Peter Viney's Blog

On to Civil Wars. I was asked a very good question:

Do the losers in wars get statues erected to them?   

The statues of Civil Wars Confederates are coming down. There goes Robert E. Lee.

Robert E. Lee statue is removed from Lee Circle, New Orleans in 2015

New Orleans took down the statues of four Confederate leaders in 2015, declaring them “a public nuisance.” In 2017,  Confederate military statues, rallying points for right wing racists, hit the news at Charlotteville.

Robert E. Lee statue, Charlotteville

Charlotteville 23 August : black tarpaulin veils the statue

This is a complex one. These statues are centrepoints and catalysts for racist violence.

I’ve been reading the arguments.

No, there are no statues of Hitler in Germany. When I first visited Berlin in 1991, the Hitler bunker area was a blasted wilderness. The Russians had decreed that the bullet holes in public buildings, like the Pergamom Museum, should not be filled in or repaired, but left as a warning. Last time I was there, blocks of flats had been built over the blasted area, hiding any sense of the location. Mind you, I wouldn’t want to live in one.

Goodbye Lenin: Kiev

After the Berlin Wall fell, statues of Stalin and Lenin were torn down all over Eastern Europe. They’re still going. Other ex-Soviet local dictators have gone the same way.

On the fall of Saddam, his statues went first.

Removing statues is a major public symbol. Destroying the statues of recently deposed dictators is heat of the moment stuff, and most of us would approve.

But a century later? Isn’t that what the Taliban have done in destroying historic sites?

I read the Oxford American online about the previous removals in New Orleans. I realize that many of these statues date only from the 1920s, and Huey Long and Father Coughlan and the KKK and American fascist movements of the era. The purpose of erecting them was to state clearly who was in charge. The Civil War was already 60 or more years in the past.

I also realize that Lee was often chosen as the “least objectionable” of the Confederate generals

I  hate airbrushing history. Teach from it, but don’t eradicate it. Which is why I agree with moving them into indoor museum spaces where they can be educational, but no longer a rallying point. Germans are taught the history of World War II. In contrast, many Chinese haven’t a clue about Mao and the Cultural revolution.

But why Robert E. Lee?

Lee was idolised in the south, and toured around Virginia setting up education for veterans until his death in 1870. Lee had also ensured that the peace treaty included a binding pledge that former soldiers:

 ‘would not at any time be disturbed by Federal authority, provided they lay down their arms and returned home.’

Lee personally disbelieved in both slavery and secession from the Union, but felt that his people and his honour came above his personal opinions. Robert E. Lee expressed this feeling in a letter of 1856 in which he wrote that the holding of slaves was an evil, but he added that their emancipation would result sooner from the mild and melting influence of time than from the storms and contests of fiery controversy. During the war, Lee freed some of his family’s slaves. Lee felt that the war was God’s instrument to end slavery. Lee has also been praised for ordering his troops to surrender once and for all, thus avoiding a protracted guerrilla war that could have gone on for months and years.

“Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”

which is how we remember George Santayana’s original phrase:

 Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

Then what about those memorials to the Confederate dead in every Southern town? We’ve never gone to the battlefields of Flanders or Normandy and removed the names of the German dead.  BUT these statues in the USA do seem to attract crowds of extreme right wing racists and are a focus for them.

It is a conundrum, but Robert E. Lee as a historical figure is being demonized.  So if you follow the logic, that any mention of Lee is a support for slavery, then next comes a radio ban for “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down.”

The 21st century is being selective on Robert E. Lee. Obviously we can’t blame the founding fathers for living decades before it was an issue, but Mount Rushmore indicates selectivity on the villains.  I hate quoting unpleasant people like Trump, but indeed Washington and Jefferson were slaveholders. Jefferson owned 600 slaves. He freed two in his lifetime and seven in his will. Like Lee, he believed in the gradual erosion of slavery and campaigned to ban it in the new territories. At the time of his death, there were 317 slaves on Washington’s estates. 124 belonged to him, the rest he managed.

It is convenient and simplistic to portray the Civil War as “a war to end slavery.” It suits modern retrospective views too. It suggests the good white folks (us) fought for racial equality and we good white folks won. Do you believe that? It was a war between two economic systems, one feudal (slave based) and one capitalist (or “wage slavery” to Marx.) Abolitionists in the north were indeed fervent and effective, but it took two years before Lincoln issued the Emancipation proclamation, and at least in part, that was war strategy. Lincoln envisaged sending freed slaves to Africa or Central America too, rather than integrating them.

