The Politics Thread 2020

[Andicis]

18 minutes ago, Highgate said:

History should be about telling the whole story as much as possible....including the uncomfortable truths...not just creating and protecting icons for the sake of it.

Yeah, I wouldn't have a problem with the whole story being told, given context to the world at the time. However, these current attacks on historical figures are simply not doing that, they only tell the negatives and provide no context whatsoever. It's also not the answer.

[Curtains]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-52969447/winston-churchill-hero-or-villain

[Highgate]

6 minutes ago, Andicis said:

Yeah, I wouldn't have a problem with the whole story being told, given context to the world at the time. However, these current attacks on historical figures are simply not doing that, they only tell the negatives and provide no context whatsoever. It's also not the answer.

Well I'm certainly not in favour of defacing statues and certainly not of people like Churchill who for all his many faults, has played such an undeniably crucial role in British history.   And I'd also agree that it's hardly ideal from a law and order point of view to have groups of people removing and vandalizing statues or monuments as they wish even when their protests as justified, as in this case.  It's not a precedent I'd like to see set as who knows what the next set of protesters on the streets will be and what their agenda will be. 

On the other hand, who can argue that Colston didn't deserve to be dumped in the harbour, given his past.  The bigger problem for me is why that statue hadn't been removed by consensus before we reached this point. 

[Alph]

20 minutes ago, Highgate said:

I can see you love history and that's to your credit in my opinion, but I don't understand why you consider of full re-examination of some historical figures to be an attack on British history or an attack on history in general.  Shouldn't historians and the general public want to tell the full story of a person's past and not gloss over their negative actions and beliefs.  History should be about telling the whole story as much as possible....including the uncomfortable truths...not just creating and protecting icons for the sake of it.  People can take pride in their nation by all means,  or at least have affection for it, but the real nation and it's real past....not a fictional version. 

Yeah I agree with you I think I might have just made my point badly. It's the toppling and vandalism of monuments that has me crying in my soup! 

You're completely right. 

The history of Christopher Columbus stopped short (in my education) of mentioning the dark side. It shouldn't have. 

The monuments are there to celebrate, or whatever other more suitable word, how these people affected the course of history. 

I think a more fitting positive response to the Columbus statue in Boston would be to expand on it. Next to it is this African slave who became free. Why? Well, I'm glad you asked... etc etc 

The Colston statue is really interesting. Should it be left up? Should it be taken down? Should there be some context added to it? But no, it gets pulled down. I know he was a slave trader. Maybe his relevance had expired. I don't see how because black slavery is still relevant. But it was for people to decide not vandals. 

Much rather see a statue of... er... yeah my black history knowledge without google proves a point... but yeah. 

Probably end up with statues all over the tip! 

[AndyinLiverpool]

13 minutes ago, TramRam said:

 

Herb Jeffries (who darkened his skin) and Spencer Williams in Harlem on the Prairie (1937)

Woody Strode in Sergeant Rutledge (1960)

Bill Cosby and Yaphet Kotto in Man and Boy (1971)

Sidney Poitier and Harry Belafonte in Buck and the Preacher (1972)

Cleavon Little in Blazin' Saddles (1974) tho you took joy in metioning "a spoof western satirising racism" I do believe Mel Brooks saw it as a Film.

The post was..".I wad reading something recently about how a large proportion if cowboys were black, but they didn't seem to make the cut in those old Westerns"

I merely showed THEY DID, Now if you're infering i'm mistaken or " proves the opposite of what you want it to"

How so?

Are they black, Are they actors, Are they in cowboy films?

I had to look up Herb Jeffries. Never heard of him. Turns out he was not black. The others were.

My point is that you have come up with 7 examples in 5 different films. For context, that's fewer westerns than Randolph Scott made 1955-59 (12). Wikipedia lists 53 Hollywood westerns made in 1955 alone.

