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Anti Woke movement grows

The MCR of a college is a bit like a private club, they can decide for themselves what goes on their wall!

Is the link of the Queen to colonialism similar to Cecil Rhodes’s link to colonialism?

Oriel has apparently decided that the Rhodes statue should be removed but they’re not going to do it, because it’s too much work. Instead they’ll put up a plaque explaining it all, “providing a context” was the expression I think. One difference between the Rhodes statue and this pic of the Queen is that the Rhodes statue looked down on a busy public street - the Magdelen MCR is a couple of rooms with a lock on the door.

I’m quite surprised that Magdalen MCR managed to get the vote passed. I’m surprised that the more conservative MCR members - at there are no shortage of them at Magdalen I’m sure - didn’t turn up to the meeting mob handed to make sure the motion wasn’t passed.
 
Burnham going along with this is a reminder that the soggy centre of Labour will always be the soggy centre. Beyond useless. Literally no one in mainstream politics apparently capable of saying, "This is bollocks, isn't it? Can we talk about something that matters?"
 
oldius said:
You are not reaching them to hate the country, which is what is often seized upon: you are teaching them of the great things we did in science, art, engineering and trade and also our role in colonialism and slavery; balance is everything.
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I see it that way too. But what I read in this thread is not always about balance.
 
It sounds as if the graduate students in their common room just decided to take ERII off the wall, maybe each had a different reasons, including being fed up with her looking at them, or simply the "look" of the room. "Anyone mind if I take this down?" "Yeah, why not?" or "Good idea, take it down" or "Do as you please, who gives a f*ck." Then a couple of tabloids heard about it and turned it into "an issue." At which point a tabloid reporter got hold of a student for a quote, put a few words in his mouth, and its "a good story." But really a non-story.
 
Sue Pertwee-Tyr said:
My take: patriotism is pride in one's country. Pride in this country implies pride in its heritage. Its heritage includes colonialism, slave trading and oppression, often bloody, of indigenous people.

I do think that's a slightly simplistic take, though. The current right-wing attempts to airbrush our past do suggest a measure of shame in what it represents, what we did in the name of colonialism and empire. But then I'd argue that if you are proud of a fictitious, romantic, bowdlerised notion of your country, you're not a patriot in any true sense anyway.
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I wouldn't see it as a deliberate attempt to airbrush, have you seen how little time kids are given in the curriculum for history?

School seems painfully slow and there's minimal depth of study in any field. My main gripe is the lack of STEM knowledge.

It wasn't much better in the past, my first wife covered none of the history that i did and vice versa. It's purely down to chance that i covered slave trade and colonial India; anything after Victoria might as well not have happened.

Achieved a miserable 42% in the last history exam but one of the few bits that remain is the diagrams of slaves packed into holds.
 
PaulMB said:
It sounds as if the graduate students in their common room just decided to take ERII off the wall, maybe each had a different reasons, including being fed up with her looking at them, or simply the "look" of the room. "Anyone mind if I take this down?" "Yeah, why not?" or "Good idea, take it down" or "Do as you please, who gives a f*ck."
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Reminds me of the old Punch cartoon showing a corporate dismissal scene. "It's nothing personal, Hopkins, we're just pruning dead wood".
 
Seanm said:
Burnham going along with this is a reminder that the soggy centre of Labour will always be the soggy centre. Beyond useless. Literally no one in mainstream politics apparently capable of saying, "This is bollocks, isn't it? Can we talk about something that matters?"
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Except, rightly or wrongly, it does matter to a section of the Electorate.
 
Appears said student who complained about HM Queen, is an American! So what the hell is it to do with him! Imagine the uproar if a UK student in an US college/university complained about a portrait of George Washington. Whole world has gone mad, student does not like a portrait then best they leave and go elsewhere.
 
ks.234 said:
There are right wing Groups (Restore Trust and The Common Sense Group) of Tory MP’s who are coordinating attacks on all things woke. They have targeted the NT for attention. Where is this abuse of your friend coming from? Is the NT supporting her?
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She is targetted as an employee of the NT and in the capacity of working on the repositioning and the modification of information to more accurately reflect the truth. Because of the way this is being reported - 'history is being cancelled', 'the wokes want to change the past' - many employees are being targeted in telephone complaints and emails. These are not personal but are directed at the NT, generally, by people who say things like, 'I will not allow my grandchildren to be made to feel guilty about slavery.' Now, I have worked in education for several years and none, and I mean none, of the children I taught would feel guilty about someone else building a house with ill-gotten gains. They would question, they would express revulsion that it went on, and they would ask if it was still happening, and that is education, not holding on to a myopic truth that serves nobody!
 
PaulMB said:
It sounds as if the graduate students in their common room just decided to take ERII off the wall, maybe each had a different reasons, including being fed up with her looking at them, or simply the "look" of the room. "Anyone mind if I take this down?" "Yeah, why not?" or "Good idea, take it down" or "Do as you please, who gives a f*ck." Then a couple of tabloids heard about it and turned it into "an issue." At which point a tabloid reporter got hold of a student for a quote, put a few words in his mouth, and its "a good story." But really a non-story.
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They had a vote about whether she should stay. The irony is that the very people kicking up an absolute stink are also the ones who hold the noose of democracy over anyone's head who suggests that the referendum result should not be followed by Brexit.
 
Seeker_UK said:
Except, rightly or wrongly, it does matter to a section of the Electorate.
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Trick is to keep that section from growing, and even try to prune it a bit. Won't happen unless Labour try to change the conversation. I realise this is largely out of their hands but still, common sense is actually quite popular. Burnham's actually not a bad communicator and even has something of the man-of-the-people about him: if he can't find a way to say, "Look, this has been blown out of proportion: students are going to student, let's look at the things that actually matter, like the problems faced by people working in health and social care, identified in yesterday's select committee", then what hope is there. The kind of people for whom bashing students is the number one priority, and who can’t even accept that Labour has other priorities, are not going to be won over, IMO.

Of course Labour have good reasons for not wanting to change the conversation, so this isn’t really a slight on their strategy. It’s just that it means you won’t get mainstream political opposition to what is basically the whole of the government’s program.
 
ks.234 said:
..."Students deciding to remove photo of Queen, is it “simply absurd” as Gavin Williamson has said, or is the case that “patriotism and colonialism are not really separable” as one student has said?

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/oxford-students-portrait-queen-remove-common-room-b939503.html
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I haven't looked at this particular case, but it seems to me that a lot of similar happenings arise from the misplaced but growing belief in a right to not be offended by anything, and the assumption of a consequent entitlement to remove what does offend.

There is much to offend modern sensibilities in our history but I see neither the right to bury what happened nor any benefit. "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
 
SteveG said:
I don't pay a great deal of attention to these sorts of things but from what little I have seen then folks that frequently call others "woke" in a derogatory fashion appear to be outing their political and world views in rather a similar way to having a swastika tattooed on their forehead would.
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Anti-woke = Nazi. Why type so long sentences.
 
Bob McC said:
I’m surprised it wasn’t used as a dartboard.
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That is exactly what I thought, anything stuck on the wall of a student’s Common Room is open to youthful misuse.
A little Hitler moustache on Queen Liz would be a lot more fun than taking it down.
 
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