Outrage at call to topple Nelson’s Column
ANGER erupted yesterday after it was claimed Nelson’s Column should be toppled because the British hero was a “white supremacist”.
Afua Hirsch, a Guardian and Sky News journalist, said it was time to tear down the London landmark because Horatio Nelson defended slavery. Ms Hirsch wrote in a newspaper article that the “colonial and pro-slavery titans of British history” should stop being “memorialised”.
She said that Nelson was “what you would now call a white supremacist” and that his influence hindered the progress of the slavery abolitionists.
She added: “While many around him were denouncing slavery, Nelson was vigorously defending it. “Britain’s best known naval hero – so idealised that after his death in 1805 he was compared to no less than ‘the God who made him’ – used his seat in the House of Lords and his position of huge influence to perpetuate the tyranny, serial rape and exploitation organised by West Indian planters, some of whom he counted among his closest friends.
“It is figures like Nelson who immediately spring to mind when I hear the latest news of confederate statues being pulled down in the US.”
Former Home Office minister Ann Widdecombe last night said the idea was “total rubbish”.
She added: “We should remember Nelson’s contribution to the safety of our nation.
“We cannot superimpose our values on previous generations who lived in different times and had different outlooks.
“No one would expect us to remove Hadrian’s Wall because it was built with slave labour. “It would be a nonsense.” Jerry White, a history professor at London’s Birkbeck College, called Ms Hirsch’s suggestion “cultural vandalism”.
He said: “Almost any historical figure that we could think of, when tested, will come off looking like they had views that would be unacceptable to people living now.
“It would be absurd to base that decision on something someone said in the 1790s. It is comparable to Islamic State in Iraq destroying a culture it believed was unacceptable and thinking it could be erased.”
There was a backlash too from visitors to Trafalgar Square who said Ms Hirsch was trying to erase history and it was crucial that the iconic statue reminds Britain of its glorious history.
Ann Meacher, 74, from Bourne mouth, derided Ms Hirsch’s controversial suggestion as “absolute nonsense”.
The retired teacher added: “This makes me rather angry. These Left-wingers should grow up. They want to do away with our heritage.”
Ann Dore, 73, from Guildford, said: “It’s a way of making people less aware of their background and a sense of who we are as a nation.”
Anthony Salkeld, a 58-yearold tourist from Sydney, Australia, said it would be “sad day” if the statue was torn down.
He said: “Britain has given so much to the world. The good and the bad should always be remembered.”
His wife Carmen, 60, added: “Even Germany retains buildings from its Nazi past. It’s important for future generations to learn about history.” David Webb, 28, a teacher from Worcester, said: “We should be proud of our great British history. This idea of removing Nelson’s Column is bonkers.”
Sian Taylor, 26, also from Worcester, agreed: “It’s an amazing monument and must be preserved for future generations.”
Chris McGovern, of the Campaign for Real Education, said: “Hadrian’s Wall is a monument to Roman power that was built on slavery. Should we destroy the ancient identity of Western civilisation. No.”
IN the summer of 1940 Britain was fighting for its very survival. With typical ruthlessness the Germans had drawn up plans not only for a major seaborne invasion but also for the governance of the conquered territory. One of their first acts, designed to emphasise the humiliation of the defeated British, would have been the removal of Nelson’s Column in London.
The relevant military directive stated: “Ever since the Battle of Trafalgar, Nelson’s Column represents for England a symbol of British might and world domination. It would be an impressive way of underlining the German victory if the column were to be transferred to Berlin.”
Due to Winston Churchill’s inspirational leadership and the bravery of our armed forces, defeat was averted so this order could not be enacted.
But now the vision of destruction in Trafalgar Square has been renewed by the journalist Afua Hirsch.
In an extraordinary article in the Left-wing Guardian newspaper this week, Ms Hirsch called for Nelson’s Column to be pulled down because he was, allegedly, “a white supremacist” who used his influence “to perpetuate the tyranny, serial rape and exploitation” organised by slave traders. Prattling about the British “brutalisation”, she doubtless regards herself as a progressive thinker.
HER demand was prompted by the growing agitation in America to tear down statues that are deemed to be offensive, particularly those of civil war Confederate leaders who are associated with the defence of slavery. The controversy, full of incendiary arguments about racism and the eradication of the past, has provoked a febrile, divisive atmosphere in the country.
In Charlottesville, Virginia, earlier this month, bitter clashes over the removal of an equestrian bronze sculpture of Confederate general Robert E Lee resulted in the deaths of two police officers and one anti-Right-wing protester.
The flames of discord appear to be intensifying. One CNN commentator said recently that even statues of the revered founding fathers George Washington and Thomas Jefferson “have to come down” because they owned slaves. We have already caught a glimpse of the same kind of fevered mood here. Last year at Oxford University there was an orchestrated movement to remove the statue of colonial statesman Cecil Rhodes from Oriel College. Thankfully, the pressure from the activists failed when donors to the college threatened to withdraw their funding if the statue went.
That nonsense was bad enough. But Ms Hirsch’s call for the demolition of Nelson’s Column plumbs a new level of absurdity, driven by a profoundly warped, anti-British view of history.
Where she sees only a bigot, most others recognise a national hero who saved Britain from continental tyranny.
Moreover, her bleats about slavery are a gross distortion. Nelson’s triumph at Trafalgar in 1805 ensured British dominance on the high seas, which swiftly put an end to the slave trade.
Her article is a classic example of institutionalised selfloathing, which is now so fashionable in liberal circles. Filled with contempt for our heritage, this mentality sees every symbol of Britishness as a source of shame rather than pride, whether it be the Union Jack or Nelson’s Column.
Such an outlook is profoundly sinister for it seeks to reshape the historical narrative to fit a narrow ideology. Like other attacks on freedom, such as book-burning and political censorship, the impulse to rewrite history is a form of thought control.
In his novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, that brilliant denunciation of totalitarianism, George Orwell wrote, “Who controls the past, controls the future. Who controls the present, controls the past.”
The desire to manipulate or challenge history can often descend into a form of intolerant, dogmatic rage. In Britain we saw just such an incident in 2002, when theatrical producer Paul Kelleher used a metal pole to decapitate a statue of Margaret Thatcher at the Guildhall Art Gallery in London.
With self-righteous politicised fury, Kelleher claimed that she was “an idol” and “the cause of capitalism and global problems”.
ON A far bigger scale, the savage zealotry of Islamist regimes has resulted in wholesale devastation of globally renowned historic treasures across the Middle East and Asia.
Extreme theocratic cleansing by the Taliban led in 2002 to the obliteration of the world’s two largest standing Buddhas in Afghanistan, both of them 1,700 years old, while more recently Islamic State in Syria inflicted appalling damage on the ancient Assyrian temple at Palmyra.
Now the ideologues in the West want to take a sledgehammer to our own civilisation. In Britain alone there are estimated to be 35,000 public statues. How many would survive the purity test of the new sculpture commissars?
Churchill would have to go for a start because of his unacceptable views on immigration and Indian independence. So would Cromwell, oppressor of the Catholics and the Irish, as would Florence Nightingale, supposedly a borderline racist.
The bullying, destructive war on the past has to stop. Our rich island story, with all its flaws and greatness, is what makes our nation.
‘Take a sledgehammer to our civilisation’