One of the aims of progressives in higher education ought to be to use their privileged position to spread knowledge to their fellow citizens. In the all but forgotten world of the original socialist movement, radicals aimed in the words of the Workers Educational Association (founded 1903) to bring ‘education within reach of everyone who needs it’.
How does this noble aim fit with the constant and needless urge to police and rewrite the language 99 per cent of the population use? To create elite discourses, to exclude and obfuscate, to launch linguistic heresy hunts, to preen yourself on knowing the latest jargon, and to punish the untutored for no valid intellectual reason whatsoever?
The latest example comes from the Cambridge University Press. It has decided that ‘Anglo-Saxon’ is no longer a description of the Germanic tribes who invaded southern Britain after the departure of the Romans, fought the Vikings, became the subjects of Norman colonial overlords, and gave us much of our language, but is in some unspecified manner racist.
It announced a few days ago that it is renaming its ‘Anglo-Saxon England’ academic journal ‘Early Medieval England and its Neighbours’.
I am going to draw on the work of scholars in a moment. But before I do, let me make one broad point: the argument is drivel.
The best you can say about the publishers is that they are bowing to American cultural imperialism: the one imperialism we are not meant to resist.
As the historian Dominic Sandbrook told the Cambridge University Press on X (Twitter) ‘Be honest. You changed the title because you are total drips and didn’t have the courage to say no to a handful of mad Americans’. And that is about the size of it.
In a series of articles in the Critic, Samuel Rubinstein filled in the details. In 2017 a Canadian academic Dr Mary Rambaran-Olm was elected vice president of the International Society of Anglo-Saxonists (ISAS). In her victory speech, she called herself a ‘woman of colour and Anglo-Saxonist,’ which was fair enough.
She then, like so many others caught up in the great awakening, fell into the delusion that you can change the world by policing language. She then denounced ‘Anglo-Saxon’ as a racist term and resigned because she could no longer possibly be associated with Anglo-Saxon studies in any form.
Sensing the danger to their careers, the members of the International Society of Anglo-Saxonists hastily voted to change its name to the ‘International Society for the Study of Early Medieval England’ in recognition of ‘the problematic connotations that are widely associated with the terms ‘Anglo-Saxon’ and ‘Anglo-Saxonist’ in public discourse.’
Such as what?
Well, they continued, Anglo-Saxon ‘has sometimes been used outside the field to describe those holding repugnant and racist views, and has contributed to a lack of diversity among those working on early-medieval England and its intellectual and literary culture.’
Seriously, when has this happened?
Answer came there none. As Rubinstein says, no evidence was put forward to support the view that the accurate use of the term Anglo-Saxon deterred anyone from studying pre-Norman England. The suspicion must be that none exists.
No matter. In our neurotic times, the most dangerous move a careful academic can make is to demand evidence.
Her destructive aims achieved, Dr Rambaran-Olm retired like a tricoteuse to concentrate on her knitting. ‘I’m a literary historian who specialises in the Middle Ages.’ She now tells anyone who wants to listen. ‘It just so happens that I really love crocheting and knitting too, and I decided to marry two of my passions.’
From a British point of view the hectoring was yet another example of American cultural imperialism. There is no good defence of the argument that Anglo-Saxon is a racist term. The best you can say is that ‘WASP’ – ‘white Anglo-Saxon protestant’ – was used in 20th century America to describe the dominant caste in the US. But as ‘whiteness’ now includes Catholics and Jews it has become archaic.
Even if you accept that, what have old American race politics to do with the study of English history?
In December 2019, several dozen scholars wrote a letter defending the use of Anglo-Saxon, and deplored the turning of a cogent historical term into a boo-word for half-educated fanatics.
‘The transformation of “Anglo-Saxon” into a shibboleth whose use or shunning will distinguish the bad from the good will only create further destructive divisions,’ they wrote.
‘The term “Anglo-Saxon” is historically authentic in the sense that from the 8th century it was used externally to refer to a dominant population in southern Britain. Its earliest uses, therefore, embody exactly the significant issues we can expect any general ethnic or national label to represent.’
For British people, including the UK based staff of the Cambridge University Press, accommodating Dr Rambaran-Olm requires rewriting our world.
Essex comes from the kingdom of the East Saxons, while Wessex was the kingdom of the West Saxons. Must they be renamed?
Cambridge is in East Anglia, the kingdom of the Angles, established in the sixth century. Must Cambridge publishers renounce it as potentially racist?
There is a tradition in English writing that echoes folk memories of the ‘Norman Yoke’. We are meant to use Anglo-Saxon English words because they are simpler and truer than the Frenchified alternatives the Norman conquerors brought.
‘Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent,’ advised George Orwell.
‘Bad writers, and especially scientific, political and sociological writers, are nearly always haunted by the notion that Latin or Greek words are grander than Saxon ones, and unnecessary words like expedite, ameliorate, predict, extraneous, deracinated, clandestine, sub-aqueous and hundreds of others constantly gain ground from their Anglo-Saxon opposite number.’
Is his advice now to be considered racist?
I suspect not because the worst condemnation of the Cambridge University Press one can make is that it is not staffed with serious people. They are not engaged in a scholarly reconsideration but are merely currying favour with dogmatists and hoping for a quiet life.
Years ago, Hopi Sen, an activist working for the Labour government at the turn of the millennium explained how progressive institutions can be manipulated in what he described as ‘the step to the left‘ manoeuvre.
You are in a meeting filled with the progressively minded: in this case Anglo-Saxon historians. Everyone agrees to a policy until someone ‘takes one step to the left’ and in an accusatory voice denounces the organisation for its betrayal of the true values of the left.
In this case, the very use of the term Anglo-Saxon is a betrayal because it is racist and adds to the barriers in the way of ethnic minority participation. No one can explain why. But everyone caught out by the step to the left manoeuvre can fear with justice that they too will be accused of racism if they ask for evidence.
Fear leads to compliance. People, who are happy to take on reactionaries, are frightened of being called reactionary themselves. The scholars who warned of the creation of ‘a shibboleth whose use or shunning will distinguish the bad from the good’ had a point. People in progressive institutions are genuinely frightened of being shunned or denounced.
But that is not all of it. Others think it rude to discount the complaints of the people with the loudest voices, even when the loudest voices are bellowing nonsense. Encouraged to be kind, they lack the self-confidence to argue back.
As so often with progressive attempts to play with language the result is elitist. In the UK there are millions interested in our history. Anglo-Saxon England is wound into our language, county boundaries and place names. Now because of a false allegation they will no longer understand the labels historians attach to the period. The complaint against university educated progressives manipulating language is that they alienate the very people they wish to help.
At the time of writing there is a trend among NGOs to move from using ‘ethnic minority’ to ‘global majority’ by which they mean non-white people. Leaving aside the term’s incoherence – what have Nigerians and Filipinos got in common? – the overwhelming majority of working-class people, including members of the ethnic minority working class, would not recognise the term.
If an NGO says in an advert, that it welcomes applications from the ‘global majority’ the very people it wishes to attract will not understand its message.
Like ‘early medieval England,’ ‘global majority’ is the product of elite concerns.
English swear words are overwhelmingly Anglo-Saxon in origin. You will still hear BBC types say X or Y’s conversation was ‘laced with Anglo-Saxon profanities’.
Does the Cambridge University Press want us to say ‘early medieval English profanities’ instead? If it does, the only sensible Anglo-Saxon response is to tell the Cambridge University Press, the International Society for the Study of Early Medieval England, and all those who agree with them to fuck off.
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