Statues should be left alone

[Rubyroost]

Ffs why target statues of Oliver Cromwell, Peel etc. They are history and should be left. Sorry, I know this is probably controversial. When will the book burning start?

@Amymone I keep seeing so many comparisons to Auschwitz and that make no sense to me. Auschwitz isn’t a statue. Public statues are for things we look up to. Auschwitz is a museum, a mausoleum, a memorial, a graveyard and a world heritage site all rolled into one. Completely different from a statue in a town centre.

Also how is putting an inappropriate statue in a museum hiding it away? It’s just changing the context in which it is seen surely? I am really trying to understand the issue some of you have with this idea, I really am.

I do understand the wish to put a nice face on history, but it isn't possible,

@PipGirl404

"Racism today has nothing to do with slavery"

Wait, what? OP if you honestly believe that you desperately need to go and educate yourself. I'm honestly aghast you've said that. You shouldn't be participating in any kind of discussion or debate on racism until you've at least educated yourself a bit more.

And?

And... what? Eh?

Let's rip down all the Boer War memorials! Did you know the first concentration camps in the world were set up in South Africa? Why are we glorifying that? Let me get a pack of aggrieved South Africans together and topple them!

Or... Maybe that's criminal damage and we need to accept that history happened?

I haven't actually seen or heard references to Auschwitz elsewhere so seemingly there are people thinking along similar lines independently. I can't speak for them, but it came to my mind just as something that could easily have been demolished for being so uncomfortable but instead it's been allowed to stay as a reminder. I wasn't actually saying that Auschwitz as a death camp and a statue of an individual are the same thing.

Museums are fine. Don't get me wrong, I love museums and spend a lot of time in them. But they're not that accessible and often not that engaging, with statues in particular tending to collect dust in corridors and go unnoticed. In my view (and it's only my view) it's easier to be out of sight out of mind, which seems to be one of the problems with education around slavery anyway. Interestingly, as I'm typing, there's a black professor on news at ten advocating for the statues to remain as a reminder of our difficult past.

I don't think there are any absolute rights or wrongs about how to handle this. I can absolutely see both sides and wouldn't claim to have 'the answer'. My only contribution is that the situation is nuanced and merits thoughtful consideration about how to move forwards.

The thing is that until this happened an awful of Brits didn't know that 'history has happened' and had no idea which cities were built on slavery and why our country is so rich. So maybe they will learn something. God knows they won't learn that at school.

@Amymone should Glasgow have kept the statue of Jimmy Savile up then? To remind us of the past? How is he different?

@silentpool a quick Google shows that although they didn’t rip down the Boer War memorial, they did have a ceremony to change its meaning.

“The memorial was rededicated on 10 October 1999 in "memory of the men, women and children of all races and all nations who lost their lives in the Anglo Boer War, 1899–1902”

did she campaign against it or kill up to 600,000 people and send another 50,000 to the Caribbean as indentured servants? Would just be interesting to know

If you're talking about Cromwell, he didn't actually do any of this.

Not meaning you, but people, especially Irish Americans, pass this kind of fake history around the internet in memes all the time.

Getting rid of these statues, street names, etc is erasing history just the same as the Taliban did
I agree with the black professor who was on the news tonight. He said that removing them would lead, in a fairly short time, less than 50 years, to people forgetting slavery and colonialism. He thought this would be more positive for white culture than having to face our history
The mayor of Bristol implied today that he was in favour of the removal of Coulson which, to me, seems like a dangerous endorsement of mob rule. If Bristol Council had responded to the vote some years ago by agreeing to retain it but placing a memorial to the slaves next to him it would have had a far greater educational impact while retaining history

Why would people be more upset about removing statues than the systemic inequalities across the UK?
Why would anyone want a statue of a Tory MP and slave trader responsible for the murder of thousands in our city centres?
I can’t see how anyone can be upset that it’s been removed.

@Amymone it also looks like the people on the internet who keep comparing it to Auschwitz are not the type of people you want to be associated with. I’ll just leave this here, as I feel it gets the point across better than I ever could.

A statue of Queen Victoria has been vandalised, (in Leeds? I think)

The vandals scrawled slave owner on it, which is bizarre because slavery in the BWI was abolished before she came to the throne. She was a teenager at abolition, if I've remember my dates correctly

@CherryPavlova

Because a lot of people are inherently racist, even if they don't mean to be.
Of course some people on MN are just blatantly racist and do not care because they have anonymity on their side.

