The title of Imperial War Museum is extremely grave – even more grave than, for example, that of the International Slavery Museum, for the simple reason that British imperial warfare included and enabled all the harms of empire, including, massacres, famine and state aggression – the latter of which, Justice Robert Jackson, US Chief of Counsel during the Nuremberg Trials, whilst prosecuting Nazi leaders, described as “the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.”
There is a need for an Imperial War Museum which honours its subject matter in an accurate and critical manner in all aspects. IWM has carried the name for 100 years, after it was initiated by the Government in 1917 and opened in Crystal Palace in 1920 to commemorate the First World War, and has expanded its remit to examine subsequent conflict involving Britain and the Commonwealth. Only recently in its history has it started to open up, more widely, to victim and dissident perspectives of British and allies’ imperial warfare, in its public programming. The forthcoming season focused on refugees which has been put on hold during the COVID-19 disruption should be on view in London and Manchester this year and may be an opportunity to address the most pressing and lethal of current threats by linking imperialism and global climate change.
Imperial War Museums’ vast collections, managed by librarians, curators, conservators and administrative staff provide a contrastingly frank and extensive insight into Britain’s imperial history – including, in cases, reaching prior to the 20th century. A policy of free visitor general entry to IWM London, sharing of collections online – albeit, with increasing licence costs for commercial and wider use – and accessible research facilities gave visitors opportunities to conduct their own research, despite the fact that deeper access has always been restricted by wider systemic barriers. (For example, people identifying as Black are least likely of surveyed ethnic groups to visit museums or galleries and 0.7% of academics at professorial level in the UK identify as being black).
However, access is increasingly under threat as IWM’s government funding has been cut and senior management have responded by defunding, dismantling and increasingly commercialising services relating to research and the library under the cover of major infrastructure and permanent exhibition developments. Any progress towards finally honouring its title, equitably sharing its resources and supporting racial and economic justice, including, for its workers, may founder in financial crises.
Like other museums, Imperial War Museums has publicly responded to the resurgent anti-racist movement in the UK and beyond, triggered by the latest murders of black people in the US, including the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery, by acknowledging that, “there’s a lot more we can do, and a long way for us to go.” In the statement, published on Twitter, Imperial War Museums commits to ten actions based around being more participatory, self-critical and representative in its decision-making and content.
The statement by the Migration Museum, a project started in 2013 and now based in Lewisham, went further by linking the disproportionate mortality rate of Covid-19 in BAME communities and the entrenched racist murder and violence in the US to emphasise the need to challenge societal structural racism. Evidence increasingly supports the case that people from Black, Asian and other ethnic minority groups in the UK experience a higher mortality rate than white peoples and that people of Black African, Black Caribbean and South Asian ethnicity appear to be at the highest risk, with the discrepancy potentially even higher in the US. In its recent report, Public Health England (PHE) cited the threat of greater inequality arising as a result of the pandemic and recommended for authorities to: “Ensure that COVID-19 recovery strategies actively reduce inequalities caused by the wider determinants of health to create long term sustainable change. Fully funded, sustained and meaningful approaches to tackling ethnic inequalities must be prioritised.”
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The idea that British colonialism has had a benign global effect is widespread, such that, in a recent poll, 27% of UK respondents expressed a wish for Britain to be an imperial power, whilst 50% opposed to the idea. A significant “pleasure culture” of British militarism and colonialism is evident across Britain’s mainstream party political lines – with 21% of those who identified as Labour supporters in the poll expressing the belief that countries were better for having been colonised by Britain.
A 2013/14 British Council poll surveying public knowledge of the global reach of imperial warfare during WW1 found that 11% considered WW1 to be linked to the modern conflict in Israel and Palestine and 25% had heard of the 1917 Balfour Declaration – Britain’s formal commitment to support the creation of a Jewish homeland in Palestine. 21% were aware that Africa was involved in WW1, despite the fact that in the East African campaign alone, Britain was served by some 160,000 African troops and one million labourers. Less than 10% had heard of the Sykes-Picot Agreement, a secret 1916 deal drawn up during WW1 by France and Britain. By contrast, some 85% of Egyptians polled were aware of the Balfour Declaration and over 50% of the Sykes-Picot Agreement.
Following the national WW1 centenary commemorations, of which the Imperial War Museums was the lead institution and which included a national arts commissioning programme called 14-18 NOW, public knowledge of the international nature of WW1, it has been suggested, increased. IWM introduced a £40 million redeveloped building and new WW1 galleries at their London site, led a Centenary Partnership of thousands of organisations and engaged 40,000 school children in educational tours. In 2018-19, IWM ran a Making a New World series of displays which showcased John Akomfrah’s Mimesis: African Soldier, a video installation highlighting the role of African soldiers and labourers in British forces during WW1.
