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Edward Colston: Bristol slave trader statue 'was an affront'

And young people, as an entire demographic, would feel so alienated by the concept of behaving lawfully that they'd withdraw their support for Labour?
Young people, being politicised by this, learning that they don't have to take it any more and can act, and wondering whether they should channel their energy into a parliamentary movement or look elsewhere. Less engaged young people, feeling angry, hopeless, wondering whether they should bother to register to vote. Yes, these people are vital. You can't bank everything on winning back racist OAPs with forensic performances on PMQs. Labour has two advantages over the Tories: demographics and an activist base. Starmer seems intent on binning them both off.
 
Starmer cannot say "criminal damage is OK if you have a grievance" and anyone who thinks he can is naive in the extreme.
He could say, "As leader of the opposition I can't condone criminal damage. But..."
 
Speaking of statue removal, a descendant of a particular famous subject speaks out:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opin...r-take-down-his-statue-let-his-cause-be-lost/

Arlington national cemetery is the site of a former slave plantation.

It was owned by Robert E Lee's wife who was the great granddaughter of Martha Washington.

Upon George Washington Parke Custis's death in 1857, he left the Arlington estate to Mary Custis Lee for her lifetime and thence to the Lees' eldest son, George Washington Custis Lee. The estate needed much repair and reorganization, and Robert E. Lee, as executor of Custis's will, took a three-year leave of absence from the Army to begin the necessary agricultural and financial improvements. The will also required the executor to free the slaves on the estate within five years of Custis's death. Robert E. Lee freed the slaves in December 1862, failing to fulfill the 5 year requirement.[14]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arlington_National_Cemetery
 
"Now is not the time for those who for so long defended the indefensible to contort themselves into some new, supposedly moral stance, or play the victim. Their strategy of heel-dragging and obfuscation was predicated on one fundamental assumption: that what happened on Sunday would never happen. They were confident that black people and brown people who call Bristol their home would forever tolerate living under the shadow of a man who traded in human flesh, that the power to decide whether Colston stood or fell lay in their hands. They were wrong on every level. Whatever is said over the next few days, this was not an attack on history. This is history. It is one of those rare historic moments whose arrival means things can never go back to how they were."

https://www.theguardian.com/comment...n-statue-history-slave-trader-bristol-protest
 
In cities such as Liverpool and Bristol the slave trade is in the mortar of almost every building and street, it is said that there were more Confederate flags flying in Liverpool during the American Civil War than there were in Richmond Virginia.The shipyards on the river(incl Lairds) built the Confederate fleet. The city's merchants armed the Southern army and broke the Union blockade.
Albert Dock, built with slave trade money. Take the Georgian Quarter,19 Abercromby Sq was allegedly built to be the Embassy of the Confederacy, became the Bishops Palace and is now part of the Uni-it is adorned with Confederate flags and other slave states ephemera, it is a listed building. You'd need to nuke the city to remove the stains of its slave trade past.

Agreed. It is horrendous. A truly shameful past. I stumbled across this Wikipedia entry for the Zong Massacre when researching Coleston. It just beggars belief. I’m certainly no academic and can’t remember much if anything about history at school, but I don’t remember this sort of stuff being taught to us at all. We need to own it. The only way to move forward is to fully grasp the horrors of nationalism and exceptionalism and to bring racism into proper historical focus.

PS Apparently Manchester behaved with rather more dignity than Liverpool and refused to touch slave-picked cotton in 1861 (Guardian).
 
He could say, "As leader of the opposition I can't condone criminal damage. But..."

I think you worry too much - I'm sure the majority of the UK population does not have your acuity or sensitivity to things like the subtleties of sentence order.
 
I remember the poll tax riots attracted wide-spread criticism but ultimately led to the ending of the poll taxs.

I think you'll find they renamed it Council Tax.

I'm glad the statue was pulled down and aghast that it existed in 2020, in fact I'm appalled that instutuationalised racism is still allowed to exist.
 
