Kew Gardens stands accused of breaking the law in a bid to ‘decolonise’ its glorious collection

Our most loved institutions are being destroyed one by one by the evil scourge called woke.

The Royal Botanical Gardens in Kew, South-West London is a recent victim. Some months ago, Kew’s management team announced bizarre plans to ‘decolonise’ its collections.

Ursula Buchan (a historian of gardening) has now challenged that decision. In a report for the Policy Exchange think-tank, Buchan accuses Kew of violating its ‘statutory responsibilities’ and says it may be in breach of the law in engaging in ‘politically charged’ activities that should have no place at a centre for botany.

It’s a cheering moment of resistance — but to be honest, a small one, and one doubts how much effect it will have.

South-West London: The Royal Botanical Gardens of Kew. Kew’s management team announced bizarre plans to ‘decolonise’ its collections

Yet Kew — which receives half its income from the taxpayer — is not alone. Instead, it is typical of the way so many of our institutions have gone of late, talking in doctrinaire, far-Left terms about ‘climate injustice’ and, in Kew’s case, the need to ‘tackle structural racism in plant and fungal science’.

Are mushrooms racist?

Never mind preserving Kew’s magnificent collections bequeathed by their illustrious predecessors. The gardens’ experts seem keener on doing public penance for what they call ‘a legacy that has deep roots in colonialism and racism’.

They represent, they suggest, a ‘beacon of privilege and exploitation’, and they try to make amends by praising Black Lives Matter; a dubious move, considering the violence that has sometimes surrounded that movement.

If the elite and the experts feel so uncomfortable about their ‘privilege’, perhaps they should take a drop in their agreeable salaries? It is much more convenient to bow down to the ideology of the woke, and still retain their power and status.

Take these extraordinary words from Kew Gardens’ Director, Richard Deverell (annual salary 2019-2020, £191,300): ‘I acknowledge that I personally benefit from enormous privilege as Kew’s current white, male director. 

“I also acknowledge how inept I am at these matters.” [racism and colonialism]I am aware of their everyday consequences for my black colleagues and members as well as our visitors. I approach this subject with humility and caution.’

Is he really confessing? Does it make sense to be male and white? And how chillingly similar this act of self-abasement sounds to the outlandish confessions of disgraced Communist party members during Stalin’s show trials.

‘Constable’s The Cornfield is a delightful image of old rural England. But beware, art lover. You are no longer allowed to enjoy this lovely work without being reminded it was presented to the Gallery in 1837 by patrons including poet William Wordsworth, who once lived in a house in Dorset, Racedown Lodge, that was owned by a former plantation holder’, writes CHRISTOPHER HART

What we are really witnessing, at Kew and elsewhere, is something Communists call ‘the long march through the institutions’. 

French Marxist Herbert Marcuse explained the term in 1972: ‘Working against the established institutions while working within them . . . boring into them,’ he added, suggesting a worm boring into an apple, causing it to rot from within.

Although early Marxists did not inspire the working classes to revolutionary change, their descendants sought power to overthrow society and seize control of institutions such as schools and universities and the law. . .

Do you sound familiar? You are correct, but it is also disastrous.

Because the Left is in power across the entire public sector today, despite courageous efforts by people like Ursula Buchan. When we visit a beloved taxpayer-funded institution for education or beauty, we feel that instead of being educated, we are actually being indoctrinated.

Each case shows that the original intent of the institution’s existence has been compromised by wakery.

For history lovers, the Imperial War Museum might be a great choice, while art enthusiasts can go to National Gallery or Kew. Gardeners should also consider Kew. You will not experience tranquility or uplift due to these new, unfriendly regimes.

As you’ll be repeatedly told, Britain is singularly bad.

Take the National Gallery, which receives tens of millions of pounds a year in taxpayer funding, despite sitting on a cash pile of more than £200 million in 2018.

