Edward Colston statue pulled down

[Tessa K]

He's been pulled up and is now in a secure location before he goes into a museum. I suspect it will go in M Shed but I'm hoping that we eventually get a museum specifically on Bristol's involvement in the slave trade as it's clearly needed.

The grafitti and ropes around him have been left on, which is interesting.

There is space in Bristol's museums to have a room devoted to the slave trade even if there isn't the money to build a separate museum.

Now the Baden Powell statue in Poole harbour has been removed. He was openly racist, homophobic and a supporter of Hitler. He was also accused of starving African people at Mafeking.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-dorset-53004638

In 1939 Baden-Powell wrote in his diary: "Lay up all day. Read Mein Kampf. A wonderful book, with good ideas on education, health, propaganda, organisation etc.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Ba ... al_beliefs

I don’t think Baden-Powell’s statue has been removed, the article says it’s going to be but there are people objecting. Maybe there will be a calm debate about it, that would be nice.

Oh, I read it as they were going to remove it temporarily to protect it rather than because they disapproved of him.

[Gentleman Jim]

I always did find the concept of cubs and scouts somewhat militaristic and sinister
- and that is from the child whose both parents had major links with the local scouting movement

[Tessa K]

Churchill has now been boarded up to protect him.

Boris Johnson said the war-time leader had expressed opinions which were "unacceptable to us today" but remained a hero for saving the country from "fascist and racist tyranny".

Mr Johnson said "we cannot try to edit or censor our past".

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-53023351

It's not just his opinions though, it's his actions. And no one is editing or censoring, quite the opposite, people want the facts known.

In Liverpool the Penny Lane street sign has been defaced because James Penny was a slaver even though there's so far no evidence it was named after him.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-m ... e-52992669

[jimbob]

Some arse has gone for a bit of revenge. You take down my statue of a slave trader, I'll throw bleach on your statue of a Windrush-generation black playwright, poet and actor.

The St Paul’s poet and community activist Lawrence Hoo said: “Someone came and bleached him. Everything didn’t get made better a couple of days ago, and just to show that in this climate, someone still felt to come down and try and deface the one statue we’ve got from one person from the community of culture that had been recognised enough to be adorned on a plinth.”

But remember to repeat to yourself 100 times before you go to sleep tonight “There is nothing racist about opposing the removal of the Colston statue. There is nothing racist about opposing the removal of the Colston statue.”

Also gollywogs.

Or indeed in opposing the removal of a bust of KKK founder Nathan Bedford Forrest from the Tennessee Capitol building. After all, it's a historic monument to how people thought back in those times when it was put up in... er... 1978.

[EACLucifer]

Some arse has gone for a bit of revenge. You take down my statue of a slave trader, I'll throw bleach on your statue of a Windrush-generation black playwright, poet and actor.

But remember to repeat to yourself 100 times before you go to sleep tonight “There is nothing racist about opposing the removal of the Colston statue. There is nothing racist about opposing the removal of the Colston statue.”

Also gollywogs.

Or indeed in opposing the removal of a bust of KKK founder Nathan Bedford Forrest from the Tennessee Capitol building. After all, it's a historic monument to how people thought back in those times when it was put up in... er... 1978.

I've pointed out before the radical difference in the number of statues of Nathan Bedford Forrest and James Longstreet.

Before the war, Forrest was a civilian, Longstreet was a distinguished US officer.

During the war, they reached the same rank. However, lost causers like to scapegoat Longstreet for a mistake made by Robert E Lee - blaming him for the failure of Pickett's Charge, among other things at Gettysburg, despite Pickett's Charge - a frontal attack against a defended line with a stone wall for protection over a couple of miles of open ground against minie rifles and massed artillery. No general could have managed it. Overall, though, Longstreet was the more talented general.

After the war, Forrest founded the KKK, while Longstreet supported reconstruction and actually deployed gatling guns against a white mob.

Longstreet has, I think, two statues in total, one at his former home. Forrest has fucktonnes. It's fairly clear what the statues are about, and it's not really about who served the Confederacy.

[Bird on a Fire]

Confederate statues are just participation prizes for racist losers.

[EACLucifer]

This is not so much me dissenting as feeling it is important that dissenting views are heard when well expressed and not as cover for something less wholesome. So here's Mary Beard on the issue of statues.

