Oliver Dowden, the United Kingdom Culture Secretary, in an op-ed published in the Sunday Telegraph of May 15, has disclosed that a new heritage board has been formed to discuss how heritage organizations could put the government's “retain and explain” approach towards controversial monuments and historic statues into practice.

In his op-ed titled “We won’t allow Britain’s history to be cancelled”, the culture secretary made a passionate argument for the preservation of the "heritage that unites us as a country, and draws visitors to our islands by the millions," and said he "will not look on as people threaten to pull down statues or strip other parts of our rich historic environment." 

Therefore, he urged that although museums and other bodies need to have genuine curatorial independence, "independence cuts both ways" and as such, "Heritage organisations should be free from government meddling, but the people who run them also need the courage to stand up to the political fads and noisy movements of the moment.”

He further credited his conservative government for the restoration of the UK's art and cultural landscape from the threat of the coronavirus through the  £2 billion Cultural Recovery Fund; "the biggest single intervention in UK arts and heritage ever" which ensured that "stately homes, churches and other heritage sites survived the worst crisis they have ever faced."

To buttress his position, he said, “I want to take not a Maoist but a ‘moreist approach’ to our heritage: I want more statues erected; more chapters added to our national narrative and more understanding of it. In short, more history, not less. The point is to expand the conversation, not shut it down.” He stressed that museums and heritage organisations should be as relevant to a “grandparent in Hartlepool or Harwich” as a “millennial in Islington”

He added that the newly-formed heritage board has the duty to give a comprehensive, balanced account of the past."

Members of the heritage board include Trevor Phillips, the former director of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, and the historian Robert Tombs. 

Dowden had earlier in February held a summit where he intimated national museum heads and leaders from the National Trust, Historic England, the National Lottery Heritage Fund, and Arts Council England (ACE) on how to implement the government’s “retain and explain” approach.

There has been a heated global conversation around "problematic" monuments and historical statues. Many of the statues and monuments dedicated to personalities and causes of questionable history, usually relating to slavery or other human rights abuse, that adorn public spaces, especially in the West, have been asked to be removed, but proponents of their preservation are making a case to "retain and explain" them.