Learning From The Past To Shape The Future

Our first keynote at xCHANGE 2025 was a session led by Dominic Sandbrook, historian, author and co-host of the hugely popular podcast "The Rest is History".

I've been forced to realise that this nation, shabby and depressing, is in sad decline. Britain is a miserable sight - a society of failures, full of apathy, aroused only by envy at the success of others. That's why we'll continue to decline – not because of our economic and industrial problems – they're soluble – but because the psychology of our people is in such an appalling – I fear, irretrievable – state. Meanness has replaced generosity, envy has replaced endeavour – this is the social personality of a loser. And fascism could breed in this unhealthy climate.

Bernard Donaghue, August 1975

We live in a deeply troubled and profoundly unsettled time. Drugs and crime, campus revolts, racial discord, draft resistance--on every hand we find old standards violated, old values discarded, old precepts ignored. A vocal minority of our young people are opting out of the process by which a civilization maintains its continuity: the passing on of values from one generation to the next. Old and young across the Nation shout across a chasm of misunderstanding, and the louder they shout, the broader the chasm becomes.

As a result of all this, our institutions in America today are undergoing what may be the severest challenge of our history.

Richard Nixon, June 1969

Opening with the quotes above, the session asked a deceptively simple question: are our current crises unprecedented or echoes of earlier storms? The guiding idea - often attributed to Mark Twain - is that history doesn't repeat, but it rhymes. From tariffs to polarisation, the past offers patterns that can help us read the present without pretending it provides a script.

Dominic challenged the belief that the 21st century has had a uniquely bad start by reflecting on other, similarly transformative historical periods: namely, late-1960s America and mid-1970s Britain. These periods were, as today, marked by racial polarisation, political violence, the spectre of terrorism, economic stagflation, and a crisis of national identity.

Despite these similarities, history does not offer us a roadmap for what may happen next; however, it can help to reassure us that the road ahead looks more normal than we might think. Indeed, by listening to the rhymes of the past echoing in the present day, we should remember that today's issues are familiar in outline, if novel in detail.

Moreover, when headlines feel apocalyptic, Dominic emphasised that it's also important to remember our collective good fortune in being born at a time when we are able to live longer, healthier, safer, more comfortable, and more colourful lives than predecessors. So, really, there has never been a better place from which to start in all of history...