Can we take back control of the institutions?

Many organisations are now institutionally progressive

If you or any of your ancestors have ever required the use of insulin or antihistamine, or faced the dangers of tetanus, diphtheria or gangrene, there’s a good chance you owe your existence to Sir Henry Wellcome. Born in a log cabin in the American frontier in 1853, Wellcome went on to become a British subject late in life after building up a pharmaceutical empire which helped to spur all sorts of medical innovation.

It was a life well lived, and when Sir Henry died in 1936 he left a vast amount of money to establish the Wellcome Trust, a charitable body aimed at health research. The Wellcome Collection, a museum of medical exhibitions and artworks, opened in 2007, including one exhibition called the Medicine Man, a gathering of Sir Henry’s own private collection, and perhaps the most personal tribute to the founder. 

A lot has changed since 2007 and on Saturday the Wellcome Foundation announced the closure of the Medicine Man because it perpetuates ‘a version of medical history that is based on racist, sexist and ableist theories and language’.

The trust said in a statement: ‘When our founder, Henry Wellcome started collecting in the 19th century, the aim then was to acquire vast numbers of objects that would enable a better understanding of the art and science of healing throughout the ages.

‘The result was a collection that told a global story of health and medicine in which disabled people, Black people, Indigenous peoples and people of colour were exoticised, marginalised and exploited – or even missed out altogether. As a result we will close Medicine Man on 27 November 2022.’

‘We can’t change our past. But we can work towards a future where we give voice to the narratives and lived experiences of those who have been silenced, erased and ignored.

‘We tried to do this with some of the pieces in Medicine Man using artist interventions. But the display still perpetuates a version of medical history that is based on racist, sexist and ableist theories and language.’ 

Its website also states that ‘Henry Wellcome’s collection was a vast personal project, the privilege of a wealthy white man in the Victorian era.'

 This has been on the cards ever since the summer of 2020, when the organisation announced that the collection was built on a ‘foundation of white supremacy’ (how original!). The Wellcome Collection also spent £1m on implicit bias training, despite this being total junk.

The organisation has also declared itself to be institutionally racist. ‘Two years ago, Wellcome made a statement recognising that we have perpetuated racism, and made a commitment to become an anti-racist organisation. We committed to developing anti-racist principles and an anti-racist programme, and to an external evaluation of our progress.

‘This evaluation of our work to become an anti-racist funder and employer has now reported. It has found that Wellcome is still an institutionally racist organisation, and that we have yet to act on this with the urgency required.’ One wonders, if they really believe this, why does any good liberal work at an ‘institutionally racist’ organisation?

Wellcome was one of those avid Victorian collectors we don’t seem to get these days, and among his artefacts was a wedge of Jeremy Bentham’s skin. Why anyone would want such a thing is beyond me, but perhaps even more baffling is why someone would think it appropriate to place, beside it, the words: ‘Bentham died while contesting the immediate emancipation of enslaved people…. After emancipation how could supremacy be justified? Through culture: museums recentred the white cis-male body. Written on the skin is whiteness. “Bought at Stevens Auction Rooms in 1925.” Time’s up. Just rewriting labels isn’t enough. Let’s face up to all the human remains that Henry Wellcome collected. Dismantle Wellcome’s enduring colonialism, its white infrastructure.’

But then, this kind of stuff is everywhere now. This is Pitt Rivers Museum. This is the Burrell collection in Glasgow. The National Maritime Museum has also disowned its own slavery gallery because, a sign declares: ‘The gallery no longer reflects the approaches and ambitions of the National Maritime Museum. It opened in 2007 but many visitors and staff are offended and hurt by the language used, the interpretation of objects, and the lack of Black voices’.

The recent Tate exhibition on William Hogarth was the same. A man from Hogarth’s era could have transported in time to the year 2000 or 2010, visited an exhibition at the Tate and understood much of it, feeling like he was still recognisably part of the same culture; if he was fast-forwarded just ten more years he would feel completely alien. A historian contrasting museum notes between 2010 and 2020 might conclude that a revolution had occurred — and perhaps they’re right. 

Apparently, Duxford Imperial War Museum is the last to hold out because its surroundings — a hanger full of warplanes — make it harder for the values of the people in charge (liberals with humanities degrees) to overrule the values of the customers, mostly men who want to look at bombers and tanks. But whether Duxford can hang on forever, like Asterix’s village surrounded by an empire of political insanity, is another matter.

Everywhere these institutions have fallen to what is often called Conquest’s Second Law, after Robert Conquest, but is almost certainly the coinage of John O’Sullivan, who wrote: ‘All organizations that are not actually right-wing will over time become left-wing.’

