I read in this morning's paper that there are calls to remove the statue of Robert Peel in Manchester, on the grounds that his father supported slavery.
A step too far? Or is there more to it.
My father was a keen golfer, what should be my penance?
The usual daub of ACAB would be fairly appropriate in this case.
Bit biblical isn't is. Sins of the father and all that.
The topple the racists website appears to have been put together by a bit of a numpty and gained a lot of traction before anyone pointed it out. Here they initially suggested the removal of Grey's monument, a more potent symbol of emancipation from the era you'd be hard pressed to find, but have now backtracked to Lord Armstrong on the grounds that he sold arms to both sides during the American Civil War. I'm not convinced they're doing their cause any favours.
AGAB surely?
I understood what happened to the statue in Bristol (lived there for 15 years) and it was I think due to not just what it represented but the utter lack of action by various councils to acknowledge or do anything about the upset it caused. Continuing in the same vane with every statue leaves me feeling worried that you erase this from history and slavery will be gone from peoples minds in ten years or so. I think a black history prof said something similar.
If they had perhaps commissioned another set of statues to sit below Cabot in chains, squashed shoulder to shoulder with an updated plaque mentioning, was it 70-80 thousand men women and children taken and transported he'd still be there.
What is it they say about putting people on pedestals? Perhaps all statues now should have two plaques one listing their greatest achievements and the other their failures or shortcomings?
Cheers
Toby
I'm backpedalling anyway, a very unwise attempt at early morning irony.......
the Peel Tower will take more than a couple of pulls to shift it, anyway.
Maybe we should expunge Elizabeth 1 from history , after all she started it in England by sponsoring Hawkins, and let the Spanish Armada win.
It would be interesting to see if you could persuade Peel ports/group/holdings to change their name, seeing that they own most of manchester and liverpool, including the former docks most strongly associated with slave produced Cotton
> I read in this morning's paper that there are calls to remove the statue of Robert Peel in Manchester, on the grounds that his father supported slavery.
Peel was a bleeding heart liberal by the standards of the day - support for Catholic emancipation, repeal of the Corn Laws... is it his founding of the police force they are objecting to?
Don't worry, I got it, made me smile.
Peel is a large part of why our police are still mostly unarmed, and we would do well to maintain the policing by consent despite all the pressures from authoritarian mouthpieces. Fortunately, that list has been put together by a total barmpot and after a little initial excitement, most people are coming to realise that.
> Peel was a bleeding heart liberal by the standards of the day - support for Catholic emancipation, repeal of the Corn Laws... is it his founding of the police force they are objecting to?
Makes no sense. If the police in the US were following Peelian values George Floyd would still be alive. It's incredibly stupid and ironic.
Sit Geoff Palmer is professor you mention. This is along the lines of what needs to be happen. As much as I dislike these statues, they shouldn't just be torn down. Erase them and you erase not only the memory of the inhuman deeds they were involved in but the fact that people stood against this and changed society for the better.
Turn them into monuments of change.
> is it his founding of the police force they are objecting to?
I hope not, given the slaughter that preceded it. Imagine Saturdays demonstrations had been handled in the style of Peterloo.
All getting a bit daft IMO
This is part of my history too. Don't erase it or hide it. Sure some people were nasty and profited from people trading both black and whites. If you have children and they dress as a pirate for a party - you could get labelled a racist as these were not just treasure smugglers but slave traders too. Should we ban Pirates of the Caribbean?
Robert Peel statue in Manchester being talked about being removed now.
How about removing the Ghandi statue in Manchester?
https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/new-st...
>Should we ban Pirates of the Caribbean?
Well, that is the very worst film I have ever had the misfortune to sit through and 2 hours of my life I will never get back.
For that reason only I'm in favour of that.
Personally I don't think Peel was particularly bad and I'd argue that Bristol Police did a great job of policing the other day. He wouldn't be on my list.
> Makes no sense. If the police in the US were following Peelian values George Floyd would still be alive. It's incredibly stupid and ironic.
^ This.
I seem to have posted this link a lot lately, but here are those 'Peelian principles' that go back to the founding of the Met. Police.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peelian_principles
Quite inspiring stuff really, even if our police forces (not least the Met) haven't always managed to live up to these principles, at least they were there.
> Continuing in the same vane with every statue leaves me feeling worried that you erase this from history and slavery will be gone from peoples minds in ten years or so. I think a black history prof said something similar.
There are a few monuments to the slave trade in the UK so I don't think it will be forgotten. Lancaster has this one, on the quay that so many slavers sailed from:
https://ageofrevolution.org/200-object/captured-africans/
> If they had perhaps commissioned another set of statues to sit below Cabot in chains, squashed shoulder to shoulder with an updated plaque mentioning, was it 70-80 thousand men women and children taken and transported he'd still be there.
Definitely scope there...
> Personally I don't think Peel was particularly bad.
Talk about damning with faint praise 😉
The problem with having ‘lists' is that anyone not exhibiting impeccable modern standards of thought or behaviour can be denounced as immoral and unfit to be remembered by history. Where does it stop?
You can check out if any of your ancestors received compensation as a slave owner when the pratice was abolished here - https://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/search/
I need to do some more research on Peel.
For me the line is clear. I appreciate others don't see things the way I do, obviously as I'm autistic. Right and wrong are easy enough in many cases and in others it's a matter of the streetcar experiment and such things.
It's also interesting to look at the social experiments done in the past where people have been socially pressured to do the wrong thing.
Anyway lunch will burn so that is enough of that.
I will do but given my family history it is reasonably unlikely.
AS I read it, exactly that-since the Babylon has oppressed people of colour and the working class generally, Peel is guilty and must fall.
