BS: in our time radio4

Subject: RE: BS: in our time radio4
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 13 Jun 20 - 06:14 AM

It would be very good if the title of this thread could be changed to something that reflects its content. The mods are quite good at doing stuff like that. Could be they haven't spotted this one yet. How about "Frederick Douglass, anti-slavery campaigner"?

Subject: RE: BS: in our time radio4
From: John MacKenzie
Date: 12 Jun 20 - 02:35 PM

I should check that big pool of bathwater over there, as I fear there may be quite a few babies in it.

Subject: RE: BS: in our time radio4
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 12 Jun 20 - 01:09 PM

Calling protesters "vandals" is a piece of Dailymailery. I know, because I saw yesterday's issue. The vast majority of protesters have been peaceful on both sides of the Atlantic. Even if you disagree with the toppling of statues, it was done by a very small minority of the protesters. Of course, showing photos of people marching quietly is too boring for the tabloids. They need action, so the spectacular downing of a statue fits their bill nicely. Let's not be fooled by sensationalist journalism, eh?

Subject: RE: BS: in our time radio4
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 12 Jun 20 - 01:02 PM

"I've learnt in the last few days from the State Broadcaster, BBC, here of some other endowments with equally embarrassing financial origins. I've yet to hear anything about banks, insurance companies, galleries, or even churches. Or about Stately Homes. So, once the dust has settled on a few hundred demolished plinths, and some bronze and marble effigies laid to rest in various museums, galleries and Visitor Centres, these other beneficiaries of "Britain's Colonial Past" will quietly go on doing business as usual."

This is a good point and, if we're being honest, one that needs addressing. I could have accused you of whataboutery when you mentioned black people who benefited from the slave trade (I won't, because it would be hypocritical to ignore the fact that this happened). Ruthless and money-grabbing African chiefs were often complicit in rounding up and selling their men, women and children to white slavers who would then transport them. It's the case that the white slavers would generally have found the trade much more difficult to carry out without this assistance. It's another reflection of the fact that the world isn't, er, to be seen as black and white (that's not meant to be a joke). It isn't the thrust of anti-racist movements that black people are all saintly whereas white people are all the devil incarnate. But, in our own countries, we see the fruits of the slave trade in the shape not only of celebratory statues but also in the shape of grand public buildings and those stately homes you mention... There's also the non-racist exploitation in the shape of the cheap and hard labour need to build those grand houses, not to speak of magnificent cathedrals, etc. In my part of the Westcountry, children from the age of seven were used to crawl through horizontal flues to scrape off the condensed sublimate from the roasting of arsenic ore. The children typically died at around fourteen and the arsenic, shipped over the Atlantic to be used on cotton plantations against the weevil, caused the premature deaths of thousands of slaves. Good old Victorian values...   I guess that the super-wealthy and powerful (including the Church) didn't care who they exploited as long as they were increasing their wealth. We then have to take a step back and consider what we're prepared to lose "on principle" in addition to the statues. With regard to that, I'd just make the point that the stately homes and cathedrals are not explicitly there today to celebrate great and powerful men (though there's plenty of annoying commemorative stuff INSIDE some cathedrals...), whereas the street statues are. There's plenty of scope inside those buildings for explaining the history, and the history needs to be honestly explained. It's also right that the buildings should be accessible to the public, with entrance fees honestly set in order to raise money for their upkeep, which is a rather more modern difficulty for many of them. As for those street statues, they are not history. They are tendentious and superficial celebrations of one facet of a person's achievements, whilst sweeping under the carpet anything that's murky. That isn't honest history. In fact, it isn't any kind of history. I'm for keeping the grand houses and the cathedrals, but I'm for having a public conversation about the people depicted by street statues, with a determined view to removing some of them...

If you want to accuse me of being rather too fond of grand buildings, you could be right...

Subject: RE: BS: in our time radio4
From: Senoufou
Date: 12 Jun 20 - 12:16 PM

I think that lockdown has made many younger people bored and at a loose end. When they come across a 'cause' like this, they erupt in violent anarchic behaviour. If my pupils had been shut in due to wet playtimes, they too erupted like a tsunami of mischief when finally permitted to go out into the playground.
It's dangerous and destructive.
I can imagine their ringleaders looking at the word 'Penny' and rubbing their hands with glee. "Oooooooh! Another racist! Come on! Let's deface it!" and so on. As you say Mr Red, just like the paedophile/paediatrician attack.
Being linked by the Internet increases the dissemination of vicious aggressive behaviour. Instead of a small group there are suddenly hundreds of the vandals gathering for some 'fun'.

Subject: RE: BS: in our time radio4
From: Mr Red
Date: 12 Jun 20 - 11:13 AM

I was not trying to paint Tate & Lyle into a corner, merely to point out that they would be on someone's shopping list, for targeting, not buying their products.

