It is part of my job to study political history. Here is my attempt at injecting some perspective into recent events, a mixture of my own views and analysis done by people that know more than me. If you can’t handle nuance then look away:
1) Statues are not history. History can be found in museums, books and history departments. Statues are an attempt to celebrate someone. We do not learn history from statues and we do not forget history when there isn’t a statue. We have not forgotten Hitler because statues commemorating him as a great leader have been ripped down and similarly we have not forgotten Jimmy Savile because statues celebrating him as a philanthropist no longer exist.
2) The UK should not have statues of slave traders to celebrate their philanthropy. Regarding Edward Colston, the council should have removed that statue long ago, several petitions on this were made. The act of ripping it down is as much an act of history as the act of putting it up.
3) Removing these statues is not rewriting history, putting the statues up was an attempt to rewite history, it was part of Britain’s attempt to gloss over its barbaric past with fake conceptions of civility and charity. Judging by people’s lack of knowledge of empire, it worked. Moving such statues into museums with notes explaining their awful deeds would be remembering history – both the act as it happened and the Victorian attempt to rewrite it.
4) That said, slave traders are an easy target. Most of us can agree slave traders shouldn’t have statues celebrating their philanthropy. When others like Peel and Gladstone come into view problems emerge. These people were problematic, they did have some abhorrent views, but they also did some good. The good they did needs to be balanced up with the bad and an adult conversation should be held between councils, citizens and interest groups on these more complex cases. Most historical characters will have been racist or homophobic to some degree, there is a difference between this and making personal wealth from enslaving people. Some of these more complex cases will need to come down and some won’t, however, if activists push too hard on statues like Gladstone, support for any kind of movement to better remember history as it was by removing statues of abhorrent people will disappear.
5) The Churchill statue isn’t going anywhere and no one seriously thinks it is, stop with the fake outrage. On balance, I think he deserves a statue. That said, all historians worth their salt would agree there is a dire need for the UK to understand Churchill as he was rather than the caricature we have constructed. He was a flawed man that made bad decisions, had bad views by today’s standards and helped contribute to a number of atrocities, the Bengal famine being one. At the same time he also made some good decisions and was instrumental in the fight against the Nazis. Both of these statements are correct. If you disagree, you don’t know Churchill.
6) The Churchill statue has been vandalised many a time, let’s stop pretending this was the first or even the worst.
7) The Churchill statue has been covered up for its own protection many a time. Stop acting like this was the first time. The 2001 May Day protests were one such time, the 2017 Million Mask March was another. It is a shame this needs to happen but it does, it really isn’t a big deal.
If seeing a statue of Churchill being covered up for its own protection makes you ‘ashamed to be British’ wait until you hear about the fact the government’s former scientific advisor has admitted that the government’s decision to lockdown late (despite warnings from around the world) has contributed to at least 20,000 unnecessary deaths; that scientists (including government advisors) are growing in confidence that a second wave will hit because of the government’s poor communication strategy and decisions; that we have the third highest death toll from COVID-19 in the world; that we are about to see mass job losses in one of the biggest recessions of our time; that a no deal Brexit is very much approaching despite that ‘oven ready deal’ the PM boasted about during the election; and that if it happens this no deal Brexit will make the UK’s experience of that recession a whole lot worse.
People are dead because of decisions by this government. People are about to die because of decisions by this government. There are bigger things to get angry about than a statue of a slaver going for a swim or a statue of Churchill being defaced. If you disagree, your priorities are wrong. Paint can be cleaned off, dead people cannot be brought back to life.
Thomas Eason
