Recent acts of vandalism in Bristol and around the country have sent councils scurrying back to their bunkers and initiating what bureaucrats generally do best and undertake a review of their statues and monuments to ensure they confirm to their 2020 vision of wokeness and correctness. Luckily Save Our Statues has been established to do exactly that and they are engaging with social media to ensure any such reviews are appropriately challenged and the majority view of the usually silent majority is heard.
Save Our Statues
I've written before to say how unhappy I was with the toppling of the statue of Edward Colston and the various acts of vandalism carried out against symbols of our British Nation. Probably the graffiti and attempted burning of the Union Jack at the Cenotaph together with the defacing of the statue of Winston Churchill got to me more than Colston; but in all cases the imposition of violent mob rule and the lack of an official response was appalling to see.
My parents lived and served through WW2 and our debt to Winston Churchill was drilled into us as children and was evident from the respect they had for him. The thought of the naval ratings pulling his coffin on the gun carriage still makes me weep with pride. I cannot let this go and I cannot allow British history to be erased in this way.
I took part in the Liberty and Livelihood March through London in 2002 largely to show support for equine sport which I could see would be next to come under the spotlight. What I specifically remember about the day is that when we marched past the Cenotaph we were told to fall quiet as a mark of respect to the fallen. This instruction was obeyed to the letter and illustrates what can be done when protest is adequately marshalled and controlled.
I'm going to blog separately about where I am with Black Lives Matter. But two of the key messages of the BLM organisation have been the need for reparation and the threatening "Silence is not an Option". We'll talk about reparation later but let's think about silence not being an option. Given this mandate, and given a feeble attempt from my employer to undermine all the good work they'd done on inclusion by declaring support for the BLM movement, I decided to reopen my Twitter account in order to promote the need to preserve Freedom of Speech and to promote British Values Matter.
Through Twitter and through the New Culture Forum on YouTube I discovered "Save Our Statues". The purpose of Save Our Statues is clear from the title and through their campaigning work I've been taken on a whirlwind tour of the UK and the statues we have amassed to celebrate our glorious past. Here's a few thoughts based on what I've learned.
Edward Colston
The furore and hate generated by this simple statue in Bristol caught all our attention. From this we learned that Colston was primarily a merchant, he was involved in the slave trade (but not a slave owner) and that this trade followed a triangular pattern, taking goods to Africa, slaves to the Caribbean and goods from the Caribbean back to Bristol. Somehow I already knew that the people on board Colston's ships did not undertake raiding parties into Africa and bring out the slaves themselves. No at this time slavery was endemic in Africa which, as we all know, was culturally developed and civilised. Colston, as a business man, knew there was a huge demand for cheap labour in the Americas and as a consequence tapped into the ready supply available from the African traders. For me this is the inconvenient truth of the slave trade; Africans were sold into slavery by their brothers and their neighbours for a trinket; there can be no lower point in your ancestry than that.
Colston lived through turbulent times; his life spanned the English Civil War, Restoration of the Monarchy and both the Great Plague and the Great Fire of London. He would have been used to death and life would have been cheap; a man could be sentenced to death for poaching rabbits or fish. Transportation of criminals and undesirable elements within society to the colonies was already in full swing; of course the fact that the white criminals were treated little better than the black slaves does not justify the transportation of either. But it does help to illustrate that by the standards of his day Colston was not a particularly bad person. He was simply successfully going about his business.
Colston's statue was not erected until 1895, 174 years after his death. It was the Victorians who recognised his contribution to the City through his charity and were clearly not sensitive about how he had made his money. What motivated Colston to be so generous to the City can only be surmised; recognition of a debt of gratitude for the City that had made him and possibly a little bit of guilt for the Bristol lives that had been lost making the money for him? Whatever the motivation he paid his "reparations" and turned bad towards the pursuit of good. The Victorians could see the good that he had done; for some reason we cannot.
Thomas Picton (Welsh Hero of Waterloo)
I am always very sensitive where the Heroes of Waterloo are concerned. It may have been "a damn close run thing" and the true intention of the Prussian Army never be truly known, but you only have to read Victor Hugo's description in Les Miserables to know how badly the French took it. Wellington's victory led to 100 years of peace in Europe (depending where you place the Crimea), a peace that was only to be broken by the first World War.
For any school boy of my generation, raised on films like Zulu and Lawrence of Arabia and the Victor Annual the Battle of Waterloo was the stuff of heroes. As well as the "Damn close run thing" memorable quotes abound such as "nothing, except a battle lost, can be half so melancholy as a battle won", "the whole line will advance" and "By God, sir, I've lost my leg!" are locked into British History. (This latter quote is attributed to the Earl of Uxbridge who has his own memorial statue on Anglesey.)
However I was less familiar with Thomas Picton who died on the Battlefield at Waterloo and whom Wellington described as "a rough foul-mouthed devil as ever lived". Picton died defending the British stronghold at La Haye Sainte in the early afternoon of the battle although it was later found he had also been wounded during the Battle of Quatre Bras two days earlier.
There are a number of memorials to Picton throughout the world and particularly in his native Wales. Two of these, his "Heroes of Wales" statue in Cardiff Town Hall and his monument in Carmarthen have recently attracted attention and look destined to go the same way as the statue of Edward Colston. Why is this you may ask, what issue could anyone have with a hero of Waterloo? Well I'm afraid it's the issue of slavery again and goes back to the time Picton was made Governor of the Island of Trinidad immediately after it had been surrendered by Spain.
Picton served as Governor for five years and had to cope with insufficient troops, internal unrest and the threat of reconquest from Spain. His rule was no doubt hard, described on Wikipedia by "He ensured order by vigorous action, viewed variously as rough-and-ready justice or as arbitrary brutality." The island was governed under a mixture of Spanish and martial law. Undoubtedly there was some tough justice in order to hold the island. This included torture, executing slaves and for Picton making money by trading in slaves.
If all of this sounds wrong in 2020 well I'm pleased to say that it sounded wrong in 1803 as well. Picton was arrested and tried but was able to win his case on the basis that his actions were necessary and justifiable under either the laws of Trinidad or martial law. While it might seem possible to dismiss this as a "show trial" it is clear that Picton had made political enemies for himself with the new administration such that proving his innocence would not have been a foregone conclusion.
This became evident when he was tried again in 1806 this time on the single charge of the use of torture. Although he was found guilty at his first trial a second trial in 1808 reversed the decision on the basis that the use of torture was common practice on the island before the British annexation and, although perhaps he should have known better, that Picton had therefore acted legally.
Some 200+ years later the good citizens of Cardiff and Carmarthen look set to put him on trial again; this time outside the subtleties and refinement of the British legal system of 1808. No this time it will be in the court of the woke, where snowflakes rule and historic achievement counts for nothing.
Wellington described Picton as "as rough foul-mouthed devil as ever lived" and hopefully when the decision comes he will be cursing his "countrymen" from his tomb in St Pauls.
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DISCLAIMER:
As always these thoughts are wholly my own and do not reflect the thoughts and policies of my ex employer (whoever that might be).
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