Symbolism: the art of propaganda…

Edward Colston, Slave trader, Tory member of Parliament and…philanthropist. As a liberal who believes that society, the law and democracy should serve only to liberate I abhor slavery and its nefarious influence which still skews our global economy to this very day.

The city of Bristol, like so many other western European port towns, lives with the historical scar of Colston’s ill-gotten wealth. There is a hall, tower, schools and streets named after this man throughout the city.

In many ways the toppling of the statue was very English. The righteous majoritarian mob after years of deliberation finally tearing down the statue and dumping it in the harbour. No conciliation, no effective legal process of removal and all that is left is the extreme options of keeping an homage to a slave trader or dumping him in the harbour – would it be cheeky to make a Brexit comparison?

Inasmuch as Englishness (at least pre-Brexit) was defined by moderation and compromise, this is now dead with the England of Politics and England of Culture at odds with each other. We have an England now dominated by political extremes, since 2018 the Labour MP Thangam Debbonaire has been trying to obtain its legal removal only to be scuppered by the “Society of Merchant Venturers” (yes it does exist in this century).

According to local press, a Tory councillor successfully lobbied to have references to Colston’s political career removed from a plaque. Again, we see a Tory party more obsessed with its own image rather than demonstrating any interest in removing a symbol of what can only be called evil.

Yet, though a righteous mob it may be, does it really warrant public vandalism? Frustration at a process is one thing, but like with Brexit, does throwing our problems into the harbour solve anything? Bristol is one of the main cities in the quite prosperous west country of England, how many BAME people stand to benefit from this in real terms?

Then we turn to Ireland, Irish twitter shot alight with pictures of Oliver Cromwell the brutal ‘Lord Protector’ who systemically butchered his way through entire counties. Sadly, discussion even veered into the removal of Queen Victoria statues with the photograph of her removal from Leinster House in 1948 front and centre.

This not only makes me feel uneasy, it makes me feel extremely unwelcome in a place where I live happily with neighbours of all religion, ethnicity and philosophical persuasion. I won’t fail republican activists from their constant crusade to link every injustice with the Irish experience, but at some stage we must see political symbolism it for what it is; propaganda.

(Ulster Unionist Political Propaganda postcards: Credit – Isles Abroad blog)

 

During the home rule debates in the 19^th to early 20^th century the nationalist and unionist press packs couldn’t get enough of symbolic propaganda. To the unionist mind the idea of ripping down the Albert Clock (above) personified the fears of home rule and the cultural ‘whitewash’ which would follow – in this case the white marble statue of Redmond. It is important to stress that although the erection of monuments themselves are an act of propaganda, their destruction or removal is also an act of propaganda.

(O’Connoll Street, Nelson’s Column explosion: Credit – National Library of Ireland)

 

Propaganda campaigns can become very real and very dangerous – especially when explosives are used. Not content with Queen Victoria being removed from the front of Leinster house by Irish Republic officialdom, the IRA destroyed the uniquely British symbol of Nelson’s Column on Dublin’s Connolly street in 1966. The old Admiral never did anything to the Irish, his defeat of the French navy at Trafalgar in 1805 was 2 years after Robert Emmet’s execution and the last stand of the united Irishmen who had allied themselves to France in the 1790s and plotted to have French armies land in 1798 as part of the rebellion against the crown.

 

(Walker’s Monument: Credit – Derry of the past)

 

For good measure I would like to include a final destroyed monument which stood on Derry’s historic walls, destroyed by the IRA in 1973. It commemorated Governor George Walker who took joint custody of the city during the turbulent siege in 1689. The area was somewhat of a pilgrimage site to Unionism therefore it became legitimised in the minds of a crusading IRA to blow it up completely. It stood at 27 metres, unlike the larger Dublin pillar it was completed destroyed along with its plinth which has since been rebuilt. I dream of a day when we can build a replacement with a unifying figure such as Saint Columba placed atop.

Whatever your views on pulling down statues, the process of how something is done is as important of the substantive reasons for doing it. A statue of a slave trader in one of Britain’s cities is unjust but the frenzy of anger on display this week is not the path to justice, that can only come through meaningful change to our social and economic order. Just as the removal of John Mitchel’s statue will make no tangible difference to BAME people in Ireland who face discrimination on a daily basis (the reports on NI racism are damning) without more meaningful reform.

Like with the propaganda value of the IRA campaign or the cartoons of the home rule debates, all that will result for the ‘statue topplers’ is the same unjust system if they refuse to engage with it and change it using the process set down by law. We learned the hard way that without a legal process in the end all that results is a group of people hoarding power for themselves with a vice like grip; whether it be Labour and the Tories, the old Stormont regime or indeed the Catholic Church of Dev’s Ireland.

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