The Sunday Times - UK (2021-11-14)

The Sunday Times November 14, 2021 29

NEWS REVIEW

D

uring a speech to a group of school teachers in 1963, the great African-American scholar James Baldwin out- lined his vision of American history and how to teach it. The American story, Bald- win said, is “longer, larger, more various, more beautiful and more terrible than anything anyone has ever said about it”. By teaching American children the real story of what the country had done to its black population, he argued, “you would be liberating not only Negroes, you’d be liberating white people who know noth- ing about their own history”. That speech was made before the Civil Rights Act passed, but America is under- going very similar ructions today. Is this a country that has been irredeemably mired in the sin of white supremacy since its founding? Does it remain so? How should Americans talk to their children about their beautiful, terrible history? Where you stand on these questions has become a defining issue, one that is upending gubernatorial races, rewriting school curriculums, hauling down monu- ments and sparking a conservative resist- ance that is reshaping US politics. These are also the questions that the 1619 Project attempted to answer when it was first published two years ago. Con- ceived as a special edition of the New York Times magazine, the project com- missioned a group of historians and jour- nalists to mark the 400th anniversary of the first African slaves being brought to North America. Its goal was no less than “to reframe the country’s history by plac- ing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very centre of our national narrative”. Of course 1776 and the revolution against the British crown was a critical moment in the founding of America, argued the introductory essay by journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones, but 1619 was just as important. 1619 is where the story really began. Thus the project. No one could have quite predicted the 1619 Project’s impact. It went off like a neutron bomb, sending shockwaves through American society that continue to reverberate today. The project, which won a Pulitzer prize, has now become a set text in high-school curriculums across America and is set to be released as a children’s book this week. A longer version of the project, featuring expanded essays, fiction and poetry, is also due to be released this month as The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story. The project’s appearance on school curriculums is part of a general move towards teaching the principles of anti- racism and emphasising the ongoing effects of white supremacy through education, a trend that has been turbo- charged by the death of George Floyd in May 2020 and the searing racial justice protests that followed. Add in the hugely contentious decisions made around mask mandates in schools and the sus- pension of teaching during the pan- demic, and it’s no wonder that education has become a political battleground; the issue was at the heart of Republican can- didate Glenn Youngkin’s surprise victory in the recent Virginia governor’s race. Youngkin’s win was part of a growing backlash. Conservative activists have labelled the new racial-justice movement in education “CRT”, which stands for critical race theory. This refers to an aca- demic doctrine developed by Harvard legal scholar Derrick Bell in the 1970s, which argues that racial inequality and bias — intentional and not — is baked into US laws and institutions. America is structurally racist to the benefit of white people, argues CRT, regardless of what well-meaning individuals might say and do to oppose racism. This has not gone down well in some quarters: parents have been organising and protesting — sometimes even violently — against CRT across the country, disrupting and pick- eting school-board meetings. Many historians, not all of them conservative, have also taken issue with the 1619 Project on account of factual errors and historical distortions. Han- nah-Jones, a journalist who has worked at The New York Times since 2015 and was the founding force behind the project, is

Nikole Hannah- Jones, right, led the 1619 Project at The New York Times, which argues American history truly began not with independence from Britain, but the arrival of African slaves 400 years ago

brand Lily’s Kitchen, which was granted a warrant by Prince Charles in 2019. Getting a warrant, it turns out, is less challenging than keeping it. Brands have to reapply every five years and the criteria have become ever more stringent. “They ask questions like ‘Are you doing something about your waste disposal?’ They want to know if rubbish is separated or not,” says Milligan. The company pledged to get an electric van as part of its latest application. “I think we uploaded 300 documents about various parts of the business. They were interested in everything from carbon footprint to what materials we use in the office.” The Royal Warrant Holders Association says that 20-40 brands will be dropped each year, as new ones are brought in. Bronnley still supplies toilet soap to the Queen, delivering to Sandringham at Christmas and Balmoral in the summer, but lost its warrant from Prince Charles. “I would imagine that the reason we lost the Prince of Wales is because we weren’t as sustainable or eco-friendly as we should be,” says Kelly Springall, a spokeswoman. Bronnley has now eliminated single-use plastics.

champagne. That brings the total list of HRH-endorsed brands to 614. That is not a patch on Queen Victoria, who granted 2,000 warrants over her 63-year reign, but considerably more than the Duke of Edinburgh, who had a mere 35. (Since his death, the duke’s warrants are void; brands have two years to remove their stamp.)