Check out Johnny Cash, God Bless Robert E. Lee on You Tube.

On Robert E. Lee, I am aware that Wikipedia, like Winston Smith in George Orwell’s 1984 is history continually rewritten. When I first did this article in 2017, Wikipedia stressed the positive aspects of Robert E. Lee’s life. In 2020, all sorts of stories of cruelty to slaves have been appended to it.

Memorial to Confederate war dead,  Mississippi

When it comes to memorials to the Confederate war dead though, you have to respect them and leave them alone. Period. Otherwise you will be forcing people in the middle to veer to the right in those towns. I  think of the murals of the siege of Vicksburg which we admired three years ago. I can’t see anyone taking those down. As they told us, July 4th was not celebrated in the state of Mississippi until 1945 because it marks the fall of Vicksburg to the Union forces.

Siege of Vicksburg, mural

Back to that initial question:

Do the losers in wars get statues erected to them?   

The War of Independence

The Declaration of Independence talks about George III:

abolishing the free System of English Laws and transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries

This was because the framers, and many people in Britain, considered George III, who was also Elector of Hanover, to be German, and the troops had large numbers of Hessian German-speaking mercenaries. This was necessary because British forced conscripts were considered highly likely to defect to the American side at the first opportunity and hightail it westwards.

Most British people can see that their ancestors, transported to the American colonies as indentured servants for poaching a rabbit, would have been on the American side. When the War of Independence broke out, the British had to create temporary prisons in the hulks of ships to accommodate those who would otherwise have been transported to America. It was suggested that they be sent to Canada instead, but that was decided against. The government thought that those transported would only  be in favour of independence. They kept them in the hulks until it was decided to send them to Australia, where there were no English-speaking locals they could defect to. The British forces were fond of hulks … ships with masts and sails removed to prevent their use in case of mutiny. There is a memorial in Fort Greene Park in Brooklyn to the 11,500 American soldiers and patriots who died in British prison hulks off Long Island during the War of Independence. Yes, we know the British were the baddies.

George III, Weymouth, Dorset. A restroom for the pigeons and seagulls

George III is celebrated in Weymouth with a major statue in the town centre. This was commercial interest, as George III enjoyed holidays in Weymouth, and helped make the resort famous. There is also an image of George III cut into the chalk hillside above Weymouth. Legend has it that the king was furious because it showed him riding away from the town, and regarded it as a hint to leave. so left and never returned. In fact he never saw it, as it was cut into the chalk after his last visit.

George III. Osmington Hill, Weymouth

Statues of kings were often contemporary. We think of George III as Mad King George, and that he was an inept ruler. He has many statues though, including a bust in the grounds of Lincoln Castle and an idealized romanticized one at Somerset House in London.

George III, Lincoln Castle

We don’t get aggravated about statues of monarchs, probably because we think of them as merely figurheads after 1688. Poor Mad King George is blamed for losing the war though.

Benedict Arnold, whose name is a byword for “Traitor” in America, having switched to the British side in theWar of Independence, has a plaque on his London house describing him as “American patriot.”

It is not an official blue one and looks old. The War of Independence is not a good comparison on attitudes to losers in “civil wars” (which is after all how it started out). It’s taught in Britain in much the same way as in the USA, from the “Americans goodies / British baddies” angle.

Thomas Paine is a “winner” though on the other side from a British point of view. He has tributes all over Lewes in Sussex. Thomas Paine married his landlord’s daughter. He’s also commemorated with a Lewes pub name, “The Rights of Man”. He separated from his wife in 1774, deserted her, and emigrated to America. “The Wrongs of Man “by Elizabeth Paine has never been published.

Lewes, Sussex

The English Civil War 1642-1647

King Charles I, St John’s College, Oxford

The trouble is establishing who the losers were in the English Civil War. On the face of it, what with him getting decapitated in 1649, King Charles I lost. I once filmed in St. John’s College, Oxford, under the fine Le Seur statue of Charles I in the quadrangle.

King Charles I, Charing Cross

Le Seur did another bronze equestarian statue in 1633. On the Parliamentary victory, it was sold to be melted down. A wily metal smith bought it, hid it away, and spent the next decade selling cutlery that was allegedly made from it. We cannot know his motivation for hiding it, possibly to ensure that he could keep selling cutlery in bulk for a long time. When the monarchy was restored, it was revealed, erected on a plinth in 1675, and now stands outside Charing Cross Station.

