The fascist violence in Charlottesville was in defence of prominent public statues to those who fought to uphold slavery. History should not be destroyed, and there is a place for such statues in appropriate explained context in museums. But public celebration of advocates of slavery ought to end. People always throw off the monuments of their oppressors, and so they should. The statues should be removed from their prestigious positions.
Hardly anybody remembers now that O’Connell Street in Dublin was Sackville Street. You will scour Ireland with little success for surviving statues of British Imperial rulers and commanders – there were once hundreds. I found that Burnes Road in Karachi is no more. Uzbekistan and Ukraine are no longer dotted with great statues of Lenin.
Yet I live here in a city which still has a Cumberland Street, named after a disgusting war criminal who perpetrated long term and systematic atrocities on this very people whose capital city is desecrated by his name. Cumberland was a worse racist and an infinitely greater war criminal than Robert E Lee. Yet I hear not a whisper to echo the brave roar of Charlottesville. The imposed regime which crushed Scotland, outlawed its major language and much of its culture and tried to expunge even the memory of its history and native culture, is celebrated in the heart of the nation. Hanover Street, George Street, Rose Street, Princes Street. These vicious, arrogant, Scot-hating people really did crush Scotland’s spirit, to the extent we still cringe before them now they are long dead.
It staggers me that, after we have decades of an element of home rule by alleged Scottish Nationalists and an alleged Labour Party, when even the pathetic colonial status of the devolution settlement gives the power to rename a few streets, Labour and the SNP, as the minimum gesture of self-awareness and a tiny, tiny glimmer of self-respect, have not renamed Cumberland Street after Keir Hardie.
Yes, we have always suffered from a parcel of rogues in a nation. Yet we remain a parcel of cowards as a nation. The brave left wing demonstrators of Charlottesville, supporting the removal of Robert E Lee against the violence of the fascists, put us to deep shame.
However, there still is a Cumberland Street in Dublin.
Agree fully craig.!
And SO many great and inspirational Scots forgotten! Where are the statues to Cochrane?!
And can we PLEASE tear down the statue on princess street of that bastard Butcher Wellington!
Was going to the Omni-Centre one day.
When I got off the train at Waverley Station I asked a taxi driver where it was.
“Turn left at the man on the horse”, he said.
When I saw who the man on the horse was, I had a wee smile to myself.
The taxi driver would not even name the bastard.
Well done taxi driver.
Yes, Craig and the point you make is even more blatant in the village of Helmsdale, where the street names are all related to the infamous Duke of Sutherland, who oversaw the brutal clearances in the Strath of Kildonan. Fortunately, there was good news there today, although the current residents at Dunrobin Castle should be ashamed to accept these funds, for lands their ancestors ‘stole’.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-40898868
The first steps… Removal of that hateful statue of the Duke of Sutherland. Second might be finally erecting a statue to Andrew de Moray, long, long past due.
Hear hear. One of Sir Andrew Wood of Largo wouldn’t go amiss either.
Why celebrate feudal lords who exploited the peasantry?
I live in Cumberland St Glasgow. I’d love a name change.
I also can’t wait till we change the names of every single Royal related Hospital in Scotland, starting with the QUEH being renamed the Mary Barbour University Hospital.
Southern General. Simple. That’s what everyone calls it.
From what I recall, the name of the new hospital wasn’t even put out to a vote by the public. The unbeffitting misnomer it has now, was a internal decision.
The headline says it all. I would like to see, post independence, a street in Edinburgh named after James Connolly. He was after all a native of the city and gave his life fighting colonial rule. Princes Street would be my choice. The unionists would be furious!
Generally, I have sympathy for your writing, but not this.
I think it’s a good thing that these reminders of our past are visible, not because we are intimidated by them, but because we are not.
It really is about time you let the past go and be where it belongs – in the past. I don’t know anyone who gives a toss what Cumberland Street is called ( except you, obviously). That no one gives a toss about it is a sign that we’re past our history, no need to obliterate it.
Of course, however it came about, Scotland benefited mightily by the Union.They say the abused becomes the abuser and we did out bit in response.
The ships would leave from what is now called Pacific Quay to spare the BBC’s blushes, Plantation Quay was the staring point of the journey to West Africa to pick up the slaves, from there to Virginia to pick up tobacco and cotton, from there with more slaves to Jamaica, to pick up sugar and back to Greenock. In total, we helped transport 1.2m West Africans into slavery, Glasgow was built on the back of it.A population of 77,000 rose to 1.3m by 1939, second city of the Empire.
