Debate briefing: the historical statue wars
By: Tony Koutsoumbos
Tags: Debate, Communication, History, Politics, Culture

Statue of Horatio Nelson on Nelson’s Column in Trafalgar Square, London

Twice a month, the Great Debaters Club hosts a public debate on a topical issue dividing public opinion as part of the club’s ‘Debating London’ series. The audience are presented with a dilemma facing real-life decision-makers that they must vote on to resolve with the help of our panel.

Instead of inviting guest speakers to sit on this panel, we ask members of our training programme to defend the competing perspectives shaping the debate in their own words. We then invite our audience to interact with those perspectives by asking questions and advancing their own opinions with our speakers staying ‘in character’ throughout when responding to them.

By the end of the evening, we measure success not based on which side wins the debate, but by how confident the audience are to make a final decision.

Our next debate is about public memorials — so, statues, plaques, flags and places e.t.c — dedicated to historical figures whose beliefs or behaviour divide opinion today with some calling for them to be removed. Is it reasonable to measure the past against the values of the present, and is it right to honour the virtues of our heroes in isolation from their vices? These are some of the questions this debate intends to address.

Debate motion

‘This House Would remove public memorials to controversial historical figures’

Why are we talking about this today?

The ‘statues debate’, as it is known, is an ongoing one that periodically flares up in different countries, most recently in the United States following the removal of memorials to the confederate movement and its leading figures. The last time the debate made the headlines in the UK was when Guardian columnist Afua Hirsch called for the statue of Horatio Nelson to be removed from Trafalgar Square owing to his support for slavery in the 19th Century. Perhaps, the most high profile of the recent statues debates in this country was that over the statue of imperialist, Cecil Rhodes, at Oxford University.

In each of these debates, one of the key strikes against the figures honoured by a memorial was that this represented an unquestioning celebration of their lives that overlooked their involvement in what would now constitute crimes against humanity, such as slavery or persecution of minorities.

What do advocates of removing memorials want to do with them?

When it comes to statues, they simply want to relocate them to museums where, they claim, the life of the figure depicted can be placed in proper context with a balanced critique of all their beliefs and actions. However, not all memorials can simply be relocated. Places named after a divisive figure, for example, can merely be renamed, erasing their association forever.

In other cases, in countries that are actively trying to move on from a painful period of their past, such as an occupation by a foreign power or the reign of a violent dictator, the most controversial monuments are moved to a private place or destroyed altogether. In some instances, widely held memorabilia may even be outlawed as is the case with displaying the swastika in Germany.

Why are some people so protective of these memorials?

Either because they hold special meaning for them and their community or because they object to what they see as an attempt to airbrush history.

The former believe the figures being memorialised deserved to be celebrated and either dispute the charges against them or believe that the sum of their achievements outweigh their failings, which may simply have reflected the values of the time they lived in. They also accuse proponents of removing memorials of using the issue to pursue their own ideological agendas.

The latter believe that if we judged historical memorials by modern values, then we would probably have to take them all down and in so doing we would lose a vital record of our past. So, they claim, even the most controversial memorials should remain because the very act of talking about why they are so controversial is crucial to understanding our history and identity.

Watch the debate, then join the debate.

Two days before we meet, a panel of experts and commentators will be having the same debate at Intelligence Squared, which you can book tickets for here or watch on-line later. You don’t have to attend that debate, though, to come and share your views at ours, which will take place in the Tea House Theatre in Vauxhall from 7.00 pm to 9.30 pm on Wednesday 16th May.

Admission is free and open to all, but we ask that you book a place in advance — by signing up here — to help us manage the number of attendees.