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Shame in Britain’s Past: Are Protestors Right?
Yes — but there is reason for pride, too.
What follows is an extract from an article I published on Medium in February last year. It anticipates the efforts by protestors, this week and last, who seek the removal of symbols that demonstrate pride in the achievements of some British historical figures. In one such protest a statue was forcibly removed from its plinth in the centre of Bristol and consigned to the waters of the docks from which slave ships regularly sailed.
Not surprisingly, given what I was saying eighteen months ago, I do not have a problem with such events in principle. However, I also agree with the historian who pointed out, in a recent interview on BBC TV, that such symbols are important reminders of our national guilt.
Will their complete removal mean that future generations will not have the opportunity to learn of these things?
The answer, surely, is that the proper location for such symbols is not some place where the men’s achievements are celebrated, but in a museum where children can be taken in order to learn of the horrors perpetrated by those of our ancestors whose beliefs and practices were formed in an age of ignorance.
Meanwhile the buildings and streets that have been named after such individuals, also…