A House of Commons Committee review of the commemorations, conducted to make recommendations for future events, found DCMS programming around the centenary lacked planning for legacy, including a failure to place ‘diversity’ as an explicit criterion in the commemorations and to plan for preserving digital projects. The high volunteer participation consisted, in one year, of 8% non-white participants, compared to their making up 13% of the population. The review found that more needed to be done to make resulting materials, including those relating to diversity, accessible in schools.
Out of the 25 academics in the digital advisory group to IWM’s WW1 centenary digital programming, one was a person of colour (Dr Santanu Das) and nine were female. The five person academic advisory board for the new WW1 galleries consisted of four men, one woman and no person of colour. Professor Richard Grayson chair of the digital advisory group, said: “Though consisting of academics based in two countries, the UK and the Republic of Ireland, all of us who teach on WWI would have significant engagement with material relevant to the countries you mention, as well as many others besides.” IWM adjusted its new WW1 gallery, after opening, following complaints, including from a former Australian deputy prime minister, that significant leaders amongst Canadian and Australian forces had been overlooked.
Low ethnic minority representation generalises across the cultural sector, with increasing consequence at board and senior management levels. 1% of IWM staff who responded to the query identified themselves as being of black or ethnic minority background. The Arts Council’s museum partners have an average of 6% black or ethnic minority workforce, whilst this group make up 16% of the national working age population. Arts Council research suggests that these workers are more likely to be in “contractual” roles rather than permanent staff compared to white peoples.
That an empowered, independent and more representative Imperial War Museums workforce can be drivers of change is evidenced by the record of the Art Department at IWM London. It has, in recent years, been at the forefront, of critical and participatory collecting, commissioning and exhibiting, particularly, in relation to conflict in the Middle East, that has welcomed the voices of victims and dissidents of contemporary British imperialism and militarism – which, in modern times, tends to take the form of being a junior partner to the US military.
In 2010, artist, Rosalind Nashashibi was commissioned by IWM to produce a work on Palestine which was to become 18 minute film, Electrical Gaza, exhibited at IWM London in 2015/16 as part of a new series focused on contemporary conflict. It formed part of Nashashibi’s works that would be nominated for the Turner Prize 2017. She praised IWM for allowing “its original remit of nominating war artists and embedding them with the British army to evolve into a new mode of commissioning artists that reflects current warfare.” Steve McQueen’s Queen and Country, on display at IWM London, depicts photographs of British service persons killed in Iraq on postage stamps within a set of drawers. Co-commissioned by Imperial War Museums and Manchester International Festival, McQueen had initially visited Iraq embedded with British forces but abandoned the project due to the restrictions he was placed under. He turned to the idea of stamps as dedication to fallen soldiers, even though the Ministry of Defence refused to support the project.
Having explored the strain faced by US lethal drone operators in Omer Fast’s film, 5,000 Feet is the Best and the effects of PTSD on British soldiers in the work of Imogen Stidworthy, in 2016, Pakistani-born, US-based artist, Mawish Chishty, was given a platform to tell a story from beneath aerial bombardment. Chisty presented a small exhibition of paintings and models of military drones decorated in the patterns and colours of Pakistani/Afghani traditional truck art. The intricate results reclaim drones as part of the region’s long history of invasion and attack – and also brought to attention the lives and culture being destroyed, traumatised and disrupted by their constant presence and threat.
A ‘War of Terror’ art exhibition by Edmund Clark at IWM London examined Britain’s role in the George Bush-era ‘extraordinary rendition’ kidnapping and torture of suspects campaign – including the British role in the rendition of suspects for torture in Muammar Gaddafi’s Libya – as well as looking at the opaque and punitive use of control orders as a form of house arrest in Britain.
As part of its collecting efforts, IWM London secured the damaged remains of a car destroyed in a bomb explosion in Iraq in 2007, which had been toured around the US by artist, Jeremy Deller, as part of his exhibit, It Is What It is. Depictions of torture in the US-run Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, by South African Expressionist artist, Albert Adams, were purchased by IWM and featured in a gallery display at IWM London in 2012. IWM’s Contemporary Conflict Team also secured artwork by cartoonist, Darren Cullen, depicting ‘first aid bombs’ targeting Yemen which, according to IWM, “vividly illustrates the public debate in Britain surrounding the Government’s position as both a major funder of humanitarian response and as a source of the weapons used by Saudi Arabia in carrying out the war in Yemen.”
