In the second part of his look at Brexit ‘campaigning’ groups, Otto English explores the attempts of those trying to weaponise their versions of British history and turning this into an orthodoxy which cannot be challenged
In February 2015, a campaign group called ‘Historians for Britain’ was launched on an unsuspecting, pre-Brexit public.
Some impressive names were signed to the project. It was chaired by Cambridge University academic and author David Abulafia, while others who supported it included Professor Robert Tombs, of the Faculty of History at Cambridge; controversial academic and television historian David Starkey; Churchill biographer Andrew Roberts; James Holland; and Jonathan Clark.
It promised to “offer insight into the EU debate from a historical perspective” and, to that end, impartiality was key.
The group’s website claimed that it was “an independent and non-partisan academic organisation… composed of historians… dedicated to historical research to expand knowledge and understanding about the fundamental changes surrounding our country”.
But for a supposedly ‘independent’ and ‘non-partisan’ group, there was a distinct whiff of the ‘usual suspects’ going on.
For a start, its HQ was 55 Tufton Street. In what must have been very cramped conditions, it shared that address with a host of other Brexit orientated campaign groups and think tanks which over that period and subsequent years – included Civitas, Business for Britain, the TaxPayers’ Alliance, ‘Economists for Britain’, Labour for Britain and various other runners and riders.
The contact email was in the name of Oliver Lewis – later of the Vote Leave group, thence deputy to David Frost as he negotiated Brexit, and finally head of Number 10’s Union Unit – a job he quit (supposedly under pressure) after just two weeks, in February 2021.
Some of the historians who climbed on board had clearly not received the ‘non-partisan’ memo.
Shortly after its launch, Starkey was quoted in City A.M. as arguing that the group would make an “important contribution to the historical debate about what it means to be – or rather, not be – ‘European’”. And there was little doubt where Abulafia, the group’s chair, stood on the issue of leaving the EU. He told the BBC’s Giles Dilnot in March 2015: “What we share is a sense that there is actually something rather distinctive about the cultural and political history of these islands which has always made it a partner of Europe rather than a full participant.”
Britain was – in a word – ‘exceptional’, and here were academics and historians from some of the nation’s greatest institutions arguing that it was so.
The Historians for Britain website is still live and perhaps the most striking thing about it now is the shocking lack of quality on view.
The grammatical and factual errors abound including: “As historians, we live by facts. Thus, we make sure that all our content here on the website are verified from reliable sources.” There is also the jaw-dropping: “Over 71% or 30 million British people voted for the UK to withdraw its membership from the EU.”
The site continues to pump out blogs which all appear to have been written by a man called Brian. Highlights include ‘Do You Know About British Hat Culture?’ and a spectacularly weird piece about King Henry VIII.
How much of an impact Historians for Britain had on Brexit is anyone’s guess. A lot of people might not even have noticed it even existed. But it was one piece in the vast Vote Leave and wider Brexit jigsaw of interconnected people and organisations.
History Reclaimed
As I set out in Part One, there were dozens of ‘Brexit campaign groups’ set up both before and after the 2016 EU Referendum. Even dedicated chroniclers of events have struggled to keep up with them all.
Historians for Britain’s purpose was reassurance. It was there to demonstrate that ‘clever people’ were backing Brexit too and, more than tha