WHEN the statue of Saddam Hussein was brought crashing down, the world cheered. It was a powerful symbol of the oppressed freeing themselves, of liberty being regained – or so we hoped. That dream turned sour, but now statues of other leading figures are also under threat of being toppled, their lustre tarnished, their names no longer glorious, but besmirched in blood and guilt. Unlike Saddam, these figures are not modern tyrants, but powerful men from the distant past whose names have fallen into disrepute.
What started with an outcry calling for the removal of the bust of imperialist Cecil Rhodes in Oxford has spread like measles. From the church in Virginia that has removed a plaque to slave owner George Washington who worshipped there, to Port Elizabeth, South Africa, where a sculpture marking the bravery of horses in the Boer War has been defaced, iconoclasm is on the march.
You could call it the new clearances. Figures from the past are being consigned to cellars, or daubed in paint and graffiti. In so doing, history is in danger of being cleansed, ugly facts hidden from sight like dirt under a rug. The latest whitewashing is the disappearance from the Scottish Government website of all mention of Sir John A MacDonald, the “founding father” of Canada. An essay heaping praise upon him on the government website Scotland.org has also disappeared – “we dinnae ken where the page has gone” we are told.
Born in Glasgow’s Merchant City, most probably in Brunswick Street (ironically the site was demolished last year for development), MacDonald emigrated with his family when he was five. Trained as a lawyer, he rose to become the country’s first prime minister. He was evidently a man of many strengths, but also weaknesses.
In recognition of these flaws, his statue in Victoria, in British Columbia, has been removed and put into storage. He might have been a founding father, but among many questionable decisions, the Indian Act for which he was responsible, which led to 100,000 Native American children being removed from their parents, shows that some of his views were utterly repellent.
Reverberations from MacDonald’s departure from public view have swiftly reached these shores. Not only has his name been eradicated from the Holyrood website, but a question mark hangs over the government’s sponsorship of the Sir John A’s Great Canadian Kilt Skate in Ottawa, held every January on his birthday.
It is of course understandable that in Canada, as everywhere, full acknowledgement and reparation must be made to those who have suffered from state-sanctioned cruelty and injustice. That is only right. But to airbrush history in the process seems to me a questionable and even sinister route to take. Who, after all, determines what is acceptable history and what is not?
If you think of the kings and queens, the parliamentarians and prime ministers who shaped nations and their futures, none was particularly pleasant. From Robert the Bruce and Elizabeth I to Cromwell, Thatcher and Blair, they all have blood on their hands, either directly or on their orders. Even were any of these deeds justified by circumstances, as heads of state they could not show weakness or hesitation. In such positions, the harshest side of people’s personality is usually given full expression, their kinder nature suppressed.
None of this excuses heinous acts or, in the case of MacDonald, attitudes that by today standards are barbaric. Yet what purpose does it serve to remove references to those who moulded the world we know, despite or indeed because of their views? They were people of their times, barometers of earlier societies. We may struggle to comprehend their mindsets, yet they must not be written off simply because they do not meet our own standards.
So what should we do with the effigies, portraits, sculptures and suchlike of those we no longer respect? Hiding them in a cupboard is childish. Pretending they didn’t exist is snowflaking of the highest order. By allowing a blizzard of condemnation to fill in footsteps leading back into the past, we lose the trail and are left with nothing but a pristine, bewildering expanse of white.
In Edinburgh, a cleverer way might soon be found. Sir Henry Dundas, who was effectively king of Scotland in the 18th century, was a ruthless and corrupt politician who helped delay the abolition of slavery, a trade he championed. But instead of removing his statue in St Andrew Square the authorities are considering rewording his plaque, to include the discreditable aspects of his career. If it could be hung around his neck all the better.
That, surely, is how to do it. History is not a bad book to be edited or rewritten. If we are to learn from it, however, we must view it from all angles. Wholesale condemnation is as unhelpful as blind reverence. We need, rather, to be reminded that even the most celebrated and gifted can behave terribly. If displayed with honesty, statues and references to flawed but significant figures could be a helpful reminder of LP Hartley’s dictum: “The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.”
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