WHEN David Starkey came out with his latest racist outburst in an interview with the right-wing activist Darren Grimes, it can hardly have been expected that the fallout would reach Scotland. And yet here we are. Grimes had tweeted excitedly about his admiration for Starkey in advance of the interview, provoking another fan to reply "Tell him I love him".
That this fan should have been Neil Oliver should surprise nobody. Oliver recently caused a stir by stating that young people shouldn’t go to university, a remark that seemed a bit odd coming from someone with his public profile. But the crucial context for Oliver’s statement was his conviction, expressed in an interview last month with Mike Graham, that universities have succumbed to a "Maoist" cultural revolution which has left them incapable of fulfilling their educational mission.
Needless to say, this is paranoid nonsense. But it’s absolutely of a piece with Oliver’s general response to the explosive reappearance of the Black Lives Matter movement in the US and beyond. In conversation with Graham, Oliver claimed that Black Lives Matter in the UK was essentially a plot by anarchists and communists to undermine the fabric of the British nation. If that raised eyebrows, his claim that removing statues of slavers was the first step towards the guillotine pushed them up a little higher.
If we were feeling charitable, we might just note that the isolation of lockdown hasn’t been good for everyone. And in truth, Oliver’s views are to a large extent his own affair. If he wants to buy into far-right fuming about the social impact of Cultural Marxism, or whatever they’re calling it today, then who apart from his nearest and dearest has any right to intervene? If he wishes to stand shoulder to shoulder with a grisly racist like Starkey, when everyone from the Royal Historical Society and Fitzwilliam College to the Mary Rose Museum is finally scrambling to cut their ties, then why should we care?
The reason for legitimate wider concern is that Oliver is the president – in their own words, an "ambassador" – for the National Trust for Scotland. NTS is Scotland’s leading heritage charity, which has a substantial proportion of the nation’s built heritage and natural landscape in its care. At any number of such sites, visitors can find themselves facing up to Scotland’s history in all its difficulty – including its deep and bloody involvement in transatlantic slavery. Telling that story sensitively should be a key part of NTS’s own stated commitment to inclusivity. Yet in Oliver they have an ambassador who refuses to see anything other than a left-wing plot against history in Black Lives Matter, and who has instead committed himself to a nostalgic fantasy of British historical greatness.
READ MORE: NTS defends Oliver after he gives support to slavery row historian
NTS have so far defended their association with Oliver, on the grounds that his political opinions are nothing to do with the work he does for them. But a growing number of people can see the contradictions between NTS’s responsibility for the curation of Scotland’s complex history and Oliver’s bizarre refusal to acknowledge a movement that asks us to look at it with eyes alert to that complexity. And that’s before we get to his unretracted admiration for Starkey. NTS should think again.
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