Oliver Cromwell, Houses of Parliament London

Oliver Cromwell won and became Lord Protector, but on the restoration of the monarchy his body was exhumed from Westminster Abbey, decapitated and hung up at Tyburn, which is now Marble Arch. His head was put on a spike above Westminster Hall in the Houses of Parliament, where it remained until 1685.

In 1899 a statue of Cromwell was erected outside Parliament. It probably had the same intent as the Robert E. Lee statues erected in the 1920s in the USA. In this case, to show the Irish who was in charge. Cromwell had been responsible for a swathe of atrocities in Ireland. In 2004, Parliament voted on whether to remove it. Cromwell was hated by the left as a butcher in Ireland, and by the right because he was a regicide. In fact, it was voted to keep the statue, as Cromwell was also a champion of the supremacy of parliament. There it stands today. A history lesson.

John Hampden, another Parliamentary leader has statues too, notably in Aylesbury.

Wars Of The Roses

King Richard III statue, Leicester

Going back to our previous Civil War, now the bones of Richard III (1483-1485) have been found under a Leicester car park, the 1980 statue of the eventual loser in the Wars of The Roses has been moved to a more prominent location. It had been commissioned by The Richard III Society in 1980. This society is dedicated to rescuing Richard III from the bad press Shakespeare gave him. Remember that Richard III was defeated by Queen Elizabeth I’s grandfather, Richmond, who became King Henry VII. No other view could be taken in Shakespeare’s era. Tudor propoganda created our view of the murderous hunchback king.

The Jacobite Rebellion

Bonnie Prince Charlie

Bonnie Prince Charlie is fondly remembered in the Scottish Highlands with his image decorating bottles of whisky and tins of shortbread. He lost the rebellion of 1745.    To put that one into perspective, it was a Highland Jacobite Catholic rebellion. Many of the troops facing him were Scottish protestants. Bonnie Prince Charlie’s first language was French. He had never been to Scotland before and his aim was to take the British throne, not to create a Scottish kingdom.

Nevertheless, “Over The Seas to Skye” created a romantic view of history.

Fiction surely frames our perception of civil wars, from Shakespeare’s Richard III on. Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With The Wind had more effect than any historians. The book and film polished an image of the Southerners as the romantic Cavaliers, and the north as the stern Roundheads. It led the British to see the American Civil War as a replica of the English Civil war. It wasn’t. Blame Margaret Mitchell. Incidentally, some historians believe that the emotional impact of the film of Gone With The Wind delayed the American entry into World War II.

Elsewhere …

Cecil Rhodes. Oxford University.

In 2016, there were moves to remove the statue of  Cecil Rhodes at Oxford University.  Rhodes founded the Rhodes scholarships and was a benefactor of the university. Eight former Rhodes scholars became heads of state, including Bill Clinton, three Australian PMs and leaders of Jamaica and Pakistan. Eighty-three students study in Oxford annually due to Rhodes’ legacies to the university.

Rhodes was a colonialist oppressor in East and South Africa if ever there was one, but there is the question of context. One comment on the Guardian article last year was:

Cecil Rhodes was a bastard, for sure, but one of the most important skills in life is learning how to deal with bastards, and it’s lot easier when they’re made out of stone than when they’re made out of blood and bone. 

Rhodes is getting even bigger demonstrations in 2020 in the wake of the Colston statue in Bristol.

The Vice-Chancellor, Louise Richardson said:

My own view on this is that hiding our history is not the route to enlightenment, We need to understand this history and understand the context in which it was made and why it was that people believed then as they did. This university has been around for 900 years. For 800 of those years the people who ran the university didn’t think women were worthy of an education. Should we denounce those people? Personally, no – I think they were wrong, but they have to be judged by the context of their time.

18 June 2020

However, on 17 June 2020 the governors of Oxford University voted to remove the statue. It is significant that just two papers had it as a headline, The Guardian which sneers at ‘Daily Mail readers’ and The Daily Mail which sneers at ‘Guardian readers.’ Note that Oxford dons “surrender” in the Mail.

