At least there's one place that still values sacrifice: LORD ASHCROFT

So farewell ‘Imperial Woke Museum’, hello National Army Museum. 

For those who missed the announcement, the latter has agreed to display my collection of Victoria Crosses (VCs) and George Crosses (GCs), the largest of its kind in the world.

This is the very same medal collection that the Imperial War Museum decided was no longer suitable to exhibit.

I am grateful that the National Army Museum, a mile and half up the Thames, still holds dear values such as bravery, duty and sacrifice.

The ‘Imperial Woke Museum’, however, has other priorities, which is why, after 15 years, it decided from the end of September last year to shut the Lord Ashcroft Gallery.

This was the gallery that, at the request of the IWM, I had spent £5million creating in 2010.

The museum’s new priorities include focusing on LGBTQ+ history. A virtual tour, ‘Exploring LGBTQ+ Stories in Times of Conflict’, was launched late last year.

Its website says: ‘The trail introduces key historical figures and lesser-known heroes who displayed great courage and resilience.’

The ongoing project also carries a major exhibition whose subjects include Enid Mary Barraud, a bisexual land girl who often dressed as a man and sometimes went by the name of ‘John’. 

The project marked the 25th anniversary of the lifting of the ban on gay people serving in the Armed Forces.

These individuals undoubtedly have interesting stories but to highlight their contribution to the war on the grounds of who they preferred to sleep with is in danger of being patronising to their memory. 

And the display, so soon after my collection was being made homeless, suggests the museum had grown tired of Armed Forces personnel whose extreme valour didn’t suit today’s vogue for tales of identity repression – for which the public is now apparently so hungry.

For most of the 15 years that these 245 VCs and a smaller number of GCs were on display at the IWM, I was proud to be associated with a museum that ‘provides for, and encourages, the study and understanding of the history of modern war and wartime experience’.

However, under its current leadership, I genuinely expect that someone will soon query whether its very name is offensive – an imprimatur of colonial excess, no doubt, that will trigger any poor soul who enters the building.

Last year, Sir Keir Starmer appointed three new trustees to the IWM, whose term will run to 2029.

None of them has a military background. One of the trustees, Professor Dame Janet Beer, an academic, was awarded her damehood ‘for services to higher education and equality and diversity’. 

I’d like to see ex-military personnel, not the Government, taking the lead in appointing future trustees.

I appreciate that the IWM has to examine other aspects to war and conflict apart from bravery but I would argue that nothing inspires such a museum audience as much as raw gallantry. 

As Winston Churchill, our great wartime Prime Minister, put it, ‘Without courage all other virtues lose their meaning’.

The IWM may be woke but it is not courteous. It was early last year that I discovered, through an intermediary rather than the museum itself, that the IWM had decided to close the Lord Ashcroft Gallery. The move was eventually greeted with outrage by past visitors and many others.

My VC and GC collection, built up over 40 years, is valued at around £70million and I had made arrangements to gift it to the IWM when I die. Unsurprisingly, those plans have now changed.

Since September, it has been kept in vaults, under lock and key. Now one museum’s loss is another’s gain and I look forward to a long and happy association with Justin Maciejewski, the Director of the National Army Museum, and his team.

They will display my full collection within the next two years. In the meantime, from July onwards, a selection will be shown in pop-up exhibitions.

At least 11 VC and nine GC medals in the collection have not been exhibited before – including the VC medal group awarded to Lieutenant Commander Charles Cowley, the so-called ‘Pirate of Basra’, for outstanding bravery as a Royal Navy officer during the First World War. 

I will leave the last word on this matter to my dear friend Lord Hague who last weekend, gave a speech at a party to mark my 80th birthday. 

William, who has a dry sense of humour, told my guests: ‘Michael is the best friend in the world but the worst enemy. So I’d just like to say “good luck” to the trustees of the Imperial War Museum...’ 

Lord Ashcroft KCMG PC is an international businessman, philanthropist, author and pollster. For more on his work, visit lordashcroft.com. Follow him on X/Facebook @LordAshcroft.