The Government can’t run away from this poisonous culture war any longer

Jun 13, 2020 by Jill

by Charles Moore, Telegraph:

Protesters are trying to efface our rich national story and retell it as purely one of racial oppression.

In 1992, the controversial Arthur “Bomber” Harris got his statue outside the RAF church, St Clement Danes in the Strand. This paper’s then editor, Max Hastings, had the nice idea of sending me thence in a circuit via Whitehall and Trafalgar Square, to compare the scores of monuments along the way. Several things struck me as I strolled. One was the odd mixture of genuine renown/heroism/usefulness – such as Nelson, Edith Cavell, Bazalgette, who built the Victorian sewers – and obscurity/lack of merit – the 19th-century Duke of Cambridge King James II. Another was the sight of a great clash of history reconciled in stone: King Charles I rides proudly at the top of Whitehall. At the bottom of it, by Parliament, stands Oliver Cromwell, who executed him …

[…] These statues (often remarkable works of art) were erected not by one omnipotent authority, but by all sorts. The choices often reflected the people’s preferences. Nelson’s column, for example, cost £50,000 (nearly £7 million today), the bulk paid for by public subscription. What overall narrative can one see in this array? Certainly no single, official preaching of imperialism, racism, or any doctrine. You see the story of a free people, unfolding in the haphazard way in which freedom always works. What we have now, under the guise of Black Lives Matter, is an attempt to impose a single, organised, hostile narrative on this country. It wants literally to efface our rich national story and retell it as one of racial oppression, using the tactics of a “flash mob”.

Read here (£)

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