The English started the slave trade

[Annamaria14]

I just saw a black American woman post online,

"The English started the slave trade. They caused all our problems, they hurt generations of people. I will never set foot in that country".

What do you think? I felt a bit guilty, because the English did cause a lot of problems around the world. Have we learned from our past. How can we do better in the future

And the statues in the South that were erected for Confederate politicians and generals were put up at a particular historical moment. It was after Deconstruction had been abandoned and the white power in the structure in the Southern states was rebuilding with Black Codes and Jim Crow to intimidate black southerners and also laud the Confederancy as if they had won. Lots of the statues were put up into the 20th century, long after the Civil War and they were triumphalist. So they were sending a strong message about who was back in charge. They were not innocently "remembering our history" because of course there were none of black emancipation or black enslavement.

I lived in Germany for six years and my children attended German schools. Noone would ever consider erecting a triumphant Nazi "just to remember the war". I was very surprised to know there was a statue to a well-known slaver in Bristol, that to me is unnecessary. We can easily tell stories and explain history without having statues glorifying some of the most horrifying parts of our past. That speaks to a certain cluelessness. If we are shocked by the story of Barbery pirates turning up in the West of Ireland and carrying off over a hundred people, we would never have a triumphalist statue of the pirate captain on the Irish shoreline.

Hopefully the best way to approach these issues is to have museums explaining all aspects of the past. There were always people lobbying in the colonies against the creation of permanent slavery tied to race BTW, but their voices were overpowered, then new generations grew up believing "it's always been this way".

@serenada

Your post is so beautifully written and so moving. It is a testament to the power and symbolism of a country's memories.

It's also something else, I think - it puts in physical form the memory and the inherited trauma of that time so that the present Irish people don't have to carry it around in respect to their ancestors. It parks it - but in a respectful, dignified way so that people can move on from such a traumatic part of history with a clear conscience. They haven't whitewashed away their ancestors or forgotten their past - it is there, in its painful brutality and I think it is important that at a time of change in Ireland they had that. They also have statues of dockers on the quayside so they although the city is changing they have kept alive a memory of their past.There is a little bridge I know of in a country town - the local school children are brought over it to look at the river and learn about river life. They can see herons and salmon, etc. The walls and floor of the bridge are opaque glass and etched on are words from elderly parishioners - sentiments like 'I remember walking over the bridge to school and seeing the herons

It's important to acknowledge the past to move forward in the present. I agree.

Thanks, @BovaryX

The thing is with the famine it is such a delicate topic. It is such a traumatic part of Irish history - I don't mean to suggest that putting statues up removes that or takes away the need to understand, study or remember it but for some reason 9and I think teh artistry involved allows this) you can feel that the thought you carry around in your mind about the famine and the solemnity you associate and 'contain' those thoughts can be shifted slightly in your heart, so that you are not having to hold that pain at all times.

It made me realise the power of monuments and sculpture in general. I loved the fact that the literary figures are all over the city. It does a really clever thing of allowing the nation's history speak for itself. I used to sit next to Mr Behan by the canal, look over at Mr Wilde in St Stephen's Green and each time I passed Mr Joyce I wondered what he would make of Ireland now. You have to have that internal conversation with the artists work to do that in a meaningful way and with regards to the history, you need to know it but the famine statues for example, are so alive, so haunting, so dramatic in their presence that they tell the story. I think 'physicalising' history this way allows people to embrace their 'present' fully.

Sorry,

you can feel that the thoughts you carry around in your mind about the famine and the solemnity you associate with it and use to wrap around those thoughts and 'contain' them can be shifted slightly in your heart, so that you are not having to hold that pain so closely at all times.

[quote serenada]@Hingeandbracket

Exactly - my white (English) ancestors were illiterate and didn't have a vote - tell me again how the slave trade and the potato famine were their fault?

I guess that for a lot of people they are sick of trusting that people won't make offensive comments so they just get the politics in first as a self protective measure. I think if you felt continuously looked down upon or treated as second class by people then you become vigilant to that and although you can't say that every individual person is like that, enough may be to make you feel exhausted.

