Burying history
HISTORY is under attack once again.
In keeping with the onward and upward trend to rewrite the history of the world, we have yet another move to change a name.
Throughout the world there are certain groups of people who think that to remove a name from a building or a street will somehow change the essence of the history surrounding that name.
It doesn’t and won’t. The most obvious example was the battle fought at Oriel College in Oxford last year over the statue of Cecil Rhodes. Cecil was obviously and undeniably a complete bounder.
Last year one of the main campaigners for the removal of the statue was Brian Kwoba who said that Rhodes was “the Hitler of southern Africa”.
“Would anyone countenance a statue of Hitler?” he said. “The fact that Rhodes is still memorialised with statues, plaques and buildings demonstrates the size and strength of Britain’s imperial blind spot.”
That campaign failed to get the statue removed on the reasonable basis put forth by the college that it “can help draw attention to this history, do justice to the complexity of the debate, and be true to our educational mission”.
Their solution has been to add plaques further detailing Rhodes’ history and including all the bad bits as well. In other words his life history has been put in context, but the good and the bad is there for all to see. An admirable compromise.
There is now another battle over a name, this time the concert venue of Colston Hall in Bristol in England. Also in the line of fire are Colston St, and Colston Tower is on Colston Ave. There is even a Colston bun to have with your morning tea.
Edward Colston was a 17thcentury philanthropist who gave great sums of money to the city.
Unfortunately that money was largely made from slavery, as Bristol was to be the epicentre of the world slave trade.
As usual it is a vocal minority that are demanding the change as the local newspaper’s opinion poll found two-thirds of its readers were against the renaming. But of course who wants to let democracy stand in the way of political correctness?
The same campaigners want the Wills memorial building at the University to be renamed, as this particular Wills is of the famous tobacco family WD & HO Wills, from an industry largely based in the 17th and 18th centuries on slave labour.
The Wills family were also noted philanthropists. Again not one piece of history will be changed by changing the names of these venues and the opportunity to truly educate people as to the historical context of the times will be lost.
In Liverpool they had an even more complex situation when the following street names were campaigned against — Tarleton St, Manesty’s Lane and Clarence St, but the idea was dropped — partly because it would have meant renaming Penny Lane.
London to a brick the first thing you think of when you see Penny Lane is the Beatles. But no, not at all. The Penny in this lane was actually the slave ship owner James Penny.
Commonsense prevailed and all these names still exist. Thank God for the Beatles is all I can say.
This trend for obliterating the past is world wide.
In the US last year Yale University announced it would change the name of Calhoun College (named after John Calhoun, a US vice-president and supporter of slavery,) but has resisted removing symbols of him around the campus. Spain has been renaming streets that had been named after fascist-era people.
Yes it does happen in Australia as well and no doubt will gather momentum when the academic herd mentality of the student Left gets going.
In fact we’ve already started. Last year a sticker changed the name of West End’s Boundary St to Boundless St.
The innocent sounding name comes from the boundary indigenous people were barred from crossing after 4pm each day, to keep them away from Brisbane’s white settlers.
Following an online petition, Lord Mayor Graham Quirk indicated he’d consider a name change but only after consultation, especially with indigenous people.
But prominent Aboriginal activist Sam Watson wasn’t convinced and argued: “You shouldn’t sanitise history or conceal history, as it should be there for people to know about.”
Good on you Sam.