Now, nobody would ever put forward a western film as an accurate portrayal of the actual American west but there's a massive imbalance. How many of the examples you cite required the character to be black? How many white characters in westerns require the character to be white? The percentages are miles apart.

The suggestion here is not that there have been NO black actors in westerns but that the numbers are so miniscule and with skin colour being essential to the plot that appearances are notable in themselves.

[sonofmidnight]

I'm going to tell you this true story about my dear old much loved and missed old dad. During WW2 he was captured by the Germans and forced to march from an Italian POW camp to one in Germany. Many men dropped dead en route. He spent 3 years in the camp and came out permanently disabled as he was shot trying to escape. About 20 years later we were on a package holiday in Spain. There wasn't enough room at our table for all our party so my dad was moved to another table occupied by a group of German men. To my utter amazement my dad was laughing and joking with these men even when he found out their roles in the war. When I asked him later how he could be so affable. His reply was well it all happened in the past and the important thing is that we learn from it and move on. What's done is done. I was and still am so proud of my dad.

[Alph]

52 minutes ago, AndyinLiverpool said:

I used to live in the Czech Republic. When I arrived there in 1996, they had been pulling down statues for over half a decade. When I left there for the final time in 2009, they were still pulling them down. 

I can guarantee that Czechs have neither forgotten who those people were nor their relevance to Czech history.

I find myself ambivalent to tearing down statues. On the one hand, nobody should be learning history from statues. On the other hand, the fact that statues exist tells us quite a lot about the society we are as well as giving us a snapshot of the times when they were put up. Who put these statues up? What kind of mandate for doing so? What was the motivation for doing so?

Here in Liverpool, we have statues of (eg) Edward VII, Victoria, the Duke of Wellington, Ken Dodd, Cilla Black, the Beatles. Would these people be forgotten without their statues? No, though I'm not sure Cilla Black will be especially well known in 100 years. Would the lived environment be a worse place without them? probably not. Are they works of art? No, though equestrian statues seem to do it for some people. (we even have a few people that want to change the name of Penny Lane because a successful slave trader was also called Penny)

What we should be asking, in my opinion, is why do we put these things up? What does it tell us about ourselves that we put statues up at all? Is it in lieu of something else? A case in point is the statue of Richard I outside parliament. It was put up in the 1850s? Why? Why him? He hated England, had no democratic credentials to speak of and we have no idea what he actually looked like. What does it say about us as a society that we should do such a thing? Are we still that kind of society?

Walk around any city in the UK and you will see statues of generals and lords who did what exactly? Were born there and went on to do generally and lordy things that their class would lead them into anyway? A statue is a form of veneration. Next time you are out and about look at the statues you can see there and ask yourself why we venerate that individual.

I think every statue or monument tells it's own story. They are surely all put up as inspiration?

It is hard to tell with some who exactly they were trying to inspire. Cilla Black? Working class woman from Liverpool? Something in there maybe? I have no idea, blind date wasn't THAT good imo. 

The Clough/Taylor statue is one that might be relevant to help people get a feeling for why they exist. 

I kind of disagree about learning history from them. They tell you a little of something. They're billboards for history books! 

[WhiteHorseRam]

1 hour ago, Highgate said:

I understand the urge to defend the reputation of an understandably revered national hero, but I think you are sugar-coating his record somewhat.  It is more than merely his views that were distasteful it's many of his considered actions and prolonged policies were distasteful too.  Just take his record in Iraq, Kenya and India to name but 3 countries where his record is more than simply distasteful, it is horrendous.

I've no problem with the statue of Colston taking a dunk in the harbour, seems fitting enough to me, it should retire a to museum somewhere now I think. The most disappointing part of that whole story is that the people of Bristol hadn't taken his statue down long before now. 

Would anyone really consider pulling down the Colesseum?  That would be travesty.  It's an iconic building, and a good reminder in itself of the cruelty of the past, given that pretty much everyone knows what went on in there.

