TOPPLING THE PAST
Dangling from a JCB, the statue of a slave-owning merchant is removed after 200 years by officials – as a cultural revolution explodes across Britain
The future of scores of public monuments was in doubt last night after the toppling of another statue linked to slavery. The memorial – to the 18th century slave trader Robert Milligan – was removed just days after the Colston statue was thrown into Bristol harbour.
Councils around the country announced yesterday they would review public monuments to ensure they were ‘appropriate’.
The 1813 statue to Milligan, who had more than 500 slaves on his Jamaican plantations, stood outside the Museum of London Docklands. But amid protests against monuments connected to slavery and colonialism, workmen moved in last night to remove it.
Watched by a jubilant crowd, a JCB digger lifted it from its base before it was stowed in a lorry and driven off.
London Mayor Sadiq Khan, who had earlier announced a sweeping review of statues, monuments and even street names, tweeted:
‘The statue of slave trader Robert Milligan has now been removed from West India Quay. It’s a sad truth that much of our wealth was derived from the slave trade – but this does not have to be celebrated in our public spaces.’
John Briggs, the mayor of Tower Hamlets, said in a video on Twitter: ‘This has become the focus of a lot of anxiety and anger in our community. We need to take it, put it into storage and then talk about what we can learn from this and how we can help these events to make us a stronger community.’
Councils said they were now reviewing the future of statues that are linked to colonialism and the slave trade – despite MPs warning of the dangers of trying to ‘erase history’.
Tory MP Ben Bradley was among those to express concern, saying: ‘Who decides who is good or bad? This is a slippery slope.’ On a dramatic day: Thousands of protesters surrounded an Oxford college demanding a monument to imperialist Cecil Rhodes be torn down, with police having to guard the college entrance;
The leader of Oxford city council wrote to Oriel College inviting it to apply for planning permission to remove the statue;
Activists compiled a hit list of 60 ‘racist statues’ they want removed for ‘celebrating slavery’;
Vandals targeted a memorial to Queen Victoria in central Leeds, daubing the word ‘slave owner’ on the plinth;
Downing Street issued an extraordinary statement urging police forces to make their own decision on whether to intervene if protesters try to pull down further statues;
All 130 Labour councils said they would review the ‘appropriateness’ of landmarks;
The University of Liverpool
‘We can learn from this’
agreed to remove former prime minister William Gladstone’s name from one of its halls of residence due to student complaints over ‘his views on slavery’;
A row continued to rage over the toppling of the Colston statue, with Bristol’s mayor describing it as a ‘ piece of historical poetry’;
Little Britain has been removed from Netflix, BBC iPlayer and BritBox amid concerns that the use of blackface characters on the series is no longer acceptable;
The Archbishop of Canterbury said racism experienced by people in this country was ‘horrifying’ and declared that the Church of England had failed to combat injustice.
The removal of the Milligan statue followed a petition launched by Tower Hamlets Labour councillor Ehtasham Haque, which demanded the removal of the figure. Campaigners had vowed to protest every day until it was removed.
Mr Haque, who started the petition, said: ‘The very existence of Robert Milligan’s statue to glorify slave trading in 2020 is an insult to humanity. Some enthusiastic resident has already covered the statue to honour the victims of racism and slavery.
‘A statue represents glorification and honouring that person’s life, not education of history. I cannot honour a slaver and I never will.’
Mr Haque had promised that a protest would take place every day at 6.30pm by the nearby train station until the statue was taken down. More than 4,500 people had signed the petition as of last night.
The Canal and River Trust, the charity which owns the land where the statue is located, issued a statement on Twitter saying it would be removed. The statement read: ‘We recognise the wishes of the local community concerning the statue of Robert Milligan at London Docklands and are committed to working with London Borough of Tower Hamlets, the Museum of London Docklands and partners at Canary Wharf to organise its safe removal.’ Manchester also announced it would review all of its statues following the toppling of the Colston monument.
Councillor Luthfur Rahman said it was important ‘that we do not shy away from the darker moments in our country’s history and the difficult conversations attached to them’. He said he hoped the review would ‘be an opportunity for education and debate around those who have been memorialised’.
He added: ‘We think it’s important to undertake a citywide review of all the statues in Manchester and work with our cultural institutions to understand their history and context. We also want to take this opportunity to ask the public who is missing, who should be celebrated but is not, with particul a r thought around representing the proud BAME history of Manchester and help to reflect the shared story of our diverse and multicultural city.’
INSPIRED by the toppling of slave-trader Edward Colston’s statue in Bristol, an angry crowd descended on Oxford University yesterday to turn its fire on Cecil Rhodes.
Their demand is that the colonial adventurer’s marble sculpture be torn down from the entrance to Oriel College, his alma mater, on the grounds that he was an exploiter of black Africans.
So what next? Ban all books mentioning Rhodes? Burn them?
Denial of history does nothing to help the cause of the minorities these protesters claim to represent. Indeed, it hampers the efforts of those working within the system to bridge educational and income gaps.
Virtue- signalling London Mayor Sadiq Khan also jumped on the decolonisation bandwagon yesterday by appointing a commission on ‘Diversity in the Public Realm’ to recommend changing ‘offensive’ street names and removing statues.
Meanwhile, a group of Labour councils has pledged to review its public statuary, and in London’s docklands a sculpture of Scottish slave-owner Robert Milligan, who helped to design and build West India Docks, has been removed from public display.
Slavery was, of course, uniquely abhorrent, and has no possible defence. But where does one draw the line? Rhodes, for example, was born nearly half a century after slavery was abolished.
And whose statues should replace those of these flawed old white men?
Gandhi held profoundly racist views on black Africans. Nelson Mandela was a serial adulterer whose first wife said he beat her when she objected to his philandering. And Marcus Garvey, hero of the Rastafarian movement, was a fraudster and anti-Semite who consorted with the Ku Klux Klan.
If they choose to look beneath the surface, Khan’s commissioners will find that even the most lauded of heroes have feet of clay when viewed through a 21st-century prism.
A vicar’s son from Bishop’s Stortford, Cecil Rhodes became the world’s richest man by exploiting the Kimberley diamond mines, and expanded British rule across southern Africa. He also created the scholarships that have funded postgraduate studies at Oxford for foreign students since 1902 – including former US president Bill Clinton and Jamaica’s first post-independence premier, Norman Manley.
These protesters may have good reason to hate what Rhodes stood for. But rather than airbrushing him from history, they should try to understand the forces that made him. For better or worse, he and the Empire he helped build are an indelible part of the history of the British people – black and white.