Worth repeating here from closed thread
Jim Carroll

"An insightful letter in this morning's Irish times on the 'historical value' of the Confederate statues
"Sir, - Oisin Keogh, who objects to the removal of, as he ' calls them, "symbolic monuments" of confederate leaders and generals, says history matters. If he cares that much about his¬tory, then surely he knows that the vast majority of these monuments were commissioned and financed during the 1920s - a period when the Ku Klux Klan was emerging and infiltrating local I and state government in the I US. These monuments are not symbolic in any way other than highlighting the deep-seated racism and anger over the loss of the war of Confederate sympathisers. People of any ethnic persuasion other than white have to walk past a monument to their oppressor anytime they want to go to a park, or school or any other public place where one of these statues has been erected. It would be akin to a statue of Rommel at Normandy, or Cromwell in Drogheda.
History does matter, and I would suggest that Mr Keogh read some to fully understand that while Washington and Jefferson were slave owners, and nobody is forgetting that, they at least created a declaration that stated "that all men are created equal" and a framework to free slaves. The people who marched in Charlottesville under the pretext of "statue rights" do not believe in that last statement. And if you agree with Donald Trump on this matter, then neither do you. - Yours, etc,
DAVID CONLON"

Another letter points out that the only ones with a real grievance about the removal of the statues are the pigeons