Imperial War Museums’ annual short film festival, supported by film production companies and local universities, has also been a platform for all manner of global voices inspired by IWM’s collections. Film entries from 2018 covered, amongst other subjects, the Spanish Civil War, Czechoslovakia during the 1952 Slansky Trials, the WW1 Zeebrugge Raid, refugees from war-torn Afghanistan and the Battle of Messines, 1917, in which Irish and Ulster divisions fought and died together, as part of the British Army.
The degree of independence and inclusiveness of perspective demonstrated is not reflected in every working of IWM which is a complex set of departments and five institutions, including the charging sites of HMS Belfast, Churchill War Rooms and IWM Duxford. IWM North, in Manchester, recently showed an exhibition on the ongoing conflict in Yemen, in which Saudi Arabia has bombed cholera and poverty-stricken Yemen since 2015, backed by the US and supported with weapons sales by Britain – without legal oversight, according to the Court of Appeals which has necessitated the Government to place a moratorium on new weapons sales licences whilst continuing to supply Saudi Arabia under extant licences and ‘accidentally’ approving two new licences.
As IWM North shed light on Yemen’s humanitarian crisis, IWM London introduced What Remains: Culture Under Attack, in collaboration with English Heritage. This small exhibition was presented itself as a potted history of built culture being destroyed during warfare, often, intentionally. As was pointed out in reviews and visitor comments on social media, the exhibition was glaring in overlooking the extent of the destruction that Britain had inflicted on culture, from the looting of artefacts from Mesopotamia during WW1 to the chain of destruction and the extent of the looting and destruction caused and unleashed in modern day Iraqi museums, libraries and heritage sites by the US/British-lead invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003, to the contribution to the destruction of Yemeni historic sites.
IWM’s owes a significant amount of its collections to the Ministry of Defence (MOD) and it has worked closely with the MOD and weapons manufacturers, on certain temporary exhibitions, and this has been reflected in the content. Whilst committed to the Museum Code of Ethics principle of retaining “editorial integrity” and resisting influence from lenders, partners and funders, it is apparent that this has not been possible in some cases. As IWM becomes increasingly reliant on big corporate funders, it has been suggested that closer understanding of their business and brand objectives will be necessary to compete for money. IWM has, at times, publicly declared its military partners in its public signage to projects and exhibitions, in observance with transparency principles in the Code of Ethics. In previous years, IWM publicly declared annual £10,000 or more donations by arms manufacturers Boeing UK and BAE Systems in its annual reports. However, in most recent years, they are no longer listed amongst named donors.
The Museums grant-in-aid from the Department of Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) has fallen from 53% of the Museums’ operating costs in 2009/10 to 39% in 2019/20. The Museum has recently warned that, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, “(i)n the next 18 months we will need to curtail massive amounts of work across the board to stay solvent. We will need cash flow to do this, but it is also important to recognise that this will increase the risk to the national collections with reduced staff and maintenance to care for them.” This may affect the major WW2 Exhibition and Holocaust Learning Suite development at IWM London which are scheduled to open in the Autumn of 2021 and cost 20% of total income in 2018/19. The Museum is currently still fundraising for the £30 million development and with supporting donations from high net worth individuals. (They plan to expand the individual giving team.)
IWM has lost over £1 million in revenue during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown, according to its Director of Development, and when it reopens, visitor capacity will necessarily be controlled. It added in its recent statement: “We require joint storage that minimises fixed costs, mass digitisation that enables the public to gain access to our collections without visiting and increased capital infrastructure so we don’t need to have people sitting in buildings to put the buckets out when it rains. In the short term IWM will also need to restructure our business to support a viable future for the museum.”
Despite funding difficulties, in 2011, IWM went ahead with a cross-site corporate rebrand, including a new logo and corporate uniforms and, in 2014, IWM transferred its Visitor Services & Security department to private company, Shield. In 2016, Shield collapsed and the contract was taken over by Noonan, which was then bought by international conglomerate, Bidvest, in 2017. A major turnover of staff has ensued since 2014 with new recruits often drawn from ethnic minority and migrant populations and placed on cheaper and lesser terms, including, in some cases, zero hour/minimal hour contracts and reliance on statutory sick pay of, currently, £95.85 a week, after four consecutive days of sickness and a number of other qualifying conditions.
The “Dying for Sick Pay” campaign, recently launched by the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCSU) who represent workers at Imperial War Museums, intensifies the call for full sick pay from day one in the COVID-19 era and has a significant racial justice element as not only are a disproportionate number of casual workers from ethnic minority backgrounds but people from these groups may be up to twice as likely to die from COVID-19.
