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?

I dont know. In my home town, theres a monument to the place where they used to hang the Welsh. There's also a street that marks where bear fighting used to take place in the tudor period. All horrifying stuff.

But I remember being walked around town when I was a child being told about these histories via these monuments and street names, and it gave me a depth of understanding about the history of the place, appalling as a lot of that history is.

So my concern would be losing the opportunity to have those discussions. Without the visual cues, you'd forget. Maybe the answer is to change the wording on the plaques beneath statues? And to balance things up by adding some new and more positive ones?

@AskingQuestionsAllTheTime

Oh, that's easy. If more than one person says a statue is controversial, that means it is -- that's the definition of a controversy, that two sides don't agree about something.

So if I and another person say Mumsnet is a nest of vipers and you and another person disagree, that's a controversy and Mumsnet should be closed.

Got it

I wonder how many prominent people whose statues are up would want people to be reminded by 'future people' of parts of their past that are controversial with a plaque next to their statue?

I am sure some famous people would love a statue of themselves for future people to see. Would they want that statue to have a plaque saying some of the controversial things they did - even though they may not have been controversial at the time.

Any statue/street name for any man who held the views of his male peers would probably need to go, if we disapprove of hatred and/or ill treatment (often amounting to slavery) of women, including approval of marital rape, or of having a majority of fellow decision makers picked from the minority of the population who are male. Black lives certainly matter. Disabled lives, or old people's lives, or women's lives are barely worth a mention, so they don't get one.

The other side of this is who will decide what goes up in the place of what is removed?

The colston statue was replaced (all be it briefly) by an artist from London.

And TBH any statue of any person that you put up is going to piss somebody off.

Yes funding is an issue. But my grandiose dream aside, I think if a British person started a petition to say National Trust asking them to add slave trade context to any of their displays in historic houses they own that were owned by slave traders. I’m sure they’d divert some of their funds to do that. For example, I know national trust owns Francis Drakes old home Buckland Abbey. Surely they could spend a few hundred £ identifying his role in the slave trade?

The National Trust has actually been doing a huge amount of work to identify their properties' links with the slave trade and with colonialism more generally, and to make this more visible to visitors. They are being slaughtered by the right-wing press and many of their members for doing so. You only have to look at another thread on here from a few days about about colonialism in India to see just how many people think that Britain went around the world magnanimously imparting its blessings to the savages.

Thank God this isn't a priority and Mumsnetters aren't in charge of the purge
Shall we start with the statue of Henry VIII at St Barts? After all he was a terrible mysogynist and murderer.

www.eastlondonlines.co.uk/2020/11/maggie-hamblings-statue-of-naked-feminist-icon-mary-wollstonecraft-attracts-criticism-and-praise/
Perhaps we could commission Maggi Hambling to create the new statues?

Nah! King Alfred the Great is the oldest UK free standing stautue, late 1300s. News just in... he wasn't that great, he lied a lot, claimed other peoples successes for his own.

Tear that fucker down!

@derxa

Thank God this isn't a priority and Mumsnetters aren't in charge of the purge Shall we start with the statue of Henry VIII at St Barts? After all he was a terrible mysogynist and murderer.

It's not like he'll be forgotten if his statue is removed.

I think he's discussed in history at school.

And yet we relish the opportunity to go to (for example) Rome and admire statues and monuments of those who conquered, fought wars, murdered, and enslaved. All great stuff.

We marvel at the massive monuments, Churches and Mosques, to Christianity and Islam, who murdered, enslaved, and subjugated.

History is brutal, and we actually, if we closely analysed, quite like that part of it.

Yy @curiousaboutsamphire

And the problem is that if they have a statue, they're likely to have some skeletons in the closet, large or small. It's naive to think that we just need to get rid of a few bad eggs. Once you start going down this path, you'd have to tear down and rename a huge percentage of Britain's monuments and streets.

If we are getting rid of people whose money and status were built on the suffering and death of others, why do we still have the Royal Family?

It seems a bit trivial getting rid of statues while the direct descendants still keep all the privilege.

It's not like he'll be forgotten if his statue is removed. Would you really try remove his statue?
What about a statue of his daughter Elizabeth I of England? She ordered the murder of many people.

intriguing-history.com/queen-elizabeth-i-statue-london/#:~:text=Queen%20Elizabeth%20I%20statue%20London%20It%20is%20London%E2%80%99s,is%20how%20young%20and%20relaxed%20the%20Queen%20looks.

@BigWoollyJumpers

And yet we relish the opportunity to go to (for example) Rome and admire statues and monuments of those who conquered, fought wars, murdered, and enslaved. All great stuff.

We marvel at the massive monuments, Churches and Mosques, to Christianity and Islam, who murdered, enslaved, and subjugated.

History is brutal, and we actually, if we closely analysed, quite like that part of it.

Precisely and having taught KS2 the more brutal the person was the more the pupils were interested. Why do you think Horrible Histories are so popular?

@derxa

It's not like he'll be forgotten if his statue is removed. Would you really try remove his statue? What about a statue of his daughter Elizabeth I of England? She ordered the murder of many people.

I'm just saying that he won't be forgotten about if his statue was removed because he is so much a part of our history.

As is Queen Elizabeth 1.

Some people are concerned that removal of statues that honour controversial figures means that their history is being erased.

Now if Henry VIII was not taught about in schools, not featured in films or TV dramas, then that might well be true.

But I don't think that's going to happen.

Yes! Told lies about her sister that we still believe today - Bloody Mary, not so much, naughty, blood thirsty Lizzie!

Precisely and having taught KS2 the more brutal the person was the more the pupils were interested. Why do you think Horrible Histories are so popular

So do you think we should put up statues of some of history's more controversial figures then in our public spaces?

Hitler maybe (goes all Godwin's Law here)

www.underthebutton.com/article/2020/06/citing-preservation-of-history-town-refuses-to-remove-hitler-statue

Hitler isn’t a controversial figure. There’s near universal agreement that he was a bad person and an incompetent failure.

Obviously there is no way to ‘erase’ history. What this does is try to remove certain i stories/histories from the public realm. Which is fine, IF there is public consent for that decision. There has to be on objective process where all views are taken into account. It’s not good enough to say (as they did with the Colston statue, for example), “It bothers some people so let’s take it down.” Other people valued it.

precisely and having taught KS2 the more brutal the person was the more the pupils were interested. Why do you think Horrible Histories are so popular

Yy, this is why I mentioned our school walk around town where they showed us where brutal things happened (we stopped by street signs and monuments at each part of the talk). Some of it was grim and horrible but we were all fascinated and all saying/thinking 'I cannot believe that it used to be okay to do that'. It's stayed in my head for 30 years.

People are saying about Henry VIII but most of history is made up of people and incidents that will be forgotten unless we find ways to make ourselves remember. It's important.

• So do you think we should put up statues of some of history's more controversial figures then in our public spaces?

Hitler maybe (goes all Godwin's Law here)*

This is just daft. There’s no public will to celebrate Hitler.

@chomalungma

Precisely and having taught KS2 the more brutal the person was the more the pupils were interested. Why do you think Horrible Histories are so popular

So do you think we should put up statues of some of history's more controversial figures then in our public spaces?

Hitler maybe (goes all Godwin's Law here)

But we are not putting up statues of those people now. That's the whole point of this debate. They are already there, for good or bad. If you only put up, or retained, persons worthy, it would be incredibly limited and totally boring.

If previous generations had done the same as we are suggesting, there would be very little to see now.