David Olusoga, author and broadcaster, told school leaders that Britain often saw its history as “leisure; a place we go for comfort, a place that makes us feel good about ourselves”, leading in ignorance of the history of her empire. and in immigration scandals like Windrush. “We are becoming, perhaps we already are, a nation for which the history we have and the relationship with history that prevails are not appropriate for the purpose,” Olusoga told a conference in Birmingham. “If history is a gentle playground, there is no room for stories that explain how we were all together on these islands, because these stories can not be purely enjoyed as recreation, they can not always be heroic. “And so for decades, we’ve been in the habit of not including these stories, and we’re so good at not even noticing the trick. It is like a trick that has been completely perfected so that no one can see the suffering. “We are comfortable with the history of abolition, but we are not comfortable with the history of two and a half centuries of slavery that imposed abolition. “We feel comfortable talking about the Indian railways, but much less comfortable talking about the famines, which also occurred in the same country.” Olusoga said the Interior Ministry’s confusing efforts throughout the Windrush case showed “the active damage that ignorance of history can do.” “People in the Interior Ministry were judging the status of people whose stories they did not understand. “They did not understand that the people of Jamaica were from an island that had been part of England and the British Empire since 1655, when it was invaded by Oliver Cromwell,” he told a conference of school principals in Birmingham. “So knowing this story is not only beneficial for everyone, but it actively, proven harms our society when people operate without knowing this story.” Olusoga said he failed at school history in the 1980s when he grew up in Gateshead and suffered from racist bullies attending the same schools and teaching the same stories as him. Subscribe to the First Edition, our free daily newsletter – every morning at 7 p.m. BST While learning in great detail about Lancashire cotton mills, Olusoga said he was not taught “where the cotton came from or that the cotton was produced by the 1.8 million African Americans who lived and died in chains in slavery.” “It hurts me to know that there are children in the classrooms who are now still being taught the dishonest version of the Industrial Revolution that does not include the lives and sufferings of these 1.8 million African-Americans,” he told the Confederation of School Confederation’s annual conference. But Olusoga said the interest in historical issues and injustices unleashed by the Black Lives Matter movement was not a “political fad” or a temporary controversy. “It is built on profound changes of generations and mentalities. This is not going to go away. When I talk to my students, these views, these positions, these priorities, are not attitudes. They are who they are. “
