The prime minister opined recently, in a radio interview, that those people who objected to certain statues and wanted to tear them down wanted to 'bowdlerise', or 're-write' history. This verb refers to the work of the Shakespearean editor Thomas Bowdler (1754-1825), who expurgated from Shakespeare's plays 'those words ... which cannot with propriety be read aloud in a family.'(John Ayto (ed.)'Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable', (2008), p. 182.) So Johnson is implicitly admitting that there are parts of British history which ought to provoke shame and embarassment. Apart from the fact that putting an object in a museum is to contextualise it, and not to erase it, and that therefore the whole controversy is about recognising different perspectives on the past, rather than erasing it (as Trump has alleged), Johnson is, albeit unconsciously, conceding a great deal of ground to his opponents. History has, in any case, been 're-written' throughout history. It can no longer be asserted that there is absolutely nothing to be ashamed of in Britain's past. Of course, that still leaves a lot of room for all sorts of disagreements about all aspects of Britain's histories. It may also be pointed out, witrh some justice, that the point of studying history is (to invert Karl Marx's 'Theses on Feuerbach', No. 11) to interpret the world, not to change it, and certainly not to feel guilt about it.
Possibly so ; but many societies, including post-apartheid South Africa, have found that confronting these feelings is also a necessary part of confronting the past.
The second remark which Johnson made in the same interview is as intriguing as the first. He said that it was 'unhealthy' for workers to continue to be furloughed. Notice those things that he did not say, but that anybody who knows anything about lived as it is lived for millions of people might have said. He did not say that a life on inadequate benefits, condemning their recipients to rely on food banks, was 'unhealthy.' Nor did he say that exploitative levels of pay, zero hours contracts, or abusive and neglectful employers were 'unhealthy.' I know that the experience of 'lockdown' has been very, very difficult for many ; but there have been people for whom being furloughed has been a welcome release from the stresses of work, and has given them more time with their families, and to experience other parts of life. Perhaps Johnson (and the Conservative Party) are anxious that people are getting a glimpse that life is about more than wearing yourself out at work, and then relieving the stress with alcohol. Which is why they are so keen on ending the furlough scheme, ensuring that people experience the sobering 'discipline' of unemployment, making them thankful that they have a zero-hours job, and why they were so desperate to open the boozers again, so that people could forget the terrible gap between life as it is and life as it might be. They had a glimpse of the life that might be lived during furlough, as if by a terrible error, and they will have to forget this horrifying aberration, this absurd deviation from capitalist 'normality.'
It is, of course, another question completely as to whether this precious 'normality' can be restored, and if it is desirable to do so.