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?

Of course there are a few neo Nazis. But there is near universal condemnation of Hitler in Europe and particularly in Britain.

@Cam77

The whole concept of statues will, at some distant enlightened future date - and if humanity ever survives and evolves long enough to get there - be regarded as fucking stupid. In the same way a typical adult in our society views a teenagers bedroom plastered with posters of rock bands and political slogans as a bit of silly adolescent phase and somewhat immature.

Societies have erected statues for millennia. Why would that suddenly stop?

@chomalungma

That smacks of rewriting the history books

Do you think that statues should have plaques etc putting things in context so the history people learn is the actual history?

More importantly, why is rewriting the history books a bad thing? The history books have been constantly rewritten by the generations before us. We fund millions of pounds worth of historical research every year and have done so for decades, all of which will inevitably lead to revision of said history books. Our history is not a static thing.

A lot of cities in this country, hospitals, mueuseums or University departments were funded by people who earnt that money through unsavoury means. Would you want hospital departments to move plaques of patrons who owned cotton mills and had poor working conditions for their workers or used child labour? Or is it just those whose money was earnt off the back of plantations and the slave trade that you care about? Would you want stately homes closed whose vast family fortune was built off the back of the British empire?

Parts of uk history are unsavoury, other parts demonstrate the ambition, innovation of those that lived before us. History is just that, it is in the past and should be debated.

There is a tendency of the youth nowadays to push forward that only their views matter, to tear down or refuse to engage in debate with anyone who disagees with them re. rhe whole cancel culture. People all over the world have fought hard for the right to free speech and I have never felt it more under threat than now. For example, if a slave trader opened a hospital his statue should be torn down. Nevermind that the hospital is still around today and has a diverse work force and serves a multi ethnic patient population. Times change, views change. Noone has the right to just blot out history that they don't like or agree with. The whole point of history is that we learn from it and don't repeat the mistakes of the past but inorder to do that you need to actually have some understanding of what went on before.

*mueseums

Rewriting history refers to the deliberate alteration of historical documents and testimony so as to mislead people or erase events. It’s a widely understood phrase. Stalin removing people from photographs for example.

It doesn’t mean historians carrying out a new analysis of those sources.

There is a tendency of the youth nowadays to push forward that only their views matter, to tear down or refuse to engage in debate with anyone who disagees with them re. rhe whole cancel culture

OTOH - there is a tendency with some people in power not to even want to discuss anything about history that may be controversial or that doesn't suit their narrative. They also don't want to engage in debate because they might see the real history rather than the one that they want to tell.

museums 🥂

It doesn’t mean historians carrying out a new analysis of those sources

Sometimes it's not even a new analysis.

It's just people being taught other history about people or events that weren't covered in schools.

I think that some of the people in power are afraid of that.

Tearing down statues is hardly engagement with debate. It’s more “I’m right. You’re wrong”.

@VinylDetective

Tearing down statues is hardly engagement with debate. It’s more “I’m right. You’re wrong”.

This thread is not about 'tearing' down statues. It's about removing them. There is a difference.

The vast majority of the History people are taught is not done in school. If you look at the kind of History British people watch on TV, it is very conservative.

That’s more reflective of what people are learning than a statue.

This thread is not about 'tearing' down statues.It's about removing them.There is a difference

Semantics. The end result and motivation are the same.

@VinylDetective

This thread is not about 'tearing' down statues.It's about removing them.There is a difference

Semantics. The end result and motivation are the same.

Not really.

Ok people think it’s right to take down statues of Saville and Hitler, but do they think Ireland should have kept the statues of Queen Victoria, Cromwell etc?

The tearing down statues point was made about cancel culture, not the discussion on this thread.

Agreed @stripesnomore

This isn't about including modern research. It's about erasure, which is different. It's the worst sort of historical revisionism and has more in common with totalitarian regimes than academic endeavour.

Similarly, a friend of mine teaches English in a university and over the Christmas break, had to help to 'de-colonise the curriculum'. Given how the 'blacklisted' topics are so intertwined with the development of the English Canon, he said he can't see who will benefit from the anaemic list of books left to study.

This thread is not about 'tearing' down statues. It's about removing them.
There is a difference

Yes: a democratic process.

@Pangur2

Ok people think it’s right to take down statues of Saville and Hitler, but do they think Ireland should have kept the statues of Queen Victoria, Cromwell etc?

That would have been up to Ireland's legislature and population.

Nobody should be forced to keep a statue any more than one should be forceably removed! They are flip sides of the same coin.

Pangur2, unless we live in Ireland, how is their built environment our business?

I just don't understand why you would think tearing down a statue is okay, but tearing a building down isn't.

If a slaver had a statue made of him, but also built a theatre - why not remove the theatre too? Okay it's useful and used. But it's still a testament to the slavers wealth and it still represents power and wealth that was gained at the expense of others.

Obviously we're not going to tear down buildings because we need them and wedl would be dismantling whole towns.

So with that in mind - isnt removing statues and changing street names just basically paying superficial lip service when the reality is that whatever unpleasant aspects of history exist, they form the skeleton over which our entire country is built? You can't erase that no matter how much you try and erase it.

I think what makes me feel uncomfortable about it is that it's like theres this elephant in the room, where people want to pretend this isnt a historically white country with a colonialist past.

It is.

If a town votes to remove a statue, the statue should be removed. That's democracy.

However in its place no new statue should be put up. Instead it should be left bare and there should be a plaque that says "this statue of (insert name) was removed by a vote on (insert date) due to offence".

That way the societies of the future can judge for themselves what it has all meant.

chomalungma

OTOH - there is a tendency with some people in power not to even want to discuss anything about history that may be controversial or that doesn't suit their narrative. They also don't want to engage in debate because they might see the real history rather than the one that they want to tell.

There are many people on both sides that "don't want to discuss anything about history that may be controversial or that doesn't suit their narrative"

Slavery is one of those points.

If I remember correctly the Colston statue was a target in part because the local council had been dragging their heels for years over agreeing a more informative plaque. So the sentiment is all very well but it has to be acted upon

There had been surveys about it beforehand and the majority wanted it to stay.

I agree it's healthy to move on with the times. No one can erase history. The museums are the best place for them in this day and age. Use them to inform and educate. On a personal note, I wish we'd stop putting up statues of people on the streets, I find them really freaky unless it's in an art gallery 😬