Edward Colston/Trans rights/Stamp collecting
Comments
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The word comes from the Vandals who sacked and looted Rome. You'd be hard pressed to believe the actions in Bristol were more serious than that.nickice said:
Using a word like vandalism really doesn't do justice to the scenes I watched on the news.rick_chasey said:Just to be clear, folk who are upset by the vandalism.
Which bothers you more, that a statue of the UK's biggest slave trader is still up, or the vandalism of said statue?0 -
I mean in it's modern meaning it doesn't tend to be used synonymously with destroyed. Vandalising a building would probably mean smashing some stuff up in it smashing some windows and I'm sure the Vandals did more than that.Pross said:
The word comes from the Vandals who sacked and looted Rome. You'd be hard pressed to believe the actions in Bristol were more serious than that.nickice said:
Using a word like vandalism really doesn't do justice to the scenes I watched on the news.rick_chasey said:Just to be clear, folk who are upset by the vandalism.
Which bothers you more, that a statue of the UK's biggest slave trader is still up, or the vandalism of said statue?
Maybe toppling would be better.0 -
Saddam was still leader (or had just been deposed) when that statue was brought down. And Iraq was hardly a democracy. Do you not see the difference or are you just being obtuse?Pross said:
True, the Yanks should have put the statue of Saddam back until there was a vote for it to be taken down.nickice said:If you want to get rid of a statue you do it by democratic means. Or you can form a mob and people will find excuses for you.
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Quite like that. Group of suspected topplers spotted moving towards town centre.nickice said:
I mean in it's modern meaning it doesn't tend to be used synonymously with destroyed. Vandalising a building would probably mean smashing some stuff up in it smashing some windows and I'm sure the Vandals did more than that.Pross said:
The word comes from the Vandals who sacked and looted Rome. You'd be hard pressed to believe the actions in Bristol were more serious than that.nickice said:
Using a word like vandalism really doesn't do justice to the scenes I watched on the news.rick_chasey said:Just to be clear, folk who are upset by the vandalism.
Which bothers you more, that a statue of the UK's biggest slave trader is still up, or the vandalism of said statue?
Maybe toppling would be better.- Genesis Croix de Fer
- Dolan Tuono0 -
This 200 year old pub sign is to be removed in Ashbourne.
[Castle Donington Ladies FC - going up in '22]0 -
I think you underestimate this movement if you think Churchill is safe. They've already gone after George Washington and Benjamin Franklin.rick_chasey said:
Who are we talking about here?nickice said:
Well what's your opinion? I don't care much for statues of businessmen as it often turns out they were pretty horrible people. I'm pretty wary of tearing down existing statues as I think it really opens a can of worms. They'll be after the Churchill one next.rick_chasey said:
It's up to everyone to make up their own mind Nick.nickice said:
So slave-trading is beyond the line and gets the statue taken down but holding slaves doesn't? I'm just trying to find the criteria.rick_chasey said:
Erm, not really in comparison to kidnapping tens of thousands of people to enslave them and being chill when around a quarter of them die on ships en route to their life of slavery. Kind of hard to come back from that really.nickice said:
Yes, he was a racist (though probably wasn't considered to be more racist than most people at the time). But, then again, didn't Edward Colston also do a lot of good? That doesn't negate the bad but, as you said, people are complex. After all, he was a slave trader when some people who are considered great men held slaves.rick_chasey said:
I mean, he did lots of good things and I think it would be hard to get anyone to agree to removing his statue.blazing_saddles said:
How about Winston Churchill, seeing his plinth was tagged with the racist word?kingstongraham said:
Give some examples of statues of people who on balance were thoroughly bad sorts like Colston, and we can decide if they should stay or go.nickice said:
Where do we draw the line? There are a lot of statues of basically horrible people who did horrible things.rjsterry said:
The Colston statue was straightforward commemoration of someone who gave a lot of money to the city. It wasn't anything to do with art or great sculpture.john80 said:
I am sure whatever art work you put up someone can vandalise whilst citing some historical reasoning. Van Gogh might well have been either an early hallucinogenic drug user and created an entire industry. One eared mad man whose paintings should definitely be burnt.DeVlaeminck said:It's probably better it doesn't go back up, maybe stick it in a local museum with some other stuff related to local history.
