Woke-Bashing of the Week: SS Great Britain didn’t ‘go woke,’ but the Telegraph couldn’t resist implying it did!

With its large student population, thriving creative industries, long tradition of grassroots activism, Green MP, Green-led council and, of course, the toppling of the statue of the 17th-century slave trader Edward Colston during the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests, Bristol has long occupied a special place in the anti-woke imagination.

It was perhaps inevitable, then, that one of Bristol’s most celebrated landmarks would eventually find itself accused of succumbing to ‘wokery.’

Brunel’s SS Great Britain recently underwent a £1.6m redevelopment of its visitor experience. Before the museum had even reopened, the Telegraph was sounding the alarm over what it described as a “controversial rebrand.” The paper reported that “Great Britain” had been dropped from the museum’s branding in favour of “Bristol Dockyard Museum,” supposedly to appeal to a more diverse audience after consultation found some local residents believed “SS” stood for “slave ship” rather than “steam ship.”

Readers were unsurprisingly reminded that the ship sits close to the spot where Colston’s statue was dumped into Bristol Harbour during the 2020 protests.

The consultation documents did indeed discuss broadening the museum’s appeal. They argued that the trust should attract a more ethnically diverse audience and proposed incorporating “new perspectives” on migration and Britain’s global connections. Yet to some commentators, that alone was enough to trigger accusations that Brunel was being erased and history rewritten.

When the redeveloped museum opened on July 18, the Telegraphreturned to the story with a provocative headline asking whether the attraction had “gone woke.” Travel writer Simon Horsford dutifully rehearsed the familiar complaints. Critics, he noted, feared that the redevelopment would diminish the legacy and engineering genius of Isambard Kingdom Brunel, who came second only to Winston Churchill in the BBC’s 2002 poll of the greatest Britons. He also repeated the anecdote about some Bristolians confusing “SS” with “slave ship,” once again linking it to the city’s recent history of anti-racist protest.

Yet the same article itself quietly dismantled the very narrative its headline invited readers to believe.

Horsford praised the museum’s extensive archival research, the work of local historians and the richer storytelling that now accompanies the ship. His verdict could hardly have been clearer: “Has the SS Great Britain gone woke? I saw nothing to justify the concerns voiced a few weeks ago, when the rebrand was announced. The ship’s history is dealt with in a balanced manner, and the new museum adds to what’s on offer, rather than detracting from Brunel’s story.”

The supposedly ‘woke’ changes amount to little more than providing additional historical context, telling more of the stories connected to the ship, and making the museum more accessible to a wider audience. Brunel’s achievements remain central.

The only thing that truly appears to have changed is the headline. The SS Great Britain didn’t become another casualty of woke revisionism. It became another prop in a culture war that exists largely because some commentators refuse to stop inventing new fronts in it.