These include organisations which ought to remain politically neutral if they are to carry out their purpose; indeed political neutrality is the central point of most clubs and organisations. Any body which calls itself ‘anti-racist’ is therefore no longer fulfilling its aim, because doing so is an explicit statement of progressive political identification.

Identifying as ‘anti-racist’ means supporting the idea of equity (racial equality of outcomes), an assumption that diversity is by its nature good, and a Fanonist worldview that white people are naturally oppressors. You can be against racism, and think all those things are wrong or untrue. But calling your organisation ‘anti-racist’ is as politically loaded and  partisan as calling it ‘anti-communist’. (Why would you object to that? Are you a communist?)

The politicisation of previously neutral institutions is a facet of elite overproduction; large numbers of people are going to universities to study areas of the humanities and social sciences where progressive ideas about deconstruction are overwhelming and unopposed. The number of these courses has expanded to the point where they no longer select for people bright enough to question their claims, and who struggle to find useful or profitable work afterwards. 

The quickest route towards advancement in such a competitive environment is by pushing progressive orthodoxy further, and because there is almost no pushback, these organisations get increasingly extreme until the only step left is to denounce their own founders.

This revolutionary fervour to lay waste the institutions of the past comes with a strange arrogance, bolstered by an obsession with credentialism. Perhaps, if you don’t know what the point of museums is, you’re in the wrong job and you should step aside to let someone else do it. 

Elite overproduction is clearly noticeable in the art notes seen everywhere in museums and galleries: aside from being quite extreme-sounding — indeed some feel to me like they're bordering on racial hatred — they are incredibly dim, inarticulate almost to the point of imbecility. These are not people able to formulate ideas, they’re parroting theories which confirm their precarious elite status. 

Most of the people involved come from fairly comfortable backgrounds — although this is somewhat exaggerated — and, ironically, it’s that which gives them the confidence to make haughty declarations on ‘privilege’ about men from past eras who grew up in log cabins; men who achieved far more, and did far more for humanity, than they ever will. These people are the cultural establishment in Britain, and have grown ever stronger this past decade while a succession of failures have walked in and out of Downing Street.

The Tories have a little over two years left in government, with very little to show for their previous 12. Before handing power to Keir Starmer, perhaps they might wish to leave some small trace of their time in power.

Firstly, in order to address a problem you need to articulate it, something progressives are hugely talented at; if conservatives were hijacking institutions to further our own aims, the Left would have about 15 neologisms describing the trend within months.

It’s a form of vandalism, an abuse of custodianship. When you take over an institution you take on a responsibility to continue its work and the vision of the founders. You pass it down so that others might appreciate it. You can still feel uncomfortable with aspects of its past without wishing to destroy it, but if you fundamentally disagree with that vision, and don’t like what the organisation stands for, don’t join it.

If you feel that an organisation is institutionally racist, or centred on white supremacy, why are you taking a salary from it? Unless, of course, you don’t actually believe it was institutionally racist, and you were just stating that in order to cement progressive control, to ensure that conservatives feel unwelcome and uncomfortable. In which case, let’s follow the American example and legislate that any organisation declaring itself institutionally racist loses government funding — or, better still, is nationalised.

Conservatives instinctively feel uncomfortable about interfering in private institutions, hoping that the market will solve the problem, a belief which leaves us completely unprepared to combat O’Sullivan’s Law.  The Wellcome Trust has a total wealth of £29 billion, and is now run by people who clearly go against its founder’s vision. Perhaps the answer is for the Government to nationalise it.

One way might be to pass a law stating that all foundations which aren’t exclusively concerned with a physical asset – for example, a school — are automatically nationalised after a certain number of years, to protect their integrity. There is a danger that small charities so far untouched by O’Sullivan’s law get caught up in the dragnet, but since almost every large charity is now overtly political, a simple assets size limit might deal with that problem. It would also probably encourage billionaires to leave a legacy, but who otherwise might now fear the end result; why would give your money to a good cause, knowing that it will only end up paying salaries to people who denounce you? 

Once we’ve nationalised an institution, we can replace those in charge with people who are sympathetic to the founding vision, and who are actually interested in, say, medicine, rather than anti-racism. Of course, when Labour is in power, they will inevitably fill these bodies with their supporters, but then progressives do that now anyway.

The British Right is hamstrung not just by a faith in free markets solving this problem, but by a belief that we should not get into the grubby business of packing institutions with our supporters. It makes us uncomfortable, because we — correctly — feel that it’s a form of gamesmanship, and we still hold by a quaint Victorian idea that it’s simply not cricket. So we allow institutions across the land to be taken over by political opponents, and then watch helplessly as the inevitable consequences follow, a culture that is both hostile to our beliefs and increasingly dysfunctional. There’s a difference, after all, between playing by the rules and simply surrendering.