Even in London, at the centre of the wealthiest region in northern Europe, in so many ways insulated from the financial realities faced by the rest of the country, the facts of austerity are becoming harder to ignore.
It is true that Britain and its institutions have survived past crises, but often this was because those in charge, at a certain point, snapped out of the stupor of latent optimism, recognised the dangers circling the nation and acted.
Britain fought the second world war with men and money partly drawn from the empire and that, after the defence of the home islands, the survival of the empire was a fundamental war aim.
Many historians will tell you that there are no laws of history and no great cycles that govern human events. History often appears more random than rhythmic. But if not patterns or cycles, there are certainly coincidences and some are so marked that they are hard not to notice.
Democratically elected governments meekly requesting giant corporations to pay pitifully low levels of tax on their enormous profits is not a good look.
It is of course perfectly possible for a university, or any institution, to carry out a rigorous investigation into the historical origins of its accumulated wealth, while at the same time putting in place systems to address modern inequalities of access and attainment.
In my school, racism was ubiquitous and unrelenting, and not just from the pupils. For a year I was terrorised by one of my teachers.
I am as much British, white and working class, my mother’s background, as I am black and Nigerian, my father’s heritage.
Ten Guinea Street is on a Historic England site.
Aside from his other achievements, Winston Churchill wrote a six-volume, 1.9m-word account of the second world war and his role in winning it.
As one of the very few black historians who, from time to time, appears on TV, my daily life is a constant, open-air focus group.
What we’re seeing is a backlash against any attempt, whether from the world of scholarship or popular culture, to paint non-white people back into the British past. Those of us who write about this history have long been familiar with this.
At 18, I stood in the Louvre in front of the paintings that TV had first shown me.
The great untruth around which everything pivots is the idea that the defenders of these statues are the defenders of history and truth; while those who want to see them toppled or contextualised are the Huns at the gate, who would destroy national histories and bring down great men.
Even the building of a second British empire in the 19th century never fully healed the wound of losing America, and the end of Britain’s imperial prestige after the second world war has cut deeper.
Whether we like it or not, there are moments in history when pessimism is the appropriate response.
Racism is not primal or instinctive.
We nonchalantly expect that next year’s smartphone will be faster and better than this year’s, yet we struggle to imagine that society and our lives could progress at anything like the pace at which technology advances and we meekly accept it when things go backwards.
Not only does the UK have the highest levels of regional inequality among the major economies, the imbalance is widening, not narrowing.
To describe someone as a pessimist is to issue an insult, whereas to be labelled an optimist is to get a pat on the back. To dismiss someone’s argument as pessimistic is to suggest it is the product of a personality disorder, rather than careful analysis.
Pages: 1 2