To illustrate my point why not consider "Penny Lane" in Liverpool. See the BBC article. "Penny" blacked out and the word "RACIST" above. Famous for the Beatles song. It was not named after the slave trader James Penny - the Slavery Museum think more research is needed and the city guide said "We've researched it and it has nothing to do with slavery. James Penny was a slave trader, but he had nothing to do with the Penny Lane area."

My point is that mob rule is moving that pendulum. Its the pedophile/pediatrician mis-association all over again.

Subject: RE: BS: in our time radio4
From: JHW
Date: 12 Jun 20 - 08:11 AM

Some good choices of replays of In Our Time programmes.

Subject: RE: BS: in our time radio4
From: Donuel
Date: 12 Jun 20 - 05:23 AM

Douglass’ ideological opposition to slavery began to take shape after he was taught to read and write. Education was banned for slaves, but in spite of this, his slaveholder Sophia Auld decided to teach him the alphabet when he was around the age of 12. Not long after, her husband forbade her from teaching, but that didn’t stop Douglass who continued to seek learning opportunities wherever they may arise.

Frederick Douglass went on to write several autobiographies — the most famous of which being Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass — openly describing his own experiences as a slave. Later on, he went on to become the first African-American citizen to hold a high U.S. government rank.

Even after the Civil War was over, Douglass continued his campaign against slavery and has strengthened the idea according to which slaves weren’t able to function as independent American citizens because they were denied the access to education, not because they lacked the intellectual capacity. And he was the living proof of these arguments.



Opposing such a deeply rooted system, rising alone against so many, proves nothing but courage and love for people and freedom.

Here are 22 Frederick Douglass quotes to make you want to stop ignorance from prevailing:

Frederick-Douglas-quotes

I prefer to be true to myself, even at the hazard of incurring the ridicule of others, rather than to be false, and to incur my own abhorrence.



Once you learn to read, you will be forever free.

frederick-douglass-quote-about-knowledge-and-slaveryKnowledge makes a man unfit to be a slave.



Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe.



Without a struggle, there can be no progress.



People might not get all they work for in this world, but they must certainly work for all they get.



The white man’s happiness cannot be purchased by the black man’s misery.



To suppress free speech is a double wrong. It violates the rights of the hearer as well as those of the speaker.



Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.



It is not light that we need, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake.



No man can put a chain about the ankle of his fellow man without at last finding the other end fastened about his own neck.



frederick-douglass-quote-strong-children-broken-menIt is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.





A gentleman will not insult me, and no man not a gentleman can insult me.



The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.
Man’s greatness consists in his ability to do and the proper application of his powers to things needed to be done.

A man’s character always takes its hue, more or less, from the form and color of things about him.



The life of a nation is secure only while the nation is honest, truthful, and virtuous.



Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have the exact measure of the injustice and wrong which will be imposed on them.



Some know the value of education by having it. I knew its value by not having it.



A smile or a tear has no nationality; joy and sorrow speak alike to all nations, and they, above all the confusion of tongues, proclaim the brotherhood of man.



Freedom is a road seldom traveled by the multitude.



A man is worked upon by what he works on. He may carve out his circumstances, but his circumstances will carve him out as well.



Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning.

Subject: RE: BS: in our time radio4
From: Jos
Date: 12 Jun 20 - 05:22 AM

I have always bought Tate & Lyle sugar rather than beet sugar because I believed I was benefitting the West Indies (not that my two or three bags a year would make much difference). I hope I was right.

Subject: RE: BS: in our time radio4
From: Manitas_at_home
Date: 12 Jun 20 - 04:08 AM

Tate and Lyle trace their history back to 1859. They did not get rich off the back of slaves although you could argue they exploited the poor.
They purposely continued to use sugar from cane rather than beets as they wanted to support the economies in the West Indies. I don't think they employed labour in the cane fields directly.

Subject: RE: BS: in our time radio4
From: Mr Red
Date: 12 Jun 20 - 02:26 AM

I well remember my friend who became a CofE curate remarming re the Pope's Infallibility:
His comment was "creeping infallibility", implying how the concept grows out of its original intention.

That is how it works, and we are seeing the same mechanism in denigration with statues and their connection to slavery. There is one in Scotland being defaced because it is of the son of a pro-slavery baron. Grandsons are next. And how long before the angry mob realise Tate & Lyle (UK Sugar, Treacle & Golden Syrup) grew rich on the products from Caribbean sugar plantations who's record on slavery is tars them with the same brush.

It is a pendulum, and once released it swings as far in the other direction if left unchallenged. Life ain't binary! People are!

Surely - statues/buildings etc that have an immoral association, educate better if they carry the message, put one on there that suits you. Remove the item and the world forgets. As if there isn't slavery going on in our lifetime. We find cases occasionally. It needs perspective. Not soundbites.

