The following letter was published in The Daily Telegraph on March 6. The conference in question took place in early February, and drew a strong protest from Alistair Lexden at that point in the pages of The Times (see below).
SIR - Could there be a more glaring example of the pernicious effects of the overindulged Black Lives Matter movement than the recent conference at which Churchill was denounced at the very Cambridge college established as a lasting tribute to him?
This anti-Churchill rant - bursting with ludicrous errors, as Charles Moore has shown (Notebook, March 2) - would have been inconceivable only two or three years ago.
Now, the dons in charge at an important academic institution appear quite untroubled, even when it is shown by leading academic experts on Churchill’s career that manifest falsehoods have been propounded on their premises.
Dame Athene Donald, the distinguished physicist who is Master of Churchill College, would presumably be appalled by uninformed denunciation of her own work, but remains silent when Churchill’s work is traduced without any serious supporting evidence.
The offence is made even worse by the presence in the college of a vast collection of Churchill’s personal papers, which any reputable scholar would consult before reaching conclusions about the great man’s attitudes to race, empire and other controversial issues.
Only warped judgements created by BLM can explain it.
Lord Lexden
London SW1
