Split Thread Tearing Down Statues Associated With Racial Injustice

In Liverpool, one proposal we had a long time ago was to change one of the names of the streets in the city center from its former name pertaining to a slave owner/trader, to something that honoured Anthony Walker.

https://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/liverpool-news/campaigners-back-call-name-street-3516881

One obvious problem people couldn't agree on was that Penny Lane itself would be something that would have to be changed, and obviously Beatles fans worldwide got their mop tops all bent out of shape over it.

Ms Hyatt urged Liverpool City Council to keep the debate about the slavery street names open.

She said: "It has to be a public debate. At the end of the day, the people in power are white and black people should be given a say."

Also from the article:

But Tony Excell, chairman of the Campaign Against Racial Terrorism (CART), said street names should not be changed.

He said: "We don't really believe there is any need to remove slave-traders' names, because that is effectively wiping out an important part of history.

"We condemn the decision to recognise and reward these people in the first place, but that was many years ago.

"But there are people who were significant in the abolition of the slave trade who we also think should be recognised in the same way."
 
Changing a street name isn't "wiping out an important part of history". Just like erecting statues, street names aren't created to teach or record or preserve history. They are acts of speech, designed to communicate that a person, place, or thing is worthy of special honor. It is okay to remove the statue or change the street name as another, separate act of speech intended to communicate that the present public no longer considers that person, place, or thing worthy of special honor. Doing so does not "delete them" from history like some kind of Twilight Zone gimmick.
 
Brainster said:
You keep mentioning this insurance on 20,000 people killed and thrown into the sea; do you have a source for that? It strikes me that the insurance company marketing that particular policy must have gone broke.
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Or you could go and find it for yourself; we live in the most information rich period in human history (so far). It would have take you less time to find the information yourself that type that post.

Insuring the Transatlantic Slave Trade

One important, but overlooked, risk mitigation device that facilitated the growth of the slave trade in the eighteenth century was the increasing availability of insurance for ships and their human cargoes. In this article we explore, for the first time, the relative cost of insurance for British slave traders, the underlying processes by which this key aspect of the business of slavery was conducted, and the factors behind price and other changes over time. Comparisons are also drawn with the transatlantic slave trades of other nations. As well as analyzing the business of underwriting slave voyages, we have two other objectives. First, we explore the meaning of slave insurance from the perspective of those directly involved in the trade. Was it about insuring lives or goods? Second, we provide new estimates of the importance of the slave trade to U.K. marine insurance. Did the former drive the growth of the latter, as Joseph Inikori has claimed?
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A critical factor enabling the transatlantic slave trade to grow to such dimensions was the ability of the merchants to find ways to mitigate not only the usual risks of trans-oceanic commerce in a pre-industrial age, but also those risks peculiar to the trade itself. The latter included high crew and slave morbidity rates, highly variable loading rates and ocean crossing times and the difficulties of provisioning for these, the moral hazard of crew neglecting their cargoes or trading for themselves, losses caused through shipboard slave revolt or resistance, and a variety of transaction risks, including exchange value uncertainties, price volatility and planter credit default in the purchase of new slaves. Historians have noted how failure to manage such risks undermined the trading capacities of some companies involved in the slaving business
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On 29 November 1781 the master of the Zong, a Liverpool slaver becalmed in the doldrums and running out of provisions, threw 132 living slaves overboard on the assumption that insurance would cover the loss. When the underwriters refused the claim the owners successfully sued. The underwriters applied for a retrial. At the Kings Bench in May 1783 Lord Mansfield and his fellow judges ruled in favor of the applicants, finding that there was no evidence that the loss had been occasioned by “perils of the sea” covered by the standard marine insurance policy.
Two years later Mansfield adjudicated another case, where a Bristol ship had lost 55 slaves during a revolt off the coast of Africa. The dispute centered on which losses the underwriters were liable for under the slave insurrection clause in the policy. The court ruled that they were to compensate for slaves shot dead or who died from wounds incurred directly in the struggle, but that they were not liable for deaths by other means, such as drowning, jumping overboard, or “abstinence” from despair at the failure of the uprising.
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Checkmite said:
Changing a street name isn't "wiping out an important part of history". Just like erecting statues, street names aren't created to teach or record or preserve history. They are acts of speech, designed to communicate that a person, place, or thing is worthy of special honor. It is okay to remove the statue or change the street name as another, separate act of speech intended to communicate that the present public no longer considers that person, place, or thing worthy of special honor. Doing so does not "delete them" from history like some kind of Twilight Zone gimmick.
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I don't necessarily disagree, but if that's the case, why even change them at all? Most people don't even know who James Penny was, for instance.

I'd be happy to see an "Anthony Walker Square", to be honest, as would a lot of people. I wouldn't, however, like to see the beautifully constructed town hall knocked down because of its links to slavery. I'm weird like that.
 
