Is it a good thing to tear down statues? 

Recent media attention has been focused around the presence of statues around the U.K. and shows protesters either attempting to tear them down or defend them. The debate has come to lack nuance and seems to have divided along the lines of ‘racists want statues’ and ‘anti-racists hate statues’ but we (Jack Johnson and Papa Obeng) think this is somewhat ridiculous and want attempt to provide a more nuanced approach to this issue. If you fall into one of the above camps you will probably find something in this blog post that you agree with and also that you disagree with, read on if you will. 

It’s worth saying at the outset that this debate is happening too late. Its 2020 over 200 years after we abolished the slave trade the fact that this conversation hasn’t happened yet is ridiculous. and we want to make it known from the beginning that we believe racism and slavery are abhorrent. As is its nature, however, government is slow and so is change, public anger is rooted in the inaction, and the lack of nuance is then is perhaps to be understood (even if it is problematic). This blog post is not about finding a ‘middle ground’ but about adding depth to a deficient discussion

Statues in British society have come to show recognition and to some extent memorialise figures from our history. This comes with both pros and cons, it allows us to recognise that people have contributed powerfully to the world we now live in (for both good and bad), it would not be the same had they not existed, and it provides a public reminder to our culture of where we have been before. Often statues remember the good of a person, let’s examine Edward Colston whose statue was recently pulled down by protestors in Bristol. Colston gave generously to schools for the poor, hospitals, alms-houses among other causes, however he also made much of his wealth from participation in the Atlantic slave trade. Now for those who come from African descent, and those of us disgusted by slavery this participation is abhorrent, and so it seems obvious why such a statue should not exist. However, Colston’s charitable acts towards the poor and working class show us exactly why this debate has to be nuanced. Poverty in Britain is long-standing issue, that affects a myriad of issues (health and education to name but two), and for those of us who care deeply about such issues, Colston can be seen to highlight the fact that even the wealthy can care about poverty and bring change. To make this post a little more personal, I (Jack) come from a family where none of my grandparents (or great-grandparents) aunts or uncles attended university, neither did my mum and my dad went to university as a mature student within my lifetime, my background is largely working class/ lower middle class, but I have somehow found myself at one of the best education institutions in the world. The fact that this is possible is because of people like Colston and others who have sought to educate and help the lower classes. Does this make up for his participation in the slave trade? No, but it serves to show us the fact that people are nuanced and so is this issue. 

What Colston highlights is that you can’t celebrate the good in people without seeing the bad. So, it begs the question should we have statues at all? It seems obvious that that there are ways to celebrate the good of people without memorialising them in stone or bronze. Nor does tearing down the statues mean we destroy them; we could place those current statues in museums to retain their use and educational value. This is not an argument that we are unsympathetic too and, in some cases, actively support (the removal of Robert Milligan’s statue is good example). However, there is undoubtedly an advantage of public art, it is unavoidable, and consumable by any who gaze upon it. Museum’s require proactive consummation of knowledge; it requires people to want to be educated on their bias in way that public art does not. Take Liverpool’s international slavery museum, this is entirely useless if you refuse to see slavery as wrong, because you simply avoid it, and so (apart from the education of children) it doesn’t change opinions, nor force you to contest opinions contrary to your own, it merely reinforces the opinions that some of us agree with. This, however, highlights the key problem of statues at the moment, in that they only show the good. Plaque’s generally tell us who they are and why they are to be remembered but they do not tell us the problems of their character. Even those who on issues of racism we would hold up are not free from this. Take Martin Luther King Jr, he in our opinion, should be remembered (his statues can be found in various places in the U.S.A. e.g. DC) for his work on civil rights, however he certainly morally deficient, its estimated that he had over 40 marital affairs. Maybe the solution then is statues of less contentious history? Let’s celebrate musicians and footballers instead, here again though we see problems, take the statue of John Lennon in Liverpool, a fabulous musician, but man who beat his wife, cheated on women and can generally be considered to be a bit of a crappy human (not exactly what we would ‘imagine’),[1] so the lesson goes, nobody is perfect. 

Here come’s our first suggestions then. Public art should include the warts and all of the people remembered, because we don’t just need to remember the good things society has done but the bad, as George Santayana said, “those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it”. 

This then means that plaques should tell us the highlights and lowlights of those we are to remember. It also means that public art should depict the bad as well as the good, we should remember Britain’s role in the slave trade publicly, just as we are inclined to remember how ‘we’ ‘ended it’ – but we should not have one without the other. As lovers of both artwork and History, we are also sympathetic to the proposition of more statues not less, but statues that show us the full picture not just the whitewashed positives of British history. Why not remember Colston’s positivity for the working class, just right next to a statue of one those he enslaved? Sure, remember Winston Churchill’s leadership, and the fight against European fascism, just as we remember his atrocities in Africa.[2] Learning from the past, and the artwork that represents it, means learning from the evil our nation committed too. Furthermore, there are plenty of people who, because of their lack of wealth or reality of racism in our nation, are not represented by statues in our country. But we would be more than happy to see statues of Olaudah Equiano or Mary Prince (if you don’t know who they are, check out the footnotes).[3]

To be clear, we think it’s fine to have statues that celebrate the good that an individual has done for our country, to a particular city or indeed the world. However, we cannot and should not celebrate the good these people did while simultaneously ignoring or failing to acknowledge that these people had moral failings (just like us). And this is especially true for those who built their successes on abusing those they considered subordinate to themselves, as J.K. Rowling wrote, “If you want to know what a man’s like, take a good look at how he treats his inferiors, not his equals.”[4]

Finally, our view on this issue is impacted by our Faith. We agree with Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn who wrote, 

If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?[5]

It is not so simple as to say that there are evil people and good people, the reality is that evil is within us all to a greater to lesser extent, As Jesus said, “nobody is good except God alone.”^[6] Whether we should have statues or tear them down is a nuanced debate, because people are not binary in the way that the current argument wants them to be, and until we get to grips with that the conversation will be deficient. 

To end then, if you want the statues, we can have them, but we also need symbols that point to their moral wrongdoing, ideological beliefs. We should know that our forebears were violent, sexist, racist, homophobic or whatever society and history judges them to be. We need to remember that only we can learn from the contents of their character. Our Judgements no longer have an effect on those who are no longer with us, and for every country man or woman that Britain celebrates we ought to acknowledge the entirety of their character. In the end we will all be judged for our thoughts, words and deeds, what is left to us is to learn from history or to forget about it. 

 Written by Jack Johnson and Papa Obeng. 

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[1] Vice, You don’t have to imagine John Lennon beat women and children- its just a fact, https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/ypa9b5/you-dont-have-to-imagine-john-lennon-beat-women-and-childrenits-just-a-fact

[2] The Independent, Not his finest hour: The dark side of Winston Churchill, https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/not-his-finest-hour-the-dark-side-of-winston-churchill-2118317.html

[3] Historic England, 5 Black Heroes of the Abolition Movement in Britain, https://heritagecalling.com/2016/11/14/5-black-heroes-of-the-abolition-movement-in-britain/

[4] J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Goblet of fire.

[5] Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the Gulag Archipelago

[6] Luke 18:19