Not heard of Robert Peel? He virtually founded the police service in Britain - hence police used to be know as "peelers" and are still known as "bobbies".
Winston Churchill
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In the latest episode of the United Hour Podcast, Nik @Rood and Imran @Annihilate Now! start with the good news by celebrating Manchester United Women's emphatic FA Cup win over Spurs at Wembley and the future of manager Marc Skinner.
Then it's the bad news and the ever worsening form of our Men with losses to Arsenal and Palace.
Finally the main debate - ETH Out now or keep him until the end of the season - if not longer. Are you Team Nik or Team Imran?
I learnt that in school. They didn’t tell he was racist (if that’s what’s being said if people want his statue down)
edit: better clarify myself, by ‘being said’ I mean I’ve never heard of it or bothered looking myself
I hadn’t
It seems there’s a small petition to bring it down because his dad was racist.
Slave trade? What about acknowledging that wealth came after looting Colonial countries for centuries? Maybe that acknowledgement will come when marches start for that.
Ah right, I don’t see the sense in that.I hadn’t
It seems there’s a small petition to bring it down because his dad was racist.
A man moulded by war and of a very different era. He believed every man, from any race, should know his place in life and above all their duty. Retrospectively that makes him look like a tyrant.
Exactly what we needed to face the Germans and didn’t seek the easy way out through peace talks with the Antichrist that was Hitler.
Capable of the despicable but had more character and balls than all the PM’s that have followed combined.
Exactly what we needed to face the Germans and didn’t seek the easy way out through peace talks with the Antichrist that was Hitler.
Capable of the despicable but had more character and balls than all the PM’s that have followed combined.
He also loves nukes in the Civilization series.
It would be fantastic and honestly quite surreal to see Britain become self-aware of its own past. Britain would be so much better for it.
Tearing the right statues down is a step in that direction. Really needs to start with that history curriculum though.
Tearing the right statues down is a step in that direction. Really needs to start with that history curriculum though.
1st Amendment which should also always immediately follow:
And he was a white suprematist, racist and killed millions by starvation and other means through his foreign policy.
(note only facts and no hyperbole)
So long as that is put into the official history book of remembering and sparked about hereafter, I passionately agree.
Hey, I’m not sure what you are or aren’t agreeing with?
What foreign policy are you referring to in particular?
He was an omnivore though, so his statue is sure to be torn down in the great vegan revolution in 2045I hope Bobby Charlton isn't racist
I think there's an awful lot of sillyness going on right now, mostly with good intentions, but mostly completely on the wrong path. Everyone in the past is a cnut when viewed with modern eyes. We'll be cnuts too in a few short years. We just have to do our best now surely?!
No. Not everyone in the past is a c.
I’d argue that what is happening is a tiny step forward and I just hope the momentum is kept.
Everyone was, all cultures were cnutish.
Next time any white male is tempted to tell another non white British person "If you don't like it here, leave" here's a heads up on what you'll look like.
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https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/oct/01/gandhi-celibacy-test-naked-women
That's deeply disturbing.
“British Values” is a phrase often spoken in support of the above comment.
The irony of someone defending their racism by saying it isn’t lost on me.
we laugh but sometime the future generations will look back on us with anger and disbelief and shame us, I think too there was a black mirror episode about this
Agree.
He's another person who is put on a pedestal with the nasty things about him swept under the carpet.
The present day sentiment in the general populace of India is very much anti-Gandhi, but for all the wrong reasons. He had a dark side to him that most people don't know or care to know about, but my thoughts on the matter are the exact same as for Churchill.
"If you don't like it, leave it! By the way, we made it far more difficult for you to move to 20 odd of our nearest neighbours"
There was a debate bout Gandhi's racism a few years ago because of Arundhati Roy writing something. Whatever I read said that he said many racist things about native South Africans but then seems to have backtracked in the 1920s. Ambedkar, a Dalit leader, was also very critical of his writing and thinking on caste. And what you linked is extremely weird, but something he wrote about on his own.
I don't think so. I think you're quite mad to think otherwise.
I got a FB post from someone about Douglas Bader. Usual tripe about being a war hero and a true Brit. So I read his wiki and found out he's not someone who'd be popular today.
Never a person to hide his opinions, Bader also became controversial for his political interventions. A staunch conservative with traditional Victorian values, his trenchantly expressed views on such subjects as juvenile delinquency, capital punishment, apartheid and Rhodesia's defiance of the Commonwealth (he was a strong supporter of Ian Smith's white minority regime) attracted much criticism.[152] During the Suez Crisis, Bader travelled to New Zealand. Some of the more recent African Commonwealth countries had been critical of British military intervention; he replied that they could "bloody well climb back up their trees"
Never a person to hide his opinions, Bader also became controversial for his political interventions. A staunch conservative with traditional Victorian values, his trenchantly expressed views on such subjects as juvenile delinquency, capital punishment, apartheid and Rhodesia's defiance of the Commonwealth (he was a strong supporter of Ian Smith's white minority regime) attracted much criticism.[152] During the Suez Crisis, Bader travelled to New Zealand. Some of the more recent African Commonwealth countries had been critical of British military intervention; he replied that they could "bloody well climb back up their trees"
Churchill was the leader we needed at the time and I suspect the only one that could have held the war effort together until the US entered the war. My admiration for that doesn't mean I can't think many other aspects of his life were despicable. Doubly so by modern standards.