I don't believe you are responsible for your ancestors actions, particularly as you say many couldn't vote/ were second class within their own country, too but as someone else pointed out we can recognise both injustices. There does seem to be conflict around this comingling of white working class and black middle class - as though they are being set up against each other in a battle of who has it the worst.

Who positions these things this way, I wonder? In whose interest is it to have us all fighting amongst ourselves?[/quote]
Your post reminds me so much of this, really powerful message.

Not true, suggest you Google it.

Help! My house is on fire, my house matters

Neighbour: My house matters

True, but your house isn’t on fire dickhead

This is doing the rounds on Twitter

It is as he says in the video, 'diluting' the message.

Dhalmeup
Thank you for your post. I appreciate your final line, not because I refuse to acknowledge history but because I want us to move forward.

Hingeandbracket I'm having a bit of a crisis; I'm English but some of my ancestors died in the potato famine and now I'm not sure if I should be demanding an apology or feel guilty! Life and history are rarely simple. My English ancestors were like yours, illiterate, no vote and lived their entire lives in poverty. Me and my siblings are the first generation of home owners.

I think that is so interesting. The echoes, the resonance, the weight of memories. You write about it beautifully. I agree with you about statues, monuments, buildings. In Istanbul, there is the Ayia Sophia. When you visit it, you marvel at the fact it survived, its metamorphosis, its beauty.

It made me realise the power of monuments and sculpture in general. I loved the fact that the literary figures are all over the city. It does a really clever thing of allowing the nation's history speak for itself. I used to sit next to Mr Behan by the canal, look over at Mr Wilde in St Stephen's Green and each time I passed Mr Joyce I wondered what he would make of Ireland now. You have to have that internal conversation with the artists work to do that in a meaningful way and with regards to the history

@BovaryX

Yes, I have visited the Ayia Sophia. I slept on top of a hostel roof in Istanbul and woke up very early as the Mosque next door did its call to prayer. I had an amazing view of the city, high up.

I always found that if I read up on a place before I visited it, then I could find some way into the psyche of the nation or its artists. Once I had, I could walk around their work - be it in a church, a museum or in a book and be within the stream of their thoughts, observing them, inline with the work. It is the power of great art that allows you to do this, I think and the intermediary pieces that help you along the way.

I read Francoise Sagan before I visited Montpelier as an adult (I had already visited the South of France) and did a lot of trips to Paris looking at the galleries when I was around 17, as I had read a lot about the lives of artists in 20th century Paris. To me, it was all alive. In Barcelona, I lived near the old artists quarter where Miro, Dali and Braque all lived and spent my days and nights there with the modern day artists. We would draw and drink absinthe and cheap wine and I had a sense that although the exterior had moved on, little hidden pockets had stayed the same (this was 25 years ago).

Real things continue. You have to dig through the debris sometimes to find them.

I'm English and I had nothing to do with the slave trade, nor did my parents or grandparents. I am fed up of being made to feel guilty for things which happened long before I was born.

I'm also fed up with not ever being allowed to feel proud to be British. Would be nice one day if all Brits (regardless of age, gender, ability, disability, colour of skin, ancestry, or any other factors) could celebrate being British without a whole load of guilt trips and connotations being attached.

See, I think that by putting these monuments (Churches,etc) up that is what the architects in teh past were trying to do - but sometimes they get co-opted by the patrons and have to become a monument to glory or something that slightly changes the tone. Real sculpture is history manifest in stone or metal or copper and is placed strategically so that it resonates with its environment and audience - it is integral to it.

I think, as a society, we have discovered that we respond much better to people and perhaps we are not so ready for th abstract yet. we need to first, bring forth our past - our monuments to Mary Seacole and the Windrush generation, our musical heroes an local working class people - to immortality what they stood for and about and then once we have put the local out there, we can put the national and international.

But I don't think that sits with the British identity, it might be seen as too provincial?

