Past Imperfect: Why Rhodes Should Stay

 

‘The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.’
George Orwell, 1984 

We reiterate that universities are no places for genocidal colonialists, or any other such toxic figures. We will continue with our call that all violent symbolism be immediately expunged from educational spaces.’

Oxford Student Union petition calling for the removal of Cecil Rhodes’ statue from Oriel College.

 

 

No longer welcome? Statue of Cecil Rhodes outside Oriel College.

  

In autocratic systems, in which one tyranny is replaced by another, the statues fall frequently. There is no space permitted for symbols of the past which might seek to vindicate a system or individual now consigned to the dustbin of history. They must be ‘immediately expunged’ – obliterated not only from sight, but also from memory, so that a visitor might conclude that they never existed at all. This was the goal of George Orwell’s fictional state in 1984: history, having ceased to be an academic discipline at all, would become a means by which the status quo could be endlessly justified and promoted. In Nazi Germany, statues, books and works of art that challenged Hitler’s monolithic view of German history were publicly destroyed or ridiculed. More recently, Islamic State purged the architectural treasures of Palmyra because they highlighted an aspect of History that did not fit in with the idea that only a Caliphate could restore the dignity of the Middle East.

By contrast, one of the great achievements of the western world has been to maintain a critical and detached approach to the past, ensuring not only a plurality of interpretations, but also allowing historians to subject these interpretations to serious scrutiny. In this context, history can be probed, tested and argued over, competing ideas can sit alongside one other, and new conclusions proposed and explored. The fact that so many UK students now express a fervent desire to remove statues, ban speakers and create ‘safe spaces’ is therefore shocking. It is a denial of the key purpose of a university education: to expose students to ideas that challenge them, make them uncomfortable and generate debate.

Briefly then, what about Cecil Rhodes, whose worn-down statue currently adorns one of the quadrangles of Oriel College, overlooking the High Street? For many (although by no means all) of his British contemporaries, Rhodes represented all that was great about the British Empire. As its reputation has declined, so has his, and today his name is equated with exploitation, slavery and even genocide. There should be no doubt at all that the values he promoted have no place in modern, multicultural Britain. Rhodes may have once proclaimed that ‘I could never accept the position that we should disqualify a human being on account of his colour’, but he also argued that Britain’s African colonies, and their inhabitants, should be harnessed in the service of the Empire, an outlook that made him extremely rich, and also contributed to a racially divided South Africa. This is a ‘toxic’ legacy indeed.

 

Campaigners in South Africa and Oxford have used the hashtag #RhodesMustFall.

But the attacks on Rhodes conceal more than they reveal. From the British view, there is a temptation to disassociate ourselves from the legacy of the empire by simply placing the burden of guilt on men such as Rhodes, and then allowing them to disappear in a cloud of righteous moral outrage. This would be to ignore the reality that, in an increasingly democratic age, pioneers and colonialists such as Rhodes drew strength from enthusiastic and widespread public support. Industrial cities were often effusive in their support for empire, since the colonies could provide both a steady stream of raw materials as well as markets for manufactured goods. We need to remember the prominence that Rhodes once enjoyed in order to comprehend the British Empire at the end of the nineteenth century. Airbrushing him may make us feel better, but if we want to continue to talk seriously about the uncomfortable parts of our history, and not simply descend into simplistic caricature, then #RhodesMustStay.






 

In Defence of Doubt

  ‘Freedom is always the freedom of the one who thinks differently.’ (Rosa Luxembourg)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06qkp8w [1]

 

                    

The debate is over. Or, at least, the votes in parliament have been counted, and MPs have voted to support British planes to bomb targets in Syria.  For many outside observers (me, at least), the whole issue was shot through with complexity and unpredictability: who can say whether action or inaction will lead to more beneficial (or less harmful) outcomes? However, there are debaters, both in and out of parliament, who have treated the issue as if the right decision was obvious, with no room for legitimate disagreement: to some it was a war against ‘evil’, while for others it will prove to be ‘another Iraq’. The Prime Minister, who should know better, made an undignified slur against the leader of the opposition. He was in turn mocked for a lack of planning, as if a war could be arranged like a game of chess, in which the actions of the neatly ordered sides could be easily predicted in advance. For those of us struggling to keep up with all of this hot air, it was tempting to simply join one side or the other in their clamourous conviction.

