In defence of division

When critics, led by Lord Roberts of Belgravia, took the National Portrait Gallery to task last month for permitting Helen Cammock’s video to defame Winston Churchill, the management disclaimed responsibility for the artist’s views, disingenuously asserting its commitment to freedom of expression (“Everyone is trying to tear down Churchill. But the facts are all on his side”, 17 June). “Disingenuously”, because it’s inconceivable that the Gallery would extend that freedom to an artistic defamer of, say, Nelson Mandela or Greta Thunberg. Here lies an instance of a general problem: the abandonment of the field to the West’s “woke” enemies by a cultural elite bereft of any sense of patriotic duty.

​Earlier this month, we witnessed the same phenomenon when the Bank of England sought to justify its decision to drop famous historical figures such as Churchill and Alan Turing from our banknotes, in favour of assorted wildlife. Its Governor, Andrew Bailey,initially argued that the “foremost objective” was security. “To ensure the public can trust the money we print,” he wrote, we have to change the design of our notes from time to time: no design can be permanent if we are to stay ahead of the counterfeiters” (“We must take Churchill off banknotes for security reasons”, 3 June). 

​But, of course, a change of design doesn’t require a change of subject: a different version of Churchill and Turing could easily have been chosen. Security, therefore, cannot have been the main motive.

​So, the Governor tacked in a different direction. He acknowledged that celebrating people who’ve made exemplary contributions to the Britain we’ve all inherited — and doing so on banknotes — is important. Immediately, however, he turned around and surrendered what he’d just asserted, apparently in democratic deference to the popular will. A poll, he said, had revealed a “clear” preference for wildlife.

​Yet again, things are not quite as they appear. For, what the Governor didn’t mention was that the said poll had been so structured as to diffuse preferences for history, while concentrating those for nature. History had been divided into three separate categories — figures, landmarks, and events. Because it had not been similarly divided — into, say, fauna, flora, and landscape—nature was enabled to attract the highest proportion of preferences.

​What’s more, the Bank hadn’t simply deferred to the people’s will. It had not, in fact,let the people choose whatever they pleased. It had asserted its authority, made a judgement,taken a stand: the people could choose between history or nature, but not between the King’s portrait and one of Mickey Mouse. So why didn’t it also dare to make the patriotic judgement that it’s more important to celebrate the people who spent their lives building and defending the national heritage that we’ve all been privileged to receive, than to showcase wildlife that would happily scurry about the landscape whether or not the British nation-state existed at all. Wildlife represents the “country” only as apolitical nature, not as a political nation. It is not a symbol of national identity.  

​Why, then, did the Bank choose to abandon Britain’s national heritage? A clue to the answer lies in an October 2025 report commissioned by the Bank from Savanta, a market-research consultancy, and only brought to light by a Freedom of Information request. From the responses of all of 119 focus-group participants, this concluded that featuring figures such as Churchill and Turing would be imperialist, insufficiently inclusive and — worst of all — “divisive”. Savanta advised the Bank to frame any move away from historical figures as a positive evolution rather than a cancellation of history. In other words, it counselled the disingenuous hiding of the true motive.

​The Bank denies that the Savanta report had any bearing on their decision. Maybe. It’s possible they deliberately paid good money to acquire data about public opinion and subsequently chose to ignore it. It’s possible, but it strains credibility. Besides, given that the only explanation they’ve offered to date doesn’t add up, the Sevanta report is the only plausible candidate left standing.

​The available evidence suggests, then, that the Bank of England’s decision to ditch the likes of Churchill and Turing for badgers and barn-owls was driven by an aversion to becoming divisive. But what does it mean to be “divisive”? What was it the Bank was loath to divide? Presumably, the dominant “decolonising” consensus that holds Churchill to have been a racist who intentionally starved millions of Indians to death in the Bengal Famine of 1943.That was Helen Cammock’s story.

But who really believes it? Only a tiny minority of historically ignorant, aggressively anti-British ideologues, some of them — but not all — members of ethnic minorities. So, how come their view amounts to a dominant consensus? Because more numerous conflict-averse people like those at the Bank of England allow the ideologues to ride on their backs. And why do they do that? Why don’t they dare to call out the baseless slander against Churchill for what it is? Because they’re terrified of being accused of being racist.

Being “divisive”, then, means to break ranks with the dominant “decolonising” narrative that asserts that the most important feature of Britain’s history — which is a proxy for the West’s — was its racism, which suffices to damn it all. Any dissenter risks bringing down upon his head denunciations for being a damnable apologist for Western racism, oppression, and exploitation.

In the Culture Wars, there is no neutral ground: those who avoid the fight serve the enemy

That doesn’t look good. Therefore, keen to keep its reputation clear of such flak, the Bank has avoided disturbing the “decolonising” consensus about history by opting for politically innocuous fauna and flora instead. So, now, at just the time when “decolonising” zealots are busy exploiting widespread historical ignorance to trash Britain’s historical record at home and abroad, the Bank of England—no less—will erase the names and faces of British heroes from our banknotes, which, as the Governor himself has admitted, are “a shared symbol of our national identity”.  

​The consequence of the Bank’s failure to shoulder its patriotic duty to conserve and promote Britain’s national heritage, and of its timorous outsourcing of responsibility for decision-making to polls and focus-groups, has been to hand the opponents of the West yet another victory. Just like the National Portrait Gallery. In the Culture Wars, there is no neutral ground: those who avoid the fight serve the enemy.