I don't think it's totally clear cut and I can understand the existence of the statue causing upset as I can understand the tearing down of a local landmark causing upset.
Thing is you can erect another statue of something else and let's be honest so many well loved buildings are pulled down in the name of profit it's hard to make the case this statue is of huge importance that something else relating to Bristol's history couldn't replace it.
The trouble with these things is you can often find a reason why someone isn't deserving of a statue. I mean trafficking slaves is a pretty big reason but you get objections made to statues of Churchill, there's an ongoing debate about whether Thatcher should be remembered with a statue, if it turns out when the papers are released properly that Martin Luther King did indeed encourage a rape should his memorials be torn down?
Personally I'd rather they put up art work rather than statues of the great and the good in the first place.
Obviously these particular protestors came under prepared and didn't have the heavy lifting gear to do a proper job.
He was however obviously a racist. This is (very) well documented for anyone who wants to pay attention to it.
I mean, I think we should all be able to recognise that most people, as in life, aren't either great or awful and are different shades of in between.
In the case of Churchill, in case it isn't obvious, he led a democracy against one of the most murderous governments (who certainly had a pre-occupation for ethnic cleansing that Churchill did not have) the world has ever seen and refused to accommodate them despite pressure internally, and that doesn't suddenly disappear when you look at what else he did.
But then, nor does that erase his views on races in general.
I think we should all be grown up enough to understand that people are complex.
And, to be clear, the discussion at the time was that slave trading was really not a good thing to be doing, and a bunch of people who wanted to make a lot of money.
What he does show is what the purpose of philanthropy often can be; whitewashing (pun intended) your past. Given it's a cycling forum I might as well drop in the Armstrong/livestrong chat, which many posters felt was an attempt to whitewash his nasty behaviour in his day job.
Churchill is not going to have his statue taken down any time soon.
I generally don't go into the whole 'great people' genre of history anyway, so I don't spend huge amounts of time trying to wrestle with the morality and judgements of individual lives. It's a bit too much of a soap opera for me. I'm more interested in the structural side and more macro topics.
If you think Colston is a can of worms, wait till you check out the debate in Belgium about king Leopold II statues...0 -
I dunno, you burn down the capital of one empire and you're marked for life. Can't help thinking of the Visigoths as people with fluorescent vests and too much eyeliner.nickice said:
I mean in it's modern meaning it doesn't tend to be used synonymously with destroyed. Vandalising a building would probably mean smashing some stuff up in it smashing some windows and I'm sure the Vandals did more than that.Pross said:
The word comes from the Vandals who sacked and looted Rome. You'd be hard pressed to believe the actions in Bristol were more serious than that.nickice said:
Using a word like vandalism really doesn't do justice to the scenes I watched on the news.rick_chasey said:Just to be clear, folk who are upset by the vandalism.
Which bothers you more, that a statue of the UK's biggest slave trader is still up, or the vandalism of said statue?
Maybe toppling would be better.1985 Mercian King of Mercia - work in progress (Hah! Who am I kidding?)
Pinnacle Monzonite
Part of the anti-growth coalition1 -
I thought this struck quite a good tone.
As a side note, Johnson should really watch his back.1985 Mercian King of Mercia - work in progress (Hah! Who am I kidding?)
Pinnacle Monzonite
Part of the anti-growth coalition2 -
Good statement. Pleases everyone I'd have thought (well most anyway)rjsterry said:I thought this struck quite a good tone.