Let’s turn back briefly: it is Paris, and the year is 1793[2]. The revolutionaries have dethroned and executed the king, declared a republic and chosen a new assembly based on universal male suffrage. Surrounded by enemies, the majority of the deputies seek refuge in certainty: on the left, Citizen Danton calls for ‘audacity, audacity, always audacity’ to save France. On the right, the Girondins are unimpeachable in their moral integrity – their speeches enable them to find new ways to protect la patrie from the evil machinations of their political opponents. Squished between the warring factions are the Plain, usually known more derisively as ‘the marsh’, weedy, weak-willed and hesitant deputies who vote sometimes with one faction, and then the other. Their lack of conviction is always emphasised in contrast to the ‘Mountain’, the group of deputies who thrive on conviction and certainty, and whose speeches argue relentlessly for courage, virtue, and inevitably, masculine strength. To sit in the Mountain is intoxicating – to know that you and your companions are alone responsible for the defence of all that is good in the revolution, and that together its enemies can be weeded out and defeated. These are the men that are willing to terrorise France, in order to save her.

The leaders of the ‘Mountain’ made a great virtue of their pure intentions, and of their contempt for compromise.  They castigated moderate voices, usually accusing them of a secret pact with the country’s enemies. Faced with such powerful rhetoric, their opponents lost credibility, enabling the ‘Mountain’ to seize power. In office, these idealists wrecked France. By the middle of 1794, over 40,000 had fallen victim to summary execution, including almost all of the leading Montagnards and Girondins who had abused each other so freely in 1793. In the end, the only prominent figures left belonged to the much-derided ‘marsh’, who took on the heavy responsibility of dragging France away from rule by fear. One such leader, Sieyès, was asked what he had done during the Terror, to which he replied simply ‘I survived’. The modern descendants of the ‘marsh’ are similarly unfashionable. Moderate politicians are dismissed not only for their arguments, but because their very moderation makes them suspect: they are ‘red Tories’ who fraternise with the enemy, or woolly liberals who bend with the wind, interested only in their own advancement. But since certainty can be such a powerful tool of suppression and political control, I’m glad that we have leaders who don’t always share it. 

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[1] After so much discussion about the Syria vote, I found that listening to this episode of the 'Moral Maze' on doubt vs. certainty clarified my opinions (thank you, Gaffer). In  addition, I had a very useful conversation with Andrew Lin, who helped me to moderate my own line of argument. The views expressed are, of course, my own.

[2] According to their respective opponents, the deputies on the Right in the National Convention (the Girondins) were a collection of traitors and warmongers, whilst the deputies on the Left were rabble rousers and, inevitably, ‘terrorist sympathisers’. There aren’t many forms of political discourse that we don’t more or less owe to the debates of the French Revolution

To The Bitter End: Conservative America and guns

‘Sandy Hook marked the end of the U.S. gun control debate. Once America decided killing children was bearable, it was over’

Dan Hodges, Tweet on 19 June 2015



The Roseburg Gun Shop in Roseburg, Oregon. Photograph: Rory Carroll/The Guardian

Conservatism is a powerful and important force in politics. While radicals are sometimes able to get hold of the controls, they struggle to remain there for long; the energy and dynamism of a reform movement can collapse in the face of political challenges, and when this occurs, the conservative stands waiting. In European politics, David Cameron and Angela Merkel showed that conservatism doesn't necessarily result in steadfast resistance to change: both leaders moved their parties towards a greater acceptance of changing social attitudes, highlighted by the passing of gay marriage in the UK  in 2014 and Merkel’s welcome for Syrian refugees.

However, conservatism is not always so adaptive. In the United States, there is outrage again amongst liberals following another school shooting incident in Roseburg, Oregon last month in which 10 people were killed. Making his fifteenth statement on shootings in the U.S. since taking office, President Obama remarked: ‘somehow this has become routine’. Since Obama won re-election in November 2012, almost a thousand mass shooting incidents have taken place in America, including nearly three hundred so far this year. The lack of any gun control reforms in the same period gives weight to Dan Hodges’ view that, in practical terms, the debate is over.

Indeed, judging by the posts in response to Hodges’ tweet, it would seem that the two sides are now talking an entirely different language. Whilst gun control advocates cite statistics showing the disproportionate and shocking levels of gun violence in the United States, the defenders of the status quo put forward arguments that shift attention on to different ground: abortion, knife crime in Britain, terrorism and the need for better mental health care. These are red herrings, and I suspect their proponents know (perhaps very deep down) that the disproportionate levels of gun crime in the United States are, from a rational point of view, hard to justify.

