What is the best way to reassess important figures in British history? – Vicki Robinson
Since protesters tore down the statue of Edward Colston in Bristol, many are reassessing figures from British history and questioning how they should be represented. The Rhodes Must Fall campaign is gaining prominence, and Edinburgh University has renamed David Hume Tower due to claims that his views were ‘racist’. Is removing statues and renaming buildings the best way to review our past?
Many argue that public statues should be to celebrate people and that Colston, as a slave trader with the Royal African Company, should be in a museum. This is a strong argument. Unfortunately, the police, in allowing the statue to be torn down, rendered others vulnerable, including the much-loved Cenotaph and Churchill statue. It is concerning that Bristolians campaigned for years for change regarding Colston without success. When authorities avoid challenging arguments, they can create the desire to tear things down.
Why, however, are other options so little discussed? Take Rhodes Must Fall, the campaign to take down the statue of the empire builder at Oriel College, University of Oxford. Journalist Matthew Parris, who grew up in Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, suggests that the Rhodes statue ‘should be joined by a statue of the Matabele Chief Lobengula’, adding that Lobengula both took land from the Mashona tribe and was ‘swindled by Rhodes out of all his territory’.
This is a really interesting idea that would broaden people’s understanding of the complexities of the colonial era. Statues do not have to just celebrate the ‘good’ – they can give opportunities to contemplate difficult areas of history outside a museum or gallery. Removing the Rhodes statue, or keeping it unchanged, risks oversimplification.
What, however, should we do with figures who made huge positive contributions, but also held questionable views? David Hume Tower at Edinburgh University was recently renamed following a petition that raised fewer than 2,000 signatures. Hume was arguably the greatest philosopher of the Scottish Enlightenment and a great leader in Western thought – however, he also made some unpleasant comments about Africans, writing, ‘I am apt to suspect the negroes to be naturally inferior to the whites’.
Do Hume’s views on race – typical of his day – really warrant the removal of his name from the tallest tower at the university? Do they cancel all the good that has come of his philosophy? There is a danger here of reducing people to their worst belief. To be fair, the university remains committed to teaching Hume, and the petition supports this too.
The truth, difficult for some, is that those who make great contributions to society tend not to be nicey-nicey types. They are often headstrong, independent thinkers. They make errors and misjudgements, like all human beings. Interestingly, the petition initially suggested renaming the tower after Julius Nyerere, first president of Tanzania, but withdrew this due to ‘his ties to dictatorship and through his homophobia’. If we only celebrate those who reach the exacting standards of the 21st century, we exclude many important figures. Great people can have great weaknesses. We should look at the whole person.
Interestingly, the Hume petition contained references to creating ‘an anti-racist culture’, an apology for ‘any harm I have caused’ and thanks to people getting in touch to ‘educate me’ – language associated with the controversial Critical Race Theory. This is echoed in the principal of Edinburgh University’s use of the phrase ‘lived experience’ in his defence of changing the building’s name. CRT is very anti-Western, and this raises questions about whether this reassessment is being used as an opportunity to deny the West heroes and drive highly-contentious ideologies in academic life.
And herein lies the rub. We do need to continually examine our history. Many minority figures deserve a statue or building named after them, more so than the likes of Rhodes and Colston. However, in a democracy, no single academic theory or political view should dominate this review. It should be carried out by a politically diverse range of people, something that may prove challenging given that the left dominates academia, arts and culture. It also needs to be done with full public consultation, not behind closed doors as appears to be happening at the moment. Our history belongs to us all.
Vicki Robinson
@storiesopinions