The education secretary's attack on first world war historians is no way to conduct the debate he claims he wants to encourage
For the second time in a few months, Michael Gove, the education secretary, has singled me out for personal attack, this time in an article in the Daily Mail headed "Why does the Left insist on belittling true British heroes?" According to Gove, I have demeaned the memory of the British soldiers who fought in the first world war and "attacked the very idea of honouring their sacrifice as an exercise in 'narrow tub-thumping jingoism'".
Actually, of course, I have done nothing of the kind. What I did say, in an article in the Guardian on 13 July 2013, was that the broad and inclusive plans of Maria Miller, the culture secretary, for the commemoration of the centenary of the outbreak of the first world war have been "in strong contrast to the narrow, tub-thumping jingoism of Gove" in his redrafting of the national schools history curriculum to force schools to teach an uncritically celebratory narrative of English history.
That redrafting was so comprehensively ridiculed by the historical profession, including such august bodies as the Royal Historical Society, the British Academy and the Historical Association, that it had to be withdrawn and replaced by a much better curriculum that encouraged pupils to think for themselves, allowed teachers wide latitude in their approach to the subject and gave due recognition to the history of other parts of the world.
I wasn't attacking the memory of British soldiers in the first world war at all. Perhaps Gove should attend some history lessons taught by the professionals he so belittles so that he can learn how to read and cite sources properly.
Of course, nobody would wish to demean the memory of the soldiers who fought in the war. I hope that the commemorations of the conflict beginning this year will find plenty of room to honour their courage. However, just as he did in his proposals for the national curriculum, Gove has again shown his ignorance of history and his preference for mythmaking over scholarship. Naturally, Gove thinks he is the scholar, and describes the arguments he wrongly claims I put forward as "more reflective of the attitude of an undergraduate cynic playing to the gallery in a Cambridge Footlights revue rather than a sober academic contributing to a proper historical debate". (Ouch!)
But who's playing to the gallery here? Gove wants us all to celebrate the first world war as a "just war", a "noble cause", fought by men "committed to defending the western liberal order". He seems to forget that one of Britain's two main allies was the Russia of Tsar Nicholas II, a despotism of no mean order, far more authoritarian than the Kaiser's Germany. Until Russia left the war early in 1918, any talk of fighting to defend "western" values was misplaced. Britain wasn't a democracy at the time either: until the Fourth Reform Act of 1918, 40% of adult males didn't have the vote, in contrast to Germany, where every adult man had the right to go to the ballot box in national elections.
Gove suggests that "the ruthless social Darwinism of the German elites, the pitiless approach they took to occupation, their aggressively expansionist war aims and their scorn for the international order all made resistance more than justified." He's right about the elites, but misses the point that they weren't able to carry the majority of the German people with them; the largest political party, the Social Democrats, was opposed to annexations and had long been critical of the militarism of the elites. By the middle of the war, the Social Democrats had forged the alliance with other democratic parties that was to come to power at the war's end. German atrocities in the first phase of the war, in France, and the last phase, in the east, were real enough, but you can't generalise from these to say this is how the Germans would have treated the whole of the rest of Europe had they won. Imperial Germany was not Nazi Germany; the Kaiser was not Hitler.
And who are these people who are peddling "leftwing versions of the past designed to belittle Britain and its leaders"? Step forward, please, Professor Niall Ferguson, a self-styled right-winger whose book The Pity of War argues that it was wrong for Britain to enter the war in 1914 and claims that the British government of the day should have left the continental powers to slug it out among themselves. Step forward, please, Sir Max Hastings, former editor of the Daily Telegraph, whose trenchant criticisms of British generals such as Sir John French in his latest book Catastrophe: Europe Goes to War 1914 yield nothing in their severity to the coruscating attacks levelled at Sir Douglas Haig and other leaders of the British army by the late Conservative MP Alan Clark in his book The Donkeys, a term used to describe the British military performance in the war ("lions led by donkeys", was a phrase he attributed to a German commentator but later admitted he had invented himself).
None of these men could remotely be described as leftwing, yet all of them convicted Britain and its leaders either of making the wrong decision in 1914 or of turning the war effort into a "misbegotten shambles"– the words Gove uses to describe the portrayal of the conflict by the likes of Oh! What a Lovely War, The Monocled Mutineer and Blackadder. The arguments that will rage about the war over the coming months and years have nothing to do with left versus right; anyone who wants proof of this has only to read the comments thread on Gove's article in the Mail Online, where the newspaper's readers, few of whom I would guess would describe themselves as leftwingers, overwhelmingly reject his views.
Defaming historians and others who think and write critically about Britain's role in the first world war by accusing them of seeking to "denigrate virtues such as patriotism, honour, and courage" is no way to conduct the debate Gove says he wants to encourage. He should be ashamed of himself. Reported by guardian.co.uk 8 hours ago.
