I’ve never been a fan of statues. Placing a man or a woman on a plinth and inviting lesser mortals to gaze up in admiration is fraught with problems. Whatever their achievement they were human beings who although created in the image of God are sons of Adam and daughters of Eve. They share our inclination to fail at a moral and spiritual level and that should temper any impulse to raise them above the common run of humanity. Many will see that as a pessimistic perspective on humanity but you don’t have to go too far into the Bible to see that even those who were deemed to be unique in their faithfulness to God still were capable of making wrong decisions which led to disaster for themselves and others. This need for us to take our inner brokenness more seriously has emerged in the wake of recent events in the UK.
While being disturbed at the flaunting of social distancing and the mob behaviour at some of the Black Lives Matter demonstrations I do not mourn the removal of the statues of people who had strong links with the eighteenth century slave trade. I also welcome the debate as to how in the future we deal with this blot on the history of the UK. I am aware that there are people who do not like to think of themselves as British but if we home in on Scotland then the picture does not get any better. Some years ago I heard a Professor of Scottish History being interviewed on the wireless. He was passionate in his belief that we Scots should be learning the history of our nation from an early age but warned against idealising our past. His particular interest was the eighteenth century and averred that whenever there was some ‘skulduggery’ (his word) going on in the British Empire someone from Dundee, Edinburgh or Glasgow wasn’t far away.
The history I received at school was full of noble freedom fighters, dashing Jacobites, intrepid explorers, ingenious engineers, romantic poets and the odd missionary. The Tobacco Lords were presented as high-powered businessmen who contributed much to Glasgow’s recognition as the Second City of Empire. There was no mention of their heavy involvement in the slave trade along with other groups of Glasgow merchants. John Glassford (1715-1783) whose name was given to streets in Glasgow and Milngavie even had an African ‘servant’.
Just today Gerry Hassan writes in the online journal Scottish Review:
‘Scotland cannot escape from its role in Empire. Sir Geoff Palmer wrote last weekend that there is silence and omission when it comes to this part of our history, saying 'I believe that, in some quarters, "false national pride" has been responsible for this omission. There is the misguided belief that the Scottish people need protection from their own history'. And, as American academic Tommy Curry from the University of Edinburgh, put it: 'Scotland remains very much in denial about its racist heritage and colonial legacy'. ‘
When I was in my mid-teens I read my first biography of Martin Luther King. It was written by Coretta his wife. That book provided me with my first insight into how much the economic growth of Western nations had depended on slavery and exploitation. Coretta begins with Martin’s award of the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1964. Before the ceremony in Oslo Martin and the family made visits to several European countries including London. Correta describes a sight-seeing tour including the ‘great government buildings - the Admiralty and the Foreign Office - which stood like monuments to the great empire that had been and was no longer.‘ She and the children were obviously a bit starry-eyed. But what about Martin? She writes:
‘ . . . the beauty and the nobility of London were clouded for Martin by the thought, as he said, “that it was built by exploitation of Africans and Indians and other oppressed peoples.”’
That cloud hangs over many if not all nations in the West. The way forward for us may be to remove statues and rename streets as long as this is the result of consultation and debate. But whatever happens there should be no air-brushing of the past. It happened and our nation was involved and many prospered.
Genevan Calvinists lived under a particular cloud for many centuries. In 1553 a man named Michael Servetus was executed for heresy. It was a complicated business. Servetus was also regarded as a heretic by a number of Roman Catholic states. However, with the passing of the years Genevan Calvinists found the execution more and more difficult to justify. So in 1903, on the 350th anniversary of the deed, a committee from the Reformed Churches set up a granite monument to Servetus at the place of his execution with this inscription:
'Respectful and grateful sons of Calvin, our great Reformer, but condemning an error which belonged to his century and firm believers in freedom of conscience according to the true principles of the Reformation and the Gospel, we have raised this expiatory monument.'
I have no objection to memorials. There are a number of instances in Scripture of God commanding His people to set up memorials as a remembrance of how He acted for them as individuals or as a people. There seems to me to be no harm in having a physical focus for significant events in the life of a nation. It’s a way of keeping history alive. Maybe then we could follow the example of the Genevan Calvinists to find ways to acknowledge the errors of the past and to establish our commitment to follow better ways in the future.
