The democratic processes of which you speak have failed to bring about change quickly enough. Do you think the anger at these monuments is unjustified? Is it too much of an affront to see a metal statue tipped into a dock in response to a man’s neck being knelt on until he died?
Even the policeman in charge of keeping the peace sympathised with the actions of those activists.
The reality of racism operates in many ways, particularly through the lack of education and understanding of Black British history. The Macpherson Report produced 20 years ago, showed that cultural diversity within the curriculum is one of the ways to prevent racism. Similarly, The Windrush Review recommended that colonial and migration history should be taught. So why are we still here today?
If there are problems in the process, let’s address those problems, as opposed to abandoning democracy and going out in the street and smashing things up, based on the untested assumption that we represent a majority.
Bear in mind that the anti-democratic precedent you set here may be used to justify hostile action by those who have completely different worldviews to yours
A commission selected by Sadiq Khan, who has already taken a personal stance on the matter? Some of Khan’s personally-led bans/awards have brought his objectivity into doubt, IMO, but that’s a debate for another topic.
Would you accept a similar commission if it were run by Boris Johnson, say?
I’d rather the treatment of individual landmarks, museums and monuments was put to a fair and representative public vote.
I would vote for the Horniman Museum to remain exactly as it is - reflective, honest and brilliantly community-focussed.
Sometimes protest is needed to address those problems. If you have never been part of a group that has had to resort to protest to make their voices heard, then you can count yourself lucky.
I don’t think any resident of Forest Hill would disagree with you that it should remain “reflective, honest and brilliantly community-focussed”. But if more attention were drawn to the uncomfortable truths of its origins then that’s no bad thing, or do you disagree? In which case it would no longer be “exactly as it is”…
Please see the insightful posts in this topic which demonstrate @HornimanMuseum is already self-aware, and has publicly acknowledged this.
I suspect there are some people who would want these acknowledgements to take centre stage at the Horniman, but I don’t.
The Horniman is so much more than just a monument to slavery, and it certainly doesn’t attempt to promote or justify it. Here in the 21st century, we don’t need to live in constant guilt of our past, any more than people of other empires (who have also engaged in slavery, plunder and worse)
Actually not entirely. I have no issue with Colston’s statue ending up in the drink. And neither did his only descendant (recently hounded off Twitter).
I find one of the weird things that if Robert Milligan hadn’t founded the West India Docks (and arguably turned around the hitherto struggling London docklands) and if John Colston hadn’t given so much money to Bristol to fund almshouses, schools, hospitals and the university - as well as bailing out the Council - we’d not have the statues and comparatively few would have heard of them and would have been unaware that much of their cities’ infrastructure was built on profits from slavery.
But what about all those who don’t have statues to remind us? What of the Portuguese and the Dutch and the Belgian slave traders? And if course the many whose pension funds continue to invest in companies that profit from forced labour - in much the same way Thomas Guy (whose statue is also on the hit list) used profits from his investments in the South Sea Company to fund the hospitals we rely on today.
Please don’t misunderstand me. I was a member of the Anti Slavery Society for many years. Slavery is the most abhorrent and evil thing in the world today. But remember Britain led the world in abolishing the slave trade. I mean abolishing the form of the slave trade that everyone’s been talking about - not the slave trade that still exists and that we should be doing something about: the debt bondage, the forced labour, the human trafficking, the descent-based slavery still endemic in parts of Africa today. Imagine that. In 2020. Being born into slavery, because your mother was, and her mother was And unless something changes, your daughter will be.
Yes, I’m one of them. I’ve been visiting the Horniman since I was a kid (I’m now 45) and I wasn’t aware of his connections to the slave trade. I guess that makes me naive as practically all of the wealth amassed during the 19th century came via the slave trade and the British colonial project.
I don’t feel guilty. Would it be too much for you then?
The problem with the “democratic process” argument is that somewhere down the line, something hasn’t worked.
It’s the same democratic process that waves through unjust decisions through western courts, disproportionately targeting non-white people.
As a country we’re only as good as our last action. We are still riding the waves of imperialism, and it’s right to acknowledge that and try and appreciate that perhaps statues of great people who were also slavers might be construed differently by communities other than our own.
Can we not be proud to lead the world in acknowledging and removing the relics that insult the descendants of people who were treated so poorly, and continue to serve as a relic and a reminder of white supremacy to their descendants?
Thomas Guy, founder of Guys Hospital, was also involved in the slave trade.
Should we topple him too? Maybe, maybe not – that’s the point of the review, surely?
The world we live in today is very different; despite modern complaints it’s better than it ever has been for many.
I find it funny that people are arguing about the importance of statues of figures that are frankly not that relevant in modern life. Some people did great things, a statue is a token gesture and a physical thing that one day, one way or another, is going to disappear. Forcefully removing it now does not undo the person’s acts, good or bad. This lockdown has allowed me and my partner to discover the beautiful local cemeteries. Walking through there, you’ll notice that even the fanciest gravestone will fall victim to entropy eventually.
If we’re expending so much energy about statues, it’ll be good fun when it comes to discussing amendments to the education curriculum…
I think as a white guy who’s never experienced this sort of subtle insult while walking around a city, it’s probably more important to try and listen more than pick an obscure hill to die on. It’s strange the funders of universities etc, who are overwhelmingly of the same demographic, don’t even entertain the idea that maybe the values the statues implicitly convey could be insulting.
As people are fond of doing right now, I’m going to employ the “Jimmy Saville argument”. All of his charitable good works and deeds do not erase his crimes. And neither should they in the case of slavers…
The truth of the colonial past needs to shift from being represented by monuments that glorify it to critical understanding through education at a root and branch level… It needs to be in the history books and curriculum. It’s really not that complicated.
The statues can be moved to museums as relics of the past. Milligan and Colston can be discussed in the text books with their philanthropy represented alongside their profiteering from human misery.
Nope, that’s not what we’re arguing about. We’re arguing about the notion that people in the street can arbitrarily destroy public monuments and buildings that don’t fit their present day moral framework.
The question is a much bigger one than any individual statue.
For the record I couldn’t care less about the Colston statue. But I do care about Horniman.
There is a monument to Karl Marx in London which I find offensive (as his ideology led to the deaths of over 100M people). Does my offence give me the right to destroy the monument?
