Chris

Indeed.

Also worth pointing out that this nation, having built so much on the profits of slavery, came to its collective senses, as a result of campaigning by its own people, and not only outlawed the practice but then actively sought its interdiction on the high seas via the Royal Navy.

I’m aware of contemporary complaints that the British government put a stop to it by paying off the slavers, and of the argument that it was somehow therefore just another example of rich men feeding money to other rich men, but this is exactly the sort of argument you get from people who don’t understand how to read history. Within the strictures of the time, it was a pragmatic solution and once done, it allowed this country to lead the world in efforts towards abolition.

Churchill, too, was a man of his time. So was Cecil Rhodes, whose statue at Oxford has been subject to ongoing demands for its removal. So, too, was Edward Colston, and for that matter Andrew Buchanan of Glasgow, who made a fortune from tobacco plantations in Virginia (and therefore, out of slave labour), and whose street in the city centre is now subject to demands it be re-named. Decrying any of these men merely as “racist” is ahistorical. Erasing any of them from memory or from history ensures future generations will be ignorant of history and ill-prepared for their own present. What is required is a proper understanding of context, not self-righteous iconoclasm.