The Prince of Wales has granted 173. Perusing the list of the royals’ chosen products feels rather like watching an episode of Through the Keyhole. The practice of granting royal warrants goes back to the 15th century. Henry VIII appointed Thomas Hewytt to “Serve the court with Swannes and Cranes” and “all

p)

T

he Queen uses Clarins beauty products, gets her umbrellas from Fulton and fish from a great little place in Brixham. I know this not because I’ve popped in to Buckingham Palace recently, but because she’s given all these firms a coveted royal warrant. Social media influencers may believe they are at the cutting edge of marketing trends by boosting product sales with subtle, and not so subtle, nods of approval, but the royal family have been playing this game since Kim Kardashian was a twinkle in her mother’s eye and TikTok was just a sound in a nursery rhyme. Last week Dubonnet, the French aperitif, became the latest to be granted the royal stamp of approval. The Queen is said to enjoy a dash mixed into a glass of

Ainsworths homeopathic pharmacy, gets his suits from the Savile row tailor Anderson & Sheppard and buys environmentally friendly cleaning products from Delphis Eco. He appears to prefer English sparkling wine (Camel Valley in Cornwall; £32.95 for a bottle of brut). He relies on Wendy Keith in Truro for his shooting and kilt hosiery. It is hard to measure the financial uplift that royal endorsement provides for a company, though research by Brand Finance has suggested that in some cases it could be responsible for up to 5 per cent of revenue. Huddersfield Fine Worsteds has been supplying the royal family with Balmoral tweed since George VI granted it a warrant in

“We are the only
cloth merchants to have
a royal warrant, so as far
as our export business goes,
the kudos, it’s very
important,” says Iain
Milligan, the company’s
international business
director.
“It is particularly in the
Asian market that people get
very excited by the
association,” says
Samantha Crossley,
marketing director for
the upmarket pet food

Pour the Dubonnet, Charles.

We’ve granted it a royal warrant

The Queen’s seal of approval is prized

by companies, but once won, it’s tricky

to keep hold of, says Rosie Kinchen

We’re

still

fighting

the civil

war in

some

ways

US history has

been rewritten as

racist. Now here’s

the fightback

turns out, Americans reject racialising children, assigning guilt to them based on skin color, and condemning the United States,” says Chris Rufo, an activist who has been the organising force behind the anti-CRT movement. “We’ve definitely hit an inflection point, we have them on the defensive — and we’ll pursue them without mercy, until their bankrupt ideology is abolished from public life.” For Maureen Costello, executive director of the Centre for Antiracist Edu- cation, history is just a proxy for a fight over the present. “What the people [opposing CRT] really want to stop is dis- cussion of contemporary racism,” she says. “It’s a reaction to a rapidly changing society. People who oppose this teaching also tend to oppose changing transgen- der policy, for example.” Sean Wilentz, a history professor at Princeton, puts the current fight in the context of similar rows over a national history standard during the 1990s, and arguments in the 1960s over how important slavery was to the Confederacy. America, he believes, is still wrangling over the questions of equality that were left unsettled by the civil war. “We are still a young society, and a revolutionary society, so people are invested in history and its versions in a way that can be very vola- tile,” he says. “Slavery and race are always right at the centre of it. We’re still fighting the civil war in some ways.”

A project by The New York Times that put slavery at

the heart of how America teaches its past has sparked

a ferocious national showdown, writes Josh Glancy

Running a shop

after Brexit:

how taxing

could it be?

Flogging leather jackets to Germans

should be a breeze with the PM’s ‘zero

tariffs’ EU trade deal, right? To find out,

Harry Wallop went into business...

example, chemical exports have been subject to tariffs, but the figure rises to 60 per cent for textiles and clothing. “For us, it just ain’t a free- trade deal,” Mansell said. My simple, profitable business was unravelling fast. And mine was not the only one. Gadjet, based in Birmingham, supplies mobile phone accessories to thousands of petrol stations and corner shops, nearly half of them in the EU. It now has to pay a 6 per cent tariff when it exports to the EU, plus fees to its third-party agent. Gadjet has had to swallow these extra costs; its profits on sales to the EU have halved. “It feels really, really difficult,” said Ali Taranssari, the company’s director of strategy. “We want to be in these markets and we want to carry on growing. But it pains us to go through this hassle.” Moon Climbing, a Sheffield company that sells rock- climbing clothing and equipment, has attempted to pass on its new costs to customers. A typical £300 order to France used to cost £12 to send. “That was it. There were no hidden charges,” said Ben Moon, the owner. “Now it’s often £100 or quite a bit more. But the problem is it’s impossible for us to say, because it varies all the time.” As a consequence, Moon Climbing and Gadjet have started to move their export business to Europe, taking jobs and taxes out of the UK.

