How a history festival became a forum of fear

Spectator

9 hours ago

'Defence needs to be our number one priority.' This sounds like the sort of thing you'd hear at a Nato summit, or a Chatham House conference, but it was the plea of Colin Bell, a 104-year-old second world war RAF veteran, as he was interviewed at Chalke Valley History Festival last weekend.
The Wiltshire festival was the brainchild of historian James Holland (second world war specialist; brother of Tom). Originally designed as a fundraiser for his local cricket club, the weeklong event is now in its tenth year. Speakers at last weekend's event ranged from Max Hastings and Alice Loxton to Al Murray and Peter Frankopan, and were complemented by live re-enactments and activities. I attended the festival on the penultimate day, saw a guillotine and battle tanks and heard about everything from the origins of the name 'Charing Cross' to the five partitions of the British Raj. But despite the fun, I noticed a darker tone running through many of the talks.
Discussion of Donald Trump dominated. Talks by the historian Niall Ferguson and the peer and former Supreme Court judge Jonathan Sumption drew the biggest audiences of the day, and both focused on the American president. Sumption focused on the challenges facing American democracy, while Ferguson put the present-day concerns over Taiwan into historical perspective. This was Glastonbury for history nerds. The music festival was taking place only an hour west away the same weekend, but this crowd was more red corduroy and linen suits than vest tops and baggy shorts. Though judging by the queue for Ferguson to sign his books, he was the festival's rockstar.
Ferguson's talk was stark. He said he put the chance of a US-China conflict over Taiwan at 50 per cent over the next three years, and that Trump's presidency raises the likelihood of such a conflict happening sooner. President Xi (potentially ill or on his way out), could seek to secure a legacy, Ferguson argued, and exploit a Trump administration that looks increasingly disinterested in Taiwan. Ferguson imagined a scenario where a blockade of Taiwan begins and Trump is presented with two options: attack the Chinese fleet and defend the island, with consequences that could escalate to a third world war, or concede. Which would he pick?
We are already living through Cold War Two, Ferguson continued, and it probably started in the early 2010s. The West's dependency on semi-conductors from Taiwan could see a crisis akin to the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, he said, except this time the island is off the coast of the other superpower. 'Do we really want Trump in Khrushchev's position?' Ferguson asked.
Sumption – promoting his new book The Challenges of Democracy – took an even more pessimistic view of Trump than Ferguson, arguing that the President had all the hallmarks of an authoritarian leader. Democracy is a fragile thing, he told us. Much of Sumption's talk focused on the merits and pitfalls of the American constitution versus its European counterparts. Britain's unwritten constitution somehow survived the tests of the Johnson and Truss premierships, he said. We should consider ourselves lucky: the American system is more easily dismantled.
For a day, Chalke was no longer a history festival, but a forum of fear. Leaving Ferguson's talk, I couldn't help but think again of the RAF veteran, Colin Bell. Throughout his talk, the TV screens in the tent displayed the phrase 'We Will Remember', over the backdrop of a poppy. Surrounded by his interviewers, young historians and broadcasters in their twenties and thirties, he declared that 'to avoid a third world war, we must focus on defence'. War, warned Ferguson and Sumption and Bell, is not just a thing from history.