Edward Colston statue pulled down

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Re: Edward Colston statue pulled down

Post by Gfamily » Mon Jun 08, 2020 5:19 pm

My avatar was a scientific result that was later found to be 'mistaken' - I rarely claim to be 100% correct
ETA 5/8/20: I've been advised that the result was correct, it was the initial interpretation that needed to be withdrawn
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Re: Edward Colston statue pulled down

Post by JQH » Mon Jun 08, 2020 5:21 pm

Bird on a Fire wrote:
Mon Jun 08, 2020 5:14 pm
The "erasing history" argument is particularly misguided. We remember history through books, not statues. It's not like Germany should be forced to erect statues of prominent Nazis to help remember that chapter of history.
Or the citizens of Eastern Europe be forced to re-erect the statues of Stalin and other communist leaders they pulled down in 1989. Unfortunately I missed the Daily Mail's outrage at those particular acts of vandalism.
He should be replaced with a slavery memorial IMHO.
Definitly. Preferably designed and constructed by Afro-Carribean artists.
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Re: Edward Colston statue pulled down

Post by dyqik » Mon Jun 08, 2020 5:32 pm

JQH wrote:
Mon Jun 08, 2020 5:21 pm
Bird on a Fire wrote:
Mon Jun 08, 2020 5:14 pm
The "erasing history" argument is particularly misguided. We remember history through books, not statues. It's not like Germany should be forced to erect statues of prominent Nazis to help remember that chapter of history.
Or the citizens of Eastern Europe be forced to re-erect the statues of Stalin and other communist leaders they pulled down in 1989. Unfortunately I missed the Daily Mail's outrage at those particular acts of vandalism.
Perhaps the US/Iraqi government should be required to put back that statue of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad as well.

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Re: Edward Colston statue pulled down

Post by Tessa K » Tue Jun 09, 2020 11:58 am

Bird on a Fire wrote:
Mon Jun 08, 2020 5:14 pm
The "erasing history" argument is particularly misguided. We remember history through books, not statues. It's not like Germany should be forced to erect statues of prominent Nazis to help remember that chapter of history.

He should be replaced with a slavery memorial IMHO.
I wonder how many of the people who say it's erasing history could actually have named who the statue was of if shown it?

Now the statue of Churchill in Parliament Square has been sprayed with 'was a racist' - which he certainly was.
He had a hierarchical perspective of race, believing white people were most superior and black people the least. He was an adherent to the view that British domination was a result of social Darwinism... Churchill advocated against black or indigenous self-rule in Africa, Australia, the Americas and the Caribbean. During World War II he prioritised stockpiling of food for Europeans over feeding Indian subjects suffering during the Bengal famine of 1943. ... At one point he explicitly told his Secretary of State for India, Leo Amery that he "hated Indians" and considered them "a beastly people with a beastly religion" ... He also described the Arabs as a "lower manifestation of humanity" than the Jews who he treated a "higher grade race"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_vi ... _Churchill

I suspect this will be a more complex and heated discussion than the one about Colston as many people still alive remember the war and Churchill's role in the victory so they're more emotionally invested in him as part of their own past, which makes it harder to evaluate him objectively.

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Re: Edward Colston statue pulled down

Post by Bird on a Fire » Tue Jun 09, 2020 12:10 pm

Tessa K wrote:
Tue Jun 09, 2020 11:58 am
Bird on a Fire wrote:
Mon Jun 08, 2020 5:14 pm
The "erasing history" argument is particularly misguided. We remember history through books, not statues. It's not like Germany should be forced to erect statues of prominent Nazis to help remember that chapter of history.

He should be replaced with a slavery memorial IMHO.
I wonder how many of the people who say it's erasing history could actually have named who the statue was of if shown it?

