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A richer understanding of heritage

Heritage has not only the power to inspire us and enrich our lives, but it also has the potential to deepen our shared understanding of who we are, strengthening the social bonds that connect us. As former Minister for Higher Education, and Culture Minister, I know the profound political and emotional importance of our nation’s history and how it is told. That is why I am proud of the Labour Government’s record of investment in heritage and culture since 1997. History is of deep personal importance to me, but my own sense of identity is bound up not with the national story, but with the histories of many countries, peoples and places. I write as someone who was born in Tottenham, but whose ancestors were taken from Africa to Guyana by European slave traders in the seventeenth century; whose great-great grandparents became British subjects when Guyana became part of the Empire in 1831; and whose parents came to these shores to find work and a better life in the 1950s. I was fortunate to be inspired by a rich heritage – from the culture I found on my doorstep in London to the classical music and architecture I encountered at Peterborough Cathedral where I went to school. Our personal relationship with our history is all the more important because questions of identity are becoming more, not less, acute. Yet, this is happening as it is becoming increasingly difficult to sustain a single shared narrative about Britain. Identity itself is increasingly fragmented, not just because of a growing Black and minority ethnic population, but also because of stronger Scots, Welsh and English identities. Diversity makes the search for a common ground more, not less important, but it means that this common ground cannot be staked out in a single narrative. Once perhaps, it might have seemed that that the search for meaning would grow less intense with the passing of the years. Today, we know that cannot happen. More importantly, young people from all backgrounds are today less deferential and more willing to construct their own sense of meaning and identity. Young people – White or Black, Irish to Indian – want to see their backgrounds reflected in wider British culture, but for them the compelling questions may no longer be about the struggles and successes of the Empire Windrush generation; young people’s questions are about making sense of a world whose problems seem dominated by historic questions of identity, from Kashmir to Jerusalem.