I’VE never much enjoyed the spectacle of crowds tearing down statues, even when it’s an effigy of a tyrant like Saddam Hussein. And even though it is perfectly understandable for people who have suffered years of torture and repression from the person commemorated in marble or bronze to vent their rage in this way.
So my first instinct at seeing the statue of slave-owner Edward Colston in Bristol being dragged from its plinth by protestors, stamped on, daubed in paint and tossed into the harbour, was distaste. But then I started to wonder what it would be like, if I was a black person, to walk past a statue of a man who was able to make donations to the city from a fortune he built on human suffering.
Between 1672 and 1689, his ships are believed to have transported around 80,000 men, women and children from Africa to the Americas. Around 19,000 are thought to have died in transit, and were thrown overboard. The citation on the statue described him as a “wise and virtuous man”.
Add that to the sense of communal anger at the death of George Floyd while being arrested by Minneapolis police and it becomes, if not reasonable, then perfectly understandable.
The tight-lipped condemnation by Priti awful Patel who promised those guilty would be hunted down and prosecuted shows what a tin ear the current Tory cabinet has. Then witness Boris Johnson, hair carefully rumpled, saying he believes black lives matter. This from the man who once wrote about “piccaninnies with water-melon smiles”.
The black mayor of Bristol, Marvin Rees, later said that walking past the statue daily had felt like “an affront” but it would be fished out of the harbour and would probably end up in a museum. This is where it should have been put years ago, and if there had been a proper response to the thousands of people who signed a petition calling for the removal of the statue, then the visceral anger displayed at the weekend needn’t have happened.
Here, we are well aware of the importance of symbols. Currently there’s a petition to remove a statue of John Mitchel, a 19th century Young Irelander, who openly espoused racist and pro-slavery views.
A while back there were calls for the removal of a statue of Queen Victoria at Botanic Gardens, because it was close to Friar’s Bush cemetery where many Famine victims are buried. But where do you stop with that kind of “cleansing” of history? Do you also change the name of the university, the Royal Victoria Hospital?
I don’t think it serves future generations to remove these symbols of the past. Far better to equally honour other figures from history, like Mary Ann McCracken, the sister of United Irishmen leader Henry Joy. She was, in her own right, a tireless social reformer who established the Belfast Women’s Anti-Slavery League.
I wouldn’t like to see Edward Carson’s statue removed from Stormont. I recall many years ago, when it was being refurbished and was under a tarpaulin. On one particular day there was a protest in the grounds that required a heavy police and army presence. A bored squaddie approached us media types and asked who was under the covering. “Carson,” I replied. He looked puzzled. “Frank Carson? Really?”
I’m sorry that I put him right. But leave him where he is. Just make room for another plinth for a more deserving figure. John Hume gets my vote.
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THE decision by the PSNI to dish out fines to the people who took part in the Black Lives Matter protest at Custom House Square seems more than a tad heavy handed. The pictures I saw suggested people did stand in socially distanced spaces... and it was outdoors, where the risk is considerably less.
Compare that with the close proximity of the MPs squeezed up behind each other at Westminster to vote on the ludicrous Jacob Rees-Mogg’s demand for a return to attendance in parliament instead of remote voting… or indeed the crowds lining up outside Ikea.
If they really want to feel someone’s collar, maybe they should be looking at those loopers in Ormeau Park last weekend, carrying placards offering people “free hugs”. When my husband challenged them, one guy told him. “The virus? Sure it’s all over now.”
Thankfully none of the passers-by seemed to be rushing in for an embrace.
I don’t imagine those getting a fine for taking part in the protest will fret too much about whether it comes from the PSNI or the Police Service NI. I always thought they should’ve been called the NIPD anyway.