These things aren't always easy to reconcile and I don't have an easy answer, but I suspect looking for easy answers is part of the problem.
These things aren't always easy to reconcile and I don't have an easy answer, but I suspect looking for easy answers is part of the problem.
Middle aged, upper/middle class white bloke essentially saying to a black woman's face "Love it (as is) or leave". Shameful.
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Gandhi was a nonce. feck Gandhi.
Seems like tearing these statues down has been way more educational for a lot of people than keeping them up.
Reads a lot like the RedCafe general forum at the moment.
I also thought the way she dealt with such disgusting hostility was equally telling.
You could see she was quite shokced but also didn’t bite into his rage baiting, and instead ridiculed him with poise and intellect.
He needs he be fired by sky/lbc as many are now demanding.
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Interesting thread but it begs the questions: exactly how responsible are we for the actions of our ancestors? And is that a fair stick to beat people with?
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Within the first two decades of the 17th century, the East India Company was the wealthiest commercial operation in the world with 50,000 employees worldwide and a private fleet of 200 ships. The vast displacement of blacks from Africa into the West and Indians displaced across Asia and Africa to perform physically intensive slave labour were acts by the white British establishment.
Slaves traders and East India Company employees (Eg Colston, Milligan, Rhodes, Courteen, Lancaster, Roe, Hastings ... there are 1000s of them from literally every village and town across England) garnered heinous levels of wealth, way in excess of what their family required. Upon death, they bequeathed some of these funds to whitewash their legacy through public charitable donations, or left as inheritance to continue white supremacy in subsequent bloodline generations. I'm not aware of many donations or inheritance that went to the countries or communities they looted or enslaved.
These funds (including from the Opium business) were also used to fuel the Industrial Revolution, but again using stolen natural resources from colonised lands and racist economic policy (eg forcing Indians to buy inferior and more expensive cotton made in northern English towns) to solely advance the British population.
As generations passed, so the white UK population advanced with better schooling and health services. An interesting anecdote I was once explained was to note that UK villages (eg Cotswolds but their are many) are now gentile, wealthy with huge stately homes, churches and public services. And yet in India or Africa, villages are places of backwardness and poverty. Why is that?
In my opinion, it's because even the lowest clerks and employees of East India Company, who came from what were poor English villages at the time, managed to earn enormous wealth in their lifetime, and invested that into their home and community. There are many evidences of poorer uneducated East India Company employees who couldn't believe their eyes at just how relatively wealthy even rural Indians were.
Though it's almost certainly been proven that Lord Macaulay didn't say the following, the sentiment is accurate and describes what ended up happening:
"I have travelled across the length and breadth of India and I have not seen one person who is a beggar, who is a thief. Such wealth I have seen in this country, such high moral values, people of such calibre, that I do not think we would ever conquer this country, unless we break the very backbone of this nation, which is her spiritual and cultural heritage, and, therefore, I propose that we replace her old and ancient education system, her culture, for if the Indians think that all that is foreign and English is good and greater than their own, they will lose their self-esteem, their native culture and they will become what we want them, a truly dominated nation."
As 21st Century Brits, we enjoy many of our privileges versus other nations based on gains from slavery and looting during the empire era.
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I have changed my mind over the years on the statue question - and possibly Redcafe has contributed to that. I used to think the past should be left to the past, but now i don't see the point in keeping monuments to people whose legacy was built chiefly on questionable actions. I still don't agree with destroying them, that's the definition of whitewashing history, but put them in a museum somewhere rather than celebrating them on a plinth.
At the same time, people whose legacy is built on something else should be remembered primarily for that thing, and monuments to what they did left alone accordingly. Churchill is such a person. Discuss all sides of what he did by all means, but i will never agree that we should attempt to diminish the main reason he is remembered. If we take that approach we would have no statues left.
Instead of removing the statues why not paint them rainbow colours or something so that whenever people look up and see they will know that this was a slave trader and now he's being painted as that and we want it known that what he did is not acceptable anymore.
I'll bet most of the people who walked past Colston had no clue who he was or cared to know.
I'll bet most of the people who walked past Colston had no clue who he was or cared to know.
I'd rather see something like that with a plaque giving a history of each person - that way we can educate people about the history of the British Empire. I think that would be much more beneficial than tearing down statues and trying to erase bits of history we don't like - the country needs to own it's history and make people more aware of it all the good and the bad - British Empire is mostly bad but we shouldn't deny that it happened.