Schools: History

Baroness Benjamin Excerpts

Thursday 20th October 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Benjamin]

My Lords, I too thank my noble friend Lord Luke for securing this debate as I have always maintained that in order to shape our future we must look into our past. The lessons of history are a valuable road map of how events and changes in society have affected the world we live in today. It is often said that we can learn from history and avoid making the same mistakes twice. The only problem I have with this is that many leaders and Governments around the world fail to take an even cursory look at a history book before plunging their countries and populations into catastrophic wars and devastating economic events.

Recent history is frequently airbrushed and adjusted to suit political and ideological ends. I find this deeply worrying because some of today’s history books do not tell the full catalogue of events. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Berridge, I am personally concerned with the documentation of black history and that which applies to the diverse nature of Britain and the reasons why we have become such a rich multicultural society. The recent BBC2 television series “Mixed Race Britain” is, I believe, a landmark piece of television. It has made me aware of part of our history that I never knew had taken place. The programme is brilliantly researched and brilliantly documented. It reminds us of some of the most horrific episodes of racism in our recent history. It tells of Chinese fathers and husbands torn from the bosoms of their English wives and children in dawn raids and deported for no good reason, and of curfews forbidding black people to be out after dark. Yes, this all happened here in Britain less than a lifetime ago.

I have always gone to great lengths to explain to anyone who will listen that immigration to this country did not start with the Windrush, as many people seem to believe, and as the media continue constantly to reinforce. In 17th-century paintings by Hogarth we see the diverse nature of London, and yet it is rarely reflected in our history books that there has been diversity here since Roman times.

In 1987, October was established as Black History Month here in Britain to celebrate and acknowledge the contribution of black people, and to educate and inform society about the important part that black people have played in history. To celebrate, over the past few weeks I have been touring schools across the country, speaking to children in both urban and rural areas about the experiences of those who came to the UK from the British Empire. I make them aware that there were thousands of people from Africa, India, China and the Caribbean here in Britain long before the 1950s. I explain how in Nelson's fleet many black sailors manned the ships; how in Devon there are graveyards with African names carved on the tombstones; how millions of people from Africa, the Indian sub-continent and Asia fought for Britain in the First and Second World Wars, the Boer War, and the Crimean War, in which not only Florence Nightingale but Jamaican-born Mary Seacole nursed British soldiers. The children I speak to absorb this information like sponges. It is a delight to see their minds opening up to history.

I always find it amazing that so many films and television programmes fail to show the involvement of any of these groups of people when portraying these historic moments. Time and time again, with very few exceptions, films depicting the Elizabethan or Victorian eras fail to show people of colour as part of history. Even the story of the abolition of slavery frequently assigns the success of the campaign to William Wilberforce and his associates, often airbrushing out the black abolitionists who campaigned alongside them, as the noble Lord, Lord Morgan, highlighted just now. I find it sad, disheartening and frustrating that writers, researchers and directors fail to research past events correctly and truthfully and are therefore in effect changing history. That is why the teaching of accurate recent history in schools is so vital. If our young people grow up without learning and understanding history then we are making a terrible mistake, because the social make-up of our society is shaped by recent history. What vital lessons will be missed by our future leaders if they are not taught recent history in the classroom, history which is affecting their lives?

Some of this history may be unpleasant. It may make us feel ashamed or guilty. But it must never be brushed under the carpet. Imagine if we allowed significant occurrences, violent conflicts, world-changing political events, and the most evil and shocking atrocities of mankind's past, to be forgotten or erased from our history: the African Holocaust where millions of Africans died in enslavement, stripped of their religion, language and culture; the Jewish Holocaust of Hitler’s Third Reich; the fall of the Berlin Wall; the assassinations of Martin Luther King and President John F. Kennedy; the Vietnam War; and most recently, the horrific events of 9/11, the Iraq war and the Afghanistan war. These episodes must never be forgotten.

I produced a television series recently called “Statues and Monuments”. While we were filming a statue in central London a woman came up and said, “Why are you filming the statue of that man? He was a monster. What he did was evil. It should be torn down”. I replied, “No. We have to remember what he represents, so that it can never happen again”. We must never burn our history books. Our young people must be taught our past, so they will never make those same mistakes again.

History is one of the most important subjects in the curriculum and it must continue to be taught in the hope of securing a more peaceful future. If some of our leaders over the past 50 years had spent more time studying history, how different things might be. The world might not be in the wounded state it is today.

I love history and I loved studying history at school. I took a delight in wallowing in it because it gave me the opportunity to delve into the past with an inquisitive mind and to broaden my knowledge of the world. It inspired me to try to make a difference to our society. That love for history still exists today. I believe we must encourage all children and reach out and hand them the opportunity to study history. We must not deprive them of the rich lessons of the past. I ask the Minister to tell us how the Government will ensure that the teaching of history, including black history, remains a core subject for children of all cultures and all backgrounds throughout their time at school, to enable them to leave this world a better place than they found it.