@Flaxmeadow you are thinking of the idea that some Irish and Irish Americans think that Cromwell sent Irish people over as slaves. That is not true. They were indentured servants and labourers, which is a big difference. Most never saw their homeland again though, it’s still not great, is it?

*@Destroyedpeople

The city of London is pprobably the most corrupt place in the world by the by ..not some banana republic as we might have been led to think

Do you honestly believe that? What is your source? Have you ever set foot outside the UK? Have you ever lived and worked in a 2nd or 3rd world country, where elections are rigged, people disappear or conveniently ‘fall out of windows’ and corruption is endemic? Your utter ignorance is breathtaking.

Well you can choose to look at Jimmy saville and the slave trade in the same way if you want to, but that strikes me as perverse. The slave trade was an ongoing, systematised regime of abuse of an entire race of humans for profit, spanning hundreds of years. Jimmy Saville (arguably with a network of help from others in high places) was a sick individual who did terrible things to children. I don't see them as comparable and I’m not sure why you do.

I fear you are trotting out the Jimmy Saville line (as others have ad nauseum) to insinuate that I am some sort of apologist for slave traders, which would strike me as a wilful misunderstanding of what I’ve said about realising, examining and educating about our terrible shared history of slavery.

Because they are dead white men. Make some statues of women, children, ethnic minorities then that's true history.

Yes I have 'set foot outside the uk' more times than most. What on earth does that have to do with anything,? In fact what a strange biased question...
Yes the city of London is the most financially corrupt place in the world. I am talking about 'the square mile' obviously.

@Amymone I’m drawing a similarity between two very bad people who both used some of their money for “good”.

I fear that some people can’t see the link because 1 thing seemed quite close to home (Savile, who was on our TVs and had most of our society tricked for a long time) and another seems so long in the past it’s quite abstract (any of the slavers whose statues have come down in the last week.) For some people the slaver statues aren’t abstract and historical though. They are still living with the day to day ramifications those slavers had on their race, on their communities and how they are perceived by others even today. They feel the same feeling of disgust having to walk past that statue in a town centre as you would feel if you saw the Jimmy Savile statue on your way to buy your lunch. Surely you can understand that?
Being in a museum completely changes the context.

@Flaxmeadow you are thinking of the idea that some Irish and Irish Americans think that Cromwell sent Irish people over as slaves. That is not true. They were indentured servants and labourers, which is a big difference. Most never saw their homeland again though, it’s still not great, is it?

Most indentured servants, and convicts (who were in some respects chattel slaves) who went to the Amerrican colonies were English.

I know the Irish Slaves myth isn't true. It's vile that this fake history is believed by millions of Americans. Especially as it's a myth that was started by right wing Americans and then went viral. Cromwell is also used in this way.

The "Topple the Statues" website also uses the myths about Cromwell as their reason for pulling his statue down. It's in the info on there 60 stautes map.

There is just way too much of this type meme history doing the rounds. I can think of so many examples of it

"Churchill gassed Kurds" not true
"Irish were slaves" not true
"Cromwell genocide in ireland" not true
"Queen Victoria owned slaves" not true
All Britain's wealth was built on colonialism" not true (this was actually said by a so called "expert" today on Sky News

@Boredbumhead like the one if Pankhurst that someone scrawled 'white privilege' on? I couldn't give a shit about the statue in Bristol being pulled down but that pissed me right off

@Pangur2 the tweet you posted just seems to me a blind oversimplification by someone who doesn't want to engage with thought. It's aggressive and abusive. I'm unconvinced, sorry. As I haven't seen any other references to Auschwitz or their context i cannot comment on 'the company I [do not] keep'. Please try not to be goady. I am on nobody's 'side' and not interested in joining some sort of 'us v them' battle I'm afraid.

@Pangur2 RE your 'disgust' comment....I do believe we are actually saying similar things. If you look up thread I have explicitly said that my way of thinking would be to change the context of these statues so that the enormous damage done by individuals such as this is apparent...I DO NOT think that they should be venerated as part of some sort of myopic, glorified history. The best way to change the narrative of course is up for debate. Removing the statues entirely is one option, sure, but like the professor on TV said, may be short lived. Museums are another option. Keeping them on the streets but changing their context and meaning is another. Each have their merits I think. I'm not hardline campaigning to keep everything as it's always been as some sort of way of ignoring the problem.