> You can check out if any of your ancestors received compensation as a slave owner when the pratice was abolished here - https://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/search/
I've no idea whether some distant relative received slavery compensation (it seems extremely unlikely) but I do know that, if they did, certainly none of it trickled down to me or my parents.
> AS I read it, exactly that-since the Babylon has oppressed people of colour and the working class generally, Peel is guilty and must fall.
I would have thought that the whole Babylon area has already suffered enough.
> . is it his founding of the police force they are objecting to?
There is a very garbled petition I have seen, and the thrust is that Peels father was involved with slaves, and Peel himself made a speech in Parliament that was not supportive of Abolition, but then it seems to go off on one about Police Brutality and how Peel formed the Police.
Here it is, not worth your time reading, but fill your boots https://www.change.org/p/manchester-remove-the-robert-peel-statue-from-picc...
I heard about 'Offence archaeologists' for the first time today, "What historic thing can I dig up off the internet to get offended about today?"
It's pathetic.
These protests are about fighting racism in the here and now.
Picking on statues is just lame brained, easy targeting, virtue signalling, look at me I'm an activist, nonsense. Which will be completely forgotten about in a few months time. I wonder what these people have actually done over the last 10, 20, 30 years to actually fight racism?
A total waste of time and energy when people should be fighting the real problems of racism and modern day slavery, which is almost certainly happening with 100s of yards of your own doorsteps.
You do realise that 'offence archaeology' is not a real academic discipline don't you? It's just another phrase concocted for smearing anyone with liberal and leftwing tendencies who dares to criticise those on the far right on the basis of their past behaviour and utterances. File with 'snowflake', 'social justice warrior' etc..
If we melt down all statues and sell for scrap will this offset the economic crisis we are headed to?
> I will do but given my family history it is reasonably unlikely.
And if it did?
Then I will look at ways to pay it back.
As much as UK Government would appreciate a few grand right now the debt was finally paid off in 2015 out of almost 200 years worth of taxes.
Perhaps a better way to pay off your debt would be to lay off the grafitti and property damage for a while and petition government to take action against modern injustices just as the abolitionist movement did all those years ago.
I've never graffitied or damaged property in my life thanks. I throughly approve of the actions taken in Bristol but I wasn't there in person.
I've checked and unsurprisingly none of my family received compensation. I didn't think there was anyone rich enough or in the right locations to have had.
As for paying back, if i was in that position I think the government wouldn't be an option.
Assuming it wouldn't be possible to trace the families of the slaves (some people have ) then I'd have been looking to pay it forward one way or another.
> I've checked and unsurprisingly none of my family received compensation. I didn't think there was anyone rich enough or in the right locations to have had.
> As for paying back, if i was in that position I think the government wouldn't be an option.
Well that wouldn't be paying it back then would it? The UK Government bought the slaves' freedom and it's that amount that is recorded by the archive.
Putting that to one side, would you pay the entire amount (if it were tens of thousands) or some sort of percentage based on the number of generations between you and the family member that benefitted?
What if you hadn't received a penny of the money due to some kind of family split? Would you still feel compelled pay on the amount?
I find this whole thing quite bizarre. I don't even hold myself accountable to actions of my late father let alone someone I never met and died hundreds of years ago. I actually don't think it's helpful to badge everyone either as the decendent of a slave or a slaver.
Its hypothetical now, but I'd look to give what I could to appropriate charities or education or something. I guess I'd look at how much money in modern terms and see how realistic it would be.
I guess I'm in a third category. Not descended from slaves or slave owners.
> I guess I'm in a third category. Not descended from slaves or slave owners.
If you're English or Irish it's not that unlikely that you are descended from Slaves. According to the Domesday book around 10% of the population were slaves at the time. In the centuries before slavery was even more rife with many of these slaves transported to Ireland or the continent.
https://www.historytoday.com/archive/normans-and-slavery-breaking-bonds
What about most of the stately homes and mansions built in the 17th and 18th centuries a lot of them built from the proceeds of slavery or selling opium to the Chinese shall we pull them down? Its getting silly and sometimes people when they score a small victory just try and push things too far and then lose public sympathy, a case in point being all the fuss about transphobia . There was a lot of sympathy for transgender people but there was a contentious area of athletes and some feminists had legitimate concerns but there was an attempt to ostrasize them by calling them transphobic. I and many people had reservations like the athletes and feminists and are now labelled transphobic, by pushing things too far they have just ended up devaluing the term. There seems to be a new prurience about race in the air which could be counter productive in the end. Racism is only defeated by education, you can pull as many statues down as you want but it wont change racism.
> What about most of the stately homes and mansions built in the 17th and 18th centuries a lot of them built from the proceeds of slavery or selling opium to the Chinese shall we pull them down
I guess it's not possible to go that far back in family history.
I agree, statues are purely for glory. Buildings are at least useful and practical.
the sins of the father should not be put upon their children
In reply:
Every single statue of everyone everywhere should immediately be smashed into a million pieces. Because they all did terrible things
> In reply:
> Every single statue of everyone everywhere should immediately be smashed into a million pieces. Because they all did terrible things
Not everyone...
Not according to the standards of today but in a 100 years ... who knows?
Interesting short article about statues - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-52999319
Dave
So do you draw a line between statues and sculpture. Do you include all the statues of Jesus, Michaelangelo's David and La Pieta, all the Egyptian statues of kings many of whom did dreadful things, Roman Emperors, Easter Island Heads. If you are being facetious well ok but if you are being serious I would have said you are a bit of a philistine but someone would be along to say that is a racial slur on philistines and that they are offended for them.
But he bottled a penguin 🐧 ?
A very very naughty penguin.
From Bristol - guilty be association
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