There is a museum of the whirling dervishes, mosque gardens filled with cats and an underground cisterna with huge carvings and the echo of water and the weight of the ages. A fascinating city.

to immortalitise what they stood for

@HotCoffeeAndPorridge

I'm also fed up with not ever being allowed to feel proud to be British. Would be nice one day if all Brits (regardless of age, gender, ability, disability, colour of skin, ancestry, or any other factors) could celebrate being British without a whole load of guilt trips and connotations being attached.

Yes - but we need to establish the content of that, don't we? there are lots of things to be proud of - i think people are pointing out that the Empire is not necessarily on of them in light of the damage inflicted on countries.

But we should be able to feel a national pride in other aspects of our identity. I think we have to build this consciously now though - and taking into account the amount of mixed heritage identities we have - that is why it tends to be dealt with in the abstract - so that it can encompass everything without being bogged down by specifics that then get jumped on as defining identifying traits at the exclusion of everything else. But perhaps before we can do that, we need to give people something that allows them to move forward - so, like the famine statues, something that acknowledges their local, shared history, their immediate world and the things that shaped it and then they can feel they have done right by their collective memories and move on.

@BovaryX

The little I have seen of Islamic countries tells me they do museums well.

Have you seen this? I think it is great. It is Damien Hirst and exhibited, i think outside the maternity hospital. Not quite what we have been talking about as it celebrates life but it does the same thing, I think - it puts in place a physical presence of something often intangible yet known.

news.artnet.com/art-world/damien-hirst-public-fetus-works-go-back-up-in-doha-1398895

I'm also fed up with not ever being allowed to feel proud to be British. Would be nice one day if all Brits (regardless of age, gender, ability, disability, colour of skin, ancestry, or any other factors) could celebrate being British without a whole load of guilt trips and connotations being attached.

You can be proud and British. No one has said you can't, perhaps you care about what others think too much and clearly you are paranoid about something? Perhaps you need to address where those insecurities come from.

Help! My house is on fire, my house matters

Neighbour: My house matters

True, but your house isn’t on fire dickhead

I do not think this is true. I have a friend who has been accused of not understanding as she is not black. She is a woman and disabled. This is victimhood top trumps where nobody wins.

This is more like a village on fire and everyone is arguing about whose house is most on fire and who is to blame for starting the fires hours ago, instead of working together to put out all of the fires.

HotCoffeeAndPorridge

I'm also fed up with not ever being allowed to feel proud to be British. Would be nice one day if all Brits (regardless of age, gender, ability, disability, colour of skin, ancestry, or any other factors) could celebrate being British without a whole load of guilt trips and connotations being attached

And how should such niceness for you be achieved? That those who don’t have so much to celebrate just shut up and let the tea and scones commence, or you support genuine change so that everyone can feel the same level of celebration?

I lived for many years in a Middle Eastern country where slaves from East Africa were still a fact for a long time after slavery was abolished in the U.K.

Slavery was common - and considered a necessity! - in many parts of the world for many centuries. There is a great deal of ignorance on the subject.

I was very surprised to know there was a statue to a well-known slaver in Bristol, that to me is unnecessary.
They didn't put up his statue because of his involvement in slavery. The statue is because he spent the wealth in philanthropic ways (schools, hospitals, almshouses and churches). There will be loads of ex-slavers who never get mentioned because they kept their wealth to themselves and stayed under the radar.
It's ironic, really, that Colston gets singled out.

Just saying. Don't jump on me and try to call me an apologist.

I am still proud to be English. By the way I am surprised at the amount of people on here, who say we must say British not English. Can you tell me why?

I always say I am English. My Dad always said he was English. I have friends from Scotland who always say they are Scottish. Similiar, with friends from Wales.

Why wouldn't you say what country you were from within the UK! And also why is it only English people that say we must say British. I have never heard a Scottish or Welsh person insist on being called British

They didn't put up his statue because of his involvement in slavery. The statue is because he spent the wealth in philanthropic ways (schools, hospitals, almshouses and churches). There will be loads of ex-slavers who never get mentioned because they kept their wealth to themselves and stayed under the radar.

So true. He wouldn't have got a statue if he'd salted his money away. It is indeed ironic that he's been vilified because he "did the right thing" and spent some of the profits on good causes to benefit the people of the city.