As a side note, Johnson should really watch his back.0 -
It's difficult to argue that these Enlightenment founding father types didn't have a bit of a blind spot when it came to their ideas on universal rights and freedoms. It's not as though there was no one making the case against slavery at the time either. Wesley was preaching against it and Wesley had a big following in Bristol. Trouble is, those plantations won't run themselves.nickice said:
I think you underestimate this movement if you think Churchill is safe. They've already gone after George Washington and Benjamin Franklin.rick_chasey said:
Who are we talking about here?nickice said:
Well what's your opinion? I don't care much for statues of businessmen as it often turns out they were pretty horrible people. I'm pretty wary of tearing down existing statues as I think it really opens a can of worms. They'll be after the Churchill one next.rick_chasey said:
It's up to everyone to make up their own mind Nick.nickice said:
So slave-trading is beyond the line and gets the statue taken down but holding slaves doesn't? I'm just trying to find the criteria.rick_chasey said:
Erm, not really in comparison to kidnapping tens of thousands of people to enslave them and being chill when around a quarter of them die on ships en route to their life of slavery. Kind of hard to come back from that really.nickice said:
Yes, he was a racist (though probably wasn't considered to be more racist than most people at the time). But, then again, didn't Edward Colston also do a lot of good? That doesn't negate the bad but, as you said, people are complex. After all, he was a slave trader when some people who are considered great men held slaves.rick_chasey said:
I mean, he did lots of good things and I think it would be hard to get anyone to agree to removing his statue.blazing_saddles said:
How about Winston Churchill, seeing his plinth was tagged with the racist word?kingstongraham said:
Give some examples of statues of people who on balance were thoroughly bad sorts like Colston, and we can decide if they should stay or go.nickice said:
Where do we draw the line? There are a lot of statues of basically horrible people who did horrible things.rjsterry said:
The Colston statue was straightforward commemoration of someone who gave a lot of money to the city. It wasn't anything to do with art or great sculpture.john80 said:
I am sure whatever art work you put up someone can vandalise whilst citing some historical reasoning. Van Gogh might well have been either an early hallucinogenic drug user and created an entire industry. One eared mad man whose paintings should definitely be burnt.DeVlaeminck said:It's probably better it doesn't go back up, maybe stick it in a local museum with some other stuff related to local history.
I don't think it's totally clear cut and I can understand the existence of the statue causing upset as I can understand the tearing down of a local landmark causing upset.
Thing is you can erect another statue of something else and let's be honest so many well loved buildings are pulled down in the name of profit it's hard to make the case this statue is of huge importance that something else relating to Bristol's history couldn't replace it.
The trouble with these things is you can often find a reason why someone isn't deserving of a statue. I mean trafficking slaves is a pretty big reason but you get objections made to statues of Churchill, there's an ongoing debate about whether Thatcher should be remembered with a statue, if it turns out when the papers are released properly that Martin Luther King did indeed encourage a rape should his memorials be torn down?
Personally I'd rather they put up art work rather than statues of the great and the good in the first place.
Obviously these particular protestors came under prepared and didn't have the heavy lifting gear to do a proper job.
He was however obviously a racist. This is (very) well documented for anyone who wants to pay attention to it.
I mean, I think we should all be able to recognise that most people, as in life, aren't either great or awful and are different shades of in between.
In the case of Churchill, in case it isn't obvious, he led a democracy against one of the most murderous governments (who certainly had a pre-occupation for ethnic cleansing that Churchill did not have) the world has ever seen and refused to accommodate them despite pressure internally, and that doesn't suddenly disappear when you look at what else he did.
But then, nor does that erase his views on races in general.
I think we should all be grown up enough to understand that people are complex.
And, to be clear, the discussion at the time was that slave trading was really not a good thing to be doing, and a bunch of people who wanted to make a lot of money.
What he does show is what the purpose of philanthropy often can be; whitewashing (pun intended) your past. Given it's a cycling forum I might as well drop in the Armstrong/livestrong chat, which many posters felt was an attempt to whitewash his nasty behaviour in his day job.
Churchill is not going to have his statue taken down any time soon.
I generally don't go into the whole 'great people' genre of history anyway, so I don't spend huge amounts of time trying to wrestle with the morality and judgements of individual lives. It's a bit too much of a soap opera for me. I'm more interested in the structural side and more macro topics.
If you think Colston is a can of worms, wait till you check out the debate in Belgium about king Leopold II statues...1985 Mercian King of Mercia - work in progress (Hah! Who am I kidding?)
Pinnacle Monzonite
Part of the anti-growth coalition0 -
Considering he was supposed to be the inexperienced puppet brought in to do his boss's bidding he's been impressive. He's like a real politician!rjsterry said:I thought this struck quite a good tone.
As a side note, Johnson should really watch his back.0 -
He went into bat for Cummings fairly hard so I'm not convinced he's there yet. And with 4 and a half more years, he'll soon have to be the early Osbourne years boogyman when he has to announce cuts to everything to pay for everyone to not work....rjsterry said:I thought this struck quite a good tone.
