A statue is boarded up in London, June 12.
Photo: facundo arrizabalaga/ShutterstockFor America’s mayors and governors confronting the vandalism of public monuments, London Mayor Sadiq Khan might provide an example—and a cautionary tale. He recently encased many of the city’s public statues in wood to protect them from vandalism. They now await a public commission tasked with reviewing monuments.
Included in Mr. Khan’s mothballing was a bronze likeness of King James II that stands in Trafalgar Square. There is something ludicrous about Mr. Khan’s fears for James, who reigned from 1685-88. True, the king doesn’t conform to society’s current “values.” He would probably be torn down for his investments in the slave trade. He was also a despot who believed in the divine right of kings. He wasn’t much of a police reformer, preferring to have offenders drawn and quartered. King James offers potentially limitless offense to our sensibilities.
Yet the public’s abject historical ignorance probably would have saved the statue from being specifically targeted, even without the mayor’s intervention. Figures from many centuries past tend to be too far gone to draw attention. In the case of James II, his statue is little more than a historical artifact. First erected in 1686 on the Palace of Whitehall grounds, it celebrates absolute monarchy. It portrays James dressed as a Roman emperor, a sovereign both timeless and semidivine. This ideology was controversial even then, but it was sufficiently venerable that James’s political foes spared his statue when they dethroned him. It was moved several times and neglected, but never destroyed.
It has stood in its present spot since 1947, by which time its ideological purpose had long been obsolete. Still, it was valued for its historical importance and artistic merit—the statue was made in the studio of the great English sculptor Grinling Gibbons. To hunt for reasons to destroy it seems gratuitous at best, spiteful at worst.
How much more gratuitous and malicious, then, is the destruction of monuments with a public purpose that is still venerated? Take Winston Churchill, also hidden away by Mr. Khan. The great prime minister was an imperialist who held questionable attitudes toward “subject races.” He is remembered primarily for rallying the Western world to resist fascism. That he was an imperialist, or even a Tory, is largely forgotten by the public. Thousands of streets, parks and schools bear Churchill’s name. Scrubbing it from the public culture would be a vast undertaking.
And to what end? To disparage the purpose of these memorials—antifascism—as less important than punishing Churchill for his human failures. There is a strange disconnect between the assertion of ubiquitous, unconscious “systematic” racism or sexism, and the effort to expiate these sins by stigmatizing individuals made to embody them.
Such judgmental zeal would claim victims left and right. Margaret Sanger would be doomed as a eugenicist, Franklin D. Roosevelt for his internment camps and so forth. Nor will small gestures suffice. If the local statue of Thomas Jefferson needs to come down, why not the Jefferson Memorial? If some obscure dormitory must be renamed for connection to slavery or racism, why not Yale University itself?
This is not to suggest that changing times might not render a given public monument intolerable. A simple test might ask: What was the purpose of this monument? What was it intended to honor? If that purpose is either historically dead and thus safely inoffensive (James II) or historically alive and still valued (Churchill), we should avoid devising rationales of condemnation.
The “why” test would doom most statues of Stalin, for instance. Those monuments never represented a shared purpose, and certainly don’t now. It might allow some Confederate memorials (such as those remembering the dead), but disallow those celebrating slavery or rebellion. By and large such a “why” test would leave public monuments in peace. Commemorations of Ulysses Grant celebrate him for winning the Civil War, not for waging war on Native Americans. Jefferson is honored for writing the Declaration of Independence, not for holding slaves.
Monuments aren’t erected in a spirit of blind idolatry. They commemorate particular achievements of imperfect people. There are other mechanisms—schools, documentaries, museums—that instruct us on the flaws of our forbears.
Rather than the “why” question, lately society prefers the “me” question: How does this monument offend me, or my community? What overlooked imperfection of its subject makes me feel unwelcome or “unsafe”? These feelings are understandable. There are sound reasons why the Irish don’t celebrate Cromwell and Indians might feel ambivalent about Churchill.
But if the public space is shaped by an ever-escalating tide of affront, little will survive except passing embodiments of our current sensibilities. A culture of ceaseless contestation would result, a narcissistic society unable to imagine past times—or future ones—that don’t accept all of our orthodoxies.
Mr. Collins is an associate professor of history at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario.
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