Preserving Heritage and Statues in Cities — House of Commons, 2021-06-07
Topic: Public Lands
Caroline Julia Dinenage (Conservative, Centre-right): I congratulate the hon. Member for Ealing Central and Acton (Dr Huq) on securing the Adjournment debate. Gosh, that was wide-ranging! I think I would need an entire Front Bench of Ministers to respond fully to all the important points she made. If she will forgive me, I will use the short time left to me to concentrate on the bits that fall into my portfolio, which would be those that come under the topic of this debate, and to set out the Government’s position on statues in cities and the wider context she talked about The hon. Lady started by saying that the debate on how best to acknowledge and commemorate our past and history is complicated. It can provoke really strong emotions and, although we might sometimes disagree with each other’s positions, we always have to remember that everybody’s individual views are strongly and sincerely held and need to be seriously considered. That is because our history shapes who we are and what we value, and we are the poorer if we seek to deny that We believe that the right approach to statues and to other aspects of our history that are in the public realm—that are displayed publicly—however contentious, is, as the hon. Lady says, to retain and explain their presence, and present to the public their full story. Sometimes that is unpalatable, but it is important that we learn from it, as she pointed out; we cannot airbrush our past. We need to face up to it, however uncomfortable, and explain the history of those who are commemorated or marked within the contexts of the dominant norms of their time, and how those differ from the world we live in today and what we regard as acceptable. There are so many diverse opinions on the matter of statues. As she mentioned, for every statue on display that is deemed contested, there are at least two often conflicting opinions on what should be done, and there is often no consensus. The one thing I would like to try to reach today in this short debate is some kind of balance on this issue Let us start by putting the debate in context. There are approximately 12,000 outdoor statues and memorials in England. I agree with the hon. Lady that far too few of those are of women or of people who were significant in the LGBT struggles of our past, or of people with a range of other important aspects. However, all the statues that exist are of interest, significance and often pride to the communities in which they are erected. A significant number of them are listed in their own right or as part of the buildings in which they reside, which means that they are protected. The regulatory framework means that their removal or amendment can be complex, protracted and expensive, particularly given that in some cases planning permission has to be granted to get rid of them. Just one of those 12,000 statues has recently been removed illegally—the Colston statue in Bristol, which she mentioned The hon. Lady talked about how in April the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government introduced a new planning power, giving him the authority to call in for the ultimate decision a local authority intention to remove an unlisted plaque or commemoration. A lot has been said about the penalties, but to put this matter in context, let me say that this power has yet to be used. That is an important comment to make It is also important to remember that we do not just erect statues to mark the contributions of others at the national level; in local communities up and down the country there are commemorations to our own heroes, with many of those figures being a real source of local pride. George Stephenson, engineer and father of the railways, is commemorated in Newcastle. An important recent addition in Oldham is a statue of a local suffragette and former mill worker who was an associate of Christabel Pankhurst and who was jailed for three days for challenging MPs who opposed the campaign for votes for women. As the hon. Lady said, we would all be far better off if there was more recognition of women such as that who played such a pivotal and important role in history, and without whom she and I would probably not be here doing our jobs today A commemoration in a public space, often funded by public subscription, is a really positive way to acknowledge the contributions that these individuals have made to their own communities. As we look at them, we have got to learn important things about the history of the area in which they lived and the wider context of the world in which they existed and the values of the communities that commemorated them However, as the hon. Lady said, the full stories of some individuals who are commemorated and their place in history are terribly complex. Some of them have been commissioned by past generations with very different perspectives and understandings of right and wrong from those we hold today. Although we may now disagree with those figures and their actions, they do play an important role in teaching us about our past. We are all products of our time, with our attitudes, beliefs and values often reflecting the age in which we live. Looking back, some of the norms of earlier centuries look bizarre—in fact, sometimes they look abhorrent—when measured against what we regard as acceptable today.