I agree entirely that Churchill deserves every credit for identifying, before many other, the threat presented by fascist Germany, and every credit for leading the fight against it.  Although I would say as soon as the US entered the war that it was over for Hitler and Germany, there was no way they could defeat the Red Army and the USA combined. 

I acknowledge that Churchill carried out some dark deeds. But on balance as Dr Mengele didn't get to Bengal, Iraq or Kenya I think he gets to stay in the 'good guy' column.

No Winston - no Allied win. As much as we talk it up, it also suits post 1945 USA and Russia to play down our contribution.

But context is all.

Lets view him alongside his contemporaries - Hitler, Mussolini, Tojo, Franco, Petain, Stalin, Chiang kai-shek, Quisling .... even the lovely Swedes sold the Nazis the iron they needed for their shells and tanks.  

If there had been no British Empire ....

There would have been bigger French/German/Spanish/Portuguese Empires. It was the age of imperialism. Even the Americans got a cheeky little one in at then end.

Also, a British bloke didn't just sit up in bed in 1550, and thought up slavery. It's been around forever. It was probably trying to sleep on numerous filthy mattresses in earshot of the protesters at the weekend.

As I have said before here the Past is a dark place - don't view stuff in isolation and apply some balance. Context is all. We must analyse both sides of the argument regarding these figures, so as per my previous post, lets stick with Prof Palmer and have some good interpretation.

[Curtains]

10 minutes ago, Dappled Ram said:

I'm going to tell you this true story about my dear old much loved and missed old dad. During WW2 he was captured by the Germans and forced to march from an Italian POW camp to one in Germany. Many men dropped dead en route. He spent 3 years in the camp and came out permanently disabled as he was shot trying to escape. About 20 years later we were on a package holiday in Spain. There wasn't enough room at our table for all our party so my dad was moved to another table occupied by a group of German men. To my utter amazement my dad was laughing and joking with these men even when he found out their roles in the war. When I asked him later how he could be so affable. His reply was well it all happened in the past and the important thing is that we learn from it and move on. What's done is done. I was and still am so proud of my dad.

My Grandad I was told got lost in no mans land but survived the war.    He never spoke about it.  
 

To me my Grandad was a hero. 

[AndyinLiverpool]

41 minutes ago, Curtains said:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-52969447/winston-churchill-hero-or-villain

We are, of course, living in reductive times. We don't seem to be able to accept that an individual has many facets, some good, some bad, some somewhere in the middle. My wife, for example, won't watch Frasier any more because Kelsey Grammar is a Trump supporter and won't watch Tom Cruise films because he's a dick. Fair cop on both of those things but there's no reason to cut off noses to spite faces.

Our heroes are not perfect and neither should we expect them to be.

Churchill was definitely someone who I wouldn't have got on with and had some abhorrent views . But the statues were not put up to honour his racism or his belief in the superiority of 'English speaking people' but for his wartime leadership. That ought to be enough.

[TramRam]

21 minutes ago, WhiteHorseRam said:

I acknowledge that Churchill carried out some dark deeds. But on balance as Dr Mengele didn't get to Bengal, Iraq or Kenya I think he gets to stay in the 'good guy' column.

No Winston - no Allied win. As much as we talk it up, it also suits post 1945 USA and Russia to play down our contribution.

But context is all.

Lets view him alongside his contemporaries - Hitler, Mussolini, Tojo, Franco, Petain, Stalin, Chiang kai-shek, Quisling .... even the lovely Swedes sold the Nazis the iron they needed for their shells and tanks.  

If there had been no British Empire ....

There would have been bigger French/German/Spanish/Portuguese Empires. It was the age of imperialism. Even the Americans got a cheeky little one in at then end.

Also, a British bloke didn't just sit up in bed in 1550, and thought up slavery. It's been around forever. It was probably trying to sleep on numerous filthy mattresses in earshot of the protesters at the weekend.

