Looking at history with a modern lens

[Paul]

We do have a lot to do in this country, but I do think we are easily one of the best countries when it comes to attitudes and equality.

Totally agree

 

[Paddingtonwolf]

Treated? Believe me, the way the aborigines are treated now is still appalling and openly discriminatory.

 

[YoungWolf]

History is forever manipulated and always will be, the amount of historical events and people who aren’t exactly what you’d think of them.
Pulling down statues of slave traders or those who’ve committed atrocious acts I’ve got no problem with. But I would say place them in museums and give each person a balanced explanation of who they were.
Don’t erase history, accept its there and you can’t change it all you can do is learn from it.
Also blaming and hating people from certain countries because of acts committed by the leaders of their country many generations before their birth plus the majority of people’s ancestors would have had zero influence on any decisions made at that time.
Education is the key no one is born with racism, prejudice or the ability to stereotype. All are learnt from home life, media and your social surroundings.
As a white male living in Britain I’ve never experienced racism so I can’t comprehend how it must feel or how it then makes you feel about the world around you.
As said education from an early age is key.

The irony of this being (this is what I think people are missing, not you specifically) that this country and its education system has done so much to erase the history of the British Empire and paint it in such a different light. The pulling down of those statues (which I agree with you on), has engaged people with the history around it far more than my school ever did for example.

 

[YoungWolf]

Treated? Believe me, the way the aborigines are treated now is still appalling and openly discriminatory.

Poorly worded, sorry. I know there are still huge issues and it's awful. I meant how they colonised Australia. Not an area I am that well educated on so this documentary is a good one for me to watch.

 

[Deutsch Wolf]

No surprise that the fat twat in No 10 has come out to bat for Churchill today.

 

[nimrod]

i'm against making idols out of mortals tbh and this whole situation is a good demonstration why, serving as a distraction from real everyday issues.

if statues of historical persons are put up then they could be for a finite life and then removed to a museum regardless of who it was.

the statue of the slaver going up (I know nothing about him btw) sounds like it was for dubious reasons. quite why it has remained in place is beyond reason.

similarly it sounds like the reasons for potential removal of baden-powell are dubious given the society norms at the time. don't most people know him for the scout movement not as a champion of dodgy politics or for homophobia? maybe i don't know how much he may have championed certain things. but if he got sent to scout museum after 50 years max it would be less of an issue.

reality is that if you put up a statue of someone who it turns out did have dodgy views or who was politically divisive or who was just a twat, it will always be a target to someone.

 

[Paddingtonwolf]

The statue first went up because of the philanthropic work Colston carried out in Bristol. Of course the money that philanthropic work was financed by came from slaving, but at the time that the statue was commissioned slavery would have been some years from abolition even in this country I suspect.

 

[Paddingtonwolf]

I tell a lie - it appears the statue was commissioned in 1895, and the Slavery Abolition Act was 1833. Bizarre.

 

[Kenny]

No surprise that the fat twat in No 10 has come out to bat for Churchill today.

Its an absolute easy deflection though using Churchill. His is not the only statue being protected ahead of the planned weekend protests but give all the attention to that in media. Regardless of any racism etc from Churchill all people will care about is his standing as a War Time Leader. The majority of the country are then disgusted by the actions of the protests and even think the box put over his statue is the start of the process to remove it.

 

[pr0sl0]

I tell a lie - it appears the statue was commissioned in 1895, and the Slavery Abolition Act was 1833. Bizarre.

Not bizarre at all. Towards the end of the Victorian era it was clear that Britain's hegemony as the world's most powerful empire was under threat, and there was widespread anxiety that the end was inevitably coming soon - France, Russia, and Germany had been long-time rivals that had each managed to compete with the UK more and more consistently, but the US had by that point become the world's largest industrial economy as well. There was a huge amount of soul-searching among the political and cultural elite of the day about what made the country "great", and what could be learned from past examples of greatness in order to maintain greatness in the future. And the Victorians loved public philanthropy as one of those things they liked to venerate - this was before the evolution of the modern welfare state, and it became seen as a duty for the upper classes to bestow the lower ones with public works and buildings as an act of charity. Colston was an obvious choice for the city leaders of Bristol, using that perspective.

