Corrine Fowler: My writing on colonialism made me a hate figure – so I replied to my trolls

"Would topics such as colonialism have been quite so fraught and divisive if we hadn't discussed them in this way to begin with? Or would there always have been people who wanted to stick to the way history has always been taught, kind of like those who resist the idea that dinosaurs had feathers and want to continue in their fond thoughts of Jurassic Park dinosaurs?"

Are you not discussing it in exactly the same way though? You're making a lot of assumptions about colonialism because it fits with your politcal narrative. You talks as though and everyone decent is on the left. Everyone else is uneducated or compromised. You are talking about having better ways to talk down to people less enlightened to make sure only your world view prevails! How priggish is that!

Clearly the abuse of academics like Cass, Beard and Fowler is awful. The same things have happened to Suella Braverman and Tony Sewell and I see it happeing to Kemi Badenoch and Katharine Birbalsingh on twitter everyday. But perhaps you don't feel inclined to defend them? All ideas should be debated and no doubt many of Fowler's points are excellent. What is less good is the use the NT has put the report to, Fowler may well be independently minded but the NT are not as can be seen on their attitudes to other issues. The NT are the ones at fault for letting her take the flack.

There are a range of historical view points on the British Empire incidentally. The NT may well have gone to Fowler for her views (I have no idea what her personal politicals are but I bet the NT knows) to get the report it wanted. It certainly did not ask Prof Richard Dale or Prof David Abulafia (just two off the top of my head) who both have a more nuanced view. I guess you've read them as you are so firm in your opinions?

The reason people, educated or otherwise, get irritated by this is that they suspect double standards. They suspect the left hates Britain and that the British Empire which had huge faults absolutely but was one of many empires. The power of having an empire swayed our position when defending ourselves from agressors from Napoleon to Hitler by the way. Empires were how nation states survived pre our postmodern world. The British Empire is an easy target and they (the left) love applying ahistoric moral conventions to it. They never admit it is more complicated than it seems at first glance, they do a lot of virtue signalling (like you do - implying your education is superior and that's why you 'get it' and the poor plebs just need it explaining with a bigger smile) and then use reports like these to kick those they don't like. Which is why you mention only the women you agree with getting a public kicking. Which is why I am suspicious of your defence of the report (not your defence of Fowler who has the right to her opinions unmolested though not unchallenged).

I agree. I'd like to read the book based on her description here, but the title wouldn't tempt anyone looking for something exploring the history of Britain's labouring classes.

Goodness yes. I find this a big issue with a certain type of person. They are all over what they see as these vast historical oppressions, but completely ignore current incarnations.

The one that always gets me is looking for the most tenuous connections a historical figure or institution has to slavery, and posting their discoveries on TikTok or Instagram with their Iphones.

It sounds brilliant. But since the title is all about the colonial aspect the labour history aspect is going to be missed by the people who might be interested.

@NonLinguisticRhetoricIsMyKryptonite yes it is ime experience quite universal; the recognition by communication is something very powerful.

It is incidentally used by negotiators all over the world to bring people together and secure agreement. It breaks down the status as "enemy". Obviously there is a lot more to do in reality, but this technique is effective in the most aggressive or difficult negotiations or conflicts

There's a later passage in the article that interested me, that relates here, regarding scalability.

I also began to give lots of public talks about my research on country houses and the British Empire. Among the most frequently asked questions from detractors in the audience was: Why aren’t you talking about the oppressed British labourers during those colonial centuries? The obvious reply was because I’m an expert in colonial history, not labour history. But this question led me to look far more deeply into British labour history, and the experience of working people during these times. The questioners communicated to me a sincere and valid concern that labour history is little talked about. I saw that this was true. I’d learned as little about labour history in school as I had about colonial history.

As a result, I decided to write a book that would be really meaningful to those who’d asked that question and this is how I came to explore the relationship between colonial history and British rural life. Thanks to those questions, I discovered that the two are intimately connected. Our Island Stories: Country Walks Through Colonial Britain features ten walks through Scotland, England and Wales. The walks average seven miles and maps are included to inspire others to walk together through those same landscapes. The book opens with an account of my ‘sugar walk’ with Graham Campbell on the Scottish Isle of Jura. We investigated how his Jamaican heritage connects to the island’s slavery history. Contacting a family researcher in Jamaica, we wanted to know why there are so many Jamaicans with the surname Campbell. Another of these walks is about the East India Company history of the Wordsworth family in the Lakes.

Other chapters feature a wool walk in North Wales, a Lancashire cotton walk, a tobacco walk along the Whitehaven coast in Cumbria, an enclosure walk in Norfolk, a banker’s walk through a lovely part of Hampshire and a labourer’s walk through thatched villages in Dorset. I end with a copper walk in Cornwall. Copper mines once employed a third of the local population, but I learned that a significant amount of that copper was used to sheath slave ships so that they lasted longer in tropical waters. Throughout the writing of the book, I kept in mind those who’d exhorted me to include more labour history in my accounts of our colonial past. I’ll always be grateful to them: researching and writing that book was revelatory.

It is scalable, that’s what mass media is for.
Using the insights gained from individual conversations to inform the way you approach making tv history would reach a wider audience.

