March 24, 2025 - 1:00pm
The British Museum is on the front lines of the culture war. For the progressive Left, the institution’s very name is an affront, let alone the presence of eight million historical artefacts from every part of the planet.
So when the Government last week announced the appointment of five new trustees for the museum, cultural combatants on both sides held their breath. Would this be a parachute drop of decolonisers committed to the repatriation not just of the Parthenon Marbles, but other exhibits too?
Not quite. A couple of the appointees — Martha Kearney and Claudia Winkleman — are uncontentious. It makes sense for the museum to recruit public figures who know the media inside-out. But then it gets rather interesting. First, there’s the Conservative peer Daniel Finkelstein. As the author of Hitler, Stalin, Mum and Dad — the story of his parents’ respective ordeals under the Nazi and Soviet regimes — it’s unlikely that he has much time for grim-faced ideologues.
Then there’s the historian Tom Holland, co-host of The Rest is History — a self-styled “patriotic podcast”. As the author of Dominion, in which he argues that the modern world owes its existence to Christianity, he’s no stranger to challenging the cherished narratives of the Left (and the Right). Finally, there’s the cultural historian Tiffany Jenkins, author of Keeping Their Marbles: How Treasures of the Past Ended Up in Museums and Why They Should Stay There. No prizes for guessing where she stands on the British Museum’s most controversial exhibit.
None of these figures are frothing-at-the-mouth reactionaries. Rather, they understand that the exhibition of the world’s largest collection of cultural treasures in the world’s greatest city is both a source of national pride and a resource for all humanity. So, at a time when stories about decolonising Shakespeare’s birthplace and queering public gardens continue to make headlines, is there reason to hope that our heritage sector hasn’t been overrun by wokery?
In the case of the five trustees, some will detect the influence of George Osborne, chair of the British Museum. Of course, that’s a position he owes to the previous Conservative government. Indeed, this selection of appointees is the last gasp of 14 years of Tory rule, likely having been in train before Labour came to power. And yet this raises an intriguing question: are we to expect radical change in the political make-up of such boards in the future? Keir Starmer and Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy could pack the boards of museums and galleries with cultural progressives. However, they may have better things to do, or the patriotically-tinged Blue Labour approach favoured by Starmer’s Chief of Staff Morgan McSweeney might win the day.
The most optimistic interpretation is that we’re now beyond “peak woke” in the culture space. Certainly, the statue-toppling frenzy at the start of the decade has abated. Winston Churchill’s likeness still stands tall in Parliament Square; and despite moves to review the legacy of Charles Darwin and his colonialist expeditions, his statue still has pride of place at the Natural History Museum. Even the Cecil Rhodes memorial at Oxford University’s Oriel College remains standing after the infamous campaign to bring it down.
Meanwhile, the University of Cambridge has reaffirmed its groundbreaking commitment to free speech and academic freedom, contrary to backsliding on the issue from Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson.
Britain isn’t America, and there’s no equivalent to the anti-woke vibe shift turbo-charged by the return of Donald Trump. But the British Museum’s new board of trustees is a promising sign that Britain’s museums and galleries are no longer under the yoke of cultural custodians who militantly hate the country’s history.
Peter Franklin is Associate Editor of UnHerd. He was previously a policy advisor and speechwriter on environmental and social issues.
peterfranklin_
Join the discussion
Join like minded readers that support our journalism by becoming a paid subscriber
To join the discussion in the comments, become a paid subscriber.
Join like minded readers that support our journalism, read unlimited articles and enjoy other subscriber-only benefits.
SubscribeAlthough the author states that the UK isn’t the US, with its anti-woke Trump in charge, still i detect certain signs from people in leadership positions in the UK – including our own two-tier Keir himself – of a slight change of tone and possibly direction. If this becomes more evident, i’d say it’s entirely down to the influence of Trump, and the need for our political class to be seen to be taking note of the effect he’s having on Western democracies in requiring them to be more robust in defence of our history and historical norms.
I think you may be underestimating the recognition by an increasing number of politicians that they’ll have to put woke to sleep if they want to be reelected.
I see what you did there, John.
If Trump pulls off a ceasefire in Ukraine everything else he stands for will get a boost.
Stateside, we’ve recently read about the ‘decolonization of Shakespeare’ at his home on Straford-upon-Avon – what’s that all about?
On the face of it, these are good appointments, perhaps amongst the last good appointments for a long time. One of the drivers of the progressive march through key cultural institutions during 14 years of nominally Conservative government from 2010 to 2024 was the churn of Culture Secretaries (12) and Education Secretaries (10) during that period. Here today, gone tomorrow ministers, some of whom were desperately weak, were given the runaround by the real administrative and cultural establishment.
I’m glad you didn’t mention any genders in relation to ministers and bureaucrats. Nowadays they’re meant to be sexless and genderless as well as the traditional faceless.
Claudia Winkleman, how on earth did that happen and based on what credentials apart from being media royalty
Her degree is from Cambridge but I can’t recall the subject.
I worked in the department of Architecture and Art History at Scroope Terrace when Claudia Winkelman was a student.
Tom Holland in…there’s hope for us yet…
Tom Holland to the rescue in his Spider-Man outfit … hero of the hour.
Now if there could only be a church revival before they are all converted in mosques!
God, I hope you’re right!
The final sentence may prove to be a little optimistic in view of the imminent new state history curriculum.
Would be good if Labour would fire Gideon Osborne though. He has too many jobs as it is
What is wrong with Bridget Phillipson?
Barely half the population of Great Britain is still ethnically British. Uncontrolled immigration and demographic change will ensure the fall of the British Museum just as surely as the fall of the British Empire. You can delay the inevitable, but not stop it.
First of all, there’s no such thing as “ethnically British” – it’s not an ethnicity. And even if it were, your defeatist conclusion doesn’t follow from the demographic changes we’ve seen since the end of WW2.
It’s easy to be defeatist, of course: the “path of least resistance” for the weak-minded. There are other forces at play that will halt what you see as being inevitable.
The British Museum may not longer exist one day (nothing stands forever), but it won’t be due to the changes you claim.
”No such thing as ethnically British”. Not even we who belong to Great Britain by deep ancestry? Are we really no different ethnically from, say, an Indian (or a Pole) who received his UK citizenship last month?
‘British’ isn’t an ethnicity, though, nor a nationality. English, Scottish and Welsh are both, but ‘British’ denotes, I would say, belonging to these islands. The British state, by definition, is multinational. Actually, that does give some hope. Your implication is that if peoples’ ancestors come from somewhere else recently then they can neither be British nor patriotic, but that is simply not true, and there are plenty of examples to prove it. It’s also the case that much of the drive towards woke decolonisation comes from white lefties with long ancestry here. Nothing is set in stone.
Oikophobics, a term coined by Roger Scruton.
Most of those whose ancestry goes back more than say 4 generations are part Anglo Saxon, part Viking, part Norman, part Irish, Scottish, or Welsh, maybe some Huguenot, and so on. And anyway, what does ethnicity mean anyway? For goodness sake, look at the world we need to make, not at where we may have come from
Check out David Reich’s observation I quoted above, which squashes your ‘ argument’ totally. Still, you prepared for that.’Even if we have a distinctive homogeneity and all those Hugenots, Danes etc didnt dilute it, it doesnt matter cos I dont care ‘.
Britain is unusual in having very little changed DNA for 4 thousabd years, indigenius Brits, obviously. (David Reich).