Subject: RE: BS: in our time radio4
From: An Buachaill Caol Dubh
Date: 11 Jun 20 - 10:05 PM

Yes, Steve Shaw, and that is exactly what I (quite ready for the predictable cries of "Conspiracy Theorist") anticipated some time ago, when the issues around the Cecil Rhodes statue at a University were publicised about a year ago, maybe more (I think it was later than the business about Confederate war-memorials in America). That is, as I've already written on, I think, the UK Politics thread, if sufficient attention can be steered towards these exciting, confrontational, potentially violent and therefore so enticingly newsworthy dramas, then the other issues connected to this particular aspect of the whole racism issue might just, conveniently for some, be neglected.

Briefly, now, one important aspect of the whole racism issue is Slavery, because in America especially to think of the one is immediately to think of the other. Anyone who has studied the matter knows that not everyone who profited from the Slave Trade was white, and I'll leave that there with just the repetition of "Slave Trade" (not "Slavery"), and a reminder - which I'm sure isn't really necessary - that Slavery goes back a long way in Human history, though sometimes it's less openly practised. This is not to "blame the victim", but to emphasise that difference of skin colour seems to have been rather less important, then, than attitude towards other human beings. The fundamental issue is one of Power. Then, and Now.

That aspect of things could be taken and developed in a number of ways, several of which seem of particular relevance currently. However, in the expectation that a long passage might just be passed over, I'll "cut to the chase" even though the modern tendency to require a "soundbite"-based approach is crude. You have mentioned the source of one historical figure's philanthropy (he was, admittedly, selective), and I've learnt in the last few days from the State Broadcaster, BBC, here of some other endowments with equally embarrassing financial origins. I've yet to hear anything about banks, insurance companies, galleries, or even churches. Or about Stately Homes. So, once the dust has settled on a few hundred demolished plinths, and some bronze and marble effigies laid to rest in various museums, galleries and Visitor Centres, these other beneficiaries of "Britain's Colonial Past" will quietly go on doing business as usual. Will the protesters disperse, with peace of mind, all passion spent?

One phrase I've heard several times recently, from at least two different sources, is about seeing every day a statue of someone who treated ancestors worse than his horse, or dog. The appeal to emotion is clear, and quite legitimate. So, with regard to removing such reminders of what has been termed "Man's inhumanity to Man", I'm still hoping that a colossal work lording it over part of the Highlands of Scotland, a statue detested for generations, will be tumbled to the very Earth by the tempest of change roaring through the great Glen o' the Warld the day.

ABCD.
2020.

Subject: RE: BS: in our time radio4
From: Backwoodsman
Date: 11 Jun 20 - 08:53 PM

”Focusing on statues rather than the broader issue is exactly what our populist leaders want, so beware!“

Bingo!

The biggest mistake anyone can make is to take what people like The Trump Mob, or the Johnson Gang, say at face value - always search for the back-story. What they want you to think is going on is always different to what’s actually going on.

Subject: RE: BS: in our time radio4
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 11 Jun 20 - 08:43 PM

Well, ABCD, a statue or similar public installation is not there as an historical statement. It's there to celebrate the greatness of the bloke in question (and it's nearly always men...). The true history, the balanced story, lies elsewhere (hopefully, on a plaque in a museum next to the rehomed statue). And that's the problem. A proper discussion about all this is about where we draw the line. Churchill was undoubtedly a great war leader, and Nelson probably stopped the French from invading Britain. To say they were both incredibly flawed men would not be inaccurate. The perfect human being has yet to be invented. Colston was a slaver of the worst kind and his philanthropy money all came from that. I can't see much of a good side. It's very difficult, but I'd probably dump Colston in the harbour but just about give Winston a bye. Those early US presidents were slavers and rank hypocrites. What should happen to their images is something for the American people to decide. Personally, were I a yank, heaven forfend, I'd want rid of them. Nobody learned any history by staring at an impressive street statue, in spite of what all the "let's-not-erase-history" types claim. History is a true story, and no statue can convey that.

One thing we shouldn't lose sight of is that the current issue is one of racism in general, not just about slavery and statues. Focusing on statues rather than the broader issue is exactly what our populist leaders want, so beware!

Subject: RE: BS: in our time radio4
From: Bonzo3legs
Date: 11 Jun 20 - 06:21 PM

It matters not whether the subject of a statue is white, black or sky-blue-pink, the statue is always dark grey!!!

Subject: RE: BS: in our time radio4
From: An Buachaill Caol Dubh
Date: 11 Jun 20 - 05:42 PM

Would it be mockery and sacrilegious irony to wonder when the current movement concerned with removing or destroying statues, because of any connection of their subjects to the Slavery issue, turns attention to Mount Rushmore?

Subject: RE: BS: in our time radio4
From: Donuel
Date: 11 Jun 20 - 05:12 PM

"Your founders are Apostles to Forgetfullness"
Frederick Douglas

Subject: BS: in our time radio4
From: The Sandman
Date: 11 Jun 20 - 04:57 PM

programe about fredrick douglass anti slavery campagner, 9 30 radio 4 available on fm schedule for some time yet