These statues send a clear message to people about their relative importance. They uphold institutional racism. Their impact on race relations is felt in the lived experience of our minority communities and seen in their lopsided poverty, police profiling, imprisonment, and abuse.
The argument
Statues are not neutral records of the past. A statue is erected to honour, placed where the public will pass it, and maintained at public expense; it is a symbol that a community celebrates, and its presence says that the figure it depicts is worth looking up to. That is what distinguishes a monument from a museum label or a page in a history book, and it is why this argument turns on veneration rather than on remembering. Once that is granted, particular cases become hard to defend. Edward Colston, a slave trader from Bristol, is the case proponents most often press. Proponents of this position argue that a city does not need to keep celebrating such a man in order to remember what he did — and that continuing to do so tells those descended from the people he trafficked that their city still regards his career as honourable. The injustice is not only historical; it is renewed each day the monument stands. Removal is therefore not an erasure of history but a correction of the public record of who is honoured. It withdraws civic celebration from figures whose prominence rested on the exploitation of others, and in doing so acknowledges a wrong that was never formally acknowledged when it was committed. The statues went up without the consent of the people harmed by their subjects; taking them down registers, belatedly, that the harm counted. This is what proponents mean by saying that the crisis forces a confrontation with the scourge of racism: the monuments make the question unavoidable. The argument concludes that statues of controversial and racist figures should be taken down, and that doing so redresses an injustice long allowed to stand.
Context
The rise in civil unrest after police in the United States killed George Floyd led to worldwide protests against racial injustice.
Premises
Counter-arguments
Many UK residents were appalled by the removal and vandalism of statues, including one of Winston Churchill in London. They argue that the removal of statues should be voted on democratically. Others believe that it is unfair to judge past figures by today’s morals and standards. One Churchill supporter offered the opinion that winning World War II deserves a statue regardless of the former Prime Minister’s personal beliefs.
Rejecting the premises
[Rejecting P1] Statues mean different things to different viewers, and having been commissioned as an honour long ago is not the same as being venerated now. Most go unnoticed until they become contested. [Rejecting P2] The historical record is not in dispute; the criterion is. Once profiting from historical injustice is the test, it reaches far beyond one merchant — which is why opponents ask who decides where the line falls. [Rejecting P3] Removal changes a streetscape rather than an injustice, and redresses nothing material for anyone living. Opponents argue that the decision belongs to a democratic process, and that reinterpretation — plaques, relocation, museum display — confronts the history more directly than absence does.