Weeping Angels

The Weeping Angels was a classic 2007 Dr Who episode which brilliantly used the idea of real-world statues coming to life, statues whose touch hurls their victim back in time – “allowing the Angel to feast on the energy of their unloved days”.  The issue of statues has come alive as the US argues about whether to tear down monuments to the supporters of slavery [‘Take the Confederate Statues Down’] and appears not to have concluded its own Civil War.

History matters. It tells us something of who we are and who we want to be. The infrastructure and symbolism of our public life – our streets and public space matters. The statues we preserve and protect aren’t just historical artefacts, casual remnants of the past hanging about, they are immutable power rendered in stone.

If the American issue has hit the headlines, we are not without the same issues in Scotland and wider Britain. Yesterday Afua Hirch made a compelling case against Nelson’s Column, arguing:

“One of the obstacles all these abolitionists had to overcome was the influence of Nelson, who was what you would now call, without hesitation, a white supremacist. While many around him were denouncing slavery, Nelson was vigorously defending it. Britain’s best known naval hero – so idealised that after his death in 1805 he was compared to no less than “the God who made him” – used his seat in the House of Lords and his position of huge influence to perpetuate the tyranny, serial rape and exploitation organised by West Indian planters, some of whom he counted among his closest friends.”

No doubt such observations will trigger a crisis for many who would rather avoid the gaze of the past and the issues it presents us with. But changing the physical world signifies an ability to ‘take back control’ to act and reclaim history for the future. Of course Scotland has its own stone monuments scattered around the highlands, homes evicted, peoples lives displaced and abandoned. These are memorials to state violence.

Some ‘monuments’ need resurrected whilst others need torn down.

Statues – not cheap – are almost always symbols of wealth and power.

Rather than look at changing the character of civic space as some kind of existential threat to history, a some kind of Caledonian Year Zero, we could imagine it as a creative and collective endeavour of re-awakening.

 

Why are we celebrating slavery and slavemasters and profiteers?

Why are there so few statues of women in 2017, and what are we going to do about it?

Why is it acceptable for Scottish towns to be named after garrisons in 2017?

Why does the statue of George Granville Leveson-Gower, the first Duke of Sutherland, still stand on the summit of Beinn a’ Bhragaidh?

Why do we celebrate Henry Dundas, 1st Viscount Melville in St Andrew Square?

Why do we celebrate Earl Haig on the Castle esplanade?

Like the fight for women on bank notes, such arguments evoke visceral howls from those who want to preserve their status, but such questioning and re-imagining could be about a wider debate about public art, history and which figures from our past deserve credit and celebration. There are situations when statues should simply be pulled down, and others where more information is required about their past.

We can have that debate.

The argument against change aren’t just defending an indefensible status quo, they are defending a position that nothing must change because … nothing must change. Oddly, its an ahistorical position to take. For some the act of overcoming symbols will never have the same urgency as ‘real work’ legislation or action. But you only have to watch the response to this debate to see the importance of symbolism for power. In a digital world of pixels and html, the lasting nature of carving in stone and casting in bronze has an importance that is worth talking about.

 

Russia Wants Bulgarians to Stop Vandalizing Soviet Monuments To Look Like American Superheroes

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/ukraine-has-finally-removed-all-1320-lenin-statues-our-turn/2017/08/25/cd2d5b06-89ae-11e7-961d-2f373b3977ee_story.html?tid=ss_tw&utm_term=.35112c4292a5

If Dr Who can shift gender, then we can shift the debate about the state of public space and the monuments we celebrate in Scotland. It’s about time.

 

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Comments (6)

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  1. bringiton says:

    Every time I see the “Mannie” I think of it as a reminder to Scots of what can result when individuals have virtually unfettered power over them (as we are beginning to see from May and her friends with regard to Scotland).
    It should be left as a symbol of man’s inhumanity to man in the same way as Auschwitch although in the case of Sutherland there wasn’t any work to make people free once the Duke and his wife had finished with their project.

  2. Joe Gibson says:

    I am a very staunch supporter of INDEPENDENCE, however I am also a firm believer of retaining all of our history.

    I do not see where all this wish to demolish statues are coming from, the are a reminder of what used to be, not what we have become or hope to achieve when independence is achieved.

    Leave the past alone our children and now my grandchildren can learn from our past sins/endeavours, lets teach them Scotlands history and leave others to do what they would wish with theirs.

    1. Alasdair Macdonald says:

      Joe Gibson, I agree entirely (as a supporter of independence, too).

      Yesterday, in The National, Ms Cat Boyd’s article was about her assertion that the people of Scotland had not confronted our ancestors’ involvement in the slave trade. In a letter today in the paper a correspondent points out how little of the history of Scotland many of us (I am in my 70th year) were taught in school.

      During the past two decades as much more of the history of Scotland has become available to the population in general, I think that a lot of us ARE aware of the damning aspects of Scotland’s past and, with regard to slavery, Glasgow’s especially. Slavery is unequivocally a crime against humanity. But, neither I nor the majority of my fellow citizens were responsible for it. So, while it is appalling that it happened, what are we supposed to do about it? There are published books about it. It is in the school curriculum. While there is, undoubtedly, still too much abuse of women, people of different races, of different religions, of different sexualities/genders, etc, young people in schools are more aware of these things and many feel freer about being what they believe themselves to be.

      I found it difficult to see what the point of her article was. Was she implying that ‘the sins of the fathers should be visited upon the sons’? (I acknowledge the inherent sexism in this old phrase). To give credit for improvement seems to be damned as complacency and that by taking some pleasure in achievements we will simply stop at that.

      Finally, I should like to add that I abjure the abuse which Ms Boyd has received from some quarters for her revelation of how she voted (or not) in recent referendum/election. I disagree with her decisions in both cases, but, since she has been in the public domain, I admire and support much of what she has done. To the trolls and abusers I say, “disagree, but do not abuse.”

  3. DialMforMurdo says:

    Fort Augustus, Fort George, Fort William and now Fort Kinnaird…

  4. Paul Henderson says:

    Thanks for this blog, I really don’t know what that mean of statue specially that man in horse with a road sign in hes head. Because I like this blog I always follow this in my page https://www.best-sms-tracker.com/.

  5. Michael Campbell says:

    I am against tearing down any of the objectionable statues. I think it would be more valuable to add a plaque to explain who the individual was and what they represented. A constant guilty reminder of what we once celebrated is better than erasing an embarrassing and offensive legacy.

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