Concern has been expressed in the heritage world after Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer announced the appointment of a supporter of the opaquely funded right wing pressure group Restore Trust to the Board of the British Museum. Dr Tiffany Jenkins, who stood unsuccessfully on the Restore Trust ticket in the 2024 elections for the National Trust Council, was named as one of five new British Museum trustees in an announcement from 10 Downing Street on 21 March.
Appointments to organisations which are in the gift of the Government are often about messaging and it is the message sent by the appointment of Dr Jenkins which is causing concern.
While the other four appointments are of mainstream media personalities, Conservative Peer Lord Finkelstein, half of The Rest Is History podcast team, the popular historian Tom Holland and two media presenters connected to the BBC, Claudia Winkelman and former Radio 4 Today presenter, and classicist Martha Kearney, that of Dr Tiffany Jenkins is somewhat different.
With a BA in Art History and a PhD in Sociology Dr Jenkins, who describes herself as a writer, cultural historian and broadcaster, is connected to the network which grew out of the far left/far right anti- environmental, libertarian group the Revolutionary Communist Party [RCP] and its magazine Living Marxism [LM], which folded after libelling ITN News during coverage of the Balkan civil wars in the 1990’s. ITN sued LM after an article in the magazine had accused ITN of fabricating stories of Bosnian Serb atrocities.
Since the magazine folded and the party disbanded in the 1990’s a number of RCP/Living Marxism alumni and their associates have made a very successful journey from Far Left to Far Right and into the heart of the Westminster and media establishment, including Baroness Claire Fox, late an MEP of the Brexit Party and founder of the Institute of Ideas, which had to rebrand as the Academy of Ideas because it was not legally an Institute, and also former advisor to Boris Johnson as Mayor of London and Prime Minister, Munira Mirza.
In February [2024] Munira Mirza was reported by the Times to be advising the Starmer operation in 10 Downing Street about aspects of multiculturalism and how to oppose the rise of Nigel Farage’s Reform UK.
Living Marxism/Spiked contributors also have an enviable hit rate in appearing on TV & radio political panel shows, likely because they are good box office, with their standard world view as contrarians almost guaranteed to provide both “balance” and conflict on any subject.
Dr Jenkins has written also for another descendent of the RCP/Living Marxism, the website Spiked online. Tim Fenton of the Zelo Street blog joked, Spiked, it should have been, but the website remains influential in right wing and libertarian circles. It appears Dr Jenkins last wrote for the website in December 2023.
Given the two most contentious issues facing the British Museum, [after that is the small matter of a major redevelopment programme costing tens of millions] it is almost certainly not a coincidence that Dr Jenkins has written books about the research and display of human remains in museums in, Contesting Human Remains in Museum Collections: The Crisis of Cultural Authority published in 2014 and “Keeping Their Marbles: How the Treasures of the Past Ended Up in Museums…and Why They Should Stay There” published by Oxford University Press in 2016.
It is the views expressed in the books, especially in Keeping their Marbles” which has raised eyebrows at Dr Jenkin’s appointment to the British Museum Trust, especially against the background of a sense that, unlike its Conservative predecessor the Starmer Government would be happy to allow the British Museum under chair of Governors George Osborne to reach a deal with the Greek Government which would see the Marbles returned to Athens, probably initially on an indefinite loan, with major items from Greek collections loaned to London as a quid pro quo.
Certainly Dr Jenkins views are out of step with much of contemporary mainstream museum thought. She endorses the concept of the Encyclopaedic Museum, such as the British Museum and the Louvre and opposes repatriations and reparations for colonial activities including slavery. Indeed she writes in “Keeping Their Marbles”,
““It is said that the British people of today, and their institutions, are responsible for the suffering of those people conquered and subjected by the British Empire, and should assume a sense of collective guilt for the sins of imperialism. What is troubling is that this has uncomfortable echoes with old racializing discourse, which promoted notions about the biological inheritance of moral traits, and the culpability of whole populations or groups for the actions of their ancestors.”
Reviewing “”Keeping Their Marbles” for the prestigious Bryn Mwr Classical Review, Johanna Hanink of Brown University wrote,
“The book is a diatribe—and not a very well-researched, well-documented, or well-written one—that has been dressed, advertised, and reviewed as an authoritative monograph issued by one of our field’s flagship presses.” and she concluded,
” In the end, one is at a loss at whom to fault more: Jenkins for her views, or Oxford University Press for allowing such a book—a combination of sloppy work and, to this reviewer’s mind, shockingly poor taste—to bear its name. Jenkins’s right to free expression of her views should certainly be protected, but that does not mean that OUP must be the one to disseminate them.”.
Its numerous critics label the efforts of RCP alumni and their fellow travellers as Dr Jenkins can fairly be described, as an entryist project. therefore it should also come as no surprise that in 2024 Dr Jenkins stood, unsuccessfully, for the Council of the National Trust on the opaquely funded, Tufton Street adjacent, “Restore Trust” ticket, where she said in her statement to members,
“The Trust requires steadfast leadership that avoids chasing passing fads and maintains its buildings and gardens to the highest standards. We owe it to past and future generations to understand history with scholarship, curiosity, passion and fun.”
The Restore Trust campaign to get supporters elected to the National Trust Council is a now annual operation which has been supported by Spiked Online as well as the Daily Telegraph and it is these connections, as well as her opinions, which will concern many in the heritage sector.
While a democratic votes of National Trust members have shown repeatedly there is little support for the divisive, culture war agenda of Restore Trust and its media outriders, who needs democracy when a prime ministerial appointment can place a Restore Trust supporting backside on a seat in the British Museum boardroom at the heart of the UK heritage establishment.
Meanwhile the question remains why has Prime Minister Starmer signed off on the appointment of someone as potentially controversial as Dr Jenkins?
Is this a manifestation of a “Blue Labour” policy, from a Government desperate to avoid being labelled as “woke”, throwing some red culture war meat to Reform UK and the right-wing media such as GB News, or, given she is one voice on a board of twenty trustees, is it a token distraction when the direction of the British Museum is towards resolving the issues of the return of the Benin Bronzes and Parthenon Marbles?
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