A Threat to Freedom of Expression That is Too Close for Comfort

 

On 22 September 2020 Oliver Dowden, the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, wrote to the British Film Institute, British Library, British Museum, Churches Conservation trust, Historic Royal Palaces, Horniman Museum, Imperial War Museum, Museum of the Home, National Archives, National Gallery, National Museums Liverpool, National Portrait Gallery, Natural History Museum, Royal Armouries, Royal Museums Greenwich, Royal Parks, Science Museum Group, Sir John Soane’s Museum, Tate Gallery, V&A Museum and Wallace Collection.

 

“RE: HM GOVERNMENT POSITION ON CONTESTED HERITAGE

 

You will recall my earlier letter setting out Government policy regarding contested heritage and the removal of historical objects.  I am grateful to those of you who have been in touch with me and my officials since.  This clearly remains a live issue, so I wanted to take the opportunity to provide further support by way of restating the Government’s position and inviting you to engage with DCMS on what this means in the context of your organisation.

 

Government Position

 

History is ridden with moral complexity. Statues and other historical objects were created by generations with different perspectives and understandings of right and wrong. Some represent figures who have said or done things which we may find deeply offensive and would not defend today.  But though we may now disagree with those who created them or who they represent, they play an important role in teaching us about our past, with all its faults.

 

It is for this reason that the Government does not support the removal of statues or other similar objects.  Historic England, as the Government’s adviser on the historic environment, have said that removing difficult and contentious parts of it risks harming our understanding of our collective past. Rather than erasing these objects, we should seek to contextualise or reinterpret them in a way that enables the public to learn about them in their entirety, however challenging this may be. Our aim should be to use them to educate people about all aspects of Britain’s complex past, both good and bad.

 

As set out in your Management Agreements, I would expect Arm’s Length Bodies’ approach to issues of contested heritage to be consistent with the Government’s position.  Further, as publicly funded bodies, you should not be taking actions motivated by

activism or politics.  The significant support that you receive from the taxpayer is an acknowledgement of the important cultural role you play for the entire country.  It is imperative that you continue to act impartially, in line with your publicly funded status, and not in a way that brings this into question. This is especially important as we enter a challenging Comprehensive Spending Review, in which all government spending will rightly be scrutinised.

 

Next Steps

 

I recognise that this is a difficult subject, and one that can attract a great deal of intense feeling - from a variety of perspectives - among employees of your organisations, stakeholders and the public at large.  We want to help.  As such, I will shortly be inviting you to an online roundtable, which will provide an opportunity for an open discussion about the government position, the practical implications in your context, and how we can best collaborate going forward.

 

In the meantime, DCMS would like to develop a more complete understanding of the work you are undertaking, or considering, in this space.  To that end, your Sponsors will be in touch with a short questionnaire designed to help inform our overview of this policy issue.  This is in addition to the existing request that you continue to notify the department in advance of any actions or public statements in relation to contested heritage or histories.

 

Thank you once again for your engagement on this important matter; I look forward to hearing from you.”

 

The government has chosen to portray to campaigns to remove statues of figures who can be judged by contemporary standards to have been in some ways reprehensible: perhaps involvement in slavery, having racist views, carrying out acts of violence against subjects of the British Empire. Now, I would not advocate removal of a statue simply because the person whom it commemorates does not match certain standards of behaviour or views. However, with the exception of one statue of a slaver in Bristol which was removed by force, and a few demonstrations during which some statues were daubed with graffiti (graffiti on a statue of Winston Churchill caused the loudest outrage), there has been little concrete action.

 

However, statues of Winston Churchill or Admiral Nelson, are convenient symbols that enabled the government to claim to defend the true heritage of our nation against rampaging mobs of criminals. This fits very nicely into the Brexit narrative of defending our sovereignty against foreign interference, defending our borders against the threat of foreign refugees and asylum seekers, creating a “hostile environment” for illegal (and frequently perfectly legal) immigrants and so on. Boris Johnson may not be a mini Donald Trump, but he stops only an inch or two short of claiming to Make Britain Great Again.

 

But are we to accept that our government can tell public museums how they may and may not portray our history, as if we live not in a democracy, but in a country whose government determines what versions of history we are allowed to receive? As a former publisher, I recognize this for what it is: government censorship. I never had to consider whether a government minister would approve the thesis of any book I have published. Nor – good for them – will museum curators.

 

The Museums Association responded to Mr Dowden’s letter as follows:

“The Museums Association (MA) welcomes the UK Government’s support for museums in England to date, in particular the Job Retention Scheme and the Culture Recovery Fund.

We agree with the Secretary of State’s comments in his recent letter to national museums and cultural bodies that statues and other historical objects “play an important role in teaching us about our past, with all its faults” and that “we should seek to contextualise or reinterpret them in a way that enables the public to learn about them in their entirety”.

The MA has been supporting museums to undertake this work and providing ethical guidance to our members. We would welcome an opportunity to discuss the issue with government.