However, guns are above all emotive symbols in the identity of American conservatives. While this may sound trivial, it is not meant to. Joan Burbick, a professor at Washington State University, has referred to the nation's "hard-wired belief in guns." Did she mean to get theological? If so, I think she was on to something. Conservatives are comfortable arguing for the unseen benefits of long-held traditions and customs. In the aftermath of Sandy Hook, Alex Massie wrote eloquently about the role of guns in the making of America and in modern American identity. For defenders, the primary reference point is still the Second Amendment to the US constitution, drafted at a time of organised military resistance to the British Empire but revered as a timeless, and flawless, prescription for individual liberty. Putting aside the arguments about lobbying and corruption, conservatives have a lot of emotional and reputational investment in this debate: the experience of defending gun rights against repeated attacks in the aftermath of horrific shootings has bound the group together: to step back now, to retreat, would be to betray colleagues and friends as well as deeply-held principles. And with every bloody incident, and every public defence, the cost of backing down gets higher and higher.

I recently had a conversation with the father of a pupil at Brighton College, who grew up in South Africa during Apartheid. Many of those who supported the regime were good men and women, he explained, courteous to their friends, believers in social justice and not inherently opposed to reform. But over the years, as the external criticism mounted and South Africa became a pariah state in the eyes of the world, many whites began to identify more strongly with the harsher aspects of the Apartheid system. Having followed it so far down the road, pulling back would be to admit that they had always been mistaken, and that their critics truly had the moral high ground. There is a challenge here for liberals and conservatives alike: the gun control argument will not be won by convincing opponents of their moral inferiority. A new language must be found, one that takes the concepts of individual responsibility and self-discipline promoted by gun-owners and gives them some legislative teeth. As in South Africa, neither side should be happy to continue the struggle to the bitter end.



Historical Fiction: A Fictional Guide

 

A passerby hesitated, stared. “Excuse me–” he said. “Good citizen–are you Robespierre?
Robespierre didn’t look at the man. “Do you understand what I say about heroes? There is no place for them. Resistance to tyrants means oblivion. I will embrace that oblivion. My name will vanish from the page.”
“Good citizen, forgive me,” the patriot said doggedly.
Eyes rested on him briefly. “Yes, I’m Robespierre,” he said. He put his hand on Citizen Desmoulin’s arm, “Camille, history is fiction.”

—Hilary Mantel, A Place of Greater Safety

 

An imaginary Robespierre lectures his imaginary boyhood friend, Camille Desmoulins, on the constructed, fictional nature of History, which he describes as a subject that has already been edited before the historian has arrived. They are interrupted by a fictional fellow citizen, eager to meet one of his ‘heroes’. The fictional Robespierre briefly sees himself from the point of view of this unknown passer-by; he and Desmoulins will become characters on the pages of other people’s stories: in short, they will ‘disappear’, they will become fiction.



How many layers of irony can one find in this brief passage from Hilary Mantel’s ‘A Place of Greater Safety’? Perhaps the greatest irony of all is that it is the very fictional nature of the scene that makes it so compellingly truthful. What historian could more eloquently describe the limitations of her subject as the novelist does here with such devastating precision? Historians might, of course, wish to challenge Hilary Mantel, not only for her invention, but also her scepticism. There are such things as historical facts, events, records, and they reward serious and detailed study.

But dare we say ‘truth’, in describing the picture that history offers us? This is a problem, and not only because the writers of history have never and will never agree on what the true picture looks like. We are also faced with weightier problem: the remoteness of our subjects, and the subjectivity of the surviving evidence. Mantel herself has written about this problem at greater length, and it is from her essay that I have quoted below.

Robespierre in caricature:
Executing the executioner

Robespierre’s life is as good an example as any of the challenge that the historian faces in reconstructing the past. The first thirty years of his life are almost entirely hidden from view. He lived his last five years in the full glare of the political limelight, which was as apt to distort then as it is now. Following his execution in 1794, his papers were left in the hands of his political enemies. In England in particular, Citizen Robespierre became a caricature of the naïve dreamer who transforms into a brutal tyrant. 'As the 19th century progressed, Robespierre acquired a set of nervous twitches and shudders, and a hideous yellow complexion highlighted by green veins.' This is the inverse of the hero-worship of the ‘patriot’ in the passage above. In contrast, Hilary Mantel’s novel offers a three-dimensional character, with blood in his veins: ‘Max’ Robespierre is thoughtful, hesitant, fatalistic, but clinging with determined eloquence to the ideals which had propelled him to high political office. I felt as if I was meeting him for the first time.

This is the power of historical fiction. It strips away the distance of years. Undeniably, there are vicarious thrills to be had here: what did it feel like to be amongst the crowds surging through Paris in July 1789, or to sit as part of ‘the Mountain’ in the National Convention in 1793? 'There are not two kinds of history, one sceptical and rational, and the other imaginative and erratic.' The best works of History are all of these things. They place us in the key moments so that we can try to comprehend the forces that shaped those moments. In so doing, the writers lend their hands to a shared enterprise: that of rescuing from oblivion the lived experience of previous generations.

I’ll leave the final words to John Adams. Not the real one, of course…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DT0qNAYJQWU