As I have said before here the Past is a dark place - don't view stuff in isolation and apply some balance. Context is all. We must analyse both sides of the argument regarding these figures, so as per my previous post, lets stick with Prof Palmer and have some good interpretation.

Who sold the black Africans to the White slave trader?

[Stive Pesley]

1 hour ago, AndyinLiverpool said:

Nobody teaches history via statues. 
We should be teaching it better in schools. 

Exactly - a lot of people seem to be missing the point about what statues represent.

If there is a statue of a once living person erected in a public place, then the context of that (unless explicitly stated otherwise) is that it's a celebration of that person and their achievements

It's absolutely fine, as time moves on and values change , for us to question whether that celebration is still appropriate or justified.

But, I've said multiple times already that in cases where that celebration no longer seems right by modern values - the statues should be moved from a celebratory location and preserved in a museum/historical setting with the full context of what they did that was good AND bad. Because if we're going to ask "does this person deserve celebration today? " it's just as important question to ask "why did we build a statue to them in the past?" 

That's how we learn from history

 

[Alph]

Don't know whether the BBC are fair with that article by retelling the story of Churchill and including his dirty washing. 

Or if they're stirring the pot and we all end up criticising him for not acknowledging the LGBT community. 

I don't think he will get elected again, you know. He's blown it. 

[Stive Pesley]

2 minutes ago, Alpha said:

Don't know whether the BBC are fair with that article by retelling the story of Churchill and including his dirty washing. 

Or if they're stirring the pot and we all end up criticising him for not acknowledging the LGBT community. 

I don't think he will get elected again, you know. He's blown it. 

I'm certainly taking my insurance policies elsewhere

[WhiteHorseRam]

Just now, SchtivePesley said:

I'm certainly taking my insurance policies elsewhere

For God's sake don't take them to Admiral .... 

[Archied]

3 hours ago, ariotofmyown said:

It's a good question and I should do more. A great part of BLM is teaching everyone what we can do to help. I think challenging the views of others is of some limited use. Hopefully the last couple of weeks has made everyone think more about how they could do more.

Your silence is violence then

[Alph]

38 minutes ago, SchtivePesley said:

Exactly - a lot of people seem to be missing the point about what statues represent.

If there is a statue of a once living person erected in a public place, then the context of that (unless explicitly stated otherwise) is that it's a celebration of that person and their achievements

It's absolutely fine, as time moves on and values change , for us to question whether that celebration is still appropriate or justified.

But, I've said multiple times already that in cases where that celebration no longer seems right by modern values - the statues should be moved from a celebratory location and preserved in a museum/historical setting with the full context of what they did that was good AND bad. Because if we're going to ask "does this person deserve celebration today? " it's just as important question to ask "why did we build a statue to them in the past?" 

That's how we learn from history

 

Completely agree. 

With Colston i'm not sure if it was the right decision to take it down or leave it up but give it some context. 

But the way it came down was wrong. 

That's why we have this horrible situation between defenders and attackers. It's opened up the door to criticising parts of Britains past we have suppressed (good thing) but also the door for everyone to start making cases for pulling down British monuments. 

Hopefully everything survives and it changes the way we think and the way we teach history. Maybe have more relevant monuments

Other topics are more complicated but British History or any history seems straight forward to me. Leave it alone unless we can agree it's purpose has expired/it does more harm than good. 

Colston the slave trader or Colston the philanthropist? You can see why it was causing debate even before all this. 

[Highgate]

23 minutes ago, WhiteHorseRam said:

I acknowledge that Churchill carried out some dark deeds. But on balance as Dr Mengele didn't get to Bengal, Iraq or Kenya I think he gets to stay in the 'good guy' column.  As evil as the Third Reich was, was it ever their intention to invade these countries ?  Was it ever Churchill's intention to save countries like these from Hitler ?