Clever woman. People who write this sort of personalized attacking stuff usually do it because they have attributed a whole mentality to the writer. That usually breaks down on an individual response, because the attacker feels recognition even if there is not agreement. A lot of people who attack views personalize it very quickly; usually in that instance they are expressing their own feelings of frustration or powerlessness. Somewhere in that exchange there may be interesting point so it's useful to try at least.

(The creepy web-scrapers at Aston will now know, from my targeted adverts, that I’m in the market for a 3D printer. I wonder what they will be able to make of that.)

But people do sneer at English working-class people all the time; here’s a screenshot from another Mumsnet thread right now, where people are openly mocked for being white and having an attachments to the traditional symbols of England. Given the extent to which working-class Britons are openly held in contempt by the more privileged, one ought to understand that they might be a little bit sensitive about these things.

They're certainly very similar stories aren't they? She posted several dozen uncaptioned photos that she had taken while campaigning, and one of them was used to create a narrative.

Academic does research into British Empire = the woke elite hate White British people.

Politician posts photo of England supporter's flag display = Labour sneer at English working class people.

Cui Bono?

One small point to note about these historical investigations of past wrongs is that they tend to collectivise responsibility; in newspaper-speak, it’s always along the lines of “these country houses reveal how we benefited from slavery”. Well, the people who ended up with the big country house were your ancestors, not mine. You don’t need much of an imagination to realise why framing it like this might antagonise some people.

I agree.

I have never been to a stately home in my life, so I totally ignored the media ruckus over that report. I knew I had too little context to work out what was going on.

But then on MN we ended up having a thread diverted to the importance of acknowledging the exploitation that funded the building of stately houses on FWR, because two posters who proudly announced that they worked in heritage (and who didn't otherwise dirty themselves by associating with the bad women here) kept pushing it back to that subject.

At that point, I still didn't care about what displays National Trust homes put up, or what the focus was. But these two posters were so incredibly patronising and seemed to feel entitled to the plebs' deference. They bloody made it clear that anyone who didn't have a relevant degree and career in heritage was their lesser!

Heritage is not, in my experience, an employment sector that you get into without the right socio-economic background, and so it proved. One admitted that she cared about the subject because she was descended from colonial landowners and she wanted to acknowledge that. Her plan of action for her atonement included stomping on all the current-day MNers that she regarded as her social inferiors.

Frankly, by the end of the thread, I was in full class-warfare mode, and I would have cheerfully marched them both to the guillotine for being aristos. If they'd said the sky was blue, I'd have refused to agree for fear of betraying the working-classes!

This stood out for me:
”I encountered opinions I’d never heard before”
A little surprising?

Shades of Emily Thornberry campaigning in Kent and being astonished that someone might have a St George’s flag.

As you and @TempestTostnote, people know the world is unjust, and they know that people can't amass vast fortunes without exploitation.

And, of course, if you're now touring the house/gardens with the National Trust, then they've lost their vast fortune! You're already partaking in the spoils of the proletariat revolution! (or something like that)

It would be rather more courageous to go and stick up signs on the current oligarchs' stuff and grill them about how they acquired their wealth.

@songaboutjam

Yes I think this goes a long way to explaining the backlash.

The kinds of people who visit country houses will already be interested in history, and those who are members of the NT will already be more likely to be better-educated.

Both groups will recognise the hypocrisy of the type of "educator" who comes from the naive cradle of student union political ideas to decry slavery while simultaneously espousing Communism as a political system, an institution which has left 100 million dead in the last century, dwarfing the Transatlantic slave trade by an order of magnitude.

As you and @TempestTost note, people know the world is unjust, and they know that people can't amass vast fortunes without exploitation.

I think you are on the right track.

It's always seemed to me that part of the issue is that the people doing the "educating" have this odd idea that the plebs don't realize that often great wealth is amassed through various types of exploitation.

In some ways I think almost the opposite is true. They might not know exactly how Lord So and So made his money (and if it's interesting they might be happy to hear.) But they do consider that where power and wealth are concerned, exploitation and bad behaviour are completely ubiquitous across humanity.

(I think this is in part why the term "woke" has caught on - it is hard to resist as a term for people who think they have some great insight to offer on something so mundane (greed, etc) everyone already knows it.

@NonLinguisticRhetoricIsMyKryptonite
Lol, I should have read all of it before answering! 😊 I subscribed to the course recently and only read the general info, so her name didn't ring a bell yet (of course she introduces herself in Lesson 1).

Agree with all of this.

I think that some on the left also have a subconscious tendency to "educate" others in a way that comes across very poorly and puts people on the defensive because they feel condescended to. Especially when the "educators" tend to be young university educated whippersnappers and the "educatees" tend to be older or non degree holders.

Would topics such as colonialism have been quite so fraught and divisive if we hadn't discussed them in this way to begin with? Or would there always have been people who wanted to stick to the way history has always been taught, kind of like those who resist the idea that dinosaurs had feathers and want to continue in their fond thoughts of Jurassic Park dinosaurs?

Fowler has nothing to do with any of that though. She's done her job, done it well, and been abused for it (just like Cass - - I wonder if misogyny played any role?) But I do really admire just how professional and level-headed she's been in some of her responses. A true case of someone taking the moral high ground, despite, I am sure, at least some temptation to respond in kind.

One has to wonder whether any of Cass's abusive detractors would come to an understanding with her and admit "I may have been wrong"?

I hope I am wrong but tbh I would put money on Fowler refusing to talk to Cass.

I'd like to see the comments but can't view them.