UK Politics: Black Lives Matter Here Too

[DaveSumm]

10 hours ago, Stannis Eats No Peaches said:

So we mustn’t accept anyone breaking the law, no matter the circumstances?

Er ... yes? I think that’s the default position isn’t it? There’s plenty of features of the legal system that can bend a little to circumstance, we can show leniency if it’s thought that it’s needed. 

To be clear, nobody here is saying it’s not a bad statue to have, I entirely sympathise with the reasons it was torn down, and I don’t think much will come of it. It’s not a huge deal for me. But it’d be slightly more of a victory if it was done legally and democratically, and I suspect would win over more people to the cause of BLM.

In other news, my local FB group (small Hampshire town, extremely white) has turned into an absolute car crash over a post in which a black lady who’d lived here most of her life spoke up about her disappointment that nobody had so much as mentioned the BLM protests. It quickly descended into a slagging match absolutely rammed full of “all lives matter”, “yea what about Lee Rigby”, “my cousin went for a job and got told if she was Asian she’d get it, therefore it’s just as bad being white” ... etc etc. It’s tempting to think there’s overwhelming support for BLM if you only visit certain sites, but shit did this post disavow me swiftly of that notion. Real venom coming from people who normally only discuss bin days and selling cakes.

Unrelated really, but it’s weird how growing up with the internet and posting in forums like this, you get so used to the etiquette of not personally attacking people, it’s like we’ve all seen what can happen if you’re allowed to do that and how it turns into an absolute shit show. FB feels like it’s made up entirely of people who missed that meeting, and for whom FB is the first time they’ve been part of any online groups. People in their 50’s/60’s just casually calling each other fat, stupid, etc. 80% of this post would’ve been deleted if it was posted here, as it was only one person got banned and he specifically sought out one of the posters husband and tried to arrange a fight. Stay classy FB.

[SeanF]

12 minutes ago, DaveSumm said:

Er ... yes? I think that’s the default position isn’t it? There’s plenty of features of the legal system that can bend a little to circumstance, we can show leniency if it’s thought that it’s needed. 

To be clear, nobody here is saying it’s not a bad statue to have, I entirely sympathise with the reasons it was torn down, and I don’t think much will come of it. It’s not a huge deal for me. But it’d be slightly more of a victory if it was done legally and democratically, and I suspect would win over more people to the cause of BLM.

In other news, my local FB group (small Hampshire town, extremely white) has turned into an absolute car crash over a post in which a black lady who’d lived here most of her life spoke up about her disappointment that nobody had so much as mentioned the BLM protests. It quickly descended into a slagging match absolutely rammed full of “all lives matter”, “yea what about Lee Rigby”, “my cousin went for a job and got told if she was Asian she’d get it, therefore it’s just as bad being white” ... etc etc. It’s tempting to think there’s overwhelming support for BLM if you only visit certain sites, but shit did this post disavow me swiftly of that notion. Real venom coming from people who normally only discuss bin days and selling cakes.

Unrelated really, but it’s weird how growing up with the internet and posting in forums like this, you get so used to the etiquette of not personally attacking people, it’s like we’ve all seen what can happen if you’re allowed to do that and how it turns into an absolute shit show. FB feels like it’s made up entirely of people who missed that meeting, and for whom FB is the first time they’ve been part of any online groups. People in their 50’s/60’s just casually calling each other fat, stupid, etc. 80% of this post would’ve been deleted if it was posted here, as it was only one person got banned and he specifically sought out one of the posters husband and tried to arrange a fight. Stay classy FB.

This is a very well-mannered forum.  Some Internet forums can be terrible.

[Stannis Eats No Peaches]

1 hour ago, DaveSumm said:

Er ... yes? I think that’s the default position isn’t it? There’s plenty of features of the legal system that can bend a little to circumstance, we can show leniency if it’s thought that it’s needed. 

To be clear, nobody here is saying it’s not a bad statue to have, I entirely sympathise with the reasons it was torn down, and I don’t think much will come of it. It’s not a huge deal for me. But it’d be slightly more of a victory if it was done legally and democratically, and I suspect would win over more people to the cause of BLM.