I will add I sort of disagree with her on the museum bit. The point she makes is good, but I don't advocate moving statues to museums to forget about them. I advocate moving them there to aid in conversation about the past. That a culture felt the desire to honour someone - and then realised that was wrong - is important, and a statue of a vile person can serve as a centrepiece of a display showing what was wrong with them, and that that is a valid use of a statue that ought not still be in a position of honour.

[EACLucifer]

Confederate statues are just participation prizes for racist losers.

Nah, they are much, much worse. An open display of white power designed to intimidate and in so doing enforce segregation. Though they are also participation prizes for racist losers.

[Gfamily]

Trump tweeted his objection to a suggestion that US military training camps should be renamed, so I looked up the person behind Fort Bragg.
He's reckoned to be one of the Generals that had most impact on the confederacy losing the Civil War.
Which isn't a good record for a Confederate General.

[Tessa K]

This is not so much me dissenting as feeling it is important that dissenting views are heard when well expressed and not as cover for something less wholesome. So here's Mary Beard on the issue of statues.

I will add I sort of disagree with her on the museum bit. The point she makes is good, but I don't advocate moving statues to museums to forget about them. I advocate moving them there to aid in conversation about the past. That a culture felt the desire to honour someone - and then realised that was wrong - is important, and a statue of a vile person can serve as a centrepiece of a display showing what was wrong with them, and that that is a valid use of a statue that ought not still be in a position of honour.

She says this about museums:

I bridle a little at the repeated suggestions that these statues belong in a museum. My view of course is that museums are a source of debate and discussion about the past and the present. But I strongly suspect that those who suggest that these statues should be moved there really think that museums are a useful dumping ground for old things you don’t want, but don’t feel you can actually throw away.

People who go to museums don't think that, though - or they wouldn't bother going. I agree that they can be useful as part of a display illustrating an aspect of history without the veneration.

[dyqik]

Trump tweeted his objection to a suggestion that US military training camps should be renamed, so I looked up the person behind Fort Bragg.
He's reckoned to be one of the Generals that had most impact on the confederacy losing the Civil War.
Which isn't a good record for a Confederate General.

You could almost turn that into an argument for why the US Army should celebrate his military prowess.

[JQH]

I see from my FaceBook feed that the Daily Mail is enthusiastically supporting some pillocks who are demanding the Graun be shut down because the Manchester Guardian allegedly supported the South in the American Civil War; finest piece of whataboutery I've seen for some time.

Replied in kind by pointing out the Mail should by that logic also be closed because of its more recent support for fascism. No reply to that as yet.

[bjn]

Confederate statues are just participation prizes for racist losers.

I’m stealing that.

[Little waster]

I see from my FaceBook feed that the Daily Mail is enthusiastically supporting some pillocks who are demanding the Graun be shut down because the Manchester Guardian allegedly supported the South in the American Civil War; finest piece of whataboutery I've seen for some time.

Replied in kind by pointing out the Mail should by that logic also be closed because of its more recent support for fascism. No reply to that as yet.

In the infamous words of jdc, “here’s a 76 page pdf which may be of interest”

https://digitalcommons.unomaha.edu/cgi/ ... tudentwork


It’s appears to be a final year undergraduate MA dissertation from the University of Nebraska in 1962.

As such it has to be treated as authoritatively as any other student dissertation and has a clear political agenda from the outset, namely by 1863 the US was the world beacon of freedom and democracy (ignoring the whole Civil War and slavery malarkey) whereas the UK was an oppressive absolute monarchy, 30 years after the Great Reform Act, and the Manchester Guardian was just expressing the general British jealousy that the crude Americans had created such a perfect nation and the MG was simply terrified that a Northern victory would fuel the flames of rebellion among the down trodden British working class.

TBF that stance isn’t without merit but it colours the whole tone of the piece and clearly impacts on the conclusion. The majority of the thesis deals with detailing the complexity of the Civil War, it is in no way as clear-cut a question of good and evil as common understanding has it, certainly at the outset and in the midst of it, and the snapshots of the MGs editorial stance is a reflection of that murky complexity where arguments could be made that the Secessionists at times represented a lesser evil compared to “tyrannical” Federalists trampling over states rights and otherwise indifferent to the lives of “free” black people. Chuck in the two sides’ propaganda, the vested interests, the rising death tolls, the atrocities and the ever-shifting stances of the belligerent and you have enough caveats and counter-examples to well ... fill a 76 page thesis.

