We must defend British culture against those who tear down controversial statues in the UK

The argument

Proponents of this position argue that the campaign to remove controversial statues misunderstands what removal can accomplish. Taking a statue down does not rewrite history: the events the figure was involved in happened, and their happening is not altered by whether a likeness of them stands in a public square. Nor does removal right the wrongs done in the past, since those wrongs were done to people long dead and no rearrangement of present-day monuments reaches them. On this account the desire behind the campaign is a desire to forget the violent colonial past of the UK by removing the representations of it — a response that changes what is visible without changing what occurred. The deeper objection is that the past being removed is the past that produced the present. Britain's empire was shaped by slave traders and slave owners, and proponents do not dispute this; they argue that it is precisely because this history is so consequential that it must remain in view. That same empire shaped the success and wealth of the United Kingdom, so the country's current circumstances are not separable from how it acquired them. The argument holds that erasing the monuments obscures a connection the country needs to be able to see. The history is also held to contain its own correction. The empire built on slavery is the same history that influenced many abolitionists to rise up, and their work reshaped the country into what it is today. Removing the statues removes the provocation as well as the offence, leaving the record of what was overcome no more visible than the record of what was done. History should not be forgotten or erased, good or bad. On that basis, proponents argue, British culture must be defended against those who tear the statues down.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Defending the statues is not equivalent to defending British culture. Those monuments and statues represent ideologies that are no longer prevalent or accepted in today’s culture. The UK has a history of evolving culture and values. British culture is be evolving right now as its society removes the statues, so there is no valid way of defending the culture and the statues at the same time.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] This premise undercuts the position it is offered to support. If removal neither rewrites history nor rights past wrongs, then removal changes nothing that the argument values — which leaves no ground for the defence being mounted. [Rejecting P2] That the past shaped the present is not in dispute, and the abolitionist point cuts the other way: the campaign against the slave trade was conducted in opposition to the men commemorated, so honouring the traders is a poor way of remembering those who defeated them. [Rejecting P3] Removal and erasure are being equated. A statue taken to a museum, recontextualised or replaced is not a fact deleted from the record, and the historical evidence about these figures resides in archives, ledgers and scholarship rather than in bronze. [Rejecting C] The counter-argument on record disputes the central equation between the statues and the culture: monuments express the values of the period that raised them, British culture has repeatedly revised its values since, and the removals are themselves an expression of that culture changing — so the two cannot be defended as the same thing. (The slug for this entry does not match its content and is a candidate for correction.)