Now the statue of Churchill in Parliament Square has been sprayed with 'was a racist' - which he certainly was.
He had a hierarchical perspective of race, believing white people were most superior and black people the least. He was an adherent to the view that British domination was a result of social Darwinism... Churchill advocated against black or indigenous self-rule in Africa, Australia, the Americas and the Caribbean. During World War II he prioritised stockpiling of food for Europeans over feeding Indian subjects suffering during the Bengal famine of 1943. ... At one point he explicitly told his Secretary of State for India, Leo Amery that he "hated Indians" and considered them "a beastly people with a beastly religion" ... He also described the Arabs as a "lower manifestation of humanity" than the Jews who he treated a "higher grade race"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_vi ... _Churchill

I suspect this will be a more complex and heated discussion than the one about Colston as many people still alive remember the war and Churchill's role in the victory so they're more emotionally invested in him as part of their own past, which makes it harder to evaluate him objectively.
Yes, going after Churchill is going to upset a lot of people.

I think pointing out that Churchill was a racist is insufficient. Pretty much everybody born a century ago will have held views that are totally unacceptably racist by today's standards - even many abolitionists wrote patronising things about black people. And I dare say that many views and attitudes that are normal today will be considered racist 100 years from now.

The larger issue with Churchill is the disparity between his actions as a leader of Britain and an overseer of the empire, especially his material contributions to millions of deaths in India at the same time as fighting fascism in Europe. This disparity makes his racism plain (and AIUI he was considered unusually racist even by other British imperialists at the time).
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Re: Edward Colston statue pulled down

Post by Fishnut » Tue Jun 09, 2020 12:23 pm

One of the statues to King Leopold has been pulled down in Belgium.

Google translate gives the English (with a few grammatical edits from me) as,
The statue of Leopold II in front of the church of Ekeren has just been removed.

The statue has been targeted several times by vandals in recent weeks. For example, it was smeared with red paint and also set on fire. The damage was virtually irreparable. The image of Leopold II is very controversial because of the horrific things that happened in Congo under his rule. A sign had already been placed near the statue, explaining the history. In 2023, when the church environment in Ekeren is scheduled to be redesigned, the statue would have been removed anyway.
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Re: Edward Colston statue pulled down

Post by Tessa K » Tue Jun 09, 2020 12:52 pm

Bird on a Fire wrote:
Tue Jun 09, 2020 12:10 pm
Tessa K wrote:
Tue Jun 09, 2020 11:58 am
Bird on a Fire wrote:
Mon Jun 08, 2020 5:14 pm
The "erasing history" argument is particularly misguided. We remember history through books, not statues. It's not like Germany should be forced to erect statues of prominent Nazis to help remember that chapter of history.

He should be replaced with a slavery memorial IMHO.
I wonder how many of the people who say it's erasing history could actually have named who the statue was of if shown it?

Now the statue of Churchill in Parliament Square has been sprayed with 'was a racist' - which he certainly was.
He had a hierarchical perspective of race, believing white people were most superior and black people the least. He was an adherent to the view that British domination was a result of social Darwinism... Churchill advocated against black or indigenous self-rule in Africa, Australia, the Americas and the Caribbean. During World War II he prioritised stockpiling of food for Europeans over feeding Indian subjects suffering during the Bengal famine of 1943. ... At one point he explicitly told his Secretary of State for India, Leo Amery that he "hated Indians" and considered them "a beastly people with a beastly religion" ... He also described the Arabs as a "lower manifestation of humanity" than the Jews who he treated a "higher grade race"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_vi ... _Churchill

I suspect this will be a more complex and heated discussion than the one about Colston as many people still alive remember the war and Churchill's role in the victory so they're more emotionally invested in him as part of their own past, which makes it harder to evaluate him objectively.
Yes, going after Churchill is going to upset a lot of people.

I think pointing out that Churchill was a racist is insufficient. Pretty much everybody born a century ago will have held views that are totally unacceptably racist by today's standards - even many abolitionists wrote patronising things about black people. And I dare say that many views and attitudes that are normal today will be considered racist 100 years from now.

The larger issue with Churchill is the disparity between his actions as a leader of Britain and an overseer of the empire, especially his material contributions to millions of deaths in India at the same time as fighting fascism in Europe. This disparity makes his racism plain (and AIUI he was considered unusually racist even by other British imperialists at the time).
Yes, he was a racist among racists but as you say, his views were considered extreme even by his peers. But when someone is in a position of power then their actions should all be weighed, not just the heroic ones. Its the 'warts and all' approach. Too many people want everything in black and white, someone is either a hero or a villain. Complex opinions or actions cause too much cognitive dissonance. What makes a good wartime leader doesn't necessarily make a good leader of empire or even a decent human being. And of course Churchill was hardly standing alone against Germany, he had a whole Parliament and Civil Service working with/for him. (And of course we didn't win the war, without Russia and the US we'd have been buggered)

This is interesting: some of his most famous radio speeches were voiced by an actor, not Churchill himself.

