University challenge: conservatives are now the radicals on campus

On the letters page of the Sunday Times last month, the presidents of the Royal Historical Society and the Historical Association were among the signatories to a letter boldly headlined ‘History must not be politicised’. They were incensed by a rumour that government funding might be cut for the Colonial Countryside project, which looks at possible connections between the British Empire, the slave trade and National Trust properties. Unable to recognise their own political bias, the letter-writers accused the government of ‘politicising’ history by trying to depoliticise it.

This extraordinary self-belief, this insistence that academics occupy the high moral ground, reflects what is happening in British universities, not least among my fellow historians. The marginalisation of those on the right is not new — but it is getting worse.

When I went up to Cambridge to read history in 1968 I thought of myself as left-wing, as a socialist. Karl Marx held no appeal, but I had my doubts about share-owning capitalists.