Pendulum will swing back to more academic assessment of our history

IAM all for history education and yet I know I am not alone in hearing alarm bells start ringing when ‘Black History’ crops up and of course we have just had this year’s jamboree that is ‘Black History Month.’

You may remember that Jeremy Corbyn was very keen for ‘Black History’ to be taught in our schools, no doubt because it is a thinly veiled Trojan horse for anti-British history and especially empire bashing (the British Empire was the largest in history), i.e. part of his one-sided and distorted view of our history.

Of course the negatives of this history need to be acknowledged, though these need to be properly set in the context of their times, and the standards that the people lived by then, in order to understand our past. All too often ‘Black History’ fails dismally in this basic historical requirement and is more about vilification and indoctrination than true understanding and education, as in the case of Edward Colston in Bristol whose story has been dumbed down, distorted, and used politically.

And if the negatives of our history are acknowledged so too should be the many positives – the spread of democracy, law, education, the fight against slavery, the defence of freedom from dictators seeking world domination, technological and scientific advances, the Commonwealth, among others.

Unfortunately, you are less likely to hear of these positives now as our history is increasingly hijacked by those pushing the ‘Black History’ agenda (which gained a lot of traction after the awful killing of George Floyd in the US brought the highly political Black Lives Matter movement to prominence here) – the liberal metropolitan elite running many of our cultural, heritage and religious organisations including the BBC, Church of England, and many of our museums; leftwing politicians, artists, and activists; and last but not least academia (who should know better). Indeed, for many artists, reporters, historians and even philosophers it has become a career path.

Sadly, other voices giving a more rounded view of our history are being marginalised in the face of this at present, though if you know where to look you can find many aspects of ‘Black History’ debunked. I particularly recommend ‘History Reclaimed’ (easily found online) set up by an independent group of scholars. In time the history pendulum will swing back to this more academic and rounded assessment of our history. Julian Hill

Knowle

Praying for change

✒ THE city council carried out a survey in September, to sample test which vehicles were not meeting the new emissions zone.

I would like to know how many private cars fail to meet this test. In Newcastle the city council has decided to not charge for private cars at the present, as they don’t want to cut off one side of the city from the other (they have four bridges).

We on the south side of this city are feeling cut off by the road restrictions we currently have – the emissions zone will only make it worse. It’s a pity we don’t have the same caring council here. Both are Labour-run.

I would suspect that only a small proportion of pollution is accounted for in private cars. The majority of buses, coaches, taxis and commercial delivery vehicles have all upgraded to compliant vehicles. These are the ones who are daily in and out of the central areas.

The central area also has a lot of churches. On Sundays many will have to pay the congestion charge, just to go to church.

David Whittern

Knowle

Post code checking

✒ A QUESTION I feel relevant, at least to our area – I live in a road called Sycamore Close in the Whitehall area with a post code of BS5.

Fortunately our house does not have a standard number but the rest do.

Recently several properties have been receiving parcels – mainly from Amazon with a Lockleaze address – dropped off by mistake and this has been happening regularly.

Letters sent by Royal Mail have apparently gone the other way, meaning some of our residents have missed hospital appointments.

Surely delivery people can read post codes and get things right? David Williams

Whitehall