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2000/ ... heobserver
Last edited by El Pollo Diablo on Tue Jun 09, 2020 3:23 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: V. important typo correction (mong -> among)

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Re: Edward Colston statue pulled down

Post by lpm » Tue Jun 09, 2020 1:13 pm

racistDonaldTrump wrote:The statue fell harder than was pushed. Could be a set up?
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Re: Edward Colston statue pulled down

Post by Fishnut » Tue Jun 09, 2020 1:24 pm

I can't stop listening to this short poem by Vanessa Kisuule about the statue. It's beautiful and perfect.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3DKfaK ... e=emb_logo
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Re: Edward Colston statue pulled down

Post by MonkeyWrench » Tue Jun 09, 2020 2:18 pm

Get rid of all statues. They're rubbish and rarely look like the person they're meant to depict.

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Re: Edward Colston statue pulled down

Post by Bird on a Fire » Tue Jun 09, 2020 2:24 pm

MonkeyWrench wrote:
Tue Jun 09, 2020 2:18 pm
Get rid of all statues. They're rubbish and rarely look like the person they're meant to depict.
Perhaps there's some value in leaving up incredibly ugly statues of people who were c.nts.

For example, the USA obviously needs to get rid of all its Confederate statues - but perhaps they should leave up this one of Nathan Bedford Forrest in Nashville, Tennessee:

Image
from https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/ugl ... est-statue
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Re: Edward Colston statue pulled down

Post by tom p » Tue Jun 09, 2020 2:32 pm

Bird on a Fire wrote:
Tue Jun 09, 2020 2:24 pm
MonkeyWrench wrote:
Tue Jun 09, 2020 2:18 pm
Get rid of all statues. They're rubbish and rarely look like the person they're meant to depict.
Perhaps there's some value in leaving up incredibly ugly statues of people who were c.nts.

For example, the USA obviously needs to get rid of all its Confederate statues - but perhaps they should leave up this one of Nathan Bedford Forrest in Nashville, Tennessee:

Image
from https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/ugl ... est-statue
Was that made by the same guy who did the Cristiano Ronaldo one?

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Re: Edward Colston statue pulled down

Post by El Pollo Diablo » Tue Jun 09, 2020 3:28 pm

Tessa K wrote:
Tue Jun 09, 2020 12:52 pm
This is interesting: some of his most famous radio speeches were voiced by an actor, not Churchill himself.

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2000/ ... heobserver
According to David Irving, the noted holocaust denier. It's a bit hard to tell.
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Re: Edward Colston statue pulled down

Post by Martin Y » Tue Jun 09, 2020 3:39 pm

El Pollo Diablo wrote:
Tue Jun 09, 2020 3:28 pm
Tessa K wrote:
Tue Jun 09, 2020 12:52 pm
This is interesting: some of his most famous radio speeches were voiced by an actor, not Churchill himself.

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2000/ ... heobserver
According to David Irving, the noted holocaust denier. It's a bit hard to tell.
My mum has an album* of Churchill's famous speeches. I wonder if they're the 1949 EMI re-recordings that link mentions or earlier, and if earlier I wonder which might be Shelley revoicing Churchill.

*From when an "album" had not yet become just one LP record, it's literally an album: in a book format, with a 10" 78rpm disc sleeved in each page.

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Re: Edward Colston statue pulled down

Post by individualmember » Tue Jun 09, 2020 4:51 pm

Fishnut wrote:
Tue Jun 09, 2020 1:24 pm
I can't stop listening to this short poem by Vanessa Kisuule about the statue. It's beautiful and perfect.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3DKfaK ... e=emb_logo
That really is beautiful

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Re: Edward Colston statue pulled down

Post by individualmember » Tue Jun 09, 2020 5:05 pm

Martin Y wrote:
Tue Jun 09, 2020 3:39 pm
El Pollo Diablo wrote:
Tue Jun 09, 2020 3:28 pm
Tessa K wrote:
Tue Jun 09, 2020 12:52 pm
This is interesting: some of his most famous radio speeches were voiced by an actor, not Churchill himself.

