Don’t drag Nelson into the culture wars
SIR – It beggars belief that the National Maritime Museum plans to “review” the displays of various historic naval officers, including Horatio Nelson, in order to “capitalise on the momentum built up” by the Black Lives Matter movement (report, October 11).
The idea that serving members of the Armed Forces are responsible for (or even support) national policy is extraordinary. Many serving officers disagreed strongly with the involvement of recent governments in Iraq and Afghanistan, for example, but they got on with what they were ordered to do.
Lord Nelson himself was never even senior enough to have been a member of the Admiralty Board; he was simply a serving officer doing his job. To infer that this made him in some way responsible for colonialism is incredible.
Lt Col Ray Aldis (retd)
Salisbury, Wiltshire
SIR – Archive material has revealed that in 1834 over 46,000 people in Britain owned slaves. These owners were compensated financially when abolition was achieved. This means that hundreds of thousands of their descendants, alive in Britain today, may have indirectly benefited as a result.
Moral values were different two centuries ago. It therefore seems unjust for the National Maritime Museum to single out Lord Nelson and others for vilification. Slavery is evil and the Navy later helped to suppress the slave trade.
How will our own moral values be judged in two centuries’ time? Our descendants may well ask: “Did people really eat animals back then?”
Colin Henderson
Cranleigh, Surrey
SIR – Lord Nelson once remarked: “I could not tread these perilous paths in safety if I did not keep a saving sense of humour.”
My sense of humour vanished on reading that his memory is to be re-evaluated.
Lt-Cdr Chris Watson
Warnbro, Western Australia