UK city to change statues celebrating Empire, Christianity

[Counselor706]

An official review of statues in Leeds, England, concluded that they “over-celebrated Empire, Christianity and ‘great’ white men” and should be changed through the use of new public-facing plaques putting them a different context.

Leeds was the site of one of the more dramatic statue vandalisations in Britain as Black Lives Matter unrest swept the country, with an impressive monument to Queen Victoria being defaced with the BLM slogans and pejoratives including ‘racist’, ‘whore’, ‘slag’, and ‘slave owner’ — wholly inaccurately, as the British had abolished the slave trade decades prior to her coronation and spent much of her reign stamping it out globally, at great cost.

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[FescueFan]

Oikophobia.

 

[DeYaKen]

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Of Course we don't expect Brietbart to put things into context. Britain continued to profit from slavery long after slavery was abolished in the British empire. They did so by using their Maritime dominance to trade in slaves for the US. The route known as the slave triangle involved Taking finished goods out to our colonies, then collecting slaves from places like Gabon and taking them to the US for sale before loading up with cotton and tobacco to take back to Britain.

Yes abolishing slavery was done at tremendous cost but not a penny of that was paid as compensation to the slaves. No, it was the white slave owners who were compensated. The wealth they accrued from this has been used to keep their families in positions of power to this very day. The statues erected glorifying the very people that made slaves of their ancestors is an insult Black people have had to tolerate for long enough.

Slavery is what made cities like Liverpool and Bristol the thriving cities they became and it is about time we acknowledged that.

 

[YDB95]

Slavery is what made cities like Liverpool and Bristol the thriving cities they became and it is about time we acknowledged that.

Liverpool has taken the step of changing the names of all streets named after people associated with the slave trade. (Penny Lane, which may or may not be named after an 18th century slave trader, got a reprieve because of the song.)

And yes, the UK did continue to profit from the slave trade long after their hands were officially clean. During the Civil War, every major European power except Russia tacitly supported the South. Thanks, guys.

 

[oggbashan]

But the original post is not about destroying or removing statues but adding an explanation about their involvement with the slave trade.

Attacking Queen Victoria's statue when slavery had been abolished BEFORE her reign started and the Royal Navy was chasing slave traders is just stupid.

 

[YDB95]

Attacking Queen Victoria's statue when slavery had been abolished BEFORE her reign started and the Royal Navy was chasing slave traders is just stupid.

In other words, it's from Breitbart.

 

[YDB95]

The real stupidity is the never-ending lament and demand for guilt and reparation over the treatment of no one who is alive today; the demand that we ignore the present, deny the future and live in the past and grovel at the feet, not of the aggrieved, but of the tokens of people who happen to resemble oppression long past. There is plenty of history of slavery across racial lines, but we have adopted only one symbol and set about to eternally patronize and apologize ignoring the slavers among the celebrated victim group.

In the US at least, that's because that one "symbol" is only a few generations removed from slavery and only one generation from still being officially treated as other and lesser. And the scars are NOT healed yet, as is reflected in dozens of ways every day if you just open your eyes. Want to put a stop to the "never ending lament and demand for guilt"? Do your part to heal the festering wounds.

 

[StrangeView]

But the original post is not about destroying or removing statues but adding an explanation about their involvement with the slave trade.

Attacking Queen Victoria's statue when slavery had been abolished BEFORE her reign started and the Royal Navy was chasing slave traders is just stupid.

I do see the point of an explanation. My little fella is 11, and asks about things we see when out and about (statues, monuments, etc.), and if I don't have an answer, we'll go and find one. Sort of history on the hoof, really. The thing is, if we remove all traces of the past, he won't see, then he won't ask, won't learn about it, and can't tell his friends or his future family what happened. Then that history starts to fade from the collective public mind, and mankind being what we are, at some point in the future, we'll make the same bloody stupid mistakes all over again.

 

[DeYaKen]

I do see the point of an explanation. My little fella is 11, and asks about things we see when out and about (statues, monuments, etc.), and if I don't have an answer, we'll go and find one. Sort of history on the hoof, really. The thing is, if we remove all traces of the past, he won't see, then he won't ask, won't learn about it, and can't tell his friends or his future family what happened. Then that history starts to fade from the collective public mind, and mankind being what we are, at some point in the future, we'll make the same bloody stupid mistakes all over again.

Perfectly true and that is exactly why the Leeds council has decided to leave the statues there but to add an explanation as to how this person got to be rich and was able to, in the case of Edward Colston in Bristol, be benevolent to the people of the city.

These people got rich not only from buying and selling other human beings, But also at the expense of the British people. When slavery was abolished within the Empire Britain bought the freedom of every slave plus a good number that only existed on paper.