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2000/ ... heobserver
According to David Irving, the noted holocaust denier. It's a bit hard to tell.
My mum has an album* of Churchill's famous speeches. I wonder if they're the 1949 EMI re-recordings that link mentions or earlier, and if earlier I wonder which might be Shelley revoicing Churchill.

*From when an "album" had not yet become just one LP record, it's literally an album: in a book format, with a 10" 78rpm disc sleeved in each page.
As I remember (please correct me if I’m wrong) the Germans had magnetic tape recording as we understand it now some time in the late 1930s but in the UK the only sound recording technology during WW2 was direct to wax disc*, and possibly optical sound on film. We didn’t get actual magnetic tape recording until the end of WW2. So anything recorded during WW2 here is necessarily very noisy and limited in frequency range, so it would be very hard to discern between Churchill’s actual voice and a half reasonable impression anyway.

ETA *probably shellac rather than wax discs (there are some in the British Library from the period IIRC)

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Re: Edward Colston statue pulled down

Post by basementer » Tue Jun 09, 2020 5:44 pm

individualmember wrote:
Tue Jun 09, 2020 5:05 pm
Martin Y wrote:
Tue Jun 09, 2020 3:39 pm
El Pollo Diablo wrote:
Tue Jun 09, 2020 3:28 pm


According to David Irving, the noted holocaust denier. It's a bit hard to tell.
My mum has an album* of Churchill's famous speeches. I wonder if they're the 1949 EMI re-recordings that link mentions or earlier, and if earlier I wonder which might be Shelley revoicing Churchill.

*From when an "album" had not yet become just one LP record, it's literally an album: in a book format, with a 10" 78rpm disc sleeved in each page.
As I remember (please correct me if I’m wrong) the Germans had magnetic tape recording as we understand it now some time in the late 1930s but in the UK the only sound recording technology during WW2 was direct to wax disc*, and possibly optical sound on film. We didn’t get actual magnetic tape recording until the end of WW2. So anything recorded during WW2 here is necessarily very noisy and limited in frequency range, so it would be very hard to discern between Churchill’s actual voice and a half reasonable impression anyway.

ETA *probably shellac rather than wax discs (there are some in the British Library from the period IIRC)
I think we had steel tape recording from the 1930s.
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Re: Edward Colston statue pulled down

Post by Bird on a Fire » Tue Jun 09, 2020 5:50 pm

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Re: Edward Colston statue pulled down

Post by individualmember » Tue Jun 09, 2020 6:19 pm

basementer wrote:
Tue Jun 09, 2020 5:44 pm
individualmember wrote:
Tue Jun 09, 2020 5:05 pm
Martin Y wrote:
Tue Jun 09, 2020 3:39 pm

My mum has an album* of Churchill's famous speeches. I wonder if they're the 1949 EMI re-recordings that link mentions or earlier, and if earlier I wonder which might be Shelley revoicing Churchill.

*From when an "album" had not yet become just one LP record, it's literally an album: in a book format, with a 10" 78rpm disc sleeved in each page.
As I remember (please correct me if I’m wrong) the Germans had magnetic tape recording as we understand it now some time in the late 1930s but in the UK the only sound recording technology during WW2 was direct to wax disc*, and possibly optical sound on film. We didn’t get actual magnetic tape recording until the end of WW2. So anything recorded during WW2 here is necessarily very noisy and limited in frequency range, so it would be very hard to discern between Churchill’s actual voice and a half reasonable impression anyway.

ETA *probably shellac rather than wax discs (there are some in the British Library from the period IIRC)
I think we had steel tape recording from the 1930s.
Ah yes, I’d forgotten about the steel tape. Still poor quality though by post war standards, plus not at all portable, I believe that anyone wanting to use it would have had to go to either Broadcasting House or Maida Vale Studio, where they were.

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Re: Edward Colston statue pulled down

Post by Tessa K » Tue Jun 09, 2020 6:29 pm

Who owns the statue and also the one of Churchill? I've been trying to find out about the Churchill one but can't see anything. I don't even know what area of law would cover this. Sadiq Khan (Mayor of London) says it's not his responsibility.

