{"id":16413,"date":"2017-08-18T15:46:33","date_gmt":"2017-08-18T14:46:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ihbconline.co.uk\/newsachive\/?p=16413"},"modified":"2017-08-18T15:46:33","modified_gmt":"2017-08-18T14:46:33","slug":"scottish-history-police-aim-to-correct-misleading-displays","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/?p=16413","title":{"rendered":"Scottish \u2018history police\u2019 aim to correct misleading displays"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"iNew<\/a>A Scottish tour operator has set up a national \u2018history police\u2019 forum, allowing the public to report misleading or inaccurate information at museums and local information boards.<\/h3>\n

iNews reports:<\/p>\n

Catriona Stevenson, who runs Clyde Coast Tourism, was inspired to set up the group after becoming annoyed by the number of factual mistakes and \u2018sheer bias\u2019 on display at public monuments and other displays around Scotland. However, she insisted that her \u2018History Police\u2019 group was not a \u2018moaners\u2019 charter\u2019 but a place for people to discuss often disputed aspects of the country\u2019s history with the hope of inspiring them to find out more.<\/p>\n

The 31-year-old said one of the most common mistakes was people and organisations referring to King James I and II when they actually meant James VI and VII, claiming this happens \u2018all the time\u2019. She told the National Newspaper: \u2018I have been going around places all over Scotland for years and finding things that just grated on me. I saw one panel in Glasgow during the Commonwealth Games which said that James Watt was born in Glasgow \u2013 I complained that he was born in Greenock and the panel was changed.\u2019<\/p>\n

She added that at the Bannockburn battlefield site, one of Scotland\u2019s most famous tourist spots, she spotted a claim that Robert the Bruce murdered John Comyn in Dumfries. She said: \u2018The accounts of the actual happening are very dubious.\u00a0 It might just have been a fight or a duel during which Bruce killed Comyn \u2013 he definitely fatally wounded him. To say to Scots that one of your greatest heroes is a murderer on holy ground is about making out that the Bruce was somehow a lesser king, and he absolutely was not.\u2019<\/p>\n

Last month Ms Stevenson sparked a row with the Isle of Arran Heritage Museum over its display about the Highland Clearances, claiming that it glossed over the fact that they were \u2018nothing less than ethnic cleansing\u2019. The museum hit back, claiming that the people who left Arran during the clearances had an \u2018element of choice\u2019 and that force was not used to make them leave, as in other parts of Scotland. After a review, it left the display as it was.<\/p>\n

Ms Stevenson said she believed some of the inaccuracies were caused by \u2018ignorance\u2019 due to the poor teaching of Scottish history in schools. She said: \u2018You get taught a very basic history of Scotland. Take the Jacobite uprisings, which are always taught wrongly in my opinion \u2013 it\u2019s all about 18th and 19th century British propaganda. I was standing with tourists on Culloden battlefield recently when a woman exclaimed \u2018But the Jacobites were terrorists\u2019.\u2019<\/p>\n

Read more…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Scottish tour operator has set up a national \u2018history police\u2019 forum, allowing the public to report misleading or inaccurate information at museums and local information boards.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16413","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sector-newsblog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16413","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16413"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16413\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16415,"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16413\/revisions\/16415"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16413"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16413"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsblogs.ihbc.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16413"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}