Statues

 Here's a Facebook post that popped up. It was posted by a Facebook friend who has a habit of getting me annoyed and who I have pulled up previously for propagating patently fake news, eg about the Treaty of Lisbon. (She didn't even take it down.)  

On the face of it there's nothing to disagree about here. But I think the sub-context is that this friend is objecting to the removal of statues following the Black Lives Matter demonstrations of last year.

Unlike the "Restore Trust" group, who apparently want the National Trust to suppress any history linking certain of its properties to slave money, I do not believe that anyone who truly believes that black lives matter as much as white lives wants to suppress anything but prejudice. What we/they are challenging is the respect afforded to historic wealthy people who under current law would be judged to be racist criminals. The savagery that Britain perpetrated on African and Caribbean people has been brushed under the carpet for nearly 200 years and needs to be brought into the open and faced.

Leaders and institutions install memorials, e.g. statues, to commemorate people and organisations which they respect and feel are important. (Unless the people being commemorated are still alive, in which case they are a symbol of current power.) They reflect attitudes and beliefs that are current at the time. And attitudes move on, and hopefully become more progressive, enlightened, and compassionate. As they do the people we choose to commemorate will change.

So those who benefited from slavery were philanthropists on the side? - so what? What they did was legal then? - so what? (No way was it moral, or even Christian!) From the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries a vast industry based on slave labour brought wealth to many British families and entrepreneurs. The compensation paid to slave owners for the loss of their 'property' after the Abolition Act in 1833 amounted to 40% of government expenditure. We are living with the results of that money.

I don't know if pulling down Colston's statue was a legal act; the court must decide. But I do understand why - when requests have been repeatedly made by those affronted by this statue and nothing was done - that direct action became the only way forward. It often is. Rant over.