What will fill the space? I enjoyed a “Letter to the Editor” suggesting that a replacement should be fibreglass so as to cause less expense when the replacement had to be replaced in turn. I found it ironic that the Guardian also has a headline article Is this the end of tourism? as it’s our old buildings (and statues) that generate tourism.

One I missed …

Admiral Horatio Lord Nelson, Trafalgar Square

A couple of hours after posting this, I saw the fuss over a Guardian article by Afua Hirsch suggesting that Admiral Horatio Nelson should be toppled from his column in Trafalgar Square on the grounds that he was a “white supremacist.” Here in the South, our favourite secondary school trip was to go round Nelson’s flagship in Portsmouth, HMS Victory, on which he died. My kids and grandkids all did that too. What next? Scrap HMS Victory perhaps?

HMS Victory, Portsmouth

Until 1918, Trafalgar Day, 21st October, was celebrated throughout Britain. It declined as it was gradually replaced by Armistice Day. In 1993 and 2011, there were muted discussions in the Conservative Party to make Trafalgar Day a public holiday, replacing the Labour Party’s 1978 selection of May Day as a public holiday.  There was a reasonable practical argument, as Britain has three Bank Holidays in close proximity, all on Mondays: Easter Monday, May Day, Spring Bank Holiday. Then we have nothing in the autumn. A counter-argument was that it would annoy the French and Spanish, defeated by Nelson at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805. If so, maybe we would need to re-name Waterloo Station.

Nelson is a popular historical figure. This is why a sense of proportion is needed. Her extraordinary argument ignores the fact virtually all white British and Americans in 1805 were white supremacists … even those who fought to end slavery. I spent many hours in the Wilberforce Museum in Hull, and on the British & Foreign Anti-Slavery Society’s microfiche records back in late 1969 to 1970. My American history tutor assigned me to dogsbody research work on original ship records. Which is why I know that the vast majority of African slaves were first captured by fellow Africans, then sold to Arab slave traders, who either moved them north, or to the coast where they could be sold to European slave ships. No one, Africans, Arabs or Europeans comes out of this one with clean hands.

You can’t recreate history. It is true that British and American slavery added an even worst aspect in regarding slaves as chattels. Slaves in Latin America or the Arab World gained limited human rights if they converted to their owners’ religions. Not so in the Caribbean or North America.

I also feel that, as a few years ago, Americans telling the British to “apologize for slavery” brings up the question of “Who to?” The descendants of slaves, surely. Of course. But reparations  to those African states which captured, enslaved and sold their own people? Surely not.  To America? The British will also add that slaves were emancipated within England in 1772, Scotland in 1778 and throughout the British Empire in 1833, so thirty years before Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. The slave trade was abolished in 1807 and the British spent the next five decades trying to police the Atlantic and stop Americans engaging in it.

In 1833 when slavery was abolished, £20 million compensation was paid to Caribbean slaveowners … £23 BILLION in modern money. That public money generated these people’s huge wealth which was in turn invested in infrastructure … the new railways, factories, hospitals, colleges in Britain. So yes, we all profited. And often those who built the hospitals and colleges were commemorated with statues and maybe they did so out of guilt or hope it might reserve them a seat in heaven with their own golden harp. Those who built railways, factories and sweatshops instead probably weren’t commemorated with statues.

I’ll repeat an incident. A West African guy told me that he was descended from a family of chiefs. Later in the conversation, he asked why Britain didn’t compensate Africa for slave trading. I pointed out that if his ancestors were chiefs in West Africa, they were almost certainly slave traders. My rural poor ancestors, well inland in Dorset had nothing to do with it and if they were foolish enough to poach a rabbit they might be “transported to the colonies” for seven years which was basically slavery, except it had an end point.

In the end, Afua Hirsch’s article is deliberately provocative Rent-a-gob journalism, designed to provoke a right-wing knee-jerk equally daft response from the likes of the Daily Express. Which of course it got. No one is seriously going to remove one of London’s most famous landmarks, nor the Landseer lions at its base. A waste of paper, designed to wind people up.

The trouble is …

Union General Sherman, New York

Where do you stop? The Nelson story shows it can go on and on.

