Your views on: the future of the Picton Monument

JUNE EVANS You can’t pick and choose the parts of history you like, all history has brought us to where we are now, being good or bad. We need to be more aware of how these people treated others and how we don’t want to go back to that, just need more awareness of what happened and plaques that explain that.

CALVIN WILLIAMS Everybody seems to forget that Nelson pressed many people into the navy, so enslaved and stole white men and children from this very country, but we don’t seem to want to remove his name from anywhere. DAVID WRIGHT Calvin Williams, we don’t need to pick and choose. We need to put these figures into proper context and stop idolising them.

SALLY JONES History is history, you cannot alter it – unfortunately these were the times, and they didn’t have all bad motives!! We need to learn from history and move forward! WINIFRED LEWIS I believe that history is what we learn from. The details on the monuments should be updated to reflect passed misdemeanours as a means of learning. Eradication will send them into oblivion and will never in the future show the past lessons. Think 30 years along, no evidence of what was wrong. That is not good.

MARK LEWIS Leave it alone. There are more important issues to be discussed by the council. It’s part of our history whether good or bad. GERAINT RICHARDS Probably they’d spend a million pound to get rid of it!! Money well spent elsewhere where its needed, leave it where it is!!!

LYN CARTER You just need education around the subject. Carmarthen is a tolerant community but there is unconscious bias in all communities. Much better if we all educated each other for the greater good of future generations. Removing monuments and statues will simply remove the opportunity to educate. EMYR VAUGHAN Put a plaque on it adding all the history so people know the good and the bad. You can’t wipe out all the history or we won’t learn from the mistakes.

DORIAN THOMAS Change the name, but you can’t change history. Let’s just make sure these things never happen again.

ELIN ŁAWICKA Remove it. It’s a monument celebrating his life. We don’t have to keep things the same all the time.

BEN HUGHES Some old monuments should be taken down, like the one to Colston in Bristol. That should have come down years ago. That man made his fortune from slaves and little else. This one, however, is there for a man who fought bravely against Napoleon’s forces and died in the process. Yes, he wasn’t perfect, very few people with money were back then. But he got his fame for doing something worthwhile. I agree that it needs more signs around the base to teach you more about the man. Both the good and the bad, just like castles do. Don’t sugar coat it if you are honestly interested in keeping it as a way of remembering our history.

SUZY FISHER Nobody is trying to erase history, this is just questioning the values behind what we celebrate. And I feel that it is wrong to celebrate Picton and the time has come to stop. Perhaps the obelisk should be repurposed. I like the idea that someone mentioned of honouring the keyworkers for their efforts during Covid. That feels timely and much more appropriate. Let’s consign Picton to the history books.