No Winston - no Allied win. As much as we talk it up, it also suits post 1945 USA and Russia to play down our contribution.

Obviously there are many crucial aspects to the Allied victory, Churchill being one of them, without doubt.  But even more important is Russia's role, just look at the numbers involved.  In fact had Germany not decided to switch their attentions from Britain to Russia, then Britain would have fallen like France before it despite Churchill's best efforts.  After the US joined the war in 1941, even if Britain had stood aside at that moment, do you really think Germany could have won? 

But context is all.

Lets view him alongside his contemporaries - Hitler, Mussolini, Tojo, Franco, Petain, Stalin, Chiang kai-shek, Quisling .... even the lovely Swedes sold the Nazis the iron they needed for their shells and tanks.  

I think you are guilty of cherry picking some of the worst people in history there for the sake of a comparison.  Nobody is going to argue that there weren't far worse people than Churchill around, nor that he didn't have admirable aspects to his character. 

If there had been no British Empire ....

There would have been bigger French/German/Spanish/Portuguese Empires. It was the age of imperialism. Even the Americans got a cheeky little one in at then end.

With respect I don't think that's much of a defence.  Merely stating that other country with pillaging weaker nations too is hardly an excuse.  Nobody need feel guilty for the sins of their ancestors, but the crimes should still be acknowledged and understood as such and the reputation of those who were instrumental to such a history should be adjusted accordingly. As should the legacy of imperialism in countries that suffered from it.  There is nothing cheeky about castrating Kenyan prisoners of war as late as the 1950s. 

Also, a British bloke didn't just sit up in bed in 1550, and thought up slavery. It's been around forever. It was probably trying to sleep on numerous filthy mattresses in earshot of the protesters at the weekend.

Yeah, that's true, it's been going on since forever as you say. If people are looking people to erect statues in honour off...then how about the British politician William Wilberforce, who led the movement to abolish the slave trade in the British Empire.

As I have said before here the Past is a dark place - don't view stuff in isolation and apply some balance. Context is all. We must analyse both sides of the argument regarding these figures, so as per my previous post, lets stick with Prof Palmer and have some good interpretation.

I agree, I guess the problem is always there are many different interpretations, and who decides which one is good?

 

[TuffLuff]

18 minutes ago, Alpha said:

Completely agree. 

With Colston i'm not sure if it was the right decision to take it down or leave it up but give it some context. 

But the way it came down was wrong. 

That's why we have this horrible situation between defenders and attackers. It's opened up the door to criticising parts of Britains past we have suppressed (good thing) but also the door for everyone to start making cases for pulling down British monuments. 

Hopefully everything survives and it changes the way we think and the way we teach history. Maybe have more relevant monuments

Other topics are more complicated but British History or any history seems straight forward to me. Leave it alone unless we can agree it's purpose has expired/it does more harm than good. 

Colston the slave trader or Colston the philanthropist? You can see why it was causing debate even before all this. 

I see it slightly differently, I heard a Bristol university lecturer on the radio say something along the lines of ‘we’ve been discussing the statue for 31 years and the protests on Sunday did more to move that discussion on than anything else preceding it’. Point is to me we are good at discussing and having opinions but not very good at listening. If we were better at that we me might be further down the line on this. Let’s even take a look at this thread, we are all brilliant at having an opinion and discussing it but are we getting anywhere?

[AndyinLiverpool]

1 minute ago, TuffLuff said:

I see it slightly differently, I heard a Bristol university lecturer on the radio say something along the lines of ‘we’ve been discussing the statue for 31 years and the protests on Sunday did more to move that discussion on than anything else preceding it’. Point is to me we are good at discussing and having opinions but not very good at listening. If we were better at that we me might be further down the line on this. Let’s even take a look at this thread, we are all brilliant at having an opinion and discussing it but are we getting anywhere?

Surely the discussion was moved on beyond the point where discussion is necessary. The statue is, after all, at the bottom of the harbour.