The Runnymede Trust, a race equality thinktank, is urging the government to make lessons on migration, belonging and empire mandatory in every secondary school in England. The Windrush scandal has exposed a “shocking lack of understanding” at government level about the winding up of the empire. At present just 4% of pupils taking GCSE history choose the “migration to Britain” option, which also covers the topic of the British empire.

The report states: “Migration and empire are not marginal events: they are central to our national story. As it stands the story we are telling is incomplete”. The reports findings are contested by the Department of Education, however historian and broadcaster David Olusoga said: “I find it hard to believe that the Windrush scandal could have been possible if we were a country that was aware of and educated in the history of empire, decolonisation and migration after 1945.” 

​Read more here and find the report itself here.

In this Guardian Opinion piece, Afua Hirsch, describes herself as "the party pooper who, while on holiday in destinations popular with Britons, has the audacity to ask: what actually happened here?" She believes that there is an opportunity "to be honest with and educate British tourists in parts of the former British empire, instead of which we are stuck in denial. Tour operators, hotel and museum owners think that visitors want to hear something that conforms to their already comfortable worldview. They then produce experiences that do so, and British holidaymakers come away with their preconceptions neatly confirmed." On recent trips to Jamaica and Kenya Afua has found herself giving "unofficial alternative history talks" to fellow British tourists and found that they were interested and curious to know more.

Things are changing in places like Auschwitz, Cambodia and Chernobyl. But the British can feel comfortably distant from tragedies in these places. "The problem with the former empire is that the questions of moral culpability it raises are a lot closer to home. It’s hard enough to get people to think about these questions here in Britain. But if Britons are still being helped to avoid the truth of empire in the places where it happened, and where local people are still living with the consequences, then what hope have we got?" Read the full article here.