It's kind of what always happens with statues of the famous and infamous. Some get put up immediately after a person dies, but a lot of them come along a lot later as future generations seek to venerate past icons as a way of reflecting their own values of the present, and what they wish to use to inspire themselves for the future. A nation's history is constantly being rewritten like this, both in history books and on the street - except monuments and statues are purely propagandistic. Ironically, the UK isn't used to actually experiencing this frequently at home, though, because it's never had a true political revolution (or revolutions). In Spain or France or Germany, or in places like Ireland and India which used to be British colonies, renaming streets and replacing/moving statues with the changing winds of history is not itself controversial - the debates are about what to replace the old with, not whether replacing the old is a thing that could and should be done at all, for the most part.

Back in 2014, when the first wave of this happened in the US with the original wave of BLM protests, there was a wave of Confederate statue desecration. Most of those statues were put up around the same time as Colston's. It was a conscious attempt to rewrite history and create a sense of southern glory and pride, and to rehabilitate the reputations of generals and politicians who had fought to preserve slavery. They were paid for, commissioned, and designed by pressure groups set up by the elderly children and younger grandchildren or great-grandchildren of the Southern white elite class which had lost the Civil War - and a lot of them came down incredibly easily, because they were usually made on the cheap. If you watch videos of people toppling them, they tend not to fall over complete, but instead fold in the middle because often they're actually hollow.

 

[Paul]

Proslo I never realised you were such a statue expert, have you been hiding your light under a bushel up to now ?

 

[pr0sl0]

Hah no - I just read up on this when topplings started happening a few years ago. Good article here, for example: https://qz.com/1054062/statues-of-c...outh-were-cheaply-mass-produced-in-the-north/

 

[YoungWolf]

https://twitter.com/NeeksQuamina/status/1271403164802191360?s=20 yeah let's not pat ourselves on the back too much about being 'better' than other countries towards equality

 

[Tredman]

https://twitter.com/NeeksQuamina/status/1271403164802191360?s=20 yeah let's not pat ourselves on the back too much about being 'better' than other countries towards equality

The point I made was relative. I traveled all over the place, we are not good by any stretch but we are a shit load better than most countries.

 

[YoungWolf]

The point I made was relative. I traveled all over the place, we are not good by any stretch but we are a shit load better than most countries.

I know, but being better doesn't make it alright (I know you know that). I just don't think we should allow any complacency to creep in because of that.

 

[nimrod]

I tell a lie - it appears the statue was commissioned in 1895, and the Slavery Abolition Act was 1833. Bizarre.

yep, surprised me too. not like they wouldn’t know about him. I got no prob with statues like that getting trashed, law or no law. if you don’t want it trashed, take it down.

 

[leedswolf]

I'm in the middle of the documentary "The Australian Dream" which is about the racism AFL player Adam Goodes faced and there are certainly parralels with the UK today in how they don't really want to discuss the issue of racism and try to erase the history of Australia and how they treated the indigenous people.

Australian laws gave the governments an extraordinary level of control over every aspect of Aboriginal people's lives, including their personal finances, where they lived, where they worked and how much they were paid.

 

[Paddingtonwolf]

My sister in law is a Queenslander. She chose a more expensive school for the kids as there wouldn’t be any “abos” there. I was fucking horrified. I like her but the attitude seems so prevalent and they genuinely can’t see anything wrong with their views. It’s a massive black mark for me about ever going to live there, which is a shame as there is a huge amount to love about the country.

 

[Kenny]

So apart from massive racists and bugs that kill just by looking at you, its OK?

 

[Paddingtonwolf]

Lovely scenery. Full of killer everything, but lovely.