As a side note, Johnson should really watch his back.0 -
It's odd, isn't it, that the oppressed minorities don't often win in democratic votes?Pross said:
True, the Yanks should have put the statue of Saddam back until there was a vote for it to be taken down.nickice said:If you want to get rid of a statue you do it by democratic means. Or you can form a mob and people will find excuses for you.
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Worryingly close to the death ratio.TheBigBean said:0 -
“New York has the haircuts, London has the trousers, but Belfast has the reason!0
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Plenty of people make the case against the textile industry today, but the average person would rather look good and spend less than worry about other people living in appaling conditions.rjsterry said:
It's difficult to argue that these Enlightenment founding father types didn't have a bit of a blind spot when it came to their ideas on universal rights and freedoms. It's not as though there was no one making the case against slavery at the time either. Wesley was preaching against it and Wesley had a big following in Bristol. Trouble is, those plantations won't run themselves.nickice said:
I think you underestimate this movement if you think Churchill is safe. They've already gone after George Washington and Benjamin Franklin.rick_chasey said:
Who are we talking about here?nickice said:
Well what's your opinion? I don't care much for statues of businessmen as it often turns out they were pretty horrible people. I'm pretty wary of tearing down existing statues as I think it really opens a can of worms. They'll be after the Churchill one next.rick_chasey said:
It's up to everyone to make up their own mind Nick.nickice said:
So slave-trading is beyond the line and gets the statue taken down but holding slaves doesn't? I'm just trying to find the criteria.rick_chasey said:
Erm, not really in comparison to kidnapping tens of thousands of people to enslave them and being chill when around a quarter of them die on ships en route to their life of slavery. Kind of hard to come back from that really.nickice said:
Yes, he was a racist (though probably wasn't considered to be more racist than most people at the time). But, then again, didn't Edward Colston also do a lot of good? That doesn't negate the bad but, as you said, people are complex. After all, he was a slave trader when some people who are considered great men held slaves.rick_chasey said:
I mean, he did lots of good things and I think it would be hard to get anyone to agree to removing his statue.blazing_saddles said:
How about Winston Churchill, seeing his plinth was tagged with the racist word?kingstongraham said:
Give some examples of statues of people who on balance were thoroughly bad sorts like Colston, and we can decide if they should stay or go.nickice said:
Where do we draw the line? There are a lot of statues of basically horrible people who did horrible things.rjsterry said:
The Colston statue was straightforward commemoration of someone who gave a lot of money to the city. It wasn't anything to do with art or great sculpture.john80 said:
I am sure whatever art work you put up someone can vandalise whilst citing some historical reasoning. Van Gogh might well have been either an early hallucinogenic drug user and created an entire industry. One eared mad man whose paintings should definitely be burnt.DeVlaeminck said:It's probably better it doesn't go back up, maybe stick it in a local museum with some other stuff related to local history.
I don't think it's totally clear cut and I can understand the existence of the statue causing upset as I can understand the tearing down of a local landmark causing upset.
Thing is you can erect another statue of something else and let's be honest so many well loved buildings are pulled down in the name of profit it's hard to make the case this statue is of huge importance that something else relating to Bristol's history couldn't replace it.
The trouble with these things is you can often find a reason why someone isn't deserving of a statue. I mean trafficking slaves is a pretty big reason but you get objections made to statues of Churchill, there's an ongoing debate about whether Thatcher should be remembered with a statue, if it turns out when the papers are released properly that Martin Luther King did indeed encourage a rape should his memorials be torn down?
Personally I'd rather they put up art work rather than statues of the great and the good in the first place.
Obviously these particular protestors came under prepared and didn't have the heavy lifting gear to do a proper job.
He was however obviously a racist. This is (very) well documented for anyone who wants to pay attention to it.
I mean, I think we should all be able to recognise that most people, as in life, aren't either great or awful and are different shades of in between.
In the case of Churchill, in case it isn't obvious, he led a democracy against one of the most murderous governments (who certainly had a pre-occupation for ethnic cleansing that Churchill did not have) the world has ever seen and refused to accommodate them despite pressure internally, and that doesn't suddenly disappear when you look at what else he did.
But then, nor does that erase his views on races in general.
I think we should all be grown up enough to understand that people are complex.
