to think removing certain statues and renaming certain street names is not erasing our history?

[chomalungma]

It's just not celebrating people who are seen as controversial.
People can still learn about these people in books.
In films
At school.

It's just that they aren't being celebrated by having public recognition and the honour of a statue or a street name.

I would link to a story - but there would be so many of them as the Government (and certain media organisations) seem to think that it's a war on our history.

I guess a lot of it is down to the person being celebrated. And whether that celebration is still deemed 'worthy' 100s of years later.

Statues have been removed in the past for a range of reasons. I wonder how many of the Victorian statues will still be up in 200 years time?

Totally agree. Like statues of slavers etc. A statue is a celebration of someone and a permanent statement that they are to be admired. Of course they should be taken down if we no longer admire the history. It isn’t etasure it’s putting the memory in its proper place ie not celebrating it.

Look at Germany they are v good at remembering difficult history without celebrating it.

It may of course be that slaving was what one might call a side-line rather than anything important about the person at the time. It's not exactly the first thing I think about when Drake is mentioned, if I am honest, nor Napoleon either.

Someone can have done things felt whilst they were alive to have been important, like be the man in charge when the country won a major war or the first person to circumnavigate the globe, and now be condemned for something which was not seen at the time as being of any great importance (Churchill was alcoholic and used tobacco, Magellan kept slaves), or any different from what was done by a lot of other people too.

I do wonder slightly what, which we now see as normal, will be righteously repugnant in a hundred or two hundred years' time. Eating meat? Buying goods from a country not out own? Failing adequately to condemn FGM?

There is the old test about who you want to lead you if you look at personal qualities alone. Your choice

A) alcoholic journalist
B) adulterous man with inherited wealth
C) teetotal vegetarian who doesn’t smoke

@LexMitior

There is the old test about who you want to lead you if you look at personal qualities alone. Your choice

A) alcoholic journalist
B) adulterous man with inherited wealth
C) teetotal vegetarian who doesn’t smoke