Civitas Blog

When he comes to spell out how the heritage sector must respond to become part of the solution, the Minister does so by explaining how his proposals differ from how Civitas would wish to address the problem. Civitas would favour all British school-children being encouraged to immerse themselves in the wonderful common national heritage they and their families have been fortunate enough to have been able to acquire through being allowed what they should consider the privilege of British citizenship, by reading, for example, such marvellously edifying and entertaining narrative histories of this country such as Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall’s ‘Our Island Story’.

We believe that, were all British schoolchildren, no matter their race, religion or colour, exposed from an early age to such literature, they would be brought to identify with their compatriots. As a result, they would never dream of engaging in indiscriminate acts of terror against them, no matter how disaffected they might become with the policies of the government or passive public support for them.

That is quite the opposite way in which Lammy should like the heritage sector to respond. Essentially, he considers Civitas’ approach insufficiently inclusive. It fails, in his eyes, to do enough to cater to the special needs arising from the distinct identities of the relative newcomers to these shores from faraway places and cultures. Because the newcomers have come from so many different places, thinks the Minister, there is no longer any single narrative history that can, or should be thought able to, do justice to their diversity or provide them with a common identity.

Instead, the Minister proposes , ‘Our Island Story needs to become Our Island’s Stories’. By this, he goes on to explain, he means that the heritage industry, as well as schools, should seek to acquaint young British citizens with the recent histories of all the different countries from which they and their families have all variously come.

So far as the heritage sector is concerned , this means it should pay less attention and devote fewer resources to exhibitions dealing with British history and culture and should start to pay more attention and allocate more resources to exhibitions about other countries and cultures with which some citizens have special connections by way of origin.

According to the Minister, the Heritage Lottery Fund has begun to respond to the challenge in the desired way by such things as ‘funding community groups to explore their heritage and to share it with others… Giving the new groups of people ... the tools to explore their recent past. Giving them the opportunity to build their own mini-archives, giving them the confidence to value and present their own history…. that will then sit alongside the great municipal histories of the[ir] cit[ies].’

Why, you might well wonder, is any of this needed or even likely to reduce the deep alienation that lay behind the suicide bombers and those who sympathise with and feel like them?

The Minister’s answer comes at the end of his speech. It runs like this:

‘People from different backgrounds cannot integrate unless they have some sense of where each other is coming from, and they cannot acquire that unless they live in a society in which preparation for citizenship includes learning about the cultures and histories of others.’

All this is arrant nonsense. The USA has been a society with traditionally high levels of immigration from all over the world. Until recently when political correctness muddied the waters, they were all able to succeed admirably in integrating without their need to learn much, if anything, about each other, by being made to learn, and typically being eager to learn, the American way and to become American citizens.

One significant difference between the USA and the UK, on which our Minister of Culture would do well to dwell, is the fact that, whereas the jihadi terrorists who flew into the New York Trade Towers were not US citizens, let alone born and bred there, all being Saudis to a man, the four July 7th suicide bombers were home-grown British citizens, albeit ones without deep roots here. They were furthermore united by a common factor other than their ethnicity which they did not as a matter of fact share with each other. On which scenario would they have been less likely to have become suicide bombers: having read, or been read, ‘Our Island Story’ when young children, or having been encouraged to celebrate their difference from their compatriots in the manner Lammy advocates? I wonder.