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Operation Black Vote have announced today on their website (http://www.obv.org.uk/news-blogs/we-ve-won-mary-seacole-olaudah-equiano#comment-144748) that Gove has agreed to include Seacole and Equiano in the new History Curriculum after all. They see it as a victory. It isn’t: it’s a disaster. Just read the actual proposals, starting on page 165 of https://media.education.gov.uk/assets/files/pdf/n/national%20curriculum%20consultation%20-%20framework%20document.pdf. Look for a Black presence in Britain before 1948, or for non-European civilisation at any time: you won’t find it. Here is what I posted on the OBV website: Sorry to spoil the celebration but the new History curriculum published today is a total disaster for the teaching of Black British history. The current National Curriculum instructs schools to teach African civilisations before the slave trade, resistance to slavery and Empire and the continued ethnic and cultural diversity of Britain over the last 2000 years. This has all been swept away. Black people are invisible in the new primary school curriculum and first appear in secondary schools as slaves. The only other references are 'free slaves', Equiano, Seacole, 'the Windrush generation' and 'the arrival of East African Asians'. So according to Gove's proposals there were no Black civilisations before the Europeans arrive, no Black working class leaders such as Cuffay (in a long list of facts children will be forced to learn, the Chartists don't even feature) and no British people of African or Asian origin until after the Second World War. Apart from two Tudor queens, women only enter history in the mid nineteenth century. Inclusion or otherwise of Seacole and Equiano was always a red herring and Gove has used his usual sleight of hand, throwing a crumb while removing the whole of the history of the majority world. There should be an outcry of millions against this. The curriculum brought in five years ago represented a real step forward for teaching the truth of the Black presence throughout our history, and of African civilisations such as Mali, Songhay and Great Zimbabwe. If Gove gets away with this, our children will be rote learning a whitewashed masculinised travesty in which - unless they are among the powerful - they will not see themselves. We've been given Mary and Olaudah and had thousands of years and millions of lives taken away. How can anyone see this as a victory? If we let him get away with this we might as well abandon the work of decades. We should be marshalling anyone and everyone to oppose this. Consultation ends in April and the government website is https://www.education.gov.uk/schools/teachingandlearning/curriculum/nationalcurriculum2014/b00220600/consultation-national-curriculum-pos