UK Politics: Black Lives Matter Here Too

[Heartofice]

16 minutes ago, john said:

Sure, I’ve got a great plan for that. We gather up all the wealth, land and property and redistribute it on a graded system depending on the exploitation of your ancestors and any current disadvantages faced. Then we devise a machine to wipe our memories in order to avoid any resentments arising from the first part of the plan. Let’s get to it.

The worst thing about this is, I suspect you are being almost serious here.

[Ran]

4 minutes ago, DaveSumm said:

It’s a tiny part of it. If we’re looking to actually improve the lives of black people in the UK we’ve successfully tackled the thousandth most pressing problem.

To be sure, the kind of rowdy enthusiasm that leads to taking part in this sort of thing can sometimes seem superficial, more a block party and Instagram-worthy moment than some expression of lasting activism or deeply-held belief. But if a bit of political vandalism is the only thing you can get some people on-side for, maybe it's better to do it than not?

Unfortunately, it's all a slippery-slope...

[Heartofice]

6 minutes ago, Ran said:

To be sure, the kind of rowdy enthusiasm that leads to taking part in this sort of thing can sometimes seem superficial, more a block party and Instagram-worthy moment than some expression of lasting activism or deeply-held belief. But if a bit of political vandalism is the only thing you can get some people on-side for, maybe it's better to do it than not?

Unfortunately, it's all a slippery-slope...

Does it actually get people on your side though? I’d suggest it can have the opposite effect. We are seeing that now.

edit, sorry misread what you wrote, though my point still stands 

[SeanF]

I see some bonehead thought the best way of demonstrating his support for the forces of order ......was to urinate on a statue to PC Keith Palmer.

[Raja]

33 minutes ago, Ran said:

I read up more on this, and I see over the last few years a number of locations have changed ( a primary school) or were in the process of changing their names (the music hall) already thanks to a sustained campaign.

I suspect the push to have the statue moved to a museum would have been successful this time around given the climate and attention without needing to topple it, and it would have done so under color of democratic institutions and process.

The City Council didn't have plans to consider removing the statue. The campaigners eventually managed to get the council to approve of a second plaque, and this was in 2018, but the wording basically got rewritten to a sanitized version of his involvement in the slave trade by the society of merchant venturers.  Remember, here we're just talking about adding another plaque as opposed to removing the statue completely and even that couldn't happen even though it's been in the works since 2018.

Maybe they would have been successful in getting the original plaque put up, but I think it is a little far fetched to think removal would have been possible when even acknowledgement with an additional plaque hasn't materialized for years.

Ideally the second plaque would have gone up with the original text and perhaps then we wouldn't be here.

 

 

[Ran]

11 minutes ago, Raja said:

Maybe they would have been successful in getting the original plaque put up, but I think it is a little far fetched to think removal would have been possible when even acknowledgement with an additional plaque hasn't materialized for years.

So we are not now in some special moment of unique attention to the matter that might change the calculus?  And if the council did not have plans to  discuss removing the statue, is this what they said at the start of the protests, or is it merely that they really didn't have time to respond? The wheels of bureaucracy move slowly, and near as I can tell the statue went from being the target of renewed active protest to being forcibly removed within a couple of days, hardly time for a city council to meet, discuss, and make a decision (including the decision to not bother meeting and discussing this particular point).

 

[dog-days]

Just watched a documentary on Thomas Picton, the governor of Trinidad. English subtitles available. 

It's hard to say if it's a good documentary in terms of accuracy since I was only broadly aware of his existence after reading an article about him a year or two ago. But you get to see Trinidad, including Port of Spain and the old jail, plus the remains of Picton's country pile in Carmarthenshire, now quite desolate. 

[BigFatCoward]

37 minutes ago, SeanF said:

I see some bonehead thought the best way of demonstrating his support for the forces of order ......was to urinate on a statue to PC Keith Palmer.

You can just imagine what his facebook was like when Palmer was killed by Islamic terrorists. 

[SeanF]

17 minutes ago, dog-days said:

Just watched a documentary on Thomas Picton, the governor of Trinidad. English subtitles available. 

It's hard to say if it's a good documentary in terms of accuracy since I was only broadly aware of his existence after reading an article about him a year or two ago. But you get to see Trinidad, including Port of Spain and the old jail, plus the remains of Picton's country pile in Carmarthenshire, now quite desolate. 

Now, I think he is a bad example of someone whose statue should be pulled down.  He was brutal as governor of Trinidad, but his statue was put up to commemorate his service in the Peninsular War (defending Spanish freedom was surely a good cause) and his heroic death at Waterloo.

[SeanF]

22 minutes ago, Ran said:

So we are not now in some special moment of unique attention to the matter that might change the calculus?  And if the council did not have plans to  discuss removing the statue, is this what they said at the start of the protests, or is it merely that they really didn't have time to respond? The wheels of bureaucracy move slowly, and near as I can tell the statue went from being the target of renewed active protest to being forcibly removed within a couple of days, hardly time for a city council to meet, discuss, and make a decision (including the decision to not bother meeting and discussing this particular point).

 

Bristol is one of the most left wing cities in England.  It's had a left wing majority on the council for ages.  Removing Colston's statue, or putting up the plaque ought to have been pushing at an open door.

[Raja]

1 hour ago, Ran said:

So we are not now in some special moment of unique attention to the matter that might change the calculus? 

