Eriskay ponies, colonial tea and Sixties Britain: culture’s quiet revolutions

The last wild ponies of Eriskay: a community’s fight for survival

On the windswept slopes of Beinn Sciathan in the Outer Hebrides, fewer than 400 Eriskay ponies roam freely—a number so small that the breed is now classified as critically endangered. Unlike the more familiar Highland pony, the Eriskay’s population has been diluted by crossbreeding, leaving only a handful of genetically pure animals. What makes their story unique, however, is not just their rarity, but the way the island’s community has rallied to protect them.

The ponies are not confined to remote pastures; they wander through villages, where locals have taken collective responsibility for their welfare. Photographer Emily Whitney’s images capture this unusual coexistence—ponies grazing beside houses, their white and grey coats stark against the Hebridean landscape. The Eriskay Pony Society, founded in 1972, has worked to preserve the breed, but the challenges are mounting. Climate change threatens their fragile habitat, while economic pressures make it harder for smallholders to maintain traditional grazing practices.

The ponies’ plight is more than a conservation story. It is a microcosm of the tensions between modernity and heritage in rural Britain. As the UK grapples with its agricultural future—post-Brexit subsidies, rewilding debates, and the decline of small farms—the Eriskay ponies stand as a symbol of what is at stake. Their survival depends not just on scientific intervention, but on the willingness of a community to adapt.

The bitter truth behind Britain’s morning cup of tea

Kenya’s rolling tea plantations are an iconic image of the country’s agricultural success, but a new documentary, Kikuyu Land, lays bare the colonial roots of this industry—and the human cost that persists today. Directed by Andrew Harrison Brown and Bea Wangondu, the film traces the violent displacement of the Kikuyu people in the 1950s, when British colonial authorities seized their ancestral lands to make way for large-scale tea production.

The documentary opens with a chilling archival clip of Evelyn Baring, the colonial governor of Kenya, justifying the land seizures as necessary for "development." What followed was a system of forced labour and economic exploitation that enriched British companies while impoverishing local communities. Today, many of the workers who harvest Kenya’s tea—one of the country’s most valuable exports—are descendants of those same Kikuyu families, still tied to a system that offers little in return.

The film takes a dramatic turn when it uncovers a family secret: one of the directors discovers that her own ancestors were complicit in the land grabs. This personal reckoning adds a layer of complexity to the broader narrative of colonial reparations. As debates over restitution and historical justice gain momentum in the UK—from the return of the Parthenon Marbles to calls for reparations for slavery—the story of Kenya’s tea industry forces a uncomfortable question: how much of Britain’s prosperity was built on stolen land and exploited labour?

The Sixties: a decade of progress and prejudice

David Kynaston’s Deep into the Sixties: Britain 1965-66 offers a nuanced corrective to the nostalgic myth of the Swinging Sixties. While the era is often celebrated for its cultural revolutions—The Beatles, Carnaby Street, the rise of youth culture—Kynaston’s meticulous social history reveals a country still deeply divided by race, class, and homophobia.

The book’s most striking passages deal with the racism faced by Black Britons. In 1965, Malcolm X visited Smethwick, a Midlands town where the Conservative council was actively preventing non-white families from buying homes. Refused service in a pub, he remarked on the "disgusting" racism he encountered—a stark contrast to the image of a tolerant, progressive Britain. Meanwhile, football fans routinely taunted Black players like Albert Johanneson, the first Black footballer to play in an FA Cup final, with racial slurs.

Kynaston’s work is a reminder that social progress is never linear. The same decade that saw the decriminalisation of homosexuality and the abolition of the death penalty also witnessed the rise of far-right groups like the National Front. As Britain today grapples with its own identity crises—from Brexit to the Windrush scandal—Deep into the Sixties serves as a cautionary tale about the gap between cultural change and systemic reform.

What to watch: Michael Palin’s journey through the Philippines

As the UK’s cultural landscape continues to reflect its colonial past, Michael Palin’s latest travel documentary offers a timely exploration of another former British territory. In Palin in the Philippines, the former Monty Python star navigates a country of stark contrasts—where the legacy of Ferdinand Marcos’s dictatorship collides with the everyday resilience of its people.

Palin’s journey takes him from the corridors of power, where he meets President Bongbong Marcos (a self-professed fan of Monty Python), to the slums of Manila, where he encounters a woman selling "recycled chicken"—a euphemism for meat scavenged from waste. The documentary’s strength lies in its refusal to romanticise or exoticise. Instead, it presents the Philippines as a nation still grappling with the aftermath of colonialism, where poverty and political corruption exist alongside vibrant cultural traditions.

For British viewers, the film is a mirror. It forces a reckoning with the UK’s own imperial legacy, and the ways in which that history continues to shape global inequalities. As debates over reparations and historical accountability intensify, Palin in the Philippines serves as a reminder that the past is never as distant as it seems.

The week in review: what matters

This week’s cultural stories are united by a common thread: the quiet revolutions that shape a nation’s identity. From the Eriskay ponies to Kenya’s tea plantations, from the racism of 1960s Britain to the Philippines’ post-colonial struggles, these narratives challenge the idea of progress as a straightforward march forward. Instead, they reveal a Britain—and a world—still coming to terms with the legacies of its past.

What makes these stories resonate is their refusal to offer easy answers. The Eriskay ponies’ survival depends on collective action; Kenya’s tea workers continue to demand justice; and Britain’s Sixties, far from being a golden age, were a time of both breakthroughs and backlash. In an era of polarised debates over history and heritage, these stories remind us that the most important cultural shifts are often the ones that unfold slowly, quietly—and against the odds.