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, stands a marble memorial to another 24 sailors of the Royal Navy who were killed when their ship, HMS Pegasus, was shelled in World War I. I am indebted to British travellers Tom Hewitson and Mia Good who visited the site last month and sent me some photographs. The graves of the dead sailors from HMS Pegasus remain in pristine condition because they fall under the auspices of the CWGC. Brownrigg and his men died just 33 years earlier. Yet they lie beneath cracked stones in a weed-strewn plot. Now the Remembrance Trust wants to refurbish it properly. On paper, the trust appears to have an impossible task, given its remit spans every campaign from American independence and the struggle to contain Napoleon through to the Crimea and the Boer War. But the Remembrance Trust’s founder, ex-Grenadier Guards officer, entrepreneur and author, Algy Cluff, is undaunted. ‘There’s no database, so we depend entirely on people coming to us,’ says Cluff, 80. ‘They can let us know if they spot a grave or memorial and if they want to volunteer or donate, all the better.’ He is driven by an old soldier’s simple sense of kinship, having himself seen active service in West Africa, Cyprus and Borneo. ‘A lady called the Coldstream Guards recently to say “how dare you leave your men like that?”. She’d seen two graves in a terrible state in France but the regiment knew nothing about it,’ he explains. ‘So we’ve spent £2,500 to help get a contractor to restore them.’ The men had been killed at the Battle of Bayonne in 1814, a year before Waterloo. It might be more than 200 years ago but these graves are more than a resting place. They are a corner of a foreign field which tell a story. By way of fostering goodwill, the trust has given the Bayonne Museum the funds to restore its most prized exhibits: two hats — one of them Wellington’s and the other Napoleon’s. The locals are delighted. Mr Cluff has always relished a challenge, whether looking for North Sea oil in the 1970s (at which he was very successful) or rescuing the Spectator magazine a decade later (ditto). But once a soldier, always a soldier. A former trustee of the National Army Museum and vice-president of the Army Benevolent Fund, he spent more than a decade as chairman of the War Memorials Trust, which supports 60,000 memorials in the UK. Now his focus is global. A few years ago, the then rector of Jersey’s St Saviour’s Church, the Rev Peter Dyson, was asked for information on a veteran of the Battle of Waterloo. (Pictured, Esme Deer, 14, from the 3rd Jersey Scouts tend to a grave) He is the first to acknowledge the shortcomings of Britain’s imperial legacy. He points out that some of the cemeteries on the trust’s radar, including one currently in hand in Antigua, contain both slaves and slave owners as well as soldiers and sailors. A current programme of works in South Africa, for example, includes the restoration of both Zulu and British graves. Last year, I joined Mr Cluff and his wife, Blondel, as they visited a trust project in Jersey, where the Princess Royal will visit this week. A few years ago, the then rector of Jersey’s St Saviour’s Church, the Rev Peter Dyson, was asked for information on a veteran of the Battle of Waterloo. He checked parish records and found that as many as 100 veterans of the Napoleonic Wars were in his graveyard. ‘After Waterloo, the Forces were cut. So you had officers on half-pay — kept in reserve — who found life expensive in Britain,’ Mr Dyson explains. ‘Jersey was cheaper with better weather. And, being close to the old enemy, France, Jersey gave them subsidies.’ Many of these old soldiers brought their staff from military days. Hence the presence of ex-drummer boy Daniel Herapath who survived many battles, including Waterloo, and died in Jersey aged 60. The parish invited Napoleonic historian Sir William Mahon to explore further and he has written a book covering every veteran here. So the Remembrance Trust has now helped to fund a new memorial with education panels, as the Princess will see this week. As Mr Cluff points out, he is not doing all this for sentimental reasons but to improve understanding of the past. During our trip, we saw a visit by the 3rd Jersey Scout Group who came to learn of the old soldiers buried in their midst and to help tend their graves. Esme Deer, 14, set to work cleaning the grave of Frederick Beatty of the 7th Light Dragoons who was badly wounded at Waterloo. All the Scouts were gripped by the tale of the drummer boy. It’s a reminder of why and how all these far-flung, largely forgotten graves and slabs matter. They all tell a story. No doubt ‘woke’ revisionists will profess the usual outrage. Yet where was the outrage last month when the French President, Emmanuel Macron, laid a wreath at the tomb of Napoleon Bonaparte on the bicentenary of the dictator’s death? ‘Napoleon understood he had to keep seeking both the unity and the greatness of the country,’ declared the President, basking in the ex-emperor’s reflected glory (Macron has an election coming up). Yet, Napoleon’s colonial record was appalling. Indeed, at the very moment the UK was abolishing slavery, Napoleon was doing the opposite. Revolutionary France had actually banned it in 1794 only for Napoleon to issue a new edict restoring it in 1802. That’s right — France was passing laws to create a new slave trade as Britain was preparing to abolish this barbarism. Had the likes of John Cole and his former comrades in Jersey not done their bit at Waterloo, would the world be better or worse off today? I think we know the answer. Much as it may pain the ‘woke’, Britain’s colonial and imperial story is not black and white. That is why anything which seeks to tell history as it was, rather than judge it through a modern lens, deserves our support. Cheques to The Remembrance Trust, 1-3 Waterloo Crescent, Dover, CT16 1LA or theremembrancetrust.com All rights reserved for this news site (dailymail) and under his responsibility