If you remove history or what's happened in the past,

The removal of statues is a typical mob led reaction to people who have agenda irrespective of the issues in America. Mindless vandalism,which in effect it is, is carried out by those who are unable to have a reasonable conversation/argument about the issues in hand.Better they deal with modern day slavery of those who are friends of the democracies, let us take Qatar and the corrupt world cup let us look at the slave labour and appalling work conditions of the impoverished Asian workforce are not making headlines.When Man City take the knee do they dwell on the sponsors who pay their unearned bloated wages?The very same people who readily hang gay men and women, behead so called criminals and jail by the thousands who defy their backward medieval religion for apostasy ????? As for young people I do not want to criticize their full of ideals. Removing statues of Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee will only widen the already deep divide in the US.Here in the UK we had better be careful lest we create a backlash.I for one will not kneel for anyone, certainly not for a 5 times jailed violent drug fuelled thug whose shining legacy remains porno films and pistol whipping a pregnant women in her own home.He did not deserve to die in that way
but he inflicted violence on other people.But there again for merely offering such views I am a racist ...yeah of course!

I think the museum is the best place for these monuments. What better place to learn ? Not removing history merely moving it it's monuments.

Let's be honest, many of us didn't even know about the subjects of some of these statues before so they clearly weren't educating us where they were !! Museums have an important role in educating us on our history and culture.

Auschwitz is a good example of a a terrible part of history that now educates future generations. Once visited never forgotten.

I think the context of the statue has to be taken into consideration. The Colston statue in Bristol and the Rhodes statue in Oxford were erected to celebrate their philanthropy and rather than connections to the slave trade or belief in white supremacy.

I would agree that description plaques should be placed alongside the statues explaining the full history of the individual highlighting both the good and bad their actions had during their lifetimes as well as giving a background on the values of the times they lived in. That is how you give a balanced education to young people rather than brainwashing children that all of history is bad.

Spot on, people including children will pass these statues everyday, if there was a plaque explaining warts n all what they did, it would educate far more people. How often do we visit a museum or gallery.

All i'm saying is that you don't need a statue to learn about History. Statues are put up of people who are admired and respected in the community. You can learn History without Statues, ask anyone who cant read but can listen or cant see but can hear. Statues immortalise heros and dignitaries. Look at how the mindless Britain 1st yobs tried to defend them over the country. They did it because they are supremacists and not for kids to learn lessons. Carry on with your conversation coz i finished what i need to say

it wasn't just right wing groups defending war memorials take a good look ... if anything they put people off going , I think you under estimate massively the immense offence to our country and its citizens by a very vocal minority whose cause this week happens to be BLM...

wow and you still don't see that u dont need statues to teach history but instead defend the mindless thugs who were doing nazi salutes in front of the cenotaph and pissing over a fallen pc's memorial
Good luck with your point of view

Surely even a one eyed crank like you knows there were violent mindless thugs on both sides.

The removal of statues is a typical mob led reaction to people who have agenda irrespective of the issues in America. Mindless vandalism,which in effect it is, is carried out by those who are unable to have a reasonable conversation/argument about the issues in hand.Better they deal with modern day slavery of those who are friends of the democracies, let us take Qatar and the corrupt world cup let us look at the slave labour and appalling work conditions of the impoverished Asian workforce are not making headlines.When Man City take the knee do they dwell on the sponsors who pay their unearned bloated wages?The very same people who readily hang gay men and women, behead so called criminals and jail by the thousands who defy their backward medieval religion for apostasy ????? As for young people I do not want to criticize their full of ideals. Removing statues of Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee will only widen the already deep divide in the US.Here in the UK we had better be careful lest we create a backlash.I for one will not kneel for anyone, certainly not for a 5 times jailed violent drug fuelled thug whose shining legacy remains porno films and pistol whipping a pregnant women in her own home.He did not deserve to die in that way
but he inflicted violence on other people.But there again for merely offering such views I am a racist ...yeah of course!