I

t’s nearly a year since Boris Johnson announced a last- gasp trade deal with the EU, one that promised not just sunlit uplands for those that wanted to take back control but also, for entrepreneurial British exporters, “zero tariffs and zero quotas”. In short, as the prime minister said, we could “have our cake and eat it”. So how has that worked out for everybody? To find out, I set up a business — selling extremely stylish leather jackets. Wallop’s Wardrobe — sadly, my suggestion of Harry’s Styles was rejected — was created for the purposes of a Dispatches documentary, and for several weeks I ran a shop and a website to shift my natty merchandise to discerning customers around the UK and Europe. With the help of Channel 4 I imported some leather jackets from America for £100 a pop and then sewed the flags of various European countries onto the sleeves — quite the look, let me assure you — with a plan to sell them for £220. German customers could even choose between a standard tricolour and one with the Weimar eagle, which was particularly snazzy. On average I would make a £43 profit on each jacket, with 60 per cent of them sold to European customers, who always seem to embrace slightly naff leather garments with more gusto than us Brits. We didn’t strictly get round to registering the business with Companies House, but instead ran our business model and numbers by the UK Fashion & Textiles Association (UKFT), which could fill us in on how viable our enterprise might be in a post-Brexit world. “Pre Brexit about 75 per cent of all fashion and textile exports from the UK went to Europe,” explained Adam Mansell, the chief executive of UKFT. That figure included “not just stuff we make in Britain, but stuff we import into the UK and then re- export into Europe”. That is a dry but crucial detail. The UK-EU Trade and Co-operation Agreement (TCA), signed on December 30 last year to much fanfare, promised a “giant free-trade zone”. And, yes, great British brands such as Wallop’s Wardrobe can still export tariff-free to EU customers. But only if the items are made here or have undergone “double transformation”. “That would involve, for instance, turning yarn into a fabric and the fabric into a garmen,” Mansell said. Sewing a flag onto a sleeve, however fetching it might be, doesn’t count as double transformation. This meant I had to pay new tariffs: each jacket sold to France or Germany would be slapped with extra duties. According to data analysed by the UK Trade Policy Observatory at Sussex University, in the first seven months of the year 25 per cent of goods covered by the TCA, exported from the UK to the EU, were subject to tariffs. This was worth between £7.1 billion and £9.5 billion to UK businesses. Just 10 per cent of, for

Sixty per cent

of clothing

firms now

pay extra fees

Tariffs swallowed up profits on Harry Wallop’s wares

To see if I could avoid all the extra costs my jacket business faced, I visited Leiden in the Netherlands, birthplace of Rembrandt, where one warehouse is slowly filling up with UK exporters. I spotted shelf after shelf of Heinz baked beans, Ambrosia custard, M&S Percy Pigs and Dairy Milk bars — all being sent out to European customers by a company called British Corner Shop, which used to be wholly based in Bristol but is now partly operating out of this corner of the EU. It plans to have 150 workers there by early next year — jobs that could have been in Britain. When we ran all the numbers, Wallop’s Wardrobe’s ledger did not make happy reading. We discovered that with the extra tariffs, import VAT and customs clearance fees, every £220 jacket I sold to an EU customer would actually give us a loss of £21.40. My brief foray into the rag trade had ended in disaster. Do you know anyone who might want a cut-price leather jacket with a German flag on for Christmas?

Dispatches: Did Brexit Work for Business? is on Channel 4 tomorrow at 8.30pm

a fiery polemicist rather than a sober his- torian. At the centre of her original essay was a startling claim about the American Revolution: that “one of the primary rea- sons the colonists decided to declare their independence from Britain was because they wanted to protect the insti- tution of slavery”. But was the protection of slavery a key factor behind the revolution and the founding of America? There’s little in the way of historical evidence to support this claim. And yet the project’s defenders, the hugely influential Hannah-Jones prin- cipal among them, argue that the fixation with the occasional overstatement is a convenient excuse not to engage with its central claim: that America has never properly acknowledged the depth of racism and inequality that still poisons its body politic today. “It’s a fabulous project because they are resetting the narrative,” said Sophia Nelson, a scholar-in-residence at Christo- pher Newport University and author of Black Woman Redefined. For 400 years, she says, the narrative has been told through a white lens, but “if you’re going to deal with how America became the country it is today, you can’t not talk about slavery”. The increasingly well-organised anti- CRT, anti-1619 Project movement claims that people such as Hannah-Jones are warping the facts to suit their political ends. They are sensing victory. “As it

intereste carb wha the T Hol that be d new Bron toilet soa deliverin

I n y ve far s goes,

The Queen has endorsed 614 brands, from Dubonnet, said to be her tipple of choice, to Cartier, Cadbury and Coca-Cola

kinds of Wildfoule”, while Charles II’s 1684 list of Royal Tradesmen included a sword- cutter and “Goffe-club maker”. But it wasn’t until the 19th century that royal sponsorship really took off as a means to promote British industry around the empire. It was then that the Royal Warrant Holders Association was formed, which set the rules that still exist today. Brands must have supplied the Queen or Charles for five of the past seven years. Service providers like vets and lawyers are not eligible. There are several royally endorsed scaffolders, a waste-management firm, and a chandelier-maker. Coca- Cola and Cadbury are on the list; so are Heinz ketchup and Cartier. The Queen has granted warrants to Martini, Angostura bitters and no fewer than eight purveyors of champagne (I feel you, ma’am). She also has an official supplier of cobnuts in Allens Farm in Kent. Prince Charles uses

The Sunday Times - UK (2021-11-14)

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