Perhaps those of a woke disposition should sit down before reading any further. For this is surely anti-wokery of the most brazen kind.
At a time when the justice warriors of the Left are furiously trying to pull down statues, plaques and portraits of anyone remotely connected with Britain’s imperial past — from sea captains and sugar merchants to Winston Churchill and even the Queen — here is an outfit which is busily trying to keep them up.
What’s more, it even wants to restore them to their former glory and trumpet their existence to the world.
Because we cannot rewrite history. Not everything about Britain’s naval and military operations over three centuries was irredeemably bad. Without the sacrifices of these men, most of the world would not be speaking English — but would French be any better?
While others might want to ‘cancel’ the lot of them and consign them to the dustbin of history, this plucky young charity, the Remembrance Trust, has other ideas
It wants to repair the broken effigies of colonial troops in the Caribbean. It is working to mend the cracked marble and faded inscriptions honouring imperial forces from Africa to the Indian Ocean — and here in Britain, too.
While others might want to ‘cancel’ the lot of them and consign them to the dustbin of history, this plucky young charity, the Remembrance Trust, has other ideas.
Its stated goal is to preserve the memory of those who made great sacrifices — and in some cases paid the ultimate price — in the name of the deplorable British Empire.
Just last week, the trust agreed to spend money restoring the grave of Guardsman John Cole, a veteran of Waterloo. Last month, his resting place was smashed to pieces by drunken yobs joy-riding on a tractor in Benfleet, Essex.
Whatever we might call the opposite of ‘woke’ — dormant? Comatose? — then the Remembrance Trust is surely it.
And, this week, I am glad to say, it is to receive royal recognition. The Princess Royal will unveil a memorial to dozens of the Duke of Wellington’s men — including a former drummer boy — discovered in a churchyard in Jersey.
Right now, the Remembrance Trust is going to need all the help it can get, for it sits in a very exposed position on the frontline of the ‘culture wars’.
If the cancel culture commissars feel entitled to destroy a new TV channel they have never watched on the grounds that it might feature the odd Brexity meat-eater; if it is acceptable to ‘cancel’ our most successful living author, JK Rowling, because she has expressed the view that women are women; then is it not borderline insanity to be lionising the men (and they are almost all men) who built the Empire?
Well, not quite.
Before you press the ‘cancel’ button, dear snowflakes, and invoke the Twitter pile-on, it may be worth taking a closer look.
Because we cannot rewrite history. Not everything about Britain’s naval and military operations over three centuries was irredeemably bad. Without the sacrifices of these men, most of the world would not be speaking English — but would French be any better?
As for the naive conceit that the world would be a happier place if Nelson, Wellington and their men had stayed at home, well, think again. That is why the Remembrance Trust and its work matter.
The charity was only registered three years ago to attempt to plug a hole in our national story. We have the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) which tends to the graves and memorials of every man and woman who has died for King or Queen and country since 1914. And a magnificent job the CWGC does, as anyone who has visited some of its beautifully maintained sites will attest.
But when it comes to those who died before the outbreak of World War I, there is nothing to preserve or protect their memory. And many of them lie in desecrated or neglected graves which are nothing short of a disgrace.
That is where the Remembrance Trust seeks to step in. Now, some will ask why anyone should give two hoots about some long-lost soldier or sailor whom no one alive knew and who died in another age. To which the volunteers behind the trust point out that all these people are part of our history and how a nation treats its fallen warriors, even those from 200 years ago, says a lot about the present.
And if you don’t think these things still exert a hold on our collective identity, then just recall those extraordinary scenes six years ago when tens of thousands lined the streets of Leicester in respectful silence to watch the coffin of that 24-carat child-murdering wrong ’un, Richard III, being carried to his new grave.
If he deserves recognition and a resting place, then what about Charles Brownrigg?
The captain of HMS London, Brownrigg was one of more than 17,000 men of the Royal Navy who died during Britain’s 80-year war against the slave trade.
He was leading a patrol off Zanzibar in December 1881 when he saw a suspicious dhow. Its Arab crew, having crammed 100 African slaves in unspeakable conditions in the hold, opened fire as Brownrigg’s launch came alongside. With his men all dead or overboard, Brownrigg fought on, blinded by blood from a head wound.
One report states he whirled his rifle like a club around his head until thrusts of an enemy sword severed his fingers. Whereupon he was killed by a shot to the chest.
Brownrigg and five of his crew are buried on nearby Grave Island, off modern Tanzania, along with 80 fellow anti-slavers. A few yards away, however,
