Kick over *all* the statues? Is Gary Younge right to argue for a better way of understanding history?
Gary Younge has written in the Guardian about the continuing and contested effort to take down statues, primarily in the UK of slave traders and racists.
It must be said that a good deal of the talk about this comes from the political right promoting various culture wars. Hence Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden continues to oppose the taking down of statues even where there is local support-such as the Museum of the Home in Hackney and arguing for a policy of retain and explain.
Certainly statues are retained but the explain bit doesn’t usually get too far or if it does the right complain further. However the reality is that there isn’t much of a clamour to take statues down. The left is mostly focused on putting them- figures like Sylvia Pankhurst and William Cuffay feature. Dowden says he is also in favour of putting statues up but hasn’t managed one in his time as Minister.
Taking down and putting up statues often signifies in visible form political change. Memorials could play the same role and indeed come and go themselves. The memorial to Henry Hunt after Peterloo in 1819 which was erected at Ancoats in Manchester has long since disappeared. Memorials to Engels residence in Eastbourne seem to come and go.
Eric Hobsbawm argues in Fractured Times that historically speaking across Europe, statues are put up and taken down as political times change. Gary Younge makes a good case for getting rid of all statues, while keeping memorials. However and particularly as he gave the Nye Bevan lecture at the Hay Festival this year I wonder if he plans to call for the removal of the statue of the founder of the NHS that stands at the end of Queen St in central Cardiff in the near future?
Update 7th June
The Guardian has published a range of views on the matter
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2021/jun/04/tear-down-every-statue-heres-what-to-do-instead
Gary Younge’s meeting at the Hay Festival on 6th June (available on Hay Player) was able to add more nuance to the argument. Perhaps the main point, which I essentially agree on, is that statues (often bad ones) of historical figures are a bad way of understanding history. Memorials looking at the wider context- perhaps in museums might work better. So, for example (mine not Gary Younge’s) a memorial to Cecil Rhodes could be placed very firmly in the context of imperialism and racism and not in the centre of Oxford.
Younge suggested that statues such as that at Marx’s grave in Highgate Cemetery would have to remain. Exceptionalism can take you to awkward places. I’ve often thought that the statue which ossifies Marx is rather Stalinist in its iconography. A memorial might be better and no need at all to disturb the grave
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