Red walls, green walls: British identity, rural racism and British colonial history.
| Author | Fowler, Corinne |
| Position | THE POLITICS OF PLACE |
The British countryside is a sensitive topic. This was confirmed by my experience of directing 'Colonial Countryside', a child-led history and writing project guided by a team of historians in partnership with the National Trust. Our aim was to make country houses' colonial connections widely known. This article reflects on why projects like Colonial Countryside, and the National Trust report on colonialism which followed it, are perceived as threats to British identity. I identify the broader challenges and consider their implications for policy-making in the areas of rural inclusion and history education. I detail common objections to talking about British colonial history, especially in rural settings. Rather than dividing people, exploring our colonial past can greatly enrich the nation's knowledge about the past, as well as contextualising and historicising its complex cultural identities.
A common objection to examining British colonial history is the argument that we should instead focus on the oppression of Britons in both factories and fields, histories of which are recounted in works like E.P. Thompson's The Making of the English Working Class. (1) Fascinating accounts of Chartists, Jacobins and suffragettes have been invaluable to the labour and trade union movements. Yet history shows us that impoverishment at home and oppression in the colonies were in fact interrelated. Contrary to popular belief, Britain's social history of industrial exploitation, rural poverty, enclosure and land-ownership are not separate from colonial activity but integral to it. Another objection is that the past is the past, and we should let it lie. Another is known as 'whataboutery', often expressed in terms of African and Arab nations' slaving histories. The answer to these objections is that curators have a responsibility not to withhold the full history of heritage sites: it is incredible that, for decades, on-site interpretation made no mention of the fact that country houses like Basildon Park and Penrhyn Castle were built with East India Company profits and slavery wealth. Telling the truth is not unpatriotic nor deliberately provocative or divisive. It is an ethical commitment to evidence-based and inclusive accounts of our past.
The challenge
It is important to distinguish between public feeling about rural Britain and strategic political rhetoric about 'wokeness', focused on the countryside. We need an explanation of why perceived threats to British history and heritage resonate with people.
There is a potent, longstanding association between the countryside and British identity. To suggest that rural Britain has anything to do with the outside world, and Empire in particular, is seen as transgressive. Yet the evidence demonstrates that British colonialism was formative of the countryside rather than separate from it. For many, this information is painful and troubling: it changes our perceptions of cherished places that we thought we knew.
In September 2020, the National Trust released a report which found that a third of its houses were linked to the British empire. The report was not simply about slavery but incorporated all kinds of colonial activities associated...
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