“Anti-racism” curriculum guidelines for British schools tell teachers to present the British Empire in the same way they would present Nazi Germany.
The guidelines, seen by The Daily Telegraph, also insist that if “topics such as the British Empire [are] taught impartially (i.e. as if the British Empire was an equal mix of good and bad)” while other topics are not, teachers should “re-frame” the subject.
It is no wonder, then, that—as historian and broadcaster Rafe Heydel-Mankoo put it—“our youth are the most left-wing in history.” Heydel-Mankoo told The European Conservative that “from primary school through to university, they are being indoctrinated in the politics of nihilism and guilt. Love of nation has been replaced by national self-loathing.”
For those who lived under Chinese or Eastern European Communist rule, this will sound eerily and scarily familiar. It is ideological subversion. Undermining a nation’s history and severing the connections between a people and their past destroys the roots that ground a population to place. It is the most effective way of undermining, demoralising and destabilising a society.
The guidance was first made available to schools in 2022, under a Conservative government. It was created by The Key, a school-supported organisation which began as a government pilot and now boasts to be “rated the must-have support by 8 out of 10 school leaders.”
The Telegraph also reports that this guidance has been presented as an example of best practice to school staff by councils including West Sussex (Conservative controlled) and East Renfrewshire (Labour-independent coalition controlled).
It also tells school leaders not to teach pupils about the balance of “good and bad” aspects of empire.
New Culture Forum founder and director Peter Whittle argued that in this case, “the term Culture War misses the point. It is better expressed as what it is: a War on our Culture.”
Heydel-Mankoo also suggested that the guidance overlooks the British Empire’s role in not just practicing but later abolishing slavery, as well as in advancing women’s rights and spreading ideas such as parliamentary democracy and the rule of law across the world. He told this publication:
Decades of teaching children incomplete and often incorrect history, such as that the British Empire has no redeeming features, is part of the broader war on Britain and the West. We must resist and counter it at every opportunity or we face a bleak—even dystopian—future.
It would take only two or three more decades to usher in an era in which the great majority of the working-age population—including those occupying elite positions of power—is not only wholly ignorant of this nation’s history, culture and achievements, but actually despises Britain and its past. Whether by accident or design, we will have landed in our own Year Zero.
