Of the #Rhodesmustfall protests in Oxford

[smokingboot]

Damnatio Memoriae: the perfect way to ensure that history's mistakes and cruelties are forgotten. We can't learn from what we don't know.

Many donors and patrons to anything anywhere were absolute shits in their time, possibly mad and definitely bad. But if they founded a scholarship or a library or whatever, then no we don't get to take the money, use the library and sink their name. That's the price of their patronage - they wanted to help in certain ways, and be remembered for that help. Doesn't mean they were good people, they might have been utter monsters; but if you use the facilities they created, you don't get to complain; the appropriate protest is to refuse to accept the scholarship, boycott the library, choose another college.  There's a bloody great statue of Churchill in parliament square; the guy was a genocidal murderer. Shall we forget him then? Cos I understand he might have been useful,necessary even, to our nation once upon a time... that doesn't justify some of the things he did, it doesn't make him a good man. Many historical bigwigs were unpleasant, immoral even.Queen Elizabeth I is one of my personal heroes...apparently she loved bear baiting/dog fighting, it was reputed that she got so close, blood from the poor beasts splattered her dress. I don't think we would have got on,for all my admiration of her brilliant mind.

Few of these people were good nor likeable by our standards, and we should be stark in truth about their crimes, glossing nothing over. What they have done, they have done, and for good or ill,it should all be known.

For good or ill.

We do not rewrite history, or there is no history. And then no-one knows anything.