However we are concerned that the Secretary of State’s recent letter asks museums to notify the government of any activities in this area; implies that government funding may be withheld if museums do not comply; and denies museums the responsibility to take carefully considered decisions about contested heritage in consultation with staff and their communities.

We feel that this contravenes the long-established principle that national museums and other bodies operate at arm’s length from government and are responsible primarily to their trustees.

The MA holds the widely respected Code of Ethics for Museums, which was created in consultation with a wide-range of museums and stakeholders and is aligned with the Arts Council England’s Accreditation scheme. Under the first principle of public benefit it states that museums should:

“Ensure editorial integrity in programming and interpretation. Resist attempts to influence interpretation or content by particular interest groups, including lenders, donors and funders.”

In these challenging times we believe that all museums must be able to make decisions relating to the care, presentation and interpretation of our cultural heritage in discussion with their communities. This principle is a vital factor in ensuring that museums build and retain public trust and act as responsible and responsive public institutions.

The MA is therefore:

Urging the UK Government to respect the arm’s-length principle for museums; and reminding our members across the UK that their responsibility under the Code of Ethics for Museums is to:

• Provide public access to, and meaningful engagement with, museums, collections, and information about collections without discrimination.
• Ensure editorial integrity in programming and interpretation. Resist attempts to influence interpretation or content by particular interest groups, including lenders, donors and funders.

We appreciate that this is a sensitive issue. We welcome the government’s request for a virtual roundtable discussion with museums and ask that it takes the time to listen to our concerns that museums should be able to make considered ethical decisions on a case-by-case basis in consultation with their stakeholders and communities.”

When independence of thought is threatened, our freedoms are indeed in danger. Well done our museum curators. To score political points at the expense of freedom is an outrage.

“many different kinds of negroes”

 

On a personal note This blog site was set up for me by my friend Jon Crosby, whose technological know-how and patience far exceeded mine. Jon and I were both students at Northgate Grammar School for Boys in Ipswich from 1963-1970, and close neighbours. In 1970 we were the two boys from Northgate admitted by Cambridge colleges (King’s in Jon’s case); two more went to Oxford. Jon would often send me comments on the pieces I wrote, and also his own descriptions of rambles around London and the like. Alas, Jon died this month, so I finished this piece too late for him to comment, but with a long and enduring friendship very much in mind.

 

In the 1950s the Police Department of Milwaukee issued to its officers a booklet on the subject of race relations. The officers learned that “our grandparents, or even we, have emerged from differing and alien cultural backgrounds, so that we do not dress, eat and live alike, and, most important, do not look alike”. The officers were encouraged to understand that “Until we realize that there are just as many different kinds of negroes as there are different kinds of policemen [note ‘men’], we shan’t be able to make intelligent and creditable decisions.” The events of 2020 suggest that, far from learning such lessons, 70 or more years later many American police forces have regressed from the culture to which Milwaukee PD aspired.

 

This passage struck me as I read one of my Christmas gifts, Jan Morris’ account of her life and travels in the USA in the late 1950s and early 1960s, Coast to Coast. Morris (who was a he at the time of writing) notes that the residents of Cranbury, New Jersey, a mere stone’s throw from Princeton, lived “in a good deal of comfort” with their refrigerator, television set, washing machine, new car, central heating, and that all-American gadget that grinds trash before it is washed down the kitchen waste pipe. However, things in Cranbury were not quite so comfortable for everybody. Each year migrant workers, “mostly Negroes”, arrived in Cranbury for the potato harvest to be housed with their families in shacks and huts. The good people of Cranbury arranged schooling for the children, provided meals and organized occasional outings, for “They care little about racial antipathies. Indeed, any distinction that I could detect between black and white in Cranbury was purely economic, the blacks being mostly indigent and ill-educated, for even the Negroes resident in Cranbury migrated not long ago from the abyss of the South.”

 

The Cranbury Inn, established 1780

Morris notes that in one of the buildings in Princeton Washington presided over the Continental Congress. He had crossed the Delaware and roundly defeated the British in three battles at Trenton to the south of Princeton. Morris notes that later Southern gentlemen would attend the hallowed halls of learning, attended by their personal slaves.

 

Nassau Hall, Princeton, last redoubt of the British forces against Washington's army

However, Morris had no time for the genteel racism of the Southern planters. He recalled a visit to a Mississippi plantation that belonged to a Mr Parker. Once, at 10,000 acres, one of the great estates of the region, the Parkers now farmed a mere 150 acres. As Morris and Parker sipped long cool drinks on the porch, “a great cloud of dust approached us from the drive”. The dust was raised by a mule-drawn contraption driven by a Negro retainer, Uncle Henry, who politely addressed Mr Parker: “G’d evening, boss, sir; g’d evening, Missus Parker”. It would, of course, have been quite unthinkable, Morris observed, to invite Uncle Henry to join them for drinks.