I think the government owns the land it's on as they allowed it to be put up https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hans ... ill-statue

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Re: Edward Colston statue pulled down

Post by AMS » Tue Jun 09, 2020 6:45 pm

Tessa K wrote:
Tue Jun 09, 2020 6:29 pm
Who owns the statue and also the one of Churchill? I've been trying to find out about the Churchill one but can't see anything. I don't even know what area of law would cover this. Sadiq Khan (Mayor of London) says it's not his responsibility.

I think the government owns the land it's on as they allowed it to be put up https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hans ... ill-statue
The Colston one is probably the property of Bristol City Council. That may cause problems in a prosecution if the council aren't interested in defending a slave trader:

https://barristerblogger.com/2020/06/08 ... convicted/
Normally the owner of damaged property will provide a statement to the police saying “I did not consent to the damage to my property.” A prosecution for criminal damage without one would be highly unusual. It might not always be an absolute legal necessity – the prosecution could perhaps prove ownership even without it – but refusing to give a statement would suggest not supporting the prosecution, which would imply that the Council did not care about the statue’s destruction.

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Re: Edward Colston statue pulled down

Post by AMS » Tue Jun 09, 2020 7:00 pm

Though that blog also points out that damage to a listed building prosecutions don't need the owner to complain. But there's also an issue that the defendants could opt for a jury trial, which makes it a risky proposition for the CPS - this is very much the sort of incident where although it's blatantly a crime, a jury (especially in Bristol) could very easily choose to acquit.

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Re: Edward Colston statue pulled down

Post by Little waster » Tue Jun 09, 2020 7:07 pm

Tessa K wrote:
Tue Jun 09, 2020 11:58 am
Bird on a Fire wrote:
Mon Jun 08, 2020 5:14 pm
The "erasing history" argument is particularly misguided. We remember history through books, not statues. It's not like Germany should be forced to erect statues of prominent Nazis to help remember that chapter of history.

He should be replaced with a slavery memorial IMHO.
I wonder how many of the people who say it's erasing history could actually have named who the statue was of if shown it?
There is a certain irony that as a non-Brizzlian I didn’t have a clue who Colston was UNTIL his statue was pulled down. It is only the act of destruction itself which has brought him and his role in the slave trade to my attention.

If it had been left where it was I could have spent the rest of my life not knowing he was a massive c.nt.

So it is the very opposite of “erasing history”.
Last edited by Little waster on Tue Jun 09, 2020 7:09 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Edward Colston statue pulled down

Post by Martin Y » Tue Jun 09, 2020 7:08 pm

Re recording stuff, yes we had steel tape recorders pre-war but the required tape speed was high so the spools were huge and the thin metal tape travelling fast was lethal so the machines were kept behind thick plate glass. We did also have small portable-ish wire recorders but the quality wasn't good compared to cutting straight to disc. It did puzzle the British that German orchestras could appear to be playing live when the venue should have been cleared for an air raid. The Germans metal oxide tape was far superior.

There's a famous recording of Wynford Vaughan Thomas on a Lancaster raid in 1943 and a couple of times over the intercom the skipper asks if Reg is "still cutting", i.e. cutting a gramophone record on his 50lb "portable" recorder.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b039lmkg
Last edited by Martin Y on Tue Jun 09, 2020 7:20 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Edward Colston statue pulled down

Post by jimbob » Tue Jun 09, 2020 7:18 pm

Bird on a Fire wrote:
Tue Jun 09, 2020 2:24 pm
MonkeyWrench wrote:
Tue Jun 09, 2020 2:18 pm
Get rid of all statues. They're rubbish and rarely look like the person they're meant to depict.
Perhaps there's some value in leaving up incredibly ugly statues of people who were c.nts.

For example, the USA obviously needs to get rid of all its Confederate statues - but perhaps they should leave up this one of Nathan Bedford Forrest in Nashville, Tennessee:

Image
from https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/ugl ... est-statue
I linked to that article somewhere else... It's a private statue on private land, but is a bit of a self-own. Those of us on Internationalskeptics.com have probably come across a black-latino poster who uses the head as his avatar for that reason.
Have you considered stupidity as an explanation

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