The Imperial War Museum was founded in 1917 in the midst of World War I ‘to collect and display material as a record of everyone’s experiences during that [conflict] — civilian and military — and to commemorate the sacrifices of all sections of society

Visit Britain’s richest gallery and you get a truly pathetic impression of Left-wing academics desperately trying to link any painting in the collection to something, anything, to do with slavery. These connections can often be laughable.

Constable’s The Cornfield is a delightful image of old rural England. But beware, art lover. It is not allowed for you to admire this beautiful work anymore without being reminded that it was donated to the Gallery in 1837, by patrons such as poet William Wordsworth. This house, Racedown Lodge in Dorset was once owned by an ex-plantation holder.

Is that enough to make you appreciate or understand the paintings a little more? It doesn’t.

But as one unusually wise academic voice, Professor Robert Tombs of St John’s College, Cambridge, has observed: ‘This is what our “history wars” are really about: not analysing and understanding the past, but using historical claims to support negative assertions about the present.’

The Imperial War Museum — also funded in large part by government grants — is, if anything, even worse. This great museum was founded in 1917 in the midst of World War I ‘to collect and display material as a record of everyone’s experiences during that [conflict] — civilian and military — and to commemorate the sacrifices of all sections of society.’

What a farce it is from that noble goal.

Not so long ago, visitors who arrived at it were blasted with the sound of hip-hop band Public Enemy’s song Fight The Power. It includes the lyrics: ‘Elvis was a hero to most / But he never meant s*** to me you see / Straight up racist, that sucker was / Simple and plain.’

Brilliant. And so very helpful in understanding our nation’s military history.

Never missing an opportunity to denigrate Britain’s past, the museum this year staged a wildly offensive performance on Remembrance Sunday, with a rap song attacking Winston Churchill. 

A member of the public spoke bluntly when he said: ‘I used to visit [the]A few times each year, the Imperial War Museum. But I’d rather support an institution that respects and upholds British values instead of s***ting all over them.’

Oxford’s Pitt Rivers Museum, with its world-class collection of weapons, canoes and other anthropological treasures, recently held an exhibition called ‘Beyond the Binary’, partly paid for by a Heritage Lottery Grant of more than £90,000. It is not funded by the public.

Curators claimed the exhibition was ‘a positive step in tackling oppression, which LGBTIAQ+ communities often feel in spaces such as this one’.

Policy Exchange’s decision to question the woke at Kew does offer a gleam of hope. This battle will continue.

Writer Josephine Bartosch described how one ‘community curator’ — who worryingly holds a PhD from Oxford — added his soft toy to the exhibition. He informed visitors: ‘My cuddly gosling comes with me when I feel vulnerable, and keeps me safe from my own criticism. When I came to Oxford as a queer working-class person, I experienced a chasm of identity separating me from others.’

As for the National Trust, one of Britain’s best-loved charities, though again not taxpayer-funded, the horror stories of its attempts to outdo itself in political correctness never seem to stop. It is no wonder that it has been called the National Distrust.

And it’s here that the tragedy lies: in the ever-deepening division between our cultural elite and the people they are supposed to serve — who often pay their salaries.

Policy Exchange’s decision to question the woke at Kew does offer a gleam of hope. However, this fight is not over.

On university campuses, free speech is dead, while the list of lecturers and guest speakers who have been banned, censored, silenced — ‘de-platformed’ in the euphemism — grows ever-longer.

In April of this year Sheffield University decided to ban Sir Isaac Newton. This was to ‘decolonise’ the engineering curriculum, as Newton may have benefited from ‘colonial-era activity’.

The attempted ban was later dropped — with some disappointment from the Left, one suspects.

Newton is, of course, one of the most important scientists ever to have lived. He is also famous for the humble observation that all his work had only been achieved by ‘standing on the shoulders of giants’, that is, thanks to the great thinkers of the past.

Today’s commissars of the cultural elite seem to me the exact opposite of Newton: pygmies standing on the shoulders of giants, scowling with ingratitude and plotting how to tear them down.