The desire to preserve some nice, gauzy memory of our ancestors is inexplicable to me. The inability to say that someone was a bad person even if they did some good things seems like the height of intellectual laziness. Cognitive dissonance has become an insult rather than the sign of a thinker it's supposed to be.

George Washington was a hero of the American Revolution and he was a racist piece of **** who committed the terrible crime of keeping slaves. One does not negate the other, but the latter is bad enough that it should be brought up any time one brings up the former.
 
Here is Michigan we have a lot of places named after Lewis Cass. He was a Governor (of the territory of Michigan) Senator (of the State of Michigan), presidential candidate, cabinet member, and generally powerful guy in the early 19th century. And, surprise, surprise, he was a racist. He didn't treat the Indians very nicely, and he didn't vote to limit slavery to existing territories.

Periodically, people get all bent out of shape about his name being on so many things. In my humble opinion, I can see why people would prefer that he not be remembered, except that he was a creature of his times, and, even more important, it would be a lot of work to rename towns, and the mail would probably get lost for a while. Not very many people even know who he is. (I kind of wondered, but I didn't know until NPR had a piece on him one day when I was listening.)
 
dudalb said:
Statue deserved to go down. The guy was a freaking slave trader he is more directly guilty then the Confederate generals (though their statues should go also.
Of course a dirty little secret is that a lot of the great British Trading Fortunes were founfrf on "The Blackbird Trade".
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This is an interesting thread on that:

https://twitter.com/tonys2009/status/1269656654683013122

Re: Bristol & slavery.

I worked for a while in a shop at the top of Blackboy Hill. (Named for it's participation in the trade.)

The shop had the warehouse in cellars. Several smaller rooms off a larger main room.

In the walls of the small rooms, there were ...
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Worth a read to get even some of the obscenity of the infrastructure of slavery.
 
Hey why isn't the Jimmy Savile statue included in this talks of important historic statues that totally shouldn't be torn down over being a creature of their times?
 
Babbylonian said:
The desire to preserve some nice, gauzy memory of our ancestors is inexplicable to me. The inability to say that someone was a bad person even if they did some good things seems like the height of intellectual laziness. Cognitive dissonance has become an insult rather than the sign of a thinker it's supposed to be.

George Washington was a hero of the American Revolution and he was a racist piece of **** who committed the terrible crime of keeping slaves. One does not negate the other, but the latter is bad enough that it should be brought up any time one brings up the former.
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It's just a part of our nature.

You'd have a hard time finding any one person who was innocent of any type of wrongdoing during their existence. Colston's involvement with the slave trade was obviously not going to win him any awards, but his generosity towards others was something he was apparently given a monument for...

It's a weird part of humanity that we're a part of something we don't and can't always agree with.

Should Colston's statue still stand? I don't care, I didn't care that it stood and I don't care that it now no longer stands, but it's a question for everyone, isn't it?

Grantham wanted a Thatcher statue, everyone else said nah, mate.

https://www.theguardian.com/politic...tcher-bronze-statue-to-be-erected-in-grantham

I can sort of see why some of them want it, and yet I can totally see why people don't want it. Was Thatcher someone to celebrate? Was Colston?
 
Gilbert Syndrome said:
It's just a part of our nature.

You'd have a hard time finding any one person who was innocent of any type of wrongdoing during their existence. Colston's involvement with the slave trade was obviously not going to win him any awards, but his generosity towards others was something he was apparently given a monument for...
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Exactly, so what if he raped some kids, that doesn't undermine the charity work Jimmy Savile did one iota. We need to rebuilt his statue!
 
ponderingturtle said:
Exactly, so what if he raped some kids, that doesn't undermine the charity work Jimmy Savile did one iota. We need to rebuilt his statue!
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You appear to be confusing me with someone who is opposed to the tearing down of statues.

I'm merely asking whether the eradication of such unfavourable monuments should extend further, and if so, how far?
 
jimbob said:
This is an interesting thread on that:

https://twitter.com/tonys2009/status/1269656654683013122



Worth a read to get even some of the obscenity of the infrastructure of slavery.
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Now that surprised me. I'm familiar with the "triangular trade" story of slaves taken directly from Africa to the West Indies and America, and the sugar, tobacco and cotton which was the produce of their labour shipped to Britain, but not that slaves were brought to Britain, specifically because as I understood it slavery was not lawful here (though plenty were happy to tolerate and profit from it overseas). Is it really the case that African slaves were held in Bristol?
 
Gilbert Syndrome said:
Is that everyone else's take on it, though? Because if that's the case, I'd agree with it, but I don't know if that's the stance being taken by everyone involved in tearing it down, tbh.
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Well, given that the earlier suggested compromise that was rejected was a second plaque explaining where his fortune came from, it seems likely that at least some people are taking that stance.
 
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