Don’t let ‘wokes’ rewrite history, let’s learn from the past – GP Taylor

This was a history I have known long before it was confirmed by a DNA test. My mother handed down the stories of the Black and Tans, and the atrocities that they committed.

Being born in Yorkshire, I had to balance this from an early age with my feelings for being English. I was torn in two, an Irish rebel with a Yorkshire heart.

I therefore feel, because of my cultural roots, that I have the right to commentate on the colonial past of Britain. Unlike many woke militants, I do not want to rewrite history, tear down statues and make sure that everyone knows that a dead poet had a relative who may have been involved in the slave trade.

Allan Bank, William Wordsworth’s Cumbrian home, was included on a list of 93 properties that had a link to ‘imperialism’ and slavery because his brother John commanded an East India Company ship.

The National Trust wants to let us all know this as some sort of trigger warning before people set foot on the premises. What utter tosh. History is the past and it cannot be changed.

My Irish blood does not want to banish or cancel the name of the murderer Oliver Cromwell or the negligent Queen Victoria, who could have saved a million Irish people from starving.

Those things are consigned to history and are facts that can help us learn for a better future. I am very aware of the shortcomings of their humanness, but that, too, goes for people like Nelson Mandela.

In my English heart, it is sad to see a number of vocal people who are obviously so ashamed of being British that they have to try and bring our culture down at every opportunity. I was incredibly annoyed last week, when an attack came from within the Church of England.

I have heard some priests say extremely stupid things in the past, but for one to equate a celebration of the life of Captain Sir Tom Moore with white nationalism before retracting their comments is the height of disrespect and ignorance.

Yet, due to the ease of writing on Twitter, there are more and more people intent on telling us their anti-British thoughts and their disgust at our history. For them, I have a simple answer. If you do not like the history of the country that gives you shelter, protects, feeds you and allows you free speech, then get out.

Go! It is as simple as that. The door opens both ways. Go and find a country where being gay is not a crime and trans people have the right to be who they are and be proud of it. Go and find a country where you can say the things you do and not be put in prison or thrown off a roof for your sexuality.

Having travelled the world, I know for a fact that Britain is now one of the most tolerant 
and liberal places to live. It is 
our history that has made it 
that way and I am very proud.

Nelson, Churchill and many others now in the woke firing line are the foundation stones of the freedom and liberty we all enjoy. Those who seek to cancel and tarnish their names pose a sinister threat to our culture and way of life.

Every nation has suffered from times in their past that have been morally wrong, but we have to stop looking back with the judgmental camera of hindsight or a distorted view of history.

I am proud to be the DNA mongrel that I am, a coming together of cultures and traditions, an English-Irish-Yorkshire Viking.

It is so fantastic that I live 
in a society that is heading quickly in the right direction in relation to human rights, racial and sexual equality and free speech.

It is only in Britain that I can be who I am, dress the way I want and have opinions that are my own. I am proud of the country in which I live and even though I battle with its past, I will never use it as a political tool for 
self-advancement as others are doing.

What these new puritans have to understand is that without our history and the people who were a part of it, Great Britain would have capitulated.

Freedom to criticise and condemn was bought at a price. That is what the woke mob should think about before they spew their anti-British sentiment to their echo chambers on social media.

GP Taylor is a writer and broadcaster. He lives in Whitby.

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