Too much mis-remembering

Will Hutton misses the point when writing about there being "too much remembering" (Endlessly refighting old wars does nothing to heal a fractured present, 08.10.17). Catalans wanting independence, just like the residents of eastern parts of Germany who voted far-right, have memories of their past which are not "inflated" as Hutton calls them, but so vivid they cannot be forgotten. History is always manipulated by politicians to suit their own ends, but when its justification is "ethnically based superiority", it becomes dangerous.

 What Hutton omitted to mention is that for many in Britain the memory of the fight against fascism is not just "over-remembered and over-deified", it is inaccurate, something that our governments have been keen to encourage, and has led to a preponderance of feelings of national pre-eminence. It is clearly a case of too much mis-remembering. The idea of "Britain alone" overcoming the Nazis is still being perpetuated, even on the cinema screens. Then there are the myths about the British empire acquired to spread civilisation, regardless of the massacres and atrocities, slavery and torture. Why else would millions of documents either have been destroyed or hidden away from the prying eyes of historians? The "glorious past", a time of economic growth without the need for European co-operation and immigration, did not exist.

  It is never "a time to forget and move on", as Hutton concludes. The mythology certainly needs to be scrapped, but the truth, especially in