Michael McGuire: Taking down a statue doesn’t erase history
Taking down a statue doesn’t erase history. In fact, it adds history to the figure represented by it, writes Michael McGuire.
Opinion
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It’s a strange thought that taking down a statue is erasing history. On the contrary, taking down a statue is adding a little history to the person represented.
Let’s face it, many of the people who were once thought worthy of being cast in metal haven’t been talked about, written about or even vaguely mentioned in many years.
Ever been to a quiz night where they ask you to find and name various statues around Adelaide? It’s never a good round.
Taking down a statue doesn’t erase history. How could it? The history books aren’t changed. The actions of the person aren’t altered. They still lived, they still died.
In the case of Edward Colston, whose statue took a dip in the Bristol Harbour, his history of making slaves of 84,000 people still stands. No one can take that away from him. Not even when his statue is rusting in the sea. So, that’s good.
For all those pontificating about that “it wasn’t the right way to do things’’, it should be noted there have been people in Bristol trying to have that statue removed for decades.
The “right way” didn’t work for them.
Of course, sometimes statues being removed by the will of the people has been the cause of great celebration. When the Iraqi people pulled down the statues of their vicious dictator Saddam Hussein after the US invasion, it was a cause of much glee in the West. Right-wing totem John Howard was quoted by authors Wayne Errington and Peter van Onselen in their biography of the former PM saying he hadn’t seen “such exhilarating scenes since the explosion of the Soviet empire in the late 1980s’’. Even if the Iraq war turned out to be a disaster, it’s easy to see why the Iraqis pulled down those statues. It was the same when the citizens of the former Soviet Union pulled down commemorations to Lenin, Marx and Stalin after the revolution of 1989.
Who wants to live with everyday reminders of people who made your life a misery?
Who doesn’t want to exact a little revenge, even if it’s only symbolic?
It’s why so many in the US want to tear down statues of Confederate heroes. Most of the Confederate statues were built well after the American Civil War ended and were erected to glorify white supremacist attitudes and intimidate everyone else.
Statues to Confederate soldiers and leaders are the strangest of things in any case. In basic terms, they were all traitors who took up arms against the US. And they lost.
I’m not saying all old statues need to be lost or torn down. I’m saying it should be possible to have a discussion about which ones should be kept and which ones should be reconsidered without everyone bolting to their tedious left and right culture-war corners.
Just because something is put up, doesn’t mean it should never come down again. Statues are not immune from the theory of gravity.
It’s clear some don’t even know what they think they are protecting. A group of dimwits in England gathered to protect a statue of Victorian-era writer and poet George Eliot. George Eliot was the pen name of Mary Ann Evans, who opposed slavery.
There has been gnashing of teeth in Britain about what should happen to Winston Churchill statues. I’d keep them. Sure, Churchill was a terrible old racist, but he did more to combat fascism than just about anyone else. That has to count for something.
I’d keep James Cook’s statues as well. Cook’s legacy contains good and bad but he shouldn’t be the scapegoat for all the horrors colonisation later brought to Australia’s indigenous people. It’s been suggested we should keep any removed statues in a museum.
That seems like a reasonable idea. Perhaps, then, they could be used to teach history. They could give context to a person’s place in history, let us argue the good and bad and let people make up their own minds.
History is never static. This generation has a right to make its own mind up, as much as any other.