Now Zulu War Battle of Rorke’s Drift Gets BLM-Style Trigger Warning

A picture in the Queen’s collection celebrating the Battle of Rorke’s Drift — one of the proudest moments in British military history — has been given a trigger warning following a Black Lives Matter style review.

For the last 140 years, the painting by Lady Butler, The Defence of Rorke’s Drift, has been left to speak for itself. It shows red-coated, pith-helmeted soldiers heroically defending their mission station redoubt as vast hordes of Zulu warriors — off-screen — threaten to overrun them and disembowel them with their assegais.

But now, at the insistence of the Royal collection’s governing Trust, the painting has been relabelled to warn viewers of its potentially offensive connotations: “connected to colonialism and Imperialism”.

According to the Telegraph:

A spokesman for the Royal Collection said the governing Trust “has an ongoing programme of activities to research, ­display, loan and publish detailed records of objects in the Royal Collection, in order for a wide range of audiences to learn about the Collection and its history”.

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The Battle of Rorke’s Drift has quite understandably imprinted itself in the British national consciousness because — a bit like Crecy and Agincourt — it symbolises the triumph of British pluck, verve, and sang froid against seemingly insuperable odds.

Around 150 British and colonial troops — mostly from the 24th (2nd Warwickshire) Regiment of Foot — held off between 3,000 and 4,000 Zulus in one of the most unlikely victories in British military history.

No fewer than 11 Victoria Crosses were awarded to the defenders — the largest ever for a single engagement. {snip}

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Their courage was celebrated in one of the all-time great British war movies, Zulu, with the two British commanding officers, John Chard of the Royal Engineers and Stanley Bromhead, played by Stanley Baker and Michael Caine.

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