Agreed. It is horrendous. A truly shameful past. I stumbled across this Wikipedia entry for the Zong Massacre when researching Coleston. It just beggars belief. I’m certainly no academic and can’t remember much if anything about history at school, but I don’t remember this sort of stuff being taught to us at all. We need to own it. The only way to move forward is to fully grasp the horrors of nationalism and exceptionalism and to bring racism into proper historical focus.

PS Apparently Manchester behaved with rather more dignity than Liverpool and refused to touch slave-picked cotton in 1861 (Guardian).

I can remember learning about the slave trade at school, in particular the triangular slave trade, William Wilberforce and the 1833 Abolition of Slavery Act. I even remembered the date. I was left in no doubt about Britian's involvement and how it benefitted. This was probably part of the University of London O level syllabus, 1980 examination year.
 
I can remember learning about the slave trade at school, in particular the triangular slave trade, William Wilberforce and the 1833 Abolition of Slavery Act. I even remembered the date. I was left in no doubt about Britian's involvement and how it benefitted. This was probably part of the University of London O level syllabus, 1980 examination year.

I was about 5 years behind you in schooling. We were taught about the triangular trade, and my history teacher (a former WW2 bomber pilot, very upper middle class) was absolutely scathing about it, he railed about the utterly disgusting treatment of the people stolen from their homeland, never mind the whole bloody issue of slavery to begin with and how Britain as a whole had benefited from the exploitation.

He was a big influence on my outlook on life.
 
Agreed. It is horrendous. A truly shameful past.

PS Apparently Manchester behaved with rather more dignity than Liverpool and refused to touch slave-picked cotton in 1861 (Guardian).
Yes the cotton famine, Lincoln sent food aid to the laid off mill workers who weren't that far removed from being slaves themselves while mill owners were sitting on huge stocks of cotton watching the price rise...Statue of the man in Manchester.
 
Leave it at the bottom of the docks... it's a fitting place for it after all the people he allowed to die/murdered and then threw their bodies overboard.
 
When the George Floyd story broke, it made me think about our history in the slave trade. I feel ashamed by the things British people did in the past.

I think would be more appropriate to fix explanatory notices on statues and street names to give people a true context on our history. Alternatively you install monuments to reflect what these men did to the slaves in same area.

In the Highlands there is a campaign to remove the monument to the Duke of Sutherland above Golspie because of his role in the clearances. When I look at it now, I see it as representing his role in the clearances rather a celebration of the man.
 
Young people, being politicised by this, learning that they don't have to take it any more and can act, and wondering whether they should channel their energy into a parliamentary movement or look elsewhere. Less engaged young people, feeling angry, hopeless, wondering whether they should bother to register to vote. Yes, these people are vital. You can't bank everything on winning back racist OAPs with forensic performances on PMQs. Labour has two advantages over the Tories: demographics and an activist base. Starmer seems intent on binning them both off.

The activist base chose Corbyn who was useless, labour now look like a credible opposition which they never really did under Corbyn.
 
The activist base chose Corbyn who was useless, labour now look like a credible opposition which they never really did under Corbyn.
It looks like a credible opposition to you. You represent a quite different demographic to the one that Labour risks losing, and which it needs, both to form an electoral alliance to take on the Tories’ grey army, and to actually make the party a living thing, rather than a ChUKTIG-like marketing exercise.
 
When the George Floyd story broke, it made me think about our history in the slave trade. I feel ashamed by the things British people did in the past.

I think would be more appropriate to fix explanatory notices on statues and street names to give people a true context on our history. Alternatively you install monuments to reflect what these men did to the slaves in same area.

In the Highlands there is a campaign to remove the monument to the Duke of Sutherland above Golspie because of his role in the clearances. When I look at it now, I see it as representing his role in the clearances rather a celebration of the man.

People get used to name changes, back in the 80s Glasgow city council renamed Royal Exchange Square, which was where the stock exchange was, to Nelson Mandela Place and of course the tories were up in arms at the time, the usual shite-terrorist blah de blah-now hardly anyone remembers what the name was before.

Glasgow was also one of the first city's in the world to make Mandela a freeman of the city, Mandela actually talked about that in his autobiography The Long Walk To Freedom.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-22976781
 


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