 

The point of the post I was quoting, and apologies if I misunderstood, was that while the statue shouldn’t have been there in the first place, its removal via mob was against the law, and that’s a bad thing in and of itself. I do agree with your second paragraph.

 

I’m honestly pretty surprised about the poll results HoI posted earlier. While I’m disappointed that 33% of the country are apparently cool with a statue of a slaver having a place of honour in a city centre, I do wonder about the 40%. Would their preference have been to tear down the statue via mob justice, or not at all? I certainly would have preferred the statue to be removed in an official manner, but I definitely prefer this way if the alternative would have been to leave it in place.

 

Edit: sorry about the font formatting.

[Heartofice]

In terms of the poll, I found the 33% who said they didn't want the statue removed surprising as well. However I've seen a lot of people jump to the conclusion that this means those 33% are a bunch of racists who want to bring back slavery.

That's unlikely, in fact nobody is calling for the reintroduction of slavery so we can dismiss that! It could just be that those people saw more value keeping it up and educating people about the past rather than attempting to erase history. I don't know, I'm guessing.

What I think this does show though is that the actions of a mob can cause quite a polarised opinion and it's easy to step over a line where you lose the ability to get people on board. Defacing the Churchill statue to some might seem like a righteous act, but to a lot of the country it is a slap in the face to one of their treasured icons and immediately gets their backs up (shouting that someone who tries to remove the banners on the statue a racist doesn't help either, if anyone saw that video)

So even if a lot of people agree with removing the Colston statue, I think that people taking the law into their own hands, ignoring societal standards and democratic consent, could possibly have the effect of stiffening the resolve of those who would have been happy to ditch the statue, but now see it as a left / right law issue. 

[Soylent Brown]

More likely the 33% are a bunch of racists who don't mind that slavery was a thing, rather than wanting to bring it back.

[mormont]

2 hours ago, DaveSumm said:

To be clear, nobody here is saying it’s not a bad statue to have, I entirely sympathise with the reasons it was torn down, and I don’t think much will come of it. It’s not a huge deal for me. But it’d be slightly more of a victory if it was done legally and democratically, and I suspect would win over more people to the cause of BLM.

No need for hypotheticals, if you've read the earlier link you'll know that the legal and democratic route was already pursued. It resulted in compromise, delay, dilution, and the other things we tend to associate with those sort of routes. More to your point, it did not receive even 0.001% of the publicity this did, so even if it was ten times as effective, it would have had a tiny fraction of the impact, suggesting that in fact your last point is incorrect.

[Chaircat Meow]

I am against the statue being torn down and doubly so because it was done by a mob. 

He's not being commemorated for his role in the slave trade by Bristol but for his role in town government and rather for giving to schools and almhouses. If you celebrate this you're really giving a license to desecration and attacks on the country's history.

On the other hand if you have a statue of someone like Lee in the US I can understand getting rid of that, as the main (perhaps only) reason to remember him is because of his role defending the confederacy. 

[Soylent Brown]

So you'd feel the same about Jimmy Savile statues then, given all of his charity work?

[A wilding]

22 minutes ago, Chaircat Meow said:

He's not being commemorated for his role in the slave trade by Bristol but for his role in town government and rather for giving to schools and almhouses. If you celebrate this you're really giving a license to desecration and attacks on the country's history.

 ... and so a compromise was suggested, to add a plaque saying that he was indeed a philanthropist but that he had made his money as a slaver. But this compromise was basically blocked by the statue's defenders.

 

Edit: for the record, my personal view is that this is a marginal case, and I am concerned about demonstrations during a pandemic, but I am narrowly in favour because the peaceful democratic approach had been repeatedly blocked, and without this the statue would most likely have remained there untouched for many years longer.

[Soylent Brown]

I'm not convinced the argument, "But he was one of the nicer slavers!" is especially strong.

