Opinion

Patrick Murphy: Anti-racism protests need to have precise demands in terms of legislation

Patrick Murphy

Patrick Murphy

Patrick Murphy is an Irish News columnist and former director of Belfast Institute for Further and Higher Education.

A statue of Edward Colston is thrown into Bristol harbour during a Black Lives Matter protest rally in memory of the late George Floyd last weekend. Picture by Ben Birchall/PA
A statue of Edward Colston is thrown into Bristol harbour during a Black Lives Matter protest rally in memory of the late George Floyd last weekend. Picture by Ben Birchall/PA A statue of Edward Colston is thrown into Bristol harbour during a Black Lives Matter protest rally in memory of the late George Floyd last weekend. Picture by Ben Birchall/PA

Should we remove the statue of Queen Victoria from the front of Belfast City Hall because she ruled Ireland during the Great Famine?

Indeed, should we re-name Craigavon (called after the man who said "a Protestant parliament for a Protestant people") and maybe even Belfast's Chichester Street (named after the Ulster Plantation organiser)?

The questions arise from the current campaign against some statues and street names as part of global anti-racism protests. But while it is easy to understand what the protests are against, it is not clear what they are for.

The weakness in the protest movement is that it lacks precise demands in terms of government policy or legislation.

If a protest movement does not know where it is going, it will not know when it has arrived. That's why the anti-racist campaign has become stranded on memorials. Welcome to the world of well intentioned, but largely disorganised, political protest, which has yet to progress beyond pulling down statues. (We never toppled statues in Ireland. We tended to blow them up.)

The problem in the United States, for example, is not statues. It is the endemic racism in a society built on repression, resulting from European colonialism. It began with the genocide of unknown millions of native Americans through disease, hunger and killings, which was later romanticised in films and popular culture.

This was followed by the importation and brutal exploitation of African slaves. What Trump describes as America's greatness was founded on slave labour. That inherent racism has never disappeared.

Of course reforming the Minneapolis police department may make a difference, but there are 18,000 police forces and agencies in the US. The Democrats have proposed nationwide reforms, including the use of police body and dash cameras, but the Republican controlled Senate may not pass their legislation. Oppressive policing is unlikely to disappear.

Britain's wealth was also built on slavery, but its slaves largely remained in its colonies. Removing the trappings of its tradition of slavery would require not just the removal of statues, but the demolition of many public and private buildings in Britain, which were built with plundered colonial wealth.

(Britain has invaded 90 per cent of the world's countries. The 22 states it missed include Sweden, Mongolia and the Vatican. How could it not be racist?)

Of course, the great and the good, here and in Britain, condemn racism while they endorse decorations named in honour of the British Empire, which killed countless millions. Can OBEs and other "honours" therefore be considered racist?

So without a fundamental attitudinal change, removing statues is merely occupational therapy. But you cannot legislate for attitude. It can change only through knowledge, education, understanding, compassion and basic humanity. The best memorial is a just and fair society.

Stone and bronze statues are symptoms, not a disease. If racism is to end, it is the right wing flesh and blood statues who hold office that need to be toppled, not through force, but through democracy. Now there's an objective for the anti-racist protest movement.

And what of Queen Victoria's statue in Belfast? Those supporting its retention would presumably point to her visit to Ireland in 1849 as the Famine was ending. She was received rapturously by the Irish people.

The Catholic bishop of Belfast was among those who erected a welcoming banner when she visited the city. She was also greeted with a, "Céad Míle Fáilte" banner outside the offices of the News Letter.

Those questioning the statue's retention might suggest that it would be more appropriate to erect a memorial to the Famine victims (and the estimated 29 million Indians who also starved to death later in her reign).

They might argue that if we must have statues, they should honour the dispossessed, rather than those who robbed them. That sounds like a more convincing argument.