The political fall-out from the Black Lives' Matter protests continues to affect our cultural and educational institutions as Madeline Grant describes in today's Telegraph.
"The Church of England’s recent undertaking to return two “Benin Bronzes” to Nigeria as a “gesture of goodwill” at first glance seems typical of our times. Yet the decision is curious, because these figures were made in the 1980s, and presented to the then-Archbishop of Canterbury Robert Runcie soon afterwards. They are unrelated to the controversial bronzes looted by British troops during the 1897 Benin expedition.
Maybe the Church was indulging in a spot of new-age virtue-signalling, or bowing to activist pressure. Perhaps it was simply using current political preoccupations to offload some of the countless gifts received by senior clerics which pile up at Lambeth Palace over the years. Yet there is a whiff of deception, a surreal stupidity, about the whole affair. The figures have no colonial links, yet activists still want them, and the Church will happily acquiesce.
Through a mixture of peer pressure, weakness, good intentions and ignorance, absurdities like these are becoming commonplace. At Jane Austen’s house in Chawton, museum officials are busily preparing to update their displays, filtering the interpretation of the exhibits through the BLM lens."
The full article can be read here with a link to the original in the link beneath it.
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