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Blackadder goes to Brussels: history’s shadow on the EU

Jonathan Lindsell, 6 January 2014

Michael Gove has a plan so cunning it might be appointed Minister of State for Cunning in the next reshuffle. The plan is to write an essay for the Daily Mail criticising a broad mass of Leftists historians for their interpretation of the First World War. Gove asserts that they advance ‘myths’ such as the war’s futility and poor leadership, which undermines the courage and patriotism of the British Tommies who died fighting for ‘Britain’s special tradition of liberty’. He argues that history is taught badly in schools, relying on Blackadder videos, ‘misunderstandings and misrepresentations’.

Gove also takes issue with Leftist accounts of the war’s inception, which tend to include the weakness of Ottoman rule, contending imperial theory, arms races, and the domino-effect of treaties toppled by Franz Ferdinand’s assassination.

Gove’s own account of the war’s cause is more straightforward:

‘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.

It’s pronouncements like this which needlessly antagonise those with whom the Conservatives will need to work, day in and day out, to substantially reform the European Union.  Such tactics are questionable: for a cheap political point against Guardian and Cambridge historian Richard Evans, Gove seems willing to irk the Germans, and implicitly the Austrians, Hungarians and Bulgarians too. His comments sparked a rebuke from Labour’s education spokesman, Tristram Hunt, which itself stoked Boris Johnson into a full-throated Telegraph piece.

What was Gove trying to achieve? Whether he’s historically correct or not, does Boris seriously think he’s being helpful writing  headlines like ‘Germany started the Great War, but the Left can’t bear to say so’? This is a mischaracterisation Hunt (who holds a history PhD), who himself went overboard in characterising Gove’s original essay as evidence of the Right’s obsession with a ‘militaristic Germany bent on warmongering and imperial aggression’.

The series of Blackadder concerning the Great War (which satirised the Somme as ‘lions led by donkeys’) first aired in 1989, so now seems an odd time for Gove to respond. Perhaps the real causes are the May European Parliament elections, which UKIP threatens to dominate, and the First World War’s centenary. German MEPs have already reacted with shock.

This short-sighted tactic risks making Euroscepticism a ‘right wing’ venture, where there are numerous EU traits that could disgust the left.  Conservative MP Robert Buckland has written recently that he fears a drift to the right to counter UKIP. This could start a dangerous arms race: Farage just said of the ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech that ruined Enoch Powell, ‘the basic principle is right’.

Accusations of allowing one’s politics to cloud one’s historical judgement show a peculiar kind of short-term obsession: few voters care about a century-old war’s nuanced interpretation, in itself. Many do care, though, about the EU and its reform: this should be Westminster’s focus.

1 comment on “Blackadder goes to Brussels: history’s shadow on the EU”

  1. “To know nothing of what happened before you were born is to remain forever a child” – Cicero

    It is a dangerous thing at any time to deny or simply omit the hard facts of history for that is the practice of tyrants. To have a sense of belonging and mutual regard for their fellow citizens People need to know where they came from if they are not to be human atoms twisting in the existential wind. They can only do that if they know the history of their people. The politically correct have sabotaged history teaching in Britain precisely because they realise the potency of a true history in thwarting their ends.

    As for Europe, there is absolutely no prospect of radically changing the EU in the ways that the British people want, in particular the question of free movement of labour. That being so leaving is the only alternative to the status quo. If you want Britain to leave part of persuading the British people to do so must be the true advertisement of our historical relations with all the major players in the EU to the British. That history is one of conflict as the norm not the exception. Moreover, the conflict has been for several centuries resolved in Britain’s favour. It leaves a residue of resentment amongst the major EU players towards Britain. These facts can ginger up the British electorate and make them think in national terms.

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