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?

No, we must move with the times but where does it end?
It ends with statues of people who are such great heroes that no one can dispute them. And we have plenty.
I think the bigger question here is what kind of a system makes us believe that this is the real history that we are erasing.

Even if we remove the aspect of how our (and I use collective loosely) collective wealth was built ..

Yes I understand why you say loosely because this is a point which also seems to have been lost. That the vast majority of British people owned nothing and gained nothing from colonialism

Today a well known Amercian said to a worldwide audience something like "and in England the white grt grt grandchildren of slave owners threw the statue of a slave owner in the river". I get that this is a statement about progression and get his general point but words and historical accuracy are important because it is unlikely that the white protesters were actual descendants of slave owners. It was almost as if he was saying "ALL white English people owned slaves" and everything that that might imply for the future
Yes point taken.. food for thought ... and very much take your earlier point about how much of the UK's was built on industrialisation our own resourcesand our own industrial labour... your are right it's not all or nothing and I veered into -one or the other -- territory...

should we be comfortable (ie complicit) in celebrating / honouring slave traders on pedestals in shared public spaces

No, we must move with the times but where does it end? Who decides what other statues are offensive. What if I find Ghandi offensive or mosques built by slaves offensive. Should I lead a mob and tear these things down? Because feelings? ....

No not just "because feelings" but let's not dismiss feelings ... it's not snowflake territory it's the difference between a statue to a slave trader in a London estate that is serving no collective purpose v a community building that might be sanctuary to a community members now - despite its unsavoury origins...??

We might desire that history and historical figures be perfect and politically correct but as someone touched on earlier in the thread, with history that's impossible ... agreed wholeheartedly ...

History is recorded in books. Statues commemorate and celebrate individuals. We should have a clear historic record of every notable individual's actions but that does not mean we should have a statue to them if there actions were, by modern ethical standards, reprehensible.

Well said.

Oh dear op your white fragility is showing

'Racial discrimination today had nothing to do with slavery '

Enough said

These people protesting are being set up to be the sacrificial lambs.

If you have a child involved you must act now as a parent.

They are in grave danger.

no not just because feelings but let's not dismiss feelings ... it's not snowflake territory

But with regards historiography I fear we already are in snowflake territory TBH.

History is not there to feed our feelings and stir emotions. That's not the point of studying it. We should always try to read it and understand it without feelings because if we don't, if we become emotionally involved, then we have bias. We feel hate or feel pride. This obviously gets in the way of understanding what happened within the context of the times

Is some of it upsetting? Yes of course it is. But we MUST put this aside or at least try.

it's the difference between a statue to a slave trader in a London estate that is serving no collective purpose v a community building that might be santuary to a community members now - despite its unsavour origins...??

I agree but this is not history. This is community progression and politics. The removal of statues is political, it's not about history.

But who decides which historical figure is worthy or unworthy? An historian or a politician? Or a crowd of a few hundred people. Or should it be the people who have to live with the statues in their town or city. Should there be a local vote on these things?

I agree Colston, and maybe Rhodes, should be in a museum but this smashing things up is escalating, not because of history but because of current politics, and sorry yes "snowflake" feelings. There's just too much emotion and hand wringing about the past. What's the point of it? Its wasted energy .

It's gone and they all died a long time ago, the slave owner Colston and his slaves. If we want to create something positive from what we've learnt from the past, how about we campaign to stop the slavery still happening in the world now. Which to me is much more offensive than some lump of metal in a park

I saw some demonstrations on TV and saw many protesters wearing cheap sportswear made in countries were children are working very long hours for a pittance.to produce these garments. Hypocrites, if they cared about slavery they would stop buying them and celebrating them by wearing them in public. Wearing these items condones slavery taking place now.

If they wanted to stop modern day slavery they would sign up and pay monthly donation to anti slavery organisation like I do. They send you magazine to educate.

Rampaging and smashing statues isn"t improving anyone's life. Donating to anti slavery organisation is.

It's gone and they all died a long time ago, the slave owner Colston and his slaves. If we want to create something positive from what we've learnt from the past, how about we campaign to stop the slavery still happening in the world now. Which to me is much more offensive than some lump of metal in a park
The point is if you remove this lump from that park and place a real life, present day hero, you will begin to see a much faster and better change.
One of those statues will definitely be of someone who is fighting present day slavery.

