Removing statues, changing road names and renaming buildings is not going to change the history but it will remove the ability for many to know that history and perhaps benefit from that in a positive way.
The BLM / snowflakes that protested at Oxford easily forget that without people like Rhodes, they would not be able to benefit from an amazing institution, funded by the Rhodes trust.
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I think we all know who the real ‘snowflakes’ are in this debate Peter - and it’s certainly not the brave men and women who protest, especially if they are black and therefore know they are much more likely to be picked on by the police and assorted bigoted thugs - nor those that have resisted the exploitation and injustice of slavery and colonialism throughout history, often at the cost of their own lives.
No - the real ‘snowflakes’ are precisely the bigots that lack the courage to confront the true history of slavery and colonialism, the truth about who is privileged, and who oppressed - lack the courage, indeed, to accept any intrusion of the truth into their deluded fantasy of their own greatness.
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Thanks Geof.
“The statues, including this one, were a propaganda effort pushing the false narrative that the Confederacy fought to preserve their “culture”. In reality, they fought to preserve slavery.”
That about sums it up, I think.
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Indeed - and not just slavers; statues of colonialists like Rhodes are also all about propagating a false history in which they, and Empire itself, are misrepresented as ‘great and good’ - whereas their true history is of racist and often bloody exploitation.
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One of the best pieces of journalism I’ve read for a long time - including a very original suggestion…
I miss Gary Younge’s regular Guardian column now he’s ‘retired’ into academia - still, we get the occasional treat like this.
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So it appears that the rule of law in the UK has finally fallen, replaced by the mob and minority opinion. No room for discussion or reflection, just vandalism and violence.
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And that’s just the government
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But at least they still have trial by jury… Oh, hang on…
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As long as they live in Bristol, the three men and a woman cleared this week of toppling the statue of Edward Colston may never have to buy their own drinks again.
The headline ‘Jurors see the bigger picture’ says it all, slippery slope?
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In what way Tim? Surely ‘seeing the bigger picture’ is always best?
As a point of principle do we want juries to base their verdicts on the ‘bigger picture’ or the evidence they’re presented with? I can only assume that there was sufficient evidence to warrant the jury’s decision that we’ve not been made aware of, perhaps the ‘expert witnesses’ the defence were allowed to present made the difference.
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ANARCHY RULES! Whoopie, I’m off to burn down the BBC because they sometimes say things that I don’t like.
Apparently it’s allowed now.
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In seeing the “Bigger picture” who decides where the cut off line is, probably 99% of people who passed the statue didn’t have any idea who it was or the history behind him.
So by all means petition and campaign to get the statue removed, but it was criminal damage pure and simple and should have been treated as such.
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But meanwhile, back in the real world, there’s no such things as ‘criminal damage pure and simple’. There is no law, nor can there ever be any law (except in a kafka-esque nightmare authoritarian state) that is entirely abstract, and operates regardless of real cicumstances.
The case in fact turned on the Criminal Damage Act’s exact wording of ‘lawful excuse’ - the circumstances that render lawful what in other circumstances could be regarded as ‘criminal damage’.
The prosecution (very foolishly) tried to argue that the circumstances didn’t matter - in effect that damage to property can never be justified - an untenable position (just think about it) that also flies in the face of the actual Act, and legal precedent, case law, etc, and the English common law. Not surprisingly, the jury decided, having actually heard all the evidence and legal argument, that in this case there was indeed a lawful excuse for the damage.
Do away with trial by jury, and the other basic principles of the rule of law that were involved in the decision, and what are you left with? - a kafka-esque nightmare authoritarian state.
I have to say, all the people I know who live in the area knew EXACTLY who it was and the history behind it, of all ages and political persuasions I should add. This sort of thing has been said before, possibly further up the thread, and I tried to point out then that this had been a 20+ year thing in Bristol. The massive redevelopment of broadmead into theCabot Circus shopping centre was originally going to be called… Merchant’s Quarter? something like that anyway, and there was a significant local grassroots campaign at the time, which the Bristol Post then got on board with, to change the name due to the merchant’s connection to slaves, which eventually only once amplified by the national press caused the company, Abrdn, Hammerson, one of those vast shopping centre owning companies, to change it. Bristol’s part in the slave trade has been a considerable issue locally as I say for a couple of decades at least, and while some may have not known who it was, i don’t think it’s the case at all that the statues, and the wider issue, is some minority thing that’s only known to a few lefties political students in the city, my experience has been that locals have been saying for YEARS that the issue needs to be looked at and discussed, even if ultimately people decide to do nothing, but that the one thing that needed to change was the ‘sweep it under the carpet and pretend it doesn’t exist’ that had been happening for decades beforehand.
I’m not from Bristol but my time there made me realise very quickly that it’s a very complex place. Nor is my comment a suggestion that what was done to the statue was necessarily correct, but rather just commentary that in fact this certainly wasn’t a few idiots doing something the entire city was against, but was far more complicated than that, and tbh I’m surprised it took as long as it did given as I say the council etc has very much taken a ‘look the other way’ attitude for centuries despite growing anger and frustrations from some, but of course not all, residents and other stakeholders locally.
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Geoff I do live in the real word daily, so please don’t be so patronising.
Anyway where do you stop, take all the statues down, hiding them all away and you are in a way sweeping everything under the carpet again
Put up large plaques telling people exactly who the person was, educate them on how they made their money in the slave trade, why it was so unacectable, tell the people the truth behind the person and don’t end up hiding it all away again , as you end up with everything being forgotten with no discussion about how terrible their actions were.
Out of sight and out of mind.
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My comment on ‘the real world’ was not about you Griffin - the point (which I thought I had made clearly) was that it’s not possible - or legal - to consider damage to property as a matter of abstract principle only, out of its real world context. Think about - oh, I don’t know - somebody breaking and entering because they are concerned about an elderly neighbour. In other circumstances, the same act would be criminal damage - it’s precisely the context, not the act itself, that is important - a judgement is involved, and that’s the jury’s job…
@kirsteastevenson - your view here of the importance of local context is very much in line with the ‘topplers’:
Obviously I don’t think that this verdict means we should start pulling down all the statues in the UK. Really, it’s not about statues at all: it’s about that statue, in this city, at this time. It really is a very particular backdrop, and the jury obviously came to an understanding of that nuance. The legacy of all the people who have protested against the statue and campaigned to end the “cult of Colston” in Bristol gave us legs to stand on – groups such as Countering Colston and Bristol Radical History Group. Without all those who have dug deep into history, we wouldn’t have stood a chance – our actions would have been seen as criminal damage by the jury.
She also points out that the statue’s ‘value has increased by up to 50-fold since we pulled it down. In that sense, how can it be said that we damaged anything?’ and that the 'statue is a far more useful tool for history and learning than it ever was before, which negates any of the arguments made about us “erasing history”.
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The ‘increase in value’ argument is interestingly of course also often applied to Banksy - another Bristolian that supported the ‘topplers’. Nobody regards his street art as graffiti, since he can turn an old shed wall into a million-pound work of art.