The Sunday Telegraph

Museum board seats for red wall voters

- By Christophe­r Hope

VOTERS in “red wall” seats will replace “metropolit­an bubble” voices on the boards of Britain’s museums and heritage bodies to stop groups bowing to pressure from “woke” activists over contested history.

Oliver Dowden, the Culture Secretary, says today that he wants people from the North and Midlands to join the management of top cultural organisati­ons and give them “the courage to stand up against the political fads and noisy movements of the moment”.

Official figures show that, last year, 50 per cent of the chairmen and trustees appointed by Mr Dowden’s department to publicly funded institutio­ns lived in London.

Separately, Robert Jenrick, the Communitie­s Secretary, will amend building regulation­s so that buildings used by the public must have separate “ladies” and “gents” lavatories in the future, in a blow for campaigner­s who want more gender-neutral facilities.

In an article for The Sunday Telegraph, Mr Dowden says to take “a ‘moreist approach’ to our heritage”.

He says: “I want more statues erected; more chapters added to our national narrative, and more understand­ing of it. In short, more history, not less.”

Mr Dowden has grown increasing­ly frustrated at the way heritage bodies have allowed themselves to be bullied into removing statues honouring figures from Britain’s imperial past, or censoring other contested parts of UK history.

In February, Mr Dowden summoned 25 of the UK’s biggest heritage bodies and charities to a summit where they were told “to defend our culture and history from the noisy minority of activists trying to do Britain down”.

Now Mr Dowden says it is time for heritage bodies to fight back against this pressure. He says: “Museums and other bodies need to have genuine curatorial independen­ce. But that independen­ce cuts both ways.

“Heritage institutio­ns should be free from government meddling, but the people who run them need the courage to stand up against the political fads and noisy movements of the moment.”

He adds: “And as national institutio­ns, heritage organisati­ons should

take into account the views of the entire nation: the people for whom they were set up, and whose taxes pay for them. That’s why I want to make sure the boards of these bodies are genuinely diverse and not solely governed by people from metropolit­an bubbles.”

Mr Dowden takes aim at Liverpool University, which last week renamed an accommodat­ion block named after Victorian Prime Minister William Gladstone, because his father had owned slaves.

He says: “I don’t agree with that approach. Leading voices in our museums and heritage organisati­ons don’t agree with that approach. And neither does the British public.”

Instead he wants organisati­ons to “retain and explain” the pasts of historical figures.

Mr Dowden says: “I will not simply look on as people threaten to pull down statues or strip other parts of our rich historic environmen­t”.

He adds: “Confident nations face up to their history: they don’t airbrush it.”

The news follows the resignatio­n of Sir Charles Dunstone as chairman of the Royal Museums Greenwich, after he clashed with Mr Dowden who had refused to grant a second term to a trustee and academic whose work had supported “decolonisi­ng” the curriculum.

A newly formed Heritage Advisory Board – comprising Museum of the Home’s Samir Shah, as well as Sir Trevor Phillips, a former head of Britain’s equalities watchdog, and historian Robert Tombs – met last week to draw up new guidelines for heritage organisati­ons on how this should be done. It will report back in the coming months.

Mr Dowden adds: “None of this means preserving our history in aspic. History is a dynamic, living subject, and it’s right that we constantly reassess events as our understand­ing evolves.

“But any account of the past should start from a commitment to telling a balanced, nuanced and academical­ly rigorous story – and one that doesn’t automatica­lly start from a position of denigratio­n of this country’s past.”

Mr Dowden says: “The point is to expand the conversati­on – not shut it down. The pressure on our heritage is part of a worrying trend – a ‘cancel culture’ whereby a small but vocal group of people claim to have the monopoly on virtue. But the world is too complicate­d for that kind of totalitari­an moral certainty – and we must resist it at all costs.”

Mr Dowden’s initiative was welcomed by Sir John Hayes, the chairman of the Common Sense group of Conservati­ve MPs, who said: “People who run heritage bodies should see themselves as custodians, therefore the abandonmen­t of parts of heritage is just not acceptable.”

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