Oh I understand the arguments that racism is linked to slavery, but I don't agree

Well some people don’t agree the earth is round but hey ho

I have to confess I do find it problematic that on one hand we want to tear down statues but modern day consumption which often exploits the labour of others is fine.

That the vast majority of British people owned nothing and gained nothing from colonialism

I rather think it could be argued that nobody benefitted from slavery. Certainly the people captured into slavery didn’t benefit.
There is a valid argument that the slave owners profited financially to a huge amount but that by reducing human life to chattels and through living cruel lives, they lost far more important things.

Clearly the global community didn’t win much. The heritage of power abuse impacts still. I think I’d take issue with the idea that racism today has nothing to do with slavery. It has almost everything to do with one group believing they have greater freedoms and rights than another group. One group dismissing the lives of others as less valuable. Would we allow white children to die in famine? Would we allow pharmaceutical companies to make simple drugs too expensive to allow them to treat those dying from generally treatable or preventable diseases such as malaria and AIDS? Tragically black lives do matter less than white comfort and wealth.

I am happy they are being removed.

The statue of Cecil Rhodes might offend some, but I notice none of the Rhodes scholars are offended enough to return the grant.

The terrible racist who specified in his will that he was providing the scholarships specifically for foreign students.

I absolutely agree with PP, if the statue is old and you need a name plaque to recognise the individual, take the plaque down and commemorate the artist.

In terms of the Saville statue question, surely it’s more that he is a modern or current figure and we are judging him in current times, rather than a historical figure judged on modern values (not terribly eloquently put - and I hope my meaning comes across).
I’m also a fan of the Banksy idea.

Certainly the people captured into slavery didn’t benefit.

The alternative was to die at the hands of the African or Arab slave takers.

cdtaylornats You are either I’ll informed or being deliberately disingenuous if you believe Rhodes Scholarships are about helping poor Black peoples. In the USA on 9% of recipients are black. It’s a postgraduate programme, so people already need to have been supported to get a first degree - this disadvantaging Black people.

Bill Clinton was a Rhodes Scholar. Not exactly representative of the Black community. The scholarship wasn’t to support black persons. It was founded to promote unity within the British empire, and to strengthen diplomatic ties between Britain and the United States of America.

@GrumpyHoonMain

Whit society wouldn’t be disputing or debating the removal of Nazi statues - so why is it disputing the removal of slavery statues? Both black slavery and Nazism are events in living memory. Are black lives worth less to white society?

Slavery was prohibited in Britain in about 1832, and in the US in the 1860s...

You know some very old people if they have black slavery in their memory, unless they came from Chad in Africa which was the last country in the world to ban slavery.

I do think that changing the plaques on these statues to say exactly what they did would be a better history lesson than tearing them down.

That's not very long ago is it? At least 2 of my grandparents were born in the 1880s and I am not that old. So recent enough to be in family spoken history.

...and certainly recent enough to still be having an effect as we see in 'the states'. When slavery was abolished there it's not like suddenly black people had homes and jobs and normal lives is it? Slavery continued under different guises like 'sharecropping' and black people were segregated to the ends of towns...places where you couldn't even get post...(as an example). Black people were still murdered hounded and lynched.

Let’s hope that this will lead to statues of known anti Semites also being pulled down. For example Keir Hardie who ‘proclaimed that imperialist wars were being planned to suit the interests of "hook-nosed Rothschilds."’
And Karl Marx who said some despicable things in his essay "Zur Judenfrage’

We as tax payers were still paying off the UKs debt to slavers in 2015, we also have to remember for six years after slavery was ‘abolished’ in the UK slavers could ‘employ’ ex slaves on apprenticeship schemes where they worked for 45 hours a week for zero pay. The apprenticeships were not optional, so for a further six years slave owners received huge amounts of money from the government and kept their slaves.

Slavery was prohibited in Britain in about 1832

we also have to remember for six years after slavery was ‘abolished’ in the UK slavers could...

It wasn't abolished in Britain/UK because it didnt need to be. There was no slavery here. Not of the kind being referred to

It was abolished by Britian in the British West Indies