Paul O'Leary

It is rare for newspaper editorials to notice, let alone take issue with, the work of academic historians. So it was worthy of note when the London Times took advantage of the publication of a government-funded report on muticulturalism to attack revisionist interpretations of British history. In an editorial entitled 'Nation and Race' on 12 October 2000, the newspaper disagreed vehemently with a loosely connected group of historians whose work has come to be known as the 'new British history'. In particular, The Times singled out writers like Linda Colley, whose work on the 'invention' of Britishness as an official ideology in the eighteenth century was seen as part of an uncongenial re-interpretation of the national past. Special criticism was reserved for her emphasis on the constructed nature of British national identity. The Times judged this kind of historical writing to be part of an insidious trend which could only serve to undermine confidence in a British identity rooted in what it believed to be a longer and more durable past. The idea that the constituent nations of the United Kingdom might have forged a common identity partly out of self-interest (and thus, implicitly, might withdraw from it in the light of changing self-interest) caused the newspaper particular offence.

What was more surprising than the editorial's disagreement with this approach to British history was the claim that it lacked originality. According to the editorial, the 'plural nature of our past' was well known. In reality, however, an emphasis on national diversity and cultural plurality has been a relatively recent development in academic writing about British history, and one that has yet to receive universal assent in the profession. It is precisely this novelty that has led to the epithet 'new' being associated with the writings of historians who, in their different ways, emphasise the importance of understanding the interaction between the different national groupings of the British Isles. Their work challenges the assumptions underpinning the separate historiographical traditions of England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales, and stands in opposition to the dominant anglocentric trend in history writing among those who have claimed to write the history of Britain as a whole.

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