History is fact, not something alterable to suit present beliefs

IF today’s delicate flowers are going to write all relevance to slave trades etc out from history, there will be very little ‘history’ to study, learn or teach.

Back in the time of such as Colston, anybody who was “anyone” and had money to invest, had very little choice.

There was little in Britain of industry and manufacture, only farming and mining, so most put their money into the growing collection of lands overseas, lands discovered mainly by British traders and the Royal Navy.

The whole business of equipping the new colonies was mainly in farming crops the products of which could then be shipped back to Britain, all in those days labourintensive businesses. The labour was provided by the wholesale trade in prisoners resulting from tribal wars. They were shipped en masse to the coast, for onward transport to the new colonies. Without the supply of these slaves, there would have been none to ship and then to work in the colonies.

This all took money, and everyone in Britain with money to invest, put it into this trade, which we today see as inhuman, degrading and revolting. To the British people of that time, it was just business, invested in by all from the High Church, politicians, and any with cash to spare, none seeing anything untoward in it, differing from our present day view.

It was a long time before views on it in Britain changed completely, this being the first country in the world to ban what had been “normal” throughout the whole world.

That is the point. Britain was normal for those times. We, today, think differently. We cannot change every little detail of history and rewrite it to suit ourselves.

History is fact, not something alterable to suit our present-day ideas, beliefs and sensitivities.

Changing a street name, a concert hall, a school, changes nothing. They are still and always will be what they were.

There are famous lines in the Rhubaiyat of Omar Khayam, written many years ago: “The Moving Finger writes; and having writ, moves on: nor all the Piety nor Wit Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line, Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.”

What was done, is done, and we can only live with it, regardless of our current feelings. We must accept history as fact, as if carved in stone, and try ourselves, ever to do better.

Davina Elaine Hockin Portishead