Controversy lies at the heart of history. Was the Stone of Destiny, pinched by Edward I, the real one, or did the monks at Scone Abbey swap it for a bit of local rock? Was the massacre of Glencoe a clan on clan battle, with the Campbells paying off old scores, or was it a government attempt to wipe out some troublesome rebels? Were there more Scots than English in Cumberland’s army at Culloden? Might the Lockerbie bomber have been wrongly convicted? And so on.
Controversy draws us back to events we thought familiar and peels off layers of evidence, revealing the true facts or, indeed, cementing the myth. I doubt if anyone, for instance, will ever dislodge the idea that Culloden involved a brutal English army suppressing the gallant Highlanders, or that Glencoe was a Campbell-MacDonald action, however telling the evidence that disproves it.
Now, another one: last weekend John Moffat died in Perthshire. The World War Two pilot is credited as “the man who sank the Bismarck” and his is the remarkable story of how, flying a fragile Fairey Swordfish biplane in a force nine Atlantic gale, he unleashed the torpedo that hit the rudder of the Germans’ most powerful battleship, and put it out of action. His obituaries have saluted his courage — and he deserves it. Except that, just maybe, it was not his torpedo that did the damage.
Moffat himself never claimed the credit. All he knew was that he had released his torpedo and returned, under heavy fire, to the aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal. Only later did naval historians deduce that it was his attack that had hit home. He had come in on the Bismarck’s port side, and that was where the ship was hit. When his exploits were celebrated in a book entitled I Sank the Bismarck, Moffat was embarrassed, but accepted the evidence.
Then, in 2001, the film-maker James Cameron sent a diving team down to examine the wreck of the Bismarck. His footage, which can be examined on YouTube, suggests that the torpedo that hit the Bismarck’s rudder, forcing it against the propeller and rendering it useless, came in from the starboard side. Two other Swordfish planes did attack from the starboard side — one piloted by David Godfrey-Faussett, the other by Kenneth Pattisson. Both were awarded the Distinguished Service Cross. Pattisson’s son Rodney believes it is time history was revised and his father, or possibly Godfrey-Faussett, given the credit. He may well have a case. Thus far, the navy continues to attribute the successful attack to Moffat, but the jury is out.
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Jock Moffat, a modest and delightful man, would not have stood in the way of new evidence, and he would have been the first to say that every one of the pilots who took part in the action that day deserved credit. Each took his life in his hands, each came under heavy fire, each was able to land safely back on the Ark Royal’s pitching deck without knowing whether his torpedo had been responsible.
“The problem with fake news on social media is that by the time it has been investigated, pronounced false and dismissed, it has done its job
This, surely, is the right way to re-examine great events — piecing together careful research, matching existing evidence with new clues as they emerge. It is the very opposite of the way we tend to be bombarded with claim against counterclaim in the internet era. The problem with fake news on social media is that by the time it has been investigated, pronounced false and dismissed, it has done its job of inserting propaganda into the minds of those disposed to believe it.
Thus the fake story during the US presidential election that the Pope had endorsed Donald Trump, absurd as it seemed, was accepted for a time as fact and even recirculated on established media. There is a fascinating TV clip showing a group of Trump supporters arguing with absolute conviction that President Obama had encouraged millions of illegal immigrants to vote. In vain the presenter points to clear evidence that the story was fabricated. Nothing could dislodge them from their view.
Obama himself cites the way that online conversations encourage over-simplicity. “An explanation of climate change from a Nobel prizewinning physicist looks exactly the same on your Facebook page as the denial of climate change by somebody [in the pay of big business],” he said. “The capacity to disseminate misinformation, wild conspiracy theories, to paint the opposition in negative light without any rebuttal — that has accelerated in ways that much more sharply polarise the electorate and make it very difficult to have a common conversation.”
The problem is that, unlike conventional history, social media by its very nature allows and encourages unsourced information. Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, acknowledging the problem of fake news, intends to introduce a system of checks using third parties to examine contentious claims. But he knows he is tampering with the very ethos of unfettered news and remains “on the side of letting people share what they want whenever possible”.
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Perhaps the only way of counteracting fake news is to reverse a proposition that most of us have grown up with, which says: “It must be true, it was in the papers.” Instead we should recite the mantra: “It must be a lie, it was on social media.” Then, and only then, will we give the facts time to emerge, investigation to reveal the evidence, serious inquiry to peel off the layers of falsehood and reveal the truth.
It may take a bit more time but it will be far better history than was ever coined in 140 characters.