Let’s think about the statues of the other side.  Take General Sherman … there’s a a gilded one in New York, in a Trump Tower colour choice. Sherman instigated the “March to the Sea” through Georgia. This is considered to be an early example of total war, destroying the infrastructure. It was “Scorched Earth.”  No doubt many Georgians thought of Sherman as a war criminal. He certainly was. But he won. Then he moved West and deliberately slaughtered buffalo to destroy the Native American food chain and force them on to reservations. Sherman was a racist, with an eye on planned genocide

Boston Public Library

Then the Boston Public Library has two memorials to the 2nd Massachusetts Infantry flanking the stairs. These boys went through all the most hellish battles. But they also participated in the burning of Atlanta and Sherman’s March to The Sea. The total war march. No one is suggesting dismantling that beautiful staircase.

I would not be surprised if some Georgians start suggesting the removal of Sherman’s statues. I just checked … they and others already have. On the scales of justice, he was surely “worse” than Robert E. Lee. But why stop there? There’s Grant and the Siege of Vicksburg … it could go on forever.

In the end

Statues mark prominent people in our history, usually white males. That was our history.

If you wish to eradicate every slave holder, then every Roman statue will have to go. This brings us to artistic merit. I’ll go way over the top and point out that King David of Judah, as portrayed in Michelangelo’s statue was a monarch, and would have been a slaveholder. On more modern grounds, Le Seur who sculpted King Charles I is considered to be an artist of merit. Modern taste doesn’t run to realistic 19th century  / early 20th century bronze statues, but tastes and attitudes change. My Michelangelo example was tongue-in-cheek, but in destroying an art work, you are making a judgment that the future might reverse.

There is no end to PC removal. Mary Seacole was a black nurse in the Crimean War. Her position in history as taught becomes increasingly prominent. She has a statue outside St Thomas’s Hospital in London, as she should. But we can’t replace every very famous white male with a slightly-famous black female. Our history is what it is. Or was what it was.

Perhaps a relaxed attitude is the answer. A friend posted:

The city symbol for Glasgow is the statue of the Duke of Wellington with a traffic cone on his head. It started in the eighties with people on a night out climbing up it and putting a traffic cone on his head. It’s quite high when you get up there. I think it sums up Glasgow and Glaswegians. ‘Edinburgh has the castle and we have the traffic cone.

Bomber Harris

There used to be a statue of Air Marshall Sir Arthur Harris in Southampton. It was on a mini roundabout next to a new car park. We had regular appointments in Southampton and I parked there many times. Suddenly it was gone.

Harris was in charge of Bomber Command in World War II and instigated the policy of area or saturation bombing (i.e. indiscriminate bombing). We find this hard to accept, thinking of the firestorms in Dresden and Hamburg (which prompted the similar US bombing of Tokyo). As a result, Bomber Command aircrew have never had a special medal, yet a higher proportion of them died than soldiers in World War One trenches. From the British contribution to World War Two, Bomber Command may be the most important force we deployed.  55,000 aircrew died. In just one raid early on 21 out of 39 bombers were shot down. Losses per flight were 5%. Less than one crew in eight would survive fifty missions. Half died before they completed ten missions.

Read Patrick Bishop’s Bomber Boys. It’s a chilling thought, If you had the equivalent of A level in Maths or Science and good eyesight, you would have been assigned straight to bomber training. I saw Patrick Bishop speak on this, and he suggested that the high attrition rate of maths / science specialists affected Britain’s future decline in those areas. I sat listening and thinking. I had A level Geography. We were made to join the Combined Cadet Force in my grammar school. I have certificates in Principles of Flight and in Navigation. Had I been eighteen back then, I would have been straight to bomber training as a navigator.

There is a statue of Harris in London. I drove into Southampton a few years ago to the same car park, and it had gone. I Googled “Bomber Harris Statue Southampton” and found not a word about it. Where had it gone? Why did it leave no press footprint? I agree that a statue of bomber crew would be far more acceptable, but this man, not one I would like to shake hands with, was one of the architects of victory. Norman Mailer’s The Naked & The Dead has the theme that the only way to defeat a vicious and evil enemy, is to appoint a leader who is even more vicious. Harris fitted the bill. However, I feel it wrong to airbrush him from Southampton’s history. The entire centre was destroyed by German bombing in 1940. I mentioned the removal (or disappearance) online and two posters, one from Liverpool and one from Coventry, said “We’ll have the statue!”

Coda: Colston & Bristol 2020

Following the murder of George Floyd by police officers in Minneapolis, protests spread across the USA in scenes not seen for decades.

