Preserving Heritage and Statues in Cities

Jim Shannon Excerpts

Monday 7th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)]

Today marks a year to the day since the name Edward Colston first crossed my consciousness, and no doubt that of many millions of others, when his statue in Bristol was ripped down from its plinth and rolled into the waters where I imagine his slave ships once docked, in the wake of the brutal racist murder of George Floyd in the US. Events in Minneapolis reverberated everywhere and copycat topplings ensued. In east London, a statue of slaver Robert Milligan was pre-emptively removed by Tower Hamlets Council before any damage was done, and in Brussels King Leopold, who oversaw genocide in the Congo, was dethroned. Confederate generals fell in Birmingham—Birmingham, Alabama—in Portsmouth, Virginia, and in New South Wales, Australia; place names that give a twist to UK geography. The felling of Saddam Hussein in 2003 proved memorable because statues confer respectability and are highly symbolic. Nearly 40,000 individuals have signed three separate petitions on the gov.uk website, so we can see that people attach a lot of significance to statues.

As for Colston, a man who made his wealth from trading in human beings and the enslavement of Africans, putting them in chains, he was once venerated as a benefactor to Bristol, with a school and even a type of cake named after him. Where is he now? No longer imposing in the city centre, his watchful eye over everyone, but horizontal in a museum, in a graffitied, defaced state. Apparently, when the council fished him out of the river, the damage done to his pedestal was so great that it could not take the weight of his standing on it. If we think about it, in some senses it is far better now that he is an educational tool, an exhibit furthering teaching, than a statue everyone walked past obliviously.

The incident of last year and its postscript is history. Colston’s latest chapter parallels how the statue of Viscount Falkland just outside this Chamber, off Central Lobby, has been missing a foot spur since 1909, because a suffragette chained herself to his feet, and in the melee before security and the police escorted her off the premises —crying “Votes for women!” all the way—the spur snapped off. That missing spur has, unintentionally, become a symbol of feminism, giving people like you, Madam Deputy Speaker, me and the Minister hope that we might one day make it into this place. It is always part of the Rupa tour—the unofficial tour I give when taking constituents around. I also show them the DIY plaque that Tony Benn screwed into place down in the dungeon, with the help, I believe, of our former leader, the right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn). The plaque commemorates Emily Wilding Davison, another suffragette. It is fitting that, like that snapped-off spur, the spray-painted version of Colston was not restored to its former glory. These one-time acts of vandalism have become matters of historical record.

There is also that larger-than-life Churchill passed by all us MPs when we come into the Chamber. It was going a bit green, because too many Conservative MPs were rubbing it for good luck. It now has a “Do not touch” notice affixed to it. Hon. Members will remember that a year ago the statue of Churchill outside in Parliament Square was first boxed up and then heavily guarded—people said he was the most guarded man in England—for fear of his being attacked by Black Lives Matter protesters. Yet it was only a week ago that that statue had “Chelsea” daubed over it. Chelsea had won some championship or another, and Chelsea fans, who I think are normally associated with the political right—remember John Major and the headhunters—took advantage of the fact that security’s eye was off the ball. That shows how we can sometimes imbue these acts with too much significance.

Granted, there could be a bit of evening up the score for womankind going on. It is shocking that it was only in 2018—quite recently, considering the first arch in Westminster Hall dates back to 1080, I believe—that we got the first woman commemorated in the environs of Parliament in the form of the statue of Millicent Fawcett. We could do better to even up the score, given that until then there had just been an unofficial plaque, not on public view, and a snapped spur to represent womankind in this Parliament.

The same is true of black and minority ethnic figures. I know that there was an almighty fight by a predecessor of mine, Lord Soley, to get a statue of Mary Seacole over the way at St Thomas’s. All these figures are quite complex. My late Dad hated the statue of Lord Clive on Whitehall because of Clive’s corruption and imperial butchery. At the same time, my dad was not a fan of Gandhi, who is one of the few colonial subjects who has a statue out there. I cannot quite remember why, or if I have misremembered, but my dad is not around to ask.

Another joke of my dad’s was, “The British Museum? That’s a funny word when all the stuff in there is nicked!” So yes, the British Museum.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I think that was an extra prompt, Madam Deputy Speaker, but anyway, the hon. Lady and I spoke beforehand.

I recently attended a meeting regarding the statue of Hans Sloane, the famous inventor of hot chocolate who was also responsible for advances in medicine. He was a son of Killyleagh in my constituency of Strangford. I find it incredible that his bust in the British Museum can be moved, especially considering the collection of 71,000 items that he bequeathed to the British nation, thus providing the foundation of the British Museum, the British Library and the Natural History Museum in London. The fact that his wife was connected to a Caribbean plantation was enough entirely to discredit anything else.

Does the hon. Lady agree that we must not seek to remove or dispose of our history, but rather should allow it to have its place and seek to address where we as a nation are going as a matter of great importance? I congratulate her again on introducing the debate and on the way she has introduced it.

[Dr Huq]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. What an honour it is to be intervened on by him in an Adjournment debate. I think this is a first for me; we may have done this in Westminster Hall, but not here in the Chamber.