Fantastic post
The virtue signallers only support whatever Twitter tells them to, black lives only matter when the killer is a cop, not when it’s a local drug dealer, Meetoo was only for women in showbiz and politics not for the thousands of working class British girls raped by Muslim grooming gangs, 4th wave feminists never show support for women in Iran jailed for refusing to wear the burka but insist women in the West should dress for themselves not for men. Slavery was only bad whe the slaver was white and the victim was black.

I think the museum is the best place for these monuments. What better place to learn ? Not removing history merely moving it it's monuments.

Let's be honest, many of us didn't even know about the subjects of some of these statues before so they clearly weren't educating us where they were !! Museums have an important role in educating us on our history and culture.

Auschwitz is a good example of a a terrible part of history that now educates future generations. Once visited never forgotten.

I think the context of the statue has to be taken into consideration. The Colston statue in Bristol and the Rhodes statue in Oxford were erected to celebrate their philanthropy and rather than connections to the slave trade or belief in white supremacy.

I would agree that description plaques should be placed alongside the statues explaining the full history of the individual highlighting both the good and bad their actions had during their lifetimes as well as giving a background on the values of the times they lived in. That is how you give a balanced education to young people rather than brainwashing children that all of history is bad.

Spot on, people including children will pass these statues everyday, if there was a plaque explaining warts n all what they did, it would educate far more people. How often do we visit a museum or gallery.

All i'm saying is that you don't need a statue to learn about History. Statues are put up of people who are admired and respected in the community. You can learn History without Statues, ask anyone who cant read but can listen or cant see but can hear. Statues immortalise heros and dignitaries. Look at how the mindless Britain 1st yobs tried to defend them over the country. They did it because they are supremacists and not for kids to learn lessons. Carry on with your conversation coz i finished what i need to say

it wasn't just right wing groups defending war memorials take a good look ... if anything they put people off going , I think you under estimate massively the immense offence to our country and its citizens by a very vocal minority whose cause this week happens to be BLM...

wow and you still don't see that u dont need statues to teach history but instead defend the mindless thugs who were doing nazi salutes in front of the cenotaph and pissing over a fallen pc's memorial
Good luck with your point of view

if you saw Nazi salutes your eyes and ears are not working mate... and im not defending mindless thugs I fckin hate BLM who are just another bunch of easily led twpsters

I think the museum is the best place for these monuments. What better place to learn ? Not removing history merely moving it it's monuments.

Let's be honest, many of us didn't even know about the subjects of some of these statues before so they clearly weren't educating us where they were !! Museums have an important role in educating us on our history and culture.

Auschwitz is a good example of a a terrible part of history that now educates future generations. Once visited never forgotten.

I think the context of the statue has to be taken into consideration. The Colston statue in Bristol and the Rhodes statue in Oxford were erected to celebrate their philanthropy and rather than connections to the slave trade or belief in white supremacy.

I would agree that description plaques should be placed alongside the statues explaining the full history of the individual highlighting both the good and bad their actions had during their lifetimes as well as giving a background on the values of the times they lived in. That is how you give a balanced education to young people rather than brainwashing children that all of history is bad.

Spot on, people including children will pass these statues everyday, if there was a plaque explaining warts n all what they did, it would educate far more people. How often do we visit a museum or gallery.

All i'm saying is that you don't need a statue to learn about History. Statues are put up of people who are admired and respected in the community. You can learn History without Statues, ask anyone who cant read but can listen or cant see but can hear. Statues immortalise heros and dignitaries. Look at how the mindless Britain 1st yobs tried to defend them over the country. They did it because they are supremacists and not for kids to learn lessons. Carry on with your conversation coz i finished what i need to say

it wasn't just right wing groups defending war memorials take a good look ... if anything they put people off going , I think you under estimate massively the immense offence to our country and its citizens by a very vocal minority whose cause this week happens to be BLM...

wow and you still don't see that u dont need statues to teach history but instead defend the mindless thugs who were doing nazi salutes in front of the cenotaph and pissing over a fallen pc's memorial
Good luck with your point of view

Surely even a one eyed crank like you knows there were violent mindless thugs on both sides.

your last statement says enough about you, "crank". you don't even know me and you call me a crank. I haven't engaged with you and you call me a crank. I think it says more about you than me

If you remove history or what's happened in the past, you will never learn! How will our children ever know or learn?