That is plausible, but I would argue that the only reason we're in a 'special moment of unique attention' is because of what happened in Bristol ( At least in the UK, though obviously more upstream factor here the BLM movement & George Floyd in the US). Though I don't even know if we are indeed in 'a special moment of unique attention', we'll have to see how it plays out. I think there are many moments in history where you think you're in a special moment but in hindsight you realize that wasn't really the case, or that they didn't go far enough, so right now I don't know.

Edit : And it seems the Bristol Mayor is of a similar opinion, at least on the last point

Quote

I don’t know. We’ve had massive moments. World war one was a massive moment, the war to end all wars. Then we were in world war two. Then the cold war and nearly blew ourselves up. You’ve got the civil rights movement sweeping around the world, in the 80s you’ve got the riots, then the Macpherson report. We’ve had these seminal moments many times, they feel all encompassing, they feel in the moment, this is the time it’s going to change. Some things change but our political and economic systems, our social hierarchies have an incredible resilience.”

I mean we had posters in here wondering why there were protests at all given that Floyd was killed in the US and another subset not believing or ignoring black people when they speak out about statues like that, which shows how far we have to go, though I'm an optimistic after seeing the support for it even personally & the scenes we've seen everywhere so I know we'll get there.

( And what I wrote about the council was more to do with saying that stuff was happening in the background, it obviously wasn't going on during the protests/ in the last few weeks)

[dog-days]

2 hours ago, SeanF said:

Now, I think he is a bad example of someone whose statue should be pulled down.  He was brutal as governor of Trinidad, but his statue was put up to commemorate his service in the Peninsular War (defending Spanish freedom was surely a good cause) and his heroic death at Waterloo.

I still think it would be better if people focused on putting new statues up rather than pulling old ones down. Things like kickstarter or gofundme should make that easier, though I'm sure red tape would get in the way a lot, as it always does when local councils are involved and you don't happen to have a large bribe available to speed things along. 

As for Picton, I'm not fond of professional soldiers, so if statues do have to come down then from my point of view he may as well be one of them.  I doubt he threw himself in front of the bullet at Waterloo deliberately, though the Wikipedia description of his military career does make him sound like an adrenaline addict. He'd be wingsuit flying if he were alive today.

[SeanF]

4 minutes ago, dog-days said:

I still think it would be better if people focused on putting new statues up rather than pulling old ones down. Things like kickstarter or gofundme should make that easier, though I'm sure red tape would get in the way a lot, as it always does when local council's are involved and you don't happen to have a large bribe available to speed things along. 

As for Picton, I'm not fond of professional soldiers, so if statues do have to come down then from may point of view he may as well be one of them.  I doubt he threw himself in front of the bullet at Waterloo deliberately, though the Wikipedia description of his military career does make him sound like an adrenaline addict. He'd be wingsuit flying if he were alive today.

Picton was suffering from a huge level of combat stress.  He was sure he would die at Waterloo, and so it proved.

[dog-days]

22 minutes ago, SeanF said:

Picton was suffering from a huge level of combat stress.  He was sure he would die at Waterloo, and so it proved.

 I can't feel admiration or sympathy for a soldier of this era, of this type, any more than for George Osborne in Vanity Fair. I don't want statues to come down, but wouldn't feel greatly moved to defend a Picton from a diving holiday, any more than a Colston. 

[Denvek]

1 hour ago, SeanF said:

Bristol is one of the most left wing cities in England.  It's had a left wing majority on the council for ages.  Removing Colston's statue, or putting up the plaque ought to have been pushing at an open door.

And yet it wasn't done after a campaign lasting years, which can explain the frustration of those who decided to help the process along. With protests all over the country there was bound to be a flashpoint somewhere, and it happened to be the Colston statue.

[mormont]

1 hour ago, SeanF said:

Bristol is one of the most left wing cities in England.  It's had a left wing majority on the council for ages.  Removing Colston's statue, or putting up the plaque ought to have been pushing at an open door.

It's almost as if something or someone was trying to keep that door closed. As if, for example:

Quote

The fact is that certain people - largely cis white men of a certain age and class - have resources that others don't, in political circles. Particularly local politics. Money. Access. Experience. Knowledge. Understanding how things are done and how to stop them being done. Overcoming these advantages requires pressure and impetus. This incident created that impetus.

 

[john]

2 hours ago, Heartofice said:

The worst thing about this is, I suspect you are being almost serious here.

Seems unworkable doesn’t it? We should probably go back a few stages and first deal with the thousandth most pressing problem affecting the lives of black people. Which, as@DaveSumm has helpfully pointed out, is the statue thing.

[DaveSumm]

20 minutes ago, john said:

Seems unworkable doesn’t it? We should probably go back a few stages and first deal with the thousandth most pressing problem affecting the lives of black people. Which, as@DaveSumm has helpfully pointed out, is the statue thing.

No suggestions at all between statues and    complete societal transformation?

[Ser Reptitious]

15 minutes ago, DaveSumm said:

No suggestions at all between statues and    complete societal transformation?

What do you propose?

[Zorral]

Getting rid of the media that enables conspiracy and liars is probably as good a place as any to start getting rid of statues and other lies?

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2020/06/conspiracy-mainstream-media-trump-farage-journalism/612628/