And, to be clear, the discussion at the time was that slave trading was really not a good thing to be doing, and a bunch of people who wanted to make a lot of money.
What he does show is what the purpose of philanthropy often can be; whitewashing (pun intended) your past. Given it's a cycling forum I might as well drop in the Armstrong/livestrong chat, which many posters felt was an attempt to whitewash his nasty behaviour in his day job.
Churchill is not going to have his statue taken down any time soon.
I generally don't go into the whole 'great people' genre of history anyway, so I don't spend huge amounts of time trying to wrestle with the morality and judgements of individual lives. It's a bit too much of a soap opera for me. I'm more interested in the structural side and more macro topics.
If you think Colston is a can of worms, wait till you check out the debate in Belgium about king Leopold II statues...
1 -
True enough.TheBigBean said:
Plenty of people make the case against the textile industry today, but the average person would rather look good and spend less than worry about other people living in appaling conditions.rjsterry said:
It's difficult to argue that these Enlightenment founding father types didn't have a bit of a blind spot when it came to their ideas on universal rights and freedoms. It's not as though there was no one making the case against slavery at the time either. Wesley was preaching against it and Wesley had a big following in Bristol. Trouble is, those plantations won't run themselves.nickice said:
I think you underestimate this movement if you think Churchill is safe. They've already gone after George Washington and Benjamin Franklin.rick_chasey said:
Who are we talking about here?nickice said:
Well what's your opinion? I don't care much for statues of businessmen as it often turns out they were pretty horrible people. I'm pretty wary of tearing down existing statues as I think it really opens a can of worms. They'll be after the Churchill one next.rick_chasey said:
It's up to everyone to make up their own mind Nick.nickice said:
So slave-trading is beyond the line and gets the statue taken down but holding slaves doesn't? I'm just trying to find the criteria.rick_chasey said:
Erm, not really in comparison to kidnapping tens of thousands of people to enslave them and being chill when around a quarter of them die on ships en route to their life of slavery. Kind of hard to come back from that really.nickice said:
Yes, he was a racist (though probably wasn't considered to be more racist than most people at the time). But, then again, didn't Edward Colston also do a lot of good? That doesn't negate the bad but, as you said, people are complex. After all, he was a slave trader when some people who are considered great men held slaves.rick_chasey said:
I mean, he did lots of good things and I think it would be hard to get anyone to agree to removing his statue.blazing_saddles said:
How about Winston Churchill, seeing his plinth was tagged with the racist word?kingstongraham said:
Give some examples of statues of people who on balance were thoroughly bad sorts like Colston, and we can decide if they should stay or go.nickice said:
Where do we draw the line? There are a lot of statues of basically horrible people who did horrible things.rjsterry said:
The Colston statue was straightforward commemoration of someone who gave a lot of money to the city. It wasn't anything to do with art or great sculpture.john80 said:
I am sure whatever art work you put up someone can vandalise whilst citing some historical reasoning. Van Gogh might well have been either an early hallucinogenic drug user and created an entire industry. One eared mad man whose paintings should definitely be burnt.DeVlaeminck said:It's probably better it doesn't go back up, maybe stick it in a local museum with some other stuff related to local history.
I don't think it's totally clear cut and I can understand the existence of the statue causing upset as I can understand the tearing down of a local landmark causing upset.
Thing is you can erect another statue of something else and let's be honest so many well loved buildings are pulled down in the name of profit it's hard to make the case this statue is of huge importance that something else relating to Bristol's history couldn't replace it.
The trouble with these things is you can often find a reason why someone isn't deserving of a statue. I mean trafficking slaves is a pretty big reason but you get objections made to statues of Churchill, there's an ongoing debate about whether Thatcher should be remembered with a statue, if it turns out when the papers are released properly that Martin Luther King did indeed encourage a rape should his memorials be torn down?
Personally I'd rather they put up art work rather than statues of the great and the good in the first place.
Obviously these particular protestors came under prepared and didn't have the heavy lifting gear to do a proper job.
He was however obviously a racist. This is (very) well documented for anyone who wants to pay attention to it.
I mean, I think we should all be able to recognise that most people, as in life, aren't either great or awful and are different shades of in between.