In 2019, IWM London’s public educational area known as the Explore History Centre, run by its librarian team, and used by the public for family history research and learning, amongst other informal research, was shut down. The resource has been replaced by volunteers standing in the atrium of the Museum. 2019 also saw the disbandment of the Visitor Engagement Officer team who conducted daily tours, talks and assisted visitors in the galleries.
IWM’s Library was marked for closure and dispersal in 2010, only for a public campaign by IWM’s Librarians and their union, Prospect, to force IWM to backtrack, albeit with extensive new service reductions. All paper-based collections in the library and archives are being transferred out of London for storage in Cambridgeshire at its IWM Duxford site, potentially undermining IWM’s archive accreditation award which requires them to enable access and service improvement. Librarians no longer provide a telephone query service. Opening hours have been reduced and a five-working-days advance ordering system introduced, as items are transported from Cambridgeshire.
The closure of the Explore History Centre strengthens academics’ expressed fear of “a wider strategy to move the Research Room and all the collections to Duxford, or close it down altogether.” The open letter to IWM’s director, Diane Lees, signed by over 90 academics stated: “It is saddening that IWM London has again decided to put up another obstacle to researchers and students’ ability to access and utilise this national library and its world-class collections. It sends another signal that serious research into modern warfare is not one of IWM’s priorities.”
Whilst IWM has cut its own expert staff and services, it has formed a new “hub” known as IWM Institute encompassing a range of experts or ‘associates’ from other sectors, including academia and media, with a view to, amongst others, providing “commercial services, including consultancy, research room services and museum sector training, to be formally offered by the Institute.” IWM’s Research and Library service has been brought within the Institute’s remit.
IWM now charges fees starting from £480 + VAT for consultation services to provide “curatorial support to film and TV producers looking for expert knowledge and advice to aid the development of their productions.” They have worked on major film productions such as Darkest Hour, 1917 and Peter Jackson’s, They Shall Not Grow Old. Without sufficient public oversight, there is a risk of pricing out certain projects and undermining public access.
Increasing commercial income has been necessitated by funding cuts, especially, since the 2008/9 subprime mortgage-induced global financial crisis and subsequent Government financial austerity measures. Those institutions reliant mostly on self-generated income are now at greatest risk of closure, despite Government’s March 2020 budget business rate reductions, self-employed and job retention support and the Art’s Council £160 million emergency public funding. Museums have called for a Recovery & Resilience Fund to prevent historic buildings being “broken up and sold off.”
Imperial War Museums’ anti-racist statement commitments, like that of other museums, contradict the austerity driven structural changes that have been underway at the Museums and may accelerate in the wake of COVID-19. Imperial War Museums and its range of services must be saved, including its collections, research, library and education services, public-facing expert staff and front-of-house workers on liveable and fair terms. If the Museums cannot secure long-term emergency public funding and reverse its structural transformation towards privatisation we cannot expect the Museum to change for the better and risk losing much more.
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Further resources:
– Dr Andrew Higgins, Director of Development at Imperial War Museums, discusses fundraising strategies in the COVID-19 era in an audio interview with David Burgess, Director of Apollo Fundraising. (Free to listen on Apollo Fundraising website: 40 minutes, Recorded 1 June 2020)
– “The Future of Museums”: Diane Lees, Director General of Imperial War Museums, in conversation with Dr Tristram Hunt, Director of V&A Museum and Mark Urban, Diplomatic Editor of BBC Newsnight and Trustee of Imperial War Museums, in an audio interview – produced by the Aspen Initiative. (Free to listen to on Aspen Initiative UK website: 57 minutes. Recorded 27 April 2020, via Aspen Initiative UK website)
– “Dying for Sick Pay” campaign launch Public and Commercial Services Union, featuring Labour MP, John McDonnell and representatives from Public Commercial Services (PCS) Union and United Voices of the World (UVW) union. (Free to listen on Youtube: 50 minutes. Recorded June 16 2020).
– ‘The Imperial War Museum in London: A Lesson in State Propaganda?’ by Louis Allday, lengthy article critiquing IWM’s editing of historical record. “Generally, the portrayal of both Britain and the USA throughout the museum’s permanent galleries reflects the ruling class consensus of these two states being responsible, well-intentioned global powers.” (Free to read on Mronline website: Published 7 September 2016).
– “Letter to IWM protesting against changes to Research Room” open letter by Clare Makepeace and signed and delivered to IWM by over 90 historians and academics, challenging access restrictions to the Research Room at IWM London and wider structural changes to the service. (Free to read on warfarehistorian.org: Published 18 April 2018)
IWM London is Changing 