All of which renders the entire argument f.cking stupid. You may as well hold Nicholas Soames responsible for his grandfather’s gassing of the Arabs.

[Little waster]

And here’s it in the Guardians own words

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2015/j ... -civil-war

Basically:-

1860 Lincoln opposes abolition

1861 MG on balance supports the South arguing secession represents the surest route to eventual abolition

1862 Lincoln declares the Emancipation Proclamation. The MG switches support to the North

[Martin Y]

While I'm broadly in favour of statuary reflecting more current events and attitudes, I'm not entirely comfortable with Churchill's statue being replaced with a statue of Boris hiding in a fridge.

fridge.JPG (116.96 KiB) Viewed 5569 times

[JQH]

And here’s it in the Guardians own words

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2015/j ... -civil-war

Basically:-

1860 Lincoln opposes abolition

1861 MG on balance supports the South arguing secession represents the surest route to eventual abolition

1862 Lincoln declares the Emancipation Proclamation. The MG switches support to the North

Thanks. Found both of these myself earlier, though I've not yet read the thesis. Re the Guardian's own article, it doesn't specifically mention the switch of support.

[Little waster]

And here’s it in the Guardians own words

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2015/j ... -civil-war

Basically:-

1860 Lincoln opposes abolition

1861 MG on balance supports the South arguing secession represents the surest route to eventual abolition

1862 Lincoln declares the Emancipation Proclamation. The MG switches support to the North

Thanks. Found both of these myself earlier, though I've not yet read the thesis. Re the Guardian's own article, it doesn't specifically mention the switch of support.

By 1865 it was all over bar the shouting so without wading through the archives it would be hard to pinpoint when exactly the editorial line completely shifted. The MG ran a number of complimentary pro-Lincoln articles after 1862, although it also famously ran a critical obit for him after his assassination.

The Spectator is proudly the only paper of the time that was staunchly pro-North for the entire war (and almost went bankrupt as a result) so bundle the Times and the rest into that.

And if we are talking about dodgy historical editorial lines, beyond the whole pro-Fascism stance of the 30s, the Daily Mail itself supported apartheid well into the 1980s, nevermind 150 years ago.

Logs and motes.

[AMS]

While I'm broadly in favour of statuary reflecting more current events and attitudes, I'm not entirely comfortable with Churchill's statue being replaced with a statue of Boris hiding in a fridge.

fridge.JPG

Someone on twitter reckons it's actually a David Blaine thing. When they open it, the box will be empty, and the Churchill statue will be on the Colston plinth in Bristol.

[Tessa K]

While I'm broadly in favour of statuary reflecting more current events and attitudes, I'm not entirely comfortable with Churchill's statue being replaced with a statue of Boris hiding in a fridge.

fridge.JPG

Someone on twitter reckons it's actually a David Blaine thing. When they open it, the box will be empty, and the Churchill statue will be on the Colston plinth in Bristol.

Schrodinger's statue.

[shpalman]

While I'm broadly in favour of statuary reflecting more current events and attitudes, I'm not entirely comfortable with Churchill's statue being replaced with a statue of Boris hiding in a fridge.

fridge.JPG

Someone on twitter reckons it's actually a David Blaine thing. When they open it, the box will be empty, and the Churchill statue will be on the Colston plinth in Bristol.

Schrodinger's statue.

I'm fairly sure he's really dead.

[Tessa K]

Someone on twitter reckons it's actually a David Blaine thing. When they open it, the box will be empty, and the Churchill statue will be on the Colston plinth in Bristol.

Schrodinger's statue.

I'm fairly sure he's really dead.

I was referring to this comment When they open it, the box will be empty, - is he in there or not rather than is he dead or not. You're being too literal.

[Tessa K]

Now this has appeared next to the Colston statue plinth



https://www.bristol247.com/news-and-fea ... on-plinth/

[Bird on a Fire]

A thing of beauty.

[Grumble]

A thing of beauty.

I’m not sure it will be a joy forever.