In the case of Churchill, in case it isn't obvious, he led a democracy against one of the most murderous governments (who certainly had a pre-occupation for ethnic cleansing that Churchill did not have) the world has ever seen and refused to accommodate them despite pressure internally, and that doesn't suddenly disappear when you look at what else he did.
But then, nor does that erase his views on races in general.
I think we should all be grown up enough to understand that people are complex.
And, to be clear, the discussion at the time was that slave trading was really not a good thing to be doing, and a bunch of people who wanted to make a lot of money.
What he does show is what the purpose of philanthropy often can be; whitewashing (pun intended) your past. Given it's a cycling forum I might as well drop in the Armstrong/livestrong chat, which many posters felt was an attempt to whitewash his nasty behaviour in his day job.
Churchill is not going to have his statue taken down any time soon.
I generally don't go into the whole 'great people' genre of history anyway, so I don't spend huge amounts of time trying to wrestle with the morality and judgements of individual lives. It's a bit too much of a soap opera for me. I'm more interested in the structural side and more macro topics.
If you think Colston is a can of worms, wait till you check out the debate in Belgium about king Leopold II statues...1985 Mercian King of Mercia - work in progress (Hah! Who am I kidding?)
Pinnacle Monzonite
Part of the anti-growth coalition0 -
Frankie Boyle: Feel free to tweet your outrage on a mobile phone made by a ten-year-old in China.TheBigBean said:
Plenty of people make the case against the textile industry today, but the average person would rather look good and spend less than worry about other people living in appaling conditions.rjsterry said:
It's difficult to argue that these Enlightenment founding father types didn't have a bit of a blind spot when it came to their ideas on universal rights and freedoms. It's not as though there was no one making the case against slavery at the time either. Wesley was preaching against it and Wesley had a big following in Bristol. Trouble is, those plantations won't run themselves.nickice said:
I think you underestimate this movement if you think Churchill is safe. They've already gone after George Washington and Benjamin Franklin.rick_chasey said:
Who are we talking about here?nickice said:
Well what's your opinion? I don't care much for statues of businessmen as it often turns out they were pretty horrible people. I'm pretty wary of tearing down existing statues as I think it really opens a can of worms. They'll be after the Churchill one next.rick_chasey said:
It's up to everyone to make up their own mind Nick.nickice said:
So slave-trading is beyond the line and gets the statue taken down but holding slaves doesn't? I'm just trying to find the criteria.rick_chasey said:
Erm, not really in comparison to kidnapping tens of thousands of people to enslave them and being chill when around a quarter of them die on ships en route to their life of slavery. Kind of hard to come back from that really.nickice said:
Yes, he was a racist (though probably wasn't considered to be more racist than most people at the time). But, then again, didn't Edward Colston also do a lot of good? That doesn't negate the bad but, as you said, people are complex. After all, he was a slave trader when some people who are considered great men held slaves.rick_chasey said:
I mean, he did lots of good things and I think it would be hard to get anyone to agree to removing his statue.blazing_saddles said:
How about Winston Churchill, seeing his plinth was tagged with the racist word?kingstongraham said:
Give some examples of statues of people who on balance were thoroughly bad sorts like Colston, and we can decide if they should stay or go.nickice said:
Where do we draw the line? There are a lot of statues of basically horrible people who did horrible things.rjsterry said:
The Colston statue was straightforward commemoration of someone who gave a lot of money to the city. It wasn't anything to do with art or great sculpture.john80 said:
I am sure whatever art work you put up someone can vandalise whilst citing some historical reasoning. Van Gogh might well have been either an early hallucinogenic drug user and created an entire industry. One eared mad man whose paintings should definitely be burnt.DeVlaeminck said:It's probably better it doesn't go back up, maybe stick it in a local museum with some other stuff related to local history.
I don't think it's totally clear cut and I can understand the existence of the statue causing upset as I can understand the tearing down of a local landmark causing upset.
Thing is you can erect another statue of something else and let's be honest so many well loved buildings are pulled down in the name of profit it's hard to make the case this statue is of huge importance that something else relating to Bristol's history couldn't replace it.
The trouble with these things is you can often find a reason why someone isn't deserving of a statue. I mean trafficking slaves is a pretty big reason but you get objections made to statues of Churchill, there's an ongoing debate about whether Thatcher should be remembered with a statue, if it turns out when the papers are released properly that Martin Luther King did indeed encourage a rape should his memorials be torn down?
