We should celebrate Robert Peel, not take down his statue

From: Lord Jonathan Caine (Con), House of Lords, London.

SIR Robert Peel should be celebrated not defenestrated. In addition to establishing the first modern police force, for which we should be grateful, Peel took Catholic emancipation through the House of Commons and stood up to the landed interest in the Conservative Party by repealing the Corn Laws.

While this hastened the end of his premiership, and split his party, it undoubtedly increased living standards for the poorer in society and paved the way for unprecedented levels of prosperity.

Peel’s record in Ireland was far from perfect but his response to the famine, unusually for the time, included intervention and relief schemes. Peel’s approach might have been limited in its impact but it is absurd to describe it as a policy of genocide. His Whig successor, John Russell, deserves far greater criticism for his more laissez faire approach.

On slavery, Peel supported abolition in 1834-5 – which finally abolished slavery in the British Empire – and, as Prime Minister in 1845, he authorised the establishment of the Anti-Slavery Squadron comprising 35 ships.

By all means debate Peel’s record but let us not judge all historical figures solely through the lens of today’s standards and values. To do so is profoundly unhistorical and often a hallmark of tyrannical regimes.

We should be cautious of treading that path. Meanwhile the statues of a great statesman, including the one on Woodhouse Moor, Leeds, should be left alone.

From: Phyllis Capstick, Hellifield.

THE past cannot be altered by throwing a statue in a river. We must get on thinking about the present and the future, and working hard to make things work for the better.

The only way to have relative peace in the world is to have each country’s culture, heritage and history (good or bad) respected by its people and by anyone who moves there.

In the early 1900s, families in this country had to move around in order to find work. Since then people from different countries, and of differing cultures, move around the world for other reasons. There is always the option to return to their own cultures and their roots.

From: Mary Alexander, Knab Road, Sheffield.

HOW self-defeating to hold a mass rally under the banner ‘Black Lives Matter’ in a pandemic which disproportionately claims black lives.