Not removing history, just not celebrating anyone with a racist past...which is fair enough. Statues of racists can still be put in museums where they belong, which means people can still learn about them without celebrating their evil past.

Of course your removing history?????

I fully agree Annis. By removing history you are removing and rewriting it and children are being deprived of a balanced education where all circumstances are included rather than being brainwashed by anyone with an agenda.

what on earth is balanced about slavery??? there is no argument that justifies it in order to give a balanced view. Why don't you start and gives the other side of the "Balance" that condones it? or an example of your so called BALANCE.

Just a quick note... I apologise for the length of this post. I've been thinking of this for a while now and found it useful to try and put my thoughts into words. I honestly think we need to think very carefully before we move forward in any direction right now, but I actually didn't mean to write so much when I started so sorry for that!

Balance can be found in every conversation if we are prepared to see it. It is also essential now more than ever to try to take a balanced view as we are on the verge of pulling our world apart. That said I can understand what you are trying to say, truly I do, but beneath the surface of the conversation there is a much more complex discussion to be had and that absolutely requires balance.

For example, we can all agree with our modern set of morality that slavery is without question wrong. Equally we can agree that Britain and the USA were deeply entrenched in the Atlantic Slave trade.

However, slavery was not unique to these nations, in fact as has been mentioned earlier in the thread, it is a common aspect of civilisation dating back for nearly 10 thousand years at least. It could be argued when looking at the entire spectrum of civilisation that our current view on slavery is a very, very recent shift in thinking.

That shift was largely down to two nations the UK and the USA, who did more than any other to usher in the way of thinking that we take for granted today. The abolition of slavery act of 1807 in the British Parliament paved the way and only a year later the British fleet was patrolling the west coast of Africa to actively suppress the Atlantic slave trade.

1.8 million white men fought alongside 200K of their black brethren in the American Civil War to end slavery in 1861 in doing so creating the 'land of the free'. So while these two nations are often looked at as the arch villains of the Atlantic slave trade, the truth is they were the architects of its demise as well.

As to specific people like Colston or Rhodes. I admit it is an even more complex discussion and one I'm still unsure of exactly where I sit. However, the one thought I keep coming to is that the argument that their good deeds should be overlooked as they are outweighed by their actions as slave owners is a dangerous path to tread.

For a start it introduces a requirement of purity that very few, if anyone could live up to.

For example, in Portland, USA, a statue of Jefferson was pulled down because he himself was a slave owner. Yet, if we want to talk about balance, Jefferson, as one of, if not the, primary author of the US Bill of Rights would have directly had a hand in the securing the freedom of millions of slaves. So on balance Jefferson's actions could be argued to outweigh the fact that he was a slave owner - i.e across his life he owned 175 slaves but played a central role in freeing 3.9 million.

But then we are getting into the very, very challenging discussions of exactly how we quantify the magnitude of slave ownership on the individual level. Is all slave ownership at the same level of evil? Should history view someone who owned a handful of slaves and treated them well as guilty as someone who owned thousands of slaves and treated them like cattle? I don't know is the honest answer, but it is a far more complex question than it seems on the surface. The closest I can think of is are all murders equal, and the answer is of course no. A wife who murders her husband after years of abuse, would be viewed as far less evil (if at all) than a serial murderer like Jeffery Dharmer who ate his victims. Is there an equivalency when it comes to slave ownership or is all slave ownership so morally wrong that we don't have such nuances in this instance.

Equally, where do we draw the line in terms of only upholding the purest of the pure on pedestals (literally)?

Last year it emerged that Martin Luther King Jr. had been involved in at least one case of gang rape as FBI records were released. We don't know if this is 100% true (I hope not as MLK is something of a childhood hero of mine) but if it is, do we pull statues of him down as well? Or does slave ownership equate to a worse crime than gang rape?

