Thread by @axrenton

A year ago, @thesundaytimes published a dishonest Jeremy Clarkson column which repeated a series of slavery denialist claims. Yesterday, after months of argument + intervention from @IpsoNews, the paper finally printed this correction. Here's why it matters. 1/14

The story. Back in Feb 2021, Clarkson in his weekly column had a pop at history teachers and other 'muddle-headed lefties who hate Britain' who – this time – he accused of covering up the positive stories from Britain’s slavery history. 2/14

He claimed schools won't teach about the Royal Navy’s campaign against slave-traders after Britain abolished the trade (but not slavery) in 1807. Even though this "most morally just war of all time... cost far more than Britain earned from its earlier slaving enterprises". 3/14

This last was bollocks: old bollocks at that. No historian supports it. Britain enslaved over 3 million Africans and their descendants over 250 years: the many enterprises dependent on it were worth 11% of GDP in the early C19th. The taxes helped finance the Napoleonic wars 4/14

Clarkson was repeating a common slavery denialists' trope - his 'research' no more than a repetition of another right-wing journalist's old opinions. Easy to put right, you'd think - and several Sunday Times journalists agreed it should be. 5/14

But the newspaper refused to even discuss a correction. Clarkson was entitled to his "opinion", and the economic point was 'arguable' - though multiple respected academics wrote to prove it was 'ridiculous'. 6/14

Only when @IpsoNews, the press standards body, decided to investigate did the Sunday Times cave in, reluctantly and partially - a half-arsed correction and Clarkson's article still on the website, slightly amended. 7/14

Questions: why would a serious newspaper, signed to the Editor’s Code, fight so hard to defend an obvious untruth and the hate-speech it supported (see the comments online)? Are celebrity columnists just too powerful for honest editing? #WarOnWoke? 8/14

Teachers and academics are working honestly and inclusively to improve our history curriculum. They face hate whipped up by people like Clarkson and his fans. See the vicious attacks on historian @corinne_fowler over her work for the @nationaltrust 9/14

Clarkson says he fears 'being cancelled' - yet he and other Times right-wing columnists are clearly pretty much inviolable. Their work enables the racist hate you see in the papers' online comments - a serious problem, as Times assistant editor Rose Wild has acknowledged. 10/14

And who are these ideologically corrupt teachers who he thinks are perverting British history? Aren't the teachers with a political problem those who taught Clarkson – and me – the partial and rose-tinted account of empire that he now wants to defend? 11/14

To finish. Some of my ancestors were involved in transatlantic slavery (#BloodLegacy). Another, David Boyle, fought as a young midshipman in the Royal Navy AGAINST the slave traders off Africa in 1850. 12/14

He and his shipmates risked their lives to stop slavery because of shame at what Britain had done earlier. Boyle would have contempt for Jeremy Clarkson and anyone who tries to diminish or excuse the crime against which they fought. 13/14

This history can't be changed: our responsibility is to the present. We have to call it out when we see the powerful propagating the lies that excuse British slavery: lies told 200 years ago by the pro-slavery lobby and still toxifying Britain now. 14/14