Damien

The Guardian is perceived as a pretty left-wing and liberal paper for doing so (amongst other things) but good for them I guess. However, it's certainly not an example of us destroying our history to discuss it more.

As people have pointed out the toppling of the statue of Colston adds to our history now, people are talking of him as being a slave trader as opposed to just a philanthropist. I am guessing actually that a lot more people know who he is and what he did now than they did a week ago. The statue itself will likely end up a museum to further educate people into his and our history.

The people who removed him don't want his name gone from the history books, they want people to know precisely who he was.


My view on statues is that it depends on why they're there in the first place. Almost everyone in history will have had racist views or otherwise 'problematic' views but if they're being commemorated for something else then that achievement still stands. As I said earlier Churchill's racist comments are insignificant compared to what he did so vandalise his statue was both stupid and morally wrong. Nelson is there for different reasons as well. Most of the founding fathers of America had slaves but given they founded America then their moments remain whilst those who led the confederacy are taken down.

To be honest I am rather unbothered if these statues remain or not. My own view is that our history is what it is, we can't go back and fix it all, but we should discuss the parts that are bad more than we do. If it takes the statue coming down then fine but I would also be fine with the statue being recontextualised to highlight the link to slavery for example and if it is taken down I would rather it not be done by a crowd of people like this.