[mormont]

32 minutes ago, Chaircat Meow said:

He's not being commemorated for his role in the slave trade by Bristol but for his role in town government and rather for giving to schools and almhouses.

Both of which were founded on the wealth he earned as a slave trader.

[Week]

16 hours ago, SeanF said:

Most of the great men (and some women) of history range from the pretty ruthless to the completely sociopathic butchers. And, our current prosperity is built upon the actions they took.  

Probably high time we lionize men and women who were actually great. No?

14 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

I know, different country, but for year's I've wondered what we should do here with Founding Fathers statues. I don't have a good answer.

"Master of these politics, you swear that you got options (Slave, yeah)
Master of opinion 'cause you vote with the white collar (Slave)
The Thirteenth Amendment says that slavery's abolished (Shit)
Look at all these slave masters posin' on yo' dollar (Get it)"

Gimme some Tubman twenties, plz. 

[dog-days]

On the subject of new statues, there was a competition last year to choose a statue of a famous Welsh woman to be put up in Cardiff by the new BBC HQ. The BBC ran a series of fascinating articles about the five "contenders". All of the articles are linked from this page - scroll down a bit to get to them. 

[DaveSumm]

1 hour ago, mormont said:

No need for hypotheticals, if you've read the earlier link you'll know that the legal and democratic route was already pursued. It resulted in compromise, delay, dilution, and the other things we tend to associate with those sort of routes. More to your point, it did not receive even 0.001% of the publicity this did, so even if it was ten times as effective, it would have had a tiny fraction of the impact, suggesting that in fact your last point is incorrect.

OK to be clearer, I wish they’d succeeded at legally taking it down. As to your last point, publicity and winning people to your cause aren’t quite the same thing. Though I accept that wasn’t necessarily their aim, I expect they just didn’t want the statue there anymore regardless of how anyone felt about it. It’s the wider point I’m interested in I guess, do protests change anyone’s mind on a matter? I can’t picture someone who disagreed with BLM’s methods beforehand changing their minds because these protests have been larger and wider spread than before. To be clear once again, I’m not remotely saying they shouldn’t be protesting, but the question ultimately is “how to we effect change”, and protesting only forms part of the answer.

[Chaircat Meow]

1 hour ago, Soylent Brown said:

I'm not convinced the argument, "But he was one of the nicer slavers!" is especially strong.

But that's Ok though, because as far as I can discern no one has ever made this argument. 

 

 

[Soylent Brown]

3 minutes ago, Chaircat Meow said:

But that's Ok though, because as far as I can discern no one has ever made this argument. 

 

 

Talking about how he used his slave money to build schools is exactly that argument.

[Chaircat Meow]

5 minutes ago, Soylent Brown said:

Talking about how he used his slave money to build schools is exactly that argument.

I never mentioned 'slave money to build schools' at all. My point was to ask why he has a statute and why he was allowed to dominate public space, not to offer an opinion on how good a person he was. 

[Soylent Brown]

1 minute ago, Chaircat Meow said:

I never mentioned 'slave money to build schools' at all. My point was to ask why he has a statute and why he was allowed to dominate public space, not to offer an opinion on how good a person he was. 

He's not being commemorated for his role in the slave trade by Bristol but for his role in town government and rather for giving to schools and almhouses. If you celebrate this you're really giving a license to desecration and attacks on the country's history.

You didn't use the term 'slave money', but you mentioned the schools and almhouses, which were given... slave money.

True enough that you offered no opinion on how good a person he was. That doesn't appear to be something that's important to you. History matters more to you than Black Lives, eh?

[Spockydog]

1 hour ago, Week said:

Probably high time we lionize men and women who were actually great. No?

Not a chance. Most of us still believe that Richard the Lionheart was one of our greatest kings, when the exact opposite is probably true.

[Chaircat Meow]

1 minute ago, Spockydog said:

Not a chance. Most of us still believe that Richard the Lionheart was one of our greatest kings, when the exact opposite is probably true.

He was still a better ruler than Jeremy Corbyn would have been though, you have to admit.