The government’s rhetoric over statues and our history does us all a disservice

We need an open debate about where we have come from and where we are headed, writes Chris Stevenson

The statue of slave trader Edward Colston in Bristol was removed and thrown into the city’s harbour last year (Reuters)

We have returned to the front lines of the “culture wars” with the communities secretary, Robert Jenrick, writing in The Sunday Telegraph about the need to protect statues from the threat of “baying mobs”.

Proposed new laws would require planning permission for any changes and a minister would be given the final veto. The complete plans are set to be unveiled in parliament this week. 

The argument over whether the UK should look to edit its history (which has been debated for years) reached its height last year in the wake of the toppling of a statue of the slave trader Edward Colston.

A number of venues in Bristol changed their names after protesters pulled the monument down – Colston’s Girls School changed its name to Montpelier High School, and the city’s Colston Hall music venue is now the Bristol Beacon. Boris Johnson and his ministers also found a cultural touchstone to rally the Conservative supporter base around – alongside another incident where a memorial to Sir Winston Churchill was daubed with the words “is a racist”.

While a “considered approach” to the removal of monuments appears sensible, the language that Jenrick used is anything but, writing about an attempt to change history “at the hand of the flash mob, or by the decree of a ‘cultural committee’ of town hall militants and woke worthies”.

I also note the timing of bringing this issue back into the spotlight, with the government facing criticism over its handling of the Covid-19 pandemic.

We have received many letters about the UK’s history and its future over the last few months – and a debate over that history and where we are going is always worth having, in my opinion. The language used by Jenrick does a deep disservice to us all, however. There will be readers that will agree with the idea of leaving monuments intact, but we all deserve better than this.

I expect the debate to continue in our letters page – in a better spirit, I hope, than this piece from a government minister.

Yours,

Chris Stevenson

Editor, Voices