So in the UK, “Black Lives Matter” marches took place. Most were peaceful, though social distancing and masks in the Covid-19 pandemic were not universally observed. That’s fair enough, though I looked with jaundiced eyes on the 1,000 plus protestors at Bournemouth Town Hall. They all appeared to be white. BCP (Bournemouth-Christchurch-Poole) council can hardly be held responsible for the crimes of Minneapolis racist police officers, nor can they conceivably have any influence on Donald Trump’s government. So the only point of the protest is “Look at me. I’m not racist.” This is known by the right as Virtue Signalling, not a phrase I embrace, but in this case, accurate.

In London graffiti was sprayed on a statue of Winston Churchill – when? On the anniversary of D-Day. My Great-Uncle Ben spent many hours teling me about Churchoill and the Miners Strikes and Lock outs, and he lost a cousin at Gallipoli when the Welsh regiments joined the ANZACs as cannon fodder. He said Churchill was booed in South Wales when he came on the radio in the war. A Scottish miner told me it was the same in Scotland but nevertheless, warts and all, Churchill rallied a nation and formed a coalition government in the face of old Tories like Halifax who wanted to surrender. (He said Atlee was the only cabinet member he trusted!)

When I was 16 or 17 I was a Mod with a Parka jacket which like many mods had various military badges sewn on. Outside Boots the Chemists, a large man stopped me and said something along the lines of “I fought with those badges on my uniform. If it hadn’t been for the likes of Winston Churchill you’d’ve been marching around saying Seig Heil now.” A simplification, but attacking a Churchill statue on D-Day?

Then “Boris bikes” were thrown in the river because of their association with Boris Johnson.  What? These are public property, surely? They belong to the people of London, not Boris. Me? I’d arrest everyone involved. Why? Because destroying public property is just one step away from looting.

On to Bristol. The statue of Colston was dragged through the streets and tipped in the river.

 

The Guardian: Colston was a member of the Royal African Company, which transported about 80,000 men, women and children from Africa to the Americas. On his death in 1721, he bequeathed his wealth to charities and his legacy can still be seen on Bristol’s streets, memorials and buildings.

Even the devil can quote scripture, but:

I say to you, that likewise joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repents, more than over ninety and nine just persons, which need no repentance.” Luke 15:7.

Colston sold his shares in slave trading to William of Orange … King William III. The Royal Family. He then devoted himself to philanthropy. A repentant sinner?

Yes, in probability the statue should have been removed and placed in a museum dedicated to Bristol’s connection to the slave trade. Virtually every 18th century building in Bristol testifies to the profits of the slave trade.

Smashed and toppled? You can’t allow that in a democracy. Yes, you can get the statue removed. You have a vote in Bristol Council. If a majority agree (a virtual certainty in Bristol”s political spectrum), then the statue is removed. I find it appalling that the Mayor of Bristol can justify this mass action. If he feels so strongly as a black Bristolian, why didn’t he put it through the council earlier? It could have been removed the next morning. Online people quote “the will of the people of Bristol.” Who decides what “the people of Bristol” think? They number 535,000. How many people demonstrated? Were the people who attacked the statue all from Bristol? A majority of those rolling it along the street in TV footage were white too. The only way you can assess the “will of the people of Bristol” is via their elected councillors. It’s an imperfect system, but I’m afraid a few political activists have no more right to decide that than anyone else.

Bristol was full of offensive stuff, such as The Black Boy Inn in Clifton (I think it may have gone in 2019) which is said to be on the site of a slave market (though historians argue that) and in one of life’s ironies, is on the corner of Whiteladies Road.

Just attacking a statue is mob rule, lynch law. It has no place in society.

Robert Baden-Powell

Yet another!  Only a couple of hours after posting the above, I see they’re taking Baden-Powell, the founder of the Scouts, Guides, Cubs and Brownies, away from Poole Quay for safe-keeping on police advice. Before lockdown I drove along Poole Quay several times a week … guess what? I’ve never noticed it! The first boy scout camp was on Brownsea Island. Apparently he was homophobic and a fascist. I didn’t know. However, as the deputy leader of BCP said, the scout movement became multi-ethnic and multi-religion too.

What is wrong with a current generation who can’t watch Gone with The Wind or walk past a lump of bronze on a plinth they had never noticed before? You have to accept the past. It happened.

These people will go from wanting academics who disagree with them to be sacked, to book banning … then book burning.

Welcome to the World of Fahrenheit 451.