On January 22 last year, the entrance whiteboard at London Underground's Dollis Hill carried a brief factual statement:
On this day in history
On the 22–23 January 1879 in Natal, South Africa, a small British garrison named Rorke's Drift was attacked by 4,000 Zulu warriors. The garrison was successfully defended by just over 150 British and colonial troops. Following the battle, 11 men were awarded the Victoria Cross.
A female passenger complained that it was ‘celebrating colonialism'. The board was wiped clean and a suitably opaque quote from Martin Luther King substituted: ‘We are not the makers of history. We are made by history.'
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