Woke History?

Woke History is the latest cultural bogeyman, apparently responsible for everything from falling exam grades to the price of a pint. If you listen to the usual suspects, you would think a cabal of sandal wearing lecturers is rewriting the national story to make Britain look like an inconsistent teenager in need of a stern talking to. In reality, Woke History is nothing more sinister than historians doing their job, which is to dig up whatever we have conveniently buried.

The problem is not the history. The problem is the people who preferred the old colouring book version. They want their kings noble, their wars glorious, and their empire bathed permanently in golden hour lighting. They want Britain as a plucky underdog who always did the right thing, helped the world, and never once had an awkward moment with a ledger full of uncomfortable figures. The trouble is that serious history is not a patriotic bedtime story. It is a record of what actually happened, good, bad and occasionally ludicrous.

What they really object to is loss of control. For generations the national narrative was written by the winners. They shaped the past to flatter themselves and reassure the present. Woke History interrupts that comfort by pointing out that the world is more complex than a Union Flag tea towel. That the empire was not all railways and cricket. That our institutions did not spring from the soil like moral mushroom crops. That women, workers and minorities did not gain rights because some kindly aristocrat had a moment of benevolence over breakfast. They fought for them, often against the very people now shouting about how unfair it is to mention it.

The irony is that those who howl most loudly about Woke History tend to be the same people who demand others face facts about everything else. They insist on personal responsibility until it comes to the nation. They lecture individuals on owning their mistakes while demanding the country never acknowledge a single one. Confront them with evidence and you are accused of hating Britain, which is a neat way of avoiding the question. It is like refusing to service your car because you prefer to remember it as reliable. Sentiment is no substitute for maintenance.

Real history is rarely flattering. That is its value. It explains how we got here, not how we would like to imagine we got here. If you start with the answer you want, you are not doing history. You are doing therapy. And badly. Nations that cling to myths end up governed by them. They make poor decisions because they are built on sand, and sooner or later the tide is coming in. When opinion is given the same status as truth, the country stops learning. It also stops improving.

So by all means rail against Woke History if it makes you feel better. It will not change a single archive, a single census, a single shipping manifest or a single court record. The past is there, stubbornly factual and often inconvenient. What the critics are really demanding is the right not to know. But that is not patriotism. It is nostalgia with its fingers in its ears.

If Britain wants to grow up, it needs a grown up history. Not a sanitised saga for the easily spooked, but a clear eyed account of what we did, why we did it, and what it cost. That is not wokeness. It is adulthood. And given the state of public debate, adulthood is overdue.