 

While Morris was appalled by the vile treatment and “gentlemanly” racism of the South, Uncle Henry is the only individual Negro included in the pages of the book. Not a single Mexican appears, although a few Indians of various tribes put in an appearance. For Morris is painting a picture, as an Englishman perceived it, of that great America emerging from the Second World War. He tells of the booming economy of a new world power, a nation of the American dream, so enticing for its Anglo population, much less so for those of other races, for whom, Morris notes, an extensive list of demeaning sobriquets had been invented. 

 

It occurred to me that today’s gun-toting America first vigilantes might well dream of a return to the America of Cranbury c.1960. That was an America in which the black man had his place and had better know it, or he’d be in trouble. Mexicans were where they belonged in the fruit and vegetable farms of California, or doing the heavy dirty work in Texas. Jews were not welcome in the country club, and certainly no Muslims in the extraordinary event that a Muslim might apply. And assorted other ethnic groups knew the social limits imposed on them.

 

Morris had an eye and ear for telling details. For example, so smoky was the atmosphere of Pittsburgh, the steel capital of the USA, that the per capita expenditure on laundry bills was $41. When the city introduced measures to clean the air, the laundry lobby fought the changes tooth and nail. After all, it was the smoke that dirtied the shirts etc. that the citizens of Pittsburgh paid the laundries to launder. The laundries lost, much to the satisfaction of the railways, whose executives had long wished to switch from coal to diesel, but dared not do so for fear of offending their biggest customers, the coal barons who powered the steel mills.

 

Pittsburgh, 1950 (photo Elliott Erwitt)

When he discusses the great Mississippi river, the watery highway that made America a great economy, Morris finds the Bill of Fare of the Steamer Monarch from 31 March 1861. Passengers were offered no fewer than six roasts, five Hot Entrées, including the mysterious Curbancedes of Mutton Garnished with New Potatoes (if any reader can tell me what a Curbancedes was I would be most grateful). If your tastes ran to the cold, you could try Potted Fowl and Tongue Ornamented with Jelly, or Boned Turkey with Champagne Jelly or Cream with Apple Jelly. Prefer game? Why not try Teal Duck Braised á la Madeira? There were five pies (including an exotic Whortleberry pie), an Apple and Gooseberry Tart, six cakes, and a dizzying array of Miscellaneous, including Cabinet Pudding, Russian Cream, Boston Cream Cake, and just plain “Cake”.

 

Jefferson County, Montana, was, it seems, uranium country in 1950s America. Some of the mineral was mined for the new atomic bombs, but many mines were marketed as health spas, where customers could benefit from the health-giving properties of the atomic gases and rays. Mines were equipped with waiting rooms with chintz curtains, “dainty rest rooms” and lifts.

 

Radon therapy at the Free Enterprise Radon Mine

Another mining story provides Morris with some attention-grabbing facts. Virginia City, Nevada, was the centre for the mining of the Comstock Lode. So significant had the production of gold been here, that the discovery of one deposit persuaded Bismarck to abandon the silver standard. The immense wealth generated by the mine gave Virginia City the International Hotel, with a famous restaurant and the first elevator to be installed anywhere between Chicago and San Francisco. There was an opera house where Virginia City’s rowdy citizens could once hear the best voices that money (but not taste) could buy. And in the city’s heyday shops had sold the latest Paris couturier fashions in desolate Nevada.

 

A view of C Street, Virginia City

Morris’ book is a good read, but not nearly as satisfying as his truly brilliant portrait of post-war New York, Manhattan ’45. For memorable anecdotes and facts don’t of themselves make a satisfying story of a vast and sprawling nation. But it did remind me of the question I was once asked by the owner of one of the publishing companies I worked for. This man owned a publishing company in New York, but loathed the USA, where he paid me to spend a good portion of my year. At a leaving party for a colleague he asked me “Do you really enjoy spending so much time in America?” I replied that I have never been anywhere in the country that did not have something interesting to be learned.

 

Of course, not everything is positive. You don’t have to spend much time in the USA to hear commentators and politicians speak of the “victim culture”. The injustices of slavery, so the argument goes, have been swept away by the civil rights campaigns of the 1950s and 60s and the resulting legislation. That fixed the problem, and any further complaints of injustice and inequality are the unjustified grumblings of minorities who wallow in grievance. Everybody loves Martin Luther King, but conveniently forgets that he stood not just for voting rights, but for workers’ rights, trade unions, the right to strike, and against imperialist wars. He considered these to be fundamental Christian principles. Contemporary evangelicals too often equate Christianity with freedoms (from the state, from taxes, from uncomfortable societal change) that obviate the need to enhance the life chances of others.

 

I lived in the USA from 1977-1981 and spent much of the following 35 years travelling in USA for Macmillan, Oxford University Press and Thames & Hudson. I was not well-disposed to America at first. I had spent some time living in Mexico, a country that, as a 19^th-century dictator once pronounced was ‘so far from God, so close to the United States’. But contact with real Americans and their immensely varied country soon dispelled my worst prejudices. This will be the subject of my next item.