During the recent protests in this country at the shocking death of a US citizen at the hands of an American police officer in the USA; it came as no surprise to me to see the amount of ignorance on display with regard to this country’s history, and in particular, the ‘slave trade’.
There has been plenty of ranting about the men who became rich, but not about the Africans who sold their fellow Africans to the European traders, or the significant part played by Britain in abolishing the slave trade and ending slavery in many parts of the world.
This isn’t the first time that there have been demands to remove statues, both here and in the USA. So, bearing this in mind, here is a copy of one of my posts from 2015 ….
“It goes without saying, that many of the people who made the British Empire so ‘Great’ were pretty unpleasant characters: but, having said that, it is almost impossible to judge them by today’s standards, which is what is happening in the case of the Cecil Rhodes’ statue.
Nearly every town and city in the UK has at least one statue of a ‘conquering hero’ posh pukka sahib or the like. Are they all to be removed ? If so, I suggest that we start with the upper class white supremacist colonialist who said that he was off to take part in …
… “a lot of jolly little wars against barbarous peoples” who had a “strong aboriginal propensity to kill” … “It was great fun galloping about.” … and personally killing at least three “savages” !
He wrote of his “irritation that Kaffirs should be allowed to fire on white men”, and demanded more conquests, based on his belief that “the Aryan stock is bound to triumph”.
He also declared that he was “strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes …[It] would spread a lively terror.”
He hated Indians stating that … “They are a beastly people with a beastly religion”. He also believed that “natives” were like helpless children who will “willingly, naturally, gratefully include themselves within the golden circle of an ancient crown” ..
So who was this great man ?.. No! .. It wasn’t Cecil Rhodes .. It was .. Winston Churchill” !
“The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there” .. L.P. Hartley
bigjohn 
