Academics and campaigners are working to establish a Museum of Sovereignty — or a Brexit Museum — to facilitate future understanding and academic research of why Britain decided to pursue her own destiny in 2016, and is seeking to collect items for an archive.
Among objects being collected for the Brexit Museum are photographs, draft speeches, placards, badges, posters, diaries, and pamphlets from both sides of the debate on Britain’s membership of the European Union over the past 40 years.
But in a launch statement Tuesday, the founders of the museum pleaded that no money be sent, arguing it would be better spent campaigning to force Britain’s politicians to see Brexit properly through.
Former UKIP head of press and now secretary to the Museum of Brexit Gawain Towler said of the initiative Tuesday that there are dozens of academic organisations and bodies devoted to studying the march towards integration, but none looking at the more recent phenomenon of nations distancing themselves from the bloc.
Reflecting on this new resource for academic analysis of the Brexit vote, Towler suggested it could be a sort of “Centre of European Disintegration Studies” which could rival the heavy bias of funding in academic towards pro-EU research.
Pictures: Farage Joins Fishing Boat-Burning Protest Against May’s Brexit Betrayal https://t.co/V8Ja4RfJNh
— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) April 9, 2018
While the Brexit battle is still being fought, Towler said it was important to start collecting now before much of the memorabilia and artefacts associated with decades of political activism were thrown away.
Dr. Lee Rotherham, a member of the committee of “political figures, veteran activists and historians that cover the broadest of Eurosceptic opinion” that are running the future museum said to The Guardian of the project: “It’s going to be a long, slow business… it’s too early to move on to the legacy side of Brexit now, but unless we start the process now, some of the material will potentially be gone.”
Taking a long view on the future of the museum, archive, and library the Museum of Brexit website sets one goal for the initiative as “creating something that will still be around to reflect back on the 100th anniversary of the UK joining the EEC – in 2073.
“We won’t be around then. We also doubt the EU will still be around by then either. And if it is, it’ll be in a form that justified our leaving.”
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.