Skip to main content
Gifts from The Morning Star
After conference the Tory war on history will intensify
Forget the ‘woke’ debate — Boris Johnson pointedly ignoring black history is an attempt to write minorities out of the future as well as the past, argues KEITH FLETT
(left to right) Foreign Secretary Liz Truss, Lord Chancellor Dominic Raab, Health Secretary Sajid Javid, Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries, Cop26 President Alok Sharma, and Chief Secretary to the Treasury Stephen Barclay, await Prime Minister Boris Johnson's keynote speech at the Conservative Party Conference in Manchester

AS usual, while the Tory conference in Manchester had a backdrop of very serious issues for working people, it wasn’t itself a serious occasion. It was essentially a large gathering of lobbyists, looking for sinecures and contracts.

While attacks on the “woke” peppered the conference, this too has become a joke term, used to signify anything Tories don’t like, which is most things apart from profit and exploitation.

Boris Johnson’s speech on the last day was no exception, best characterised as not very good light entertainment, containing lines like “Hereward the Woke.”

The 95th Anniversary Appeal
Support the Morning Star
You have reached the free limit.
Subscribe to continue reading.
More from this author
Veteran Labour MP Tony Benn, leading over 500 OAPs in a march to mark the start of the three-day National Pensioners Convention in Blackpool's Winter Gardens, April 30, 2001
Features / 22 September 2025
22 September 2025

In 1981, towering figure for the British left Tony Benn came a whisker away from victory, laying the way for a wave of left-wing Labour Party members, MPs and activism — all traces of which are now almost entirely purged by Starmer, writes KEITH FLETT

A ballot box arriving during the count for the Blackpool South by-election at Blackpool Sports Centre, Blackpool, May 2, 2024
Features / 11 September 2025
11 September 2025

Who you ask and how you ask matter, as does why you are asking — the history of opinion polls shows they are as much about creating opinions as they are about recording them, writes socialist historian KEITH FLETT

Jeremy Corbyn (second left) and Zarah Sultana, MP for Coventry South (second right) on the picket line outside London Euston train station, August 18, 2022
Features / 26 August 2025
26 August 2025

KEITH FLETT revisits debates about the name and structure of proposed working-class parties in the past

Ramsgate beach 1899
History / 14 August 2025
14 August 2025

The summer saw the co-founders of modern communism travelling from Ramsgate to Neuenahr to Scotland in search of good weather, good health and good newspapers in the reading rooms, writes KEITH FLETT

Similar stories
CRUCIAL HISTORY: A silent crowd follows the funeral processi
Features / 17 March 2025
17 March 2025
From colonialism to the Troubles, the story of England’s first colony is one of exploitation, resistance, and solidarity — and one we should fight to ensure is told, writes teacher ROBERT POOLE
Leaders of the Labour Representation Committee in 1906. From
Features / 4 March 2025
4 March 2025
The formation of the Labour Representation Committee in 1900 marked the beginning of interconnected and contested strategies — parliamentary and industrial — seeking ways to advance working-class interests, writes KEITH FLETT
EVEN FURTHER RIGHT: Margaret Thatcher
meets the press outsid
Features / 16 February 2025
16 February 2025
KEITH FLETT looks back 50 years to when the Iron Lady was elected Tory leader…
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer speaks during a reception to
Features / 17 October 2024
17 October 2024
ROGER McKENZIE argues that Black History Month has been sanitised, losing its original purpose of empowering black people through knowledge of their history and struggles to actually go out and fight the battles of today