For the second time in a few months, Michael Gove, the education secretary, has singled me out for personal attack, this time in an article in the Daily Mail headed "Why does the Left insist on belittling true British heroes?" According to Gove, I have demeaned the memory of the British soldiers who fought in the first world war and "attacked the very idea of honouring their sacrifice as an exercise in 'narrow tub-thumping jingoism'".
Actually, of course, I have done nothing of the kind. What I did say, in an article in the Guardian on 13 July 2013, was that the broad and inclusive plans of Maria Miller, the culture secretary, for the commemoration of the centenary of the outbreak of the first world war have been "in strong contrast to the narrow, tub-thumping jingoism of Gove" in his redrafting of the national schools history curriculum to force schools to teach an uncritically celebratory narrative of English history.
That redrafting was so comprehensively ridiculed by the historical profession, including such august bodies as the Royal Historical Society, the British Academy and the Historical Association, that it had to be withdrawn and replaced by a much better curriculum that encouraged pupils to think for themselves, allowed teachers wide latitude in their approach to the subject and gave due recognition to the history of other parts of the world.
I wasn't attacking the memory of British soldiers in the first world war at all. Perhaps Gove should attend some history lessons taught by the professionals he so belittles so that he can learn how to read and cite sources properly.
Of course, nobody would wish to demean the memory of the soldiers who fought in the war. I hope that the commemorations of the conflict beginning this year will find plenty of room to honour their courage. However, just as he did in his proposals for the national curriculum, Gove has again shown his ignorance of history and his preference for mythmaking over scholarship. Naturally, Gove thinks he is the scholar, and describes the arguments he wrongly claims I put forward as "more reflective of the attitude of an undergraduate cynic playing to the gallery in a Cambridge Footlights revue rather than a sober academic contributing to a proper historical debate". (Ouch!)
But who's playing to the gallery here? Gove wants us all to celebrate the first world war as a "just war", a "noble cause", fought by men "committed to defending the western liberal order". He seems to forget that one of Britain's two main allies was the Russia of Tsar Nicholas II, a despotism of no mean order, far more authoritarian than the Kaiser's Germany. Until Russia left the war early in 1918, any talk of fighting to defend "western" values was misplaced. Britain wasn't a democracy at the time either: until the Fourth Reform Act of 1918, 40% of adult males didn't have the vote, in contrast to Germany, where every adult man had the right to go to the ballot box in national elections.
Gove suggests that "the ruthless social Darwinism of the German elites, the pitiless approach they took to occupation, their aggressively expansionist war aims and their scorn for the international order all made resistance more than justified." He's right about the elites, but misses the point that they weren't able to carry the majority of the German people with them; the largest political party, the Social Democrats, was opposed to annexations and had long been critical of the militarism of the elites. By the middle of the war, the Social Democrats had forged the alliance with other democratic parties that was to come to power at the war's end. German atrocities in the first phase of the war, in France, and the last phase, in the east, were real enough, but you can't generalise from these to say this is how the Germans would have treated the whole of the rest of Europe had they won. Imperial Germany was not Nazi Germany; the Kaiser was not Hitler.
And who are these people who are peddling "leftwing versions of the past designed to belittle Britain and its leaders"? Step forward, please, Professor Niall Ferguson, a self-styled right-winger whose book The Pity of War argues that it was wrong for Britain to enter the war in 1914 and claims that the British government of the day should have left the continental powers to slug it out among themselves. Step forward, please, Sir Max Hastings, former editor of the Daily Telegraph, whose trenchant criticisms of British generals such as Sir John French in his latest book Catastrophe: Europe Goes to War 1914 yield nothing in their severity to the coruscating attacks levelled at Sir Douglas Haig and other leaders of the British army by the late Conservative MP Alan Clark in his book The Donkeys, a term used to describe the British military performance in the war ("lions led by donkeys", was a phrase he attributed to a German commentator but later admitted he had invented himself).
None of these men could remotely be described as leftwing, yet all of them convicted Britain and its leaders either of making the wrong decision in 1914 or of turning the war effort into a "misbegotten shambles"– the words Gove uses to describe the portrayal of the conflict by the likes of Oh! What a Lovely War, The Monocled Mutineer and Blackadder. The arguments that will rage about the war over the coming months and years have nothing to do with left versus right; anyone who wants proof of this has only to read the comments thread on Gove's article in the Mail Online, where the newspaper's readers, few of whom I would guess would describe themselves as leftwingers, overwhelmingly reject his views.
Defaming historians and others who think and write critically about Britain's role in the first world war by accusing them of seeking to "denigrate virtues such as patriotism, honour, and courage" is no way to conduct the debate Gove says he wants to encourage. He should be ashamed of himself. Reported by guardian.co.uk 8 hours ago.