much less comfortable talking about the famines … which also took place in this same country “.
Olusoga said the Interior Ministry’s failed attempts during the Windrush affair showed “the active damage that ignorance of history can do.”
“The people of the Home Office were being judged on the status of people whose stories they did not understand. They did not understand that the people of Jamaica were from an island that was part of the English empire. and Britain since 1655, when it was invaded by Oliver Cromwell, “he said at a conference of school leaders in Birmingham.
“Therefore, knowing this story is not only beneficial for everyone, but it is actively and demonstrably harming our society when people operate without knowing this story.”
Olusoga said it was a failure for the history that was taught in the school in the 1980s, when he grew up in Gateshead and suffered at the hands of racist thugs who attended the same schools and were taught the same stories as him. .
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Although he learned in great detail about Lancashire’s cotton mills, Olusoga said he was not taught “where the cotton came from, nor that the cotton was produced by 1.8 million African Americans who lived and went to die chained, in bondage. “
“I am saddened to learn that there are still children in the classrooms who are being taught the dishonest version of the Industrial Revolution that does not include the lives and suffering of these 1.8 million African Americans,” he said. annual conference of the Confederation of School Boards.
But Olusoga said the interest in historical issues and injustices unleashed by the Black Lives Matter movement was not a “political fad” or a passing controversy.
“It is based on profound generational and attitudinal changes. This will not go away. When I talk to my students, these opinions, these positions, these priorities, are not postures. They are who they are. “