History is to be learned from, not eradicated
In the wake of news that 700 Confederacy statues are threatened with demolition in the US, it was inevitable that the “Erasure of Global History” movement would spread across the pond to the UK.
Earlier this week, a Guardian newspaper opinion piece called for the removal of the iconic Nelson’s column in Trafalgar Square, London. Thankfully (for now) this notion produced the deluge of ridicule it deserved.
The most sensible views on the issue of “moral relativism” were those of Ye Olde Pedant in Monday’s Have Your Say, who said: “What gives us the right to pass judgement on anybody, especially when he is from a different time and place?” Exactly – why should we seek to punish or destroy retrospectively? History is to be learned from, not eradicated. Suppose it were possible for moral relativism to operate in reverse, let us consider how a devout 1950s Christian would have reacted, at that time, to the prospect of same-sex marriage and the glorification of LGBT sixty years hence?
The irony, of course, is that slavery – the central issue in this latest spat – is now rampant under its new name of “human trafficking”. If statues are ever raised to those traitorous western European leaders who promote and facilitate the current slavery epidemic in the Mediterranean, namely Blair, Merkel, Juncker et al, I trust that their statues will be trashed in far less time than the 93 years afforded to that of Confederate General Robert E Lee.
Nigel Pike
Phang Nga