What about Mohammed? Historically, we know he was a slave owner, a war lord, a paedophile and a serial rapist all of which is documented in the Koran and the Hadiths. So should we abolish Islam?

It is a serious point - in line with the current wave of thinking then surely Islam is the ultimate example of a man profiting (or should that be propheting?) from slavery. Should we be pulling down the mosques and telling 1.8 billion people to renounce their faith. Again we start getting into really, really murky waters when start treading down this path and follow the logic of such arguments against Colston and Rhodes to their most extreme, but consistent conclusions.

Where do we draw the line in the sand? Where do we stop. Again, how do we quantify it all?

I think that the thing that really strikes me about this question as to whether balance can exist in this equation, is there is a thought that I can't fully form just yet. But it is sitting there somewhere nagging away at me. That thought is that essentially what we are doing right now is removing the concept of redemption from our society.

If you have sinned there is no way back essentially. You are, and can never be, anything more than your greatest failure.

This is a phenomenally disturbing idea as our whole concept of morality is framed around the notion of redemption, it is the bedrock of our judicial system and it is in my eyes, an essential (if perhaps somewhat naive) belief that holds us together and is woven into the fabric of our society.

If we pull this pillar out from how we see the world, and how we see each other, I worry that everything else may come toppling down around us. In the last century, the abolition of history was tried both in Soviet Russia and Maoist China. Hundreds of millions of people died in those cultural revolutions.

We should at least think carefully before we embark on one of our own.


EA

If you remove history or what's happened in the past, you will never learn! How will our children ever know or learn?

Not removing history, just not celebrating anyone with a racist past...which is fair enough. Statues of racists can still be put in museums where they belong, which means people can still learn about them without celebrating their evil past.

not one of these statues is there to celebrate slavery or racism.. and yes without being able to accept things were somewhat different in days gone by you are re writing history....its really quit difficult to find a point in history when slavery was part and parcel of how things were , many of our ancestors were slaves ...so do we erase history and everything to do with history ?

Of course a statue is a celebration of someone!!!
Ps are you trolling me???

I think the museum is the best place for these monuments. What better place to learn ? Not removing history merely moving it it's monuments.

Let's be honest, many of us didn't even know about the subjects of some of these statues before so they clearly weren't educating us where they were !! Museums have an important role in educating us on our history and culture.

Auschwitz is a good example of a a terrible part of history that now educates future generations. Once visited never forgotten.

I think the context of the statue has to be taken into consideration. The Colston statue in Bristol and the Rhodes statue in Oxford were erected to celebrate their philanthropy and rather than connections to the slave trade or belief in white supremacy.

I would agree that description plaques should be placed alongside the statues explaining the full history of the individual highlighting both the good and bad their actions had during their lifetimes as well as giving a background on the values of the times they lived in. That is how you give a balanced education to young people rather than brainwashing children that all of history is bad.

Spot on, people including children will pass these statues everyday, if there was a plaque explaining warts n all what they did, it would educate far more people. How often do we visit a museum or gallery.

All i'm saying is that you don't need a statue to learn about History. Statues are put up of people who are admired and respected in the community. You can learn History without Statues, ask anyone who cant read but can listen or cant see but can hear. Statues immortalise heros and dignitaries. Look at how the mindless Britain 1st yobs tried to defend them over the country. They did it because they are supremacists and not for kids to learn lessons. Carry on with your conversation coz i finished what i need to say

it wasn't just right wing groups defending war memorials take a good look ... if anything they put people off going , I think you under estimate massively the immense offence to our country and its citizens by a very vocal minority whose cause this week happens to be BLM...

wow and you still don't see that u dont need statues to teach history but instead defend the mindless thugs who were doing nazi salutes in front of the cenotaph and pissing over a fallen pc's memorial
Good luck with your point of view

Surely even a one eyed crank like you knows there were violent mindless thugs on both sides.

your last statement says enough about you, "crank". you don't even know me and you call me a crank. I haven't engaged with you and you call me a crank. I think it says more about you than me