Historical Statues and Memorials

Lord Oates Excerpts

Thursday 9th February 2017 Grand Committee

Asked by

[Lord Oates]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they will publish guidance to encourage the protection of existing historical statues and memorials and promote the establishment of new memorials that reflect the broader history of the United Kingdom.

[Lord Oates (LD)]

My Lords, I am grateful for the opportunity to open this debate. In doing so, I declare a non-pecuniary interest as a patron of the charity Memorial 2007. I thank in advance all noble Lords for taking part in this debate.

The history of our country is passed down to us through many different channels—in the content of the history books in our libraries, in the syllabuses taught to students in our schools and universities, in the events we choose to commemorate and in the events we choose to forget. Its physical embodiment is found in the statues and monuments that stand in every city, town and village across the country. In many cases the judgment that history makes on the people commemorated by these statues and monuments is less favourable than the view that their contemporaries took or that they themselves sought to propagate.

In other countries, as history has turned, there has been wholesale destruction of monuments that no longer found favour. It was true in France after the revolution, in Germany after the Second World War and in many parts of Europe after the collapse of Soviet communism. Lacking a violent domestic upheaval in our own recent history, there has been no great disruption of our monuments. Inevitably, therefore, a fair number of history’s villains, rendered in stone or bronze, are scattered across our towns and cities. There are those who argue that the most egregious of these villains should be removed. When I first tabled this Question, a debate was raging over whether the statue of Rhodes at Oriel College, Oxford, should be removed. The controversy that followed exemplified the emotional significance afforded to these physical manifestations of our history.

I am no fan of Cecil John Rhodes; I have spent enough time in southern Africa and read enough of its history to be in no doubt about the greed-fuelled violence he unleashed on that part of Africa, the legacy of which, tragically, remains to this day. But we cannot pretend he did not exist, or that his actions were not ultimately backed by British arms and sanctioned by British law. He is part of history; he cannot be wished away any more than any other cruel period in our history can be wished away. He is of course not alone. At the public entrance to this building stands a statue of Oliver Cromwell, whose violent suppression of the English Levellers, the royalists and the Catholic Irish is well documented. London and other cities are littered with statues to slave owners. They stand alongside buildings constructed with the riches accumulated through the slave trade and close to monuments to assorted imperialists and racial supremacists of the 19th and 20th centuries. The truth is that our history is so closely entwined in these things that to pretend we can disentangle it by removing a statue or two is to delude ourselves.

We should not try to deny our history in that way but we seem determined to deny it in another. Ten years ago, a national service of remembrance was held in Westminster Abbey to commemorate the bicentenary of the Act that abolished the transatlantic slave trade. The service culminated in the Queen laying flowers, first to honour all who worked for the abolition of the slave trade and afterwards to honour those who were enslaved. The flowers to honour the abolitionists were laid at the statue of William Wilberforce that stands in Westminster Abbey, but there was no statue or monument to honour the millions of enslaved Africans—to bear witness to the vast numbers who died in appalling conditions in the camps on the African coast, on the slave ships crossing the Atlantic or at the hands of brutal overseers in the plantations. There was no statue to the millions more who survived the horror of the slave ships to suffer the unspeakable physical and psychological violence of slavery, and no statue to the courage and fortitude of those who survived and resisted. Instead, the Queen had to step outside the abbey and place her flowers on a paving stone in the forecourt, which is inscribed with generic words in tribute to the innocent. I was struck by this at the time: why was it that 200 years since abolition, there was no national memorial in our capital city to honour the millions of African people enslaved or murdered in the transatlantic slave trade? Why was there no monument to remind us that the capacity for unspeakable brutality towards innocent people is not reserved to one nationality, or to one time in history? It is in all of us and it must be guarded against by all of us at all times. History teaches us that lesson, but we have to be willing to learn.

When I was appointed to this House, I tried to find out why this part of our history seemed to have been passed by, and in doing so I came across two formidable women who are here today. They are trustees of a charity called Memorial 2007, which was established to bring into being a monument to honour the countless millions of enslaved African people and their descendants, to give voice to their history and to gain recognition that it is also all of our history. Through their fortitude and determination and against many obstacles, they secured a site for a memorial garden and sculpture in Hyde Park. They held a design competition, commissioned a sculptor and—just recently—gained planning consent for the project from Westminster City Council. They are now raising funds to make the enslaved Africans memorial a reality. The project got its inspiration from a pupil of one of the trustees. On a visit to the Tower of London, the pupil asked, “Where is our history, Miss?”. Nowhere is that absence truer than in the history of the transatlantic slave trade, for while there are statues and monuments to slave owners and white abolitionists alike, there is no representation of the history of the enslaved African people. There is no representation that testifies to the determined advocacy of black abolitionists, such as Olaudah Equiano. In all the self-congratulation over abolition, we lost sight of the real story: the central part our country played in 300 years of the brutal enslavement of millions of our fellow human beings. In losing sight of that story, we failed to learn the lessons that history has to teach us.

The Question we are debating today is a wide one and I recognise that noble Lords will want to raise a range of issues relating to this subject, but I hope the Minister will be able to address some specific issues regarding the enslaved Africans memorial in her response to this debate. First, I hope she will be able to put on record her and the Government’s support for this long-overdue monument. Secondly, I would be grateful if she could indicate whether the Government are willing to provide the sort of technical assistance to Memorial 2007 that was afforded to recent projects, such as the Ghandi statue. Thirdly, the Minister may be aware that following the difficulties with the Diana memorial, the Royal Parks now require a maintenance endowment over an extended period. In the case of the proposed enslaved Africans memorial, this amounts to nearly £1 million. I would be grateful if the Minister could look at this and consider whether the Government might be able to review this requirement, or take on this part of the cost. Finally, I hope the Minister can give guidance to public authorities and grant-giving bodies that they should consider the diverse historical experiences of our country in their decisions.

I do not believe that we should attempt to deny our history by tearing down existing statues and monuments, but we should bear true witness to that history by ensuring that the monuments of our capital city and our country begin to reflect a rather wider and more inclusive history. In 1682, as the historian Madge Dresser notes, William Goodwyn proposed a public statue in London which would have prominently acknowledged the injustice suffered by enslaved Africans under British rule. Some 335 years later, that call has not been answered. It is now time—well past time—to put that right.