Faith in history: memory, multiculturalism and the legacies of Empire in postwar England

Abstract

1This article employs a broad concept of memory in order to examine the reconstruction of the past in various migrant religious and educational settings in the period after 1970. In educational projects designed to promote good community relations, and in attempts to develop non-dogmatic forms of religious belief, British history became the subject of extensive discussion and debate. A small space opened up in which the legacies of British imperial history, so often a matter of visceral feeling, could be publicised, explored and taken seriously. Using case studies from London and Birmingham the article argues that religious groups played a small but important role in enabling new, more inclusive and more critical historical narratives to enter metropolitan British society. 1Part of the research for this paper was funded by a grant from the Nuffield Foundation whose support I gratefully acknowledge.