The ignorance that underpinned empire and slavery still has staunch defenders | Zoe Williams

It's not the woke' who want to erase the past, but those who are determined that it should never be examined

It seems that the government's war on woke is box office gold, infinite spite fired at an endlessly replenished stream of targets, none of them moving very fast, since they totally weren't expecting culture secretary Oliver Dowden to even be aware of their work.

But, ask anyone who uses it pejoratively to describe another person what woke" actually means, and it turns out to have a specific usage. In an academic or museum trustee, it means anyone who talks about decolonising the curriculum, as in the case of the academic whose reappointment to the board of the Museum of Greenwich was reportedly vetoed by Dowden. In the context of youth, it's the ones on Black Lives Matter protests, unless it's the ones posing a threat to a slave owner's statue.