If you are lucky, you may know nothing about History Reclaimed. Here’s an end to your luck: it’s a collective of grumbling historians who tilt to the right and believe only in their view of history.

They are, according to their website, “gathering evidence of instances where British history has been distorted or misrepresented in the broadcast media…”

Their anger about ‘wokeness’, that usefully vague modern ‘sin’, is just the dirty diesel these historians need to fuel their fume-belching obsessions.

Chief among the grumblers is Andrew Roberts, who shared on Twitter a newspaper report about how “the BBC has been rewriting British history recently”. That report was in the Telegraph. Of course it was. The Telegraph is the natural home of History Reclaimed, alongside being a repository for alarmingly bonkers opinion columns.

A report on the History Reclaimed website points a finger at an edition of the BBC travel-comedy show The Misadventures of Romesh Ranganathan that visited Sierra Leone. Slavery was the cause of complaint here.

These grumbling historians seem to overlap with Tory MPs in the Common Sense Group who huffed and puffed about the National Trust’s sensible and sensitive report into how its properties are connected to slavery.

The short version here is that History Reclaimed believe the British Empire was a glorious enterprise that never harmed anyone. And Winston Churchill is god. Other views are not permitted.

There is caricature in my summary here, naturally, but these people are their own caricature.

Historians who believe that history is being ‘rewritten’ don’t seem to understand how history works: every fresh line of study, every new book – they all rewrite history, as rewriting history is basically doing history. That’s how it ticks over.

History is constant reinterpretation, so to pretend that there is a fixed ‘proper’ version – to pretend that “history got done”, just like Brexit allegedly did ­– is surely a nonsense.

Just imagine how future historians will look at, say, the crisis in our NHS. Various possible arguments could be made. Historians on the right might look back and opine that the NHS was a failed socialist experiment that could never work and deserved to fail.

Historians on the left might argue that it was the greatest social benefit invented but one destroyed by years of unnecessary austerity and intentional under-funding imposed by Conservative governments.

Those who favour the present government might wish to blame the pandemic, the energy crisis, Vladimir Putin or even 1066 and the Norman Conquest (who knows, they blame everyone and everything else).

Or, like the comedian, writer and sometime medic Dr Phil Hammond, they might ask: “The question with the NHS is not why it is has disintegrated so much, but why it has been allowed to disintegrate so much…”

The question with the NHS is not why it is has disintegrated so much, but why it has been allowed to disintegrate so much. With sufficient staff & capacity, in a joined up system with excellent IT & data, add a big push for public health improvement & prevention, it would thrive.

— Dr Phil Hammond 💙 (@drphilhammond) January 4, 2023

Or, like the front page of today’s Daily Mirror, they might point out the following..

The problems with the NHS may go deep but they are owned by the Conservative party as they have been in power for 12 years and have run everything into the ground.

Of course, I am displaying my own bias here, but that’s the point in a way. Future historians will be able to take whatever line they can sustain, and could argue any of the points mentioned here.

Some might also wonder why prime minister Rishi Sunak should get so prickly every time he is asked if he or his family use the NHS. It’s a fair question to ask of a multi-millionaire prime minister and one that deserves an honest answer.

Perhaps they might also look back and wonder why, faced with endless strikes, an NHS crisis, a social care crisis, a cost-of-living crisis and so on, Sunak should wish to should wish to announce today that all pupils will study some form of mathematics until the age of 18.

Then again, it is easier to dick about with education yet again than it is to sort out the real problems pilling up outside your door.