Personally I'd rather they put up art work rather than statues of the great and the good in the first place.
Obviously these particular protestors came under prepared and didn't have the heavy lifting gear to do a proper job.
He was however obviously a racist. This is (very) well documented for anyone who wants to pay attention to it.
I mean, I think we should all be able to recognise that most people, as in life, aren't either great or awful and are different shades of in between.
In the case of Churchill, in case it isn't obvious, he led a democracy against one of the most murderous governments (who certainly had a pre-occupation for ethnic cleansing that Churchill did not have) the world has ever seen and refused to accommodate them despite pressure internally, and that doesn't suddenly disappear when you look at what else he did.
But then, nor does that erase his views on races in general.
I think we should all be grown up enough to understand that people are complex.
And, to be clear, the discussion at the time was that slave trading was really not a good thing to be doing, and a bunch of people who wanted to make a lot of money.
What he does show is what the purpose of philanthropy often can be; whitewashing (pun intended) your past. Given it's a cycling forum I might as well drop in the Armstrong/livestrong chat, which many posters felt was an attempt to whitewash his nasty behaviour in his day job.
Churchill is not going to have his statue taken down any time soon.
I generally don't go into the whole 'great people' genre of history anyway, so I don't spend huge amounts of time trying to wrestle with the morality and judgements of individual lives. It's a bit too much of a soap opera for me. I'm more interested in the structural side and more macro topics.
If you think Colston is a can of worms, wait till you check out the debate in Belgium about king Leopold II statues...1 -
You have to learn to love and embrace the hypocrisy that comes with a modern society and it's technology.nickice said:
Frankie Boyle: Feel free to tweet your outrage on a mobile phone made by a ten-year-old in China.TheBigBean said:
Plenty of people make the case against the textile industry today, but the average person would rather look good and spend less than worry about other people living in appaling conditions.rjsterry said:
It's difficult to argue that these Enlightenment founding father types didn't have a bit of a blind spot when it came to their ideas on universal rights and freedoms. It's not as though there was no one making the case against slavery at the time either. Wesley was preaching against it and Wesley had a big following in Bristol. Trouble is, those plantations won't run themselves.nickice said:
I think you underestimate this movement if you think Churchill is safe. They've already gone after George Washington and Benjamin Franklin.rick_chasey said:
Who are we talking about here?nickice said:
Well what's your opinion? I don't care much for statues of businessmen as it often turns out they were pretty horrible people. I'm pretty wary of tearing down existing statues as I think it really opens a can of worms. They'll be after the Churchill one next.rick_chasey said:
It's up to everyone to make up their own mind Nick.nickice said:
So slave-trading is beyond the line and gets the statue taken down but holding slaves doesn't? I'm just trying to find the criteria.rick_chasey said:
Erm, not really in comparison to kidnapping tens of thousands of people to enslave them and being chill when around a quarter of them die on ships en route to their life of slavery. Kind of hard to come back from that really.nickice said:
Yes, he was a racist (though probably wasn't considered to be more racist than most people at the time). But, then again, didn't Edward Colston also do a lot of good? That doesn't negate the bad but, as you said, people are complex. After all, he was a slave trader when some people who are considered great men held slaves.rick_chasey said:
I mean, he did lots of good things and I think it would be hard to get anyone to agree to removing his statue.blazing_saddles said:
How about Winston Churchill, seeing his plinth was tagged with the racist word?kingstongraham said:
Give some examples of statues of people who on balance were thoroughly bad sorts like Colston, and we can decide if they should stay or go.nickice said:
Where do we draw the line? There are a lot of statues of basically horrible people who did horrible things.rjsterry said:
The Colston statue was straightforward commemoration of someone who gave a lot of money to the city. It wasn't anything to do with art or great sculpture.john80 said:
I am sure whatever art work you put up someone can vandalise whilst citing some historical reasoning. Van Gogh might well have been either an early hallucinogenic drug user and created an entire industry. One eared mad man whose paintings should definitely be burnt.DeVlaeminck said:It's probably better it doesn't go back up, maybe stick it in a local museum with some other stuff related to local history.
