Michael, I don’t think anyone is advocating that shameful episodes in British history should be covered up, but neither should the history of this country be distorted to promote a particular agenda. For example, the view (repeated not so long ago)by Sadiq Khan)that much of the wealth of Britain was based on the profits of slavery is a myth. While slavery undoubtedly made certain individuals very rich, slave based sugar plantations added just under 2.5% to the value of the British economy at its peak, less than the share of sheep farming. Britain’s wealth in the nineteenth century was created by industrialisation, just as was Germany’s, though Germany had no empire. It should also be noted that Britain was instrumental in ending the slave trade., both diplomatically and militarily. Between 1832 and 1870 the Royal Navy patrolled the Atlantic, intercepting hundreds of slave ships and freeing some 160 000 captives. This was at the cost of the lives of around 17 000 British sailors, some killed in action, some dying of the same diseases as the captives. The cost to the British Treasury was huge. At its peak the West Africa Squadron was using half the total budget for the Royal Navy, equivalent to 2% of Britains GDP. But I don’t suppose that Sadiq knows or cares much about that.As to Shakespeare, I don’t agree that ‘Othello’ ( a play which I taught for several years) is in any way racist. Iago and Desdemona’s father make racist comments about Othello, but these characters should not be regarded as representing Shakespeare’s views. I am not even sure that ‘The Merchant of Venice’ is an antisemitic play. Shylock is a bad man, but his speech ‘I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions,; fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer,as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, do we not revenge?shows remarkable insigt, if not sympathy, on the part of Shakespeare. Anyway he is obviously a great writer whose reputation will survive the inanities of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust.There is no need for you to feel insulted by my remarks on religion. I am an atheist myself. My point is that many people with religious impulses but who do not believe in traditional religion devote themselves to a new age faith, of which wokeism is an example. And rather like the Protestant iconoclasts of the Reformation who smashed up churches to display their theological purity, woke activists attempt to parade their moral virtue by tearing down statues, banning books and bombarding visitors to art galleries with tendentious explanations next to the paintings.
Steven Rose ● 40d