David Leyonhjelm: Don’t judge statues in retrospect

WE shouldn’t scrutinise historical actions with modern eyes, just as we shouldn’t tear down statues through political correctness, argues senator David Leyonhjelm.

Alfred Deakin, Australia’s second Prime Minister, designed the White Australia Policy which was backed by all his successors up until Sir Robert Menzies.

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JOHN Howard once said “a conservative is someone who does not think he is morally superior to his grandfather”.

I am no conservative and no fan of John Howard, but I agree with the sentiment.

It is lazy thinking to label historical figures in negative terms simply because what they said and did at the time is not something that would be said or done now.

We have plenty of people in our history who should not be judged by contemporary standards.

A statue of Confederate general Robert E. Lee stands in the renamed Emancipation Park in Charlottesville, Virginia. A decision to remove the statue caused a violent protest by white nationalists and neo-Nazis.

Robert E Lee and his wife inherited 100 slaves and later freed them.

There are early governors, for example, who, among other things, ordered Aborigines to be killed. Every Prime Minister up until Menzies was on record as a supporter of the White Australia Policy, a policy crafted by Alfred Deakin, whose 2m bronze effigy still stands on Hopetoun Circuit in the eponymous Canberra suburb.

I mention this because Americans are currently engaging in debate over the removal of statues of people who, at least according to some, are immoral.

One of these is Robert E. Lee, who led the Southern forces in a civil war popularly considered to be about slavery. In a letter written to his wife Mary in 1856, Lee’s ambivalence to slavery was evident; the couple had inherited more than 100 slaves from Mary’s father following his death. Lee honoured his father-in-law’s will and granted the Arlington estate slaves their freedom five years after his death — a year before Abraham Lincoln issued his Emancipation Proclamation.

It is a shame that the council has been motivated by a politically correct view.

Lee joined the forces of the South not because he was a pro-slavery ideologue, but because of the North’s attack on the self-government of his beloved Southern state of Virginia. Now, in Charlottesville, Virginia, the local council has decided to remove a statue honouring Lee.

It is reasonable for a democratically elected council to change the public art in places for which it is responsible. After all, the council that originally installed the public art decades ago shouldn’t be able to tie the hands of future councils.

But it is a shame that the council has been motivated by a politically correct view that Lee represents a symbol of slavery and white supremacy.

Workers repair a black sheet that was put over the statue of Robert E. Lee in Virginia after a man tried to cut it off.

There have been protests by both supporters and opponents of the Lee statue. This is fine, because raucous and rude protests, if not particularly persuasive, can at least represent healthy venting. But further shame descended on Charlottesville when protests turned violent, culminating in a murder by a white supremacist who wasn’t even a local of Charlottesville.

If calmer minds had prevailed, those wanting to defend Lee could have accepted the council decision to remove the statue but campaigned at the next council election for it to be reinstalled.

A campaign based on white supremacy would fail, but a campaign explaining that Lee was neither a hero nor a villain, but a complicated man in a complicated war, might have won.

And through such a campaign, some of the supposedly anti-fascist protesters might come to a view that, given that he lost the war, urinating on Lee’s statue is a tad ungracious.

And there are plenty of statues of people whose views we would no longer endorse.

It might be hard to imagine such incidents occurring in Australia, but we should remember that we have our own “morally superior” youth (of both a left and right persuasion) and that, while it’s hard to get fired up and take to the streets during a cold winter, summer and Australia Day are around the corner.

And there are plenty of statues of people whose views we would no longer endorse.

The retention or removal of these statues, or amendment of the plaques praising them, should be a matter for the relevant council or government, with input from the locals who voted them in and who live among the statues.

I would favour retaining the statues, partly because their removal is a waste of taxpayer’s money, and parks without public art are boring, and also because I am reluctant to label as immoral our early governors and Prime Ministers.

The early governors were military rulers ordered to take land to establish a colony, and they did so using their technological and organisational superiority. It is hard to imagine how they might have employed less bloody alternatives, short of giving up and heading back to England.

And while the early Prime Ministers were wrong in thinking that population control should be achieved on the basis of racist immigration policy, their underlying desire to protect incumbent Australians from multitudes of harder-working foreigners, as expressed by Deakin, is understandable.

The best way to decide whether statues should rise or fall is through debate and the ballot box, with reason and respect. It should not be a matter of political correctness, preferably not rude and raucous protests, and certainly never by murder.

David Leyonhjelm is a Senator for the Liberal Democrats