Twentieth Century Fox

Liam Fox, Britain's former Conservative defence secretary, made an unusual contribution to the ongoing debate about Britain’s membership of the European Union, which will be decided by referendum on June 23rd. Dr Fox, a leading Eurosceptic, claimed in March that ‘The United Kingdom is one of the few countries in the European Union that does not need to bury its 20th century’. The implication seems to be that some European countries do need to bury their modern history. There are some members of the European Union who could be accused of doing just that – Austria and Slovakia come to mind – and the migrant crisis, with which the Continent seems wholly unable to cope, has further nourished selective, competing historical narratives. There is, however, one European country that could never be accused of burying its past, especially the 12-year abyss which it entered in 1933. 

Anyone who has visited Berlin and endured museums such as the Topography of Terror will know that Germany’s troubled 20th-century history is on open, unflinching display and has been for decades. Even on Wittenberg Platz, in the middle of the city’s busiest shopping district, there is a stark memorial to the Holocaust, which lists the National Socialist regime’s concentration and extermination camps in both Germany and its occupied territories. The critic and historian Ian Buruma has even argued – and I have some sympathy with him – that Germany self-flagellates too much about the Nazis to the neglect of its extraordinary contribution to world culture in art, science and thought.

The UK, buoyed by being on the right side of history in the Second World War, tends to be neglectful of its own 20th-century excesses, not that they compare remotely with the horrors of totalitarianism. But its citizens should be aware of the Amritsar Massacre, the appalling treatment of prisoners in the Mau Mau conflict and, especially poignant in a year when we commemorate the Easter Rising, Britain’s often brutal treatment of Ireland, not just in this century, but over the last eight. In part, Ireland’s healing relationship with the UK has been made possible by both sides being more frank about their shared past.

No history should be buried. The UK, among the most highly evolved, stable and secure polities ever to have existed, should, like all mature democracies, have no trouble casting an unblinking eye on its past, whether good, bad or ugly. After all, few if any of us were around at the time and bear no responsibility for the actions of our predecessors. We do have an obligation, however, not to repeat the mistakes of those who have come before us. We will create enough of our own.

Paul Lay is the editor of History Today.