I don't think it's totally clear cut and I can understand the existence of the statue causing upset as I can understand the tearing down of a local landmark causing upset.
Thing is you can erect another statue of something else and let's be honest so many well loved buildings are pulled down in the name of profit it's hard to make the case this statue is of huge importance that something else relating to Bristol's history couldn't replace it.
The trouble with these things is you can often find a reason why someone isn't deserving of a statue. I mean trafficking slaves is a pretty big reason but you get objections made to statues of Churchill, there's an ongoing debate about whether Thatcher should be remembered with a statue, if it turns out when the papers are released properly that Martin Luther King did indeed encourage a rape should his memorials be torn down?
Personally I'd rather they put up art work rather than statues of the great and the good in the first place.
Obviously these particular protestors came under prepared and didn't have the heavy lifting gear to do a proper job.
He was however obviously a racist. This is (very) well documented for anyone who wants to pay attention to it.
I mean, I think we should all be able to recognise that most people, as in life, aren't either great or awful and are different shades of in between.
In the case of Churchill, in case it isn't obvious, he led a democracy against one of the most murderous governments (who certainly had a pre-occupation for ethnic cleansing that Churchill did not have) the world has ever seen and refused to accommodate them despite pressure internally, and that doesn't suddenly disappear when you look at what else he did.
But then, nor does that erase his views on races in general.
I think we should all be grown up enough to understand that people are complex.
And, to be clear, the discussion at the time was that slave trading was really not a good thing to be doing, and a bunch of people who wanted to make a lot of money.
What he does show is what the purpose of philanthropy often can be; whitewashing (pun intended) your past. Given it's a cycling forum I might as well drop in the Armstrong/livestrong chat, which many posters felt was an attempt to whitewash his nasty behaviour in his day job.
Churchill is not going to have his statue taken down any time soon.
I generally don't go into the whole 'great people' genre of history anyway, so I don't spend huge amounts of time trying to wrestle with the morality and judgements of individual lives. It's a bit too much of a soap opera for me. I'm more interested in the structural side and more macro topics.
If you think Colston is a can of worms, wait till you check out the debate in Belgium about king Leopold II statues..."Science is a tool for cheaters". An anonymous French PE teacher.1 -
One other thought on the Colston statue. There is a very ancient tradition of one generation defacing the monuments of their predecessors.
1985 Mercian King of Mercia - work in progress (Hah! Who am I kidding?)
Pinnacle Monzonite
Part of the anti-growth coalition0 -
There was no march or outrage when this black life was lost
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-52964754
#BlacklivesHyprocrisy0 -
You seem to be lost again.1985 Mercian King of Mercia - work in progress (Hah! Who am I kidding?)
Pinnacle Monzonite
Part of the anti-growth coalition0 -
Does he post this nonsense elsewhere?0
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To follow on from the past is not history comment on another thread, it's worth remembering that this statue wasn't put up till long after the guy was dead to begin with.
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rick_chasey said:
To follow on from the past is not history comment on another thread, it's worth remembering that this statue wasn't put up till long after the guy was dead to begin with.
That the late Victorians could erect it without worrying enough to reference how he accumulated his wealth says quite a bit about their mindset too.
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Exactly. With a load of guff about how wise and virtuous he was inscribed below. The statue was put up in the 1890s when maritime Bristol was very much past its peak, so there's a strong whiff of looking back to some imagined 'good old days'. Revisionism is nothing new.rick_chasey said:To follow on from the past is not history comment on another thread, it's worth remembering that this statue wasn't put up till long after the guy was dead to begin with.
1985 Mercian King of Mercia - work in progress (Hah! Who am I kidding?)
Pinnacle Monzonite
Part of the anti-growth coalition0 -
As someone else commented - statues are put up to rewrite historyrjsterry said:
Exactly. With a load of guff about how wise and virtuous he was inscribed below. The statue was put up in the 1890s when maritime Bristol was very much past its peak, so there's a strong whiff of looking back to some imagined 'good old days'. Revisionism is nothing new.rick_chasey said:To follow on from the past is not history comment on another thread, it's worth remembering that this statue wasn't put up till long after the guy was dead to begin with.
“New York has the haircuts, London has the trousers, but Belfast has the reason!0 -
- Genesis Croix de Fer
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