The ‘inventor of socialism’ author of ‘A Man’s a Man’, Robert Burns, was ironically due to take a job on a plantation but the unexpected success of the Kilmarnock edition meant he didn’t take up the post.
The streets are there to commemorate our abuses: Jamaica Street, the Kingston Bridge, Tradeston Street – the merchant city in Glasgow houses The Corinthian, which has plaster work as good as anything in any Royal Palace was the home of the Union Bank of Scotland which funded much of it.
In 2014, it must have been a surprise to the Jamaican Athletes to find themselves running round Hampden Park, a mile from Plantation Quay, on buses going over the Kingston Bridge, from where their ancestors journey had begun, us cheering on the world’s fastest man.
I have a pal who was in Jamaica on holiday and spotted that his waitress was called ‘Mhairi Stewart’ – he proudly announced -‘Mhairi Stewart – we’re from Scotland!’
‘Where’s Scotland?’, she responded, clueless about the connection.
After what we did to West Africans relocated to Jamaica and elsewhere, we really have a bloody cheek complaining about what was done to us.
I think it’s just fine that Cumberland Street and Jamaica Street are with us – it is as it should be – we are abused and abuser and being reminded of this truth is no bad thing. We are not angels on this earth.
If only we could let our history be and get over it – I’m with Mhairi Stewart – where is Scotland?
I like the sentiment of this comment.
Great comment , you voiced my thoughts for me. What’s in a name? You illustrated that a name can revere or remind , that is important to where we are now , a permanent reminder of our colonial past is something that will not be denied by a few name changes that themselves may be subject to historical revision . Tinkering with stuff like this will get us nowhere fast , I bet a pound /euro to a penny that Mhairi Stewart knew where England is.
Where is Scotland?
Right under your nose.
Imagine trying to rename Prestwick Airport “Rabbie Burns Airport”.
They don’t allow Scottish pride or culture to blossom.
However, easy to name Liverpool Airport “John Lennon Airport”.
EF them all.
An Asian guy bought an old Co-op store at the top of the lane where I used to live.
He went back to Pakistan for a holiday and was asked, “where do you live?” “I just told them England because no one knows about Scotland”.
Yes – I agree with most of what you say. Street names are a part of the history of a place for those who wish to learn about that. Changing them obscures the history. More importance should be placed on the naming of new streets, not changing the names of old ones.
Not sure that what happened in Charlottesville is really any different from the paid agitation in Syria or Turkey, Iraq or Ukraine etc… It seems to be a tried and tested method of attempts to topple governments and maybe there will be George Soros Streets all over the world one day.
Robert, that was a really good comment. I agree with your analysis wrt Scotland and the British Empire. When I was writing a novel back in the late 1990s, I tried to find out more about Plantaion Quay, but sensed reluctance on the part of some of the people I approached (this was before the web, really) to admit that it was in any way slavery-related.
I do think, however, that the situation in the Southern States of the USA is not entirely similar. There, there was/is a very specific form of supremacism, with ongoing massive de facto if not now de jure, institutional inequality, which continues to be celebrated through multiple public symbols of which the statues are one. As Craig suggests, it is rather closer to the postcolonial, or dictatorship situation (eg. statues of Stalin, Lenin, Hitler, Ceausescu, etc.), though again not an exact parallel. I agree that Scotland does need to face up to its complex historical position. The fact too is that many of the peoples of the Empire – including many South Asians, for example – were involved in its functioning, often as ‘middlemen’ in Africa, for instance but also in India itself. There is an ongoing debate about re-naming streets/towns, etc. Sometimes, too, these debates are hijacked too by other types of supremacists, eg. religious ones, for their own purposes. Anyway, thanks for your comment.
First recalling the memory of imagined ancestors to common cause and now this equating Scottish independence with the civil rights movement and slavery. Hilarious. The captain has turned himself into a slave.
Imagined warrior pasts and an exaggerated sense of victimhood, Craig is spouting rabble-rousing clichés. I have to keep reminding myself that Scottish nationalism is different to those other nationalisms.
Fort William. Fort Augustus. Fort George. Named of course after Prince William Augustus, Duke of Cumberland, and father George II. In Gaelic, Fort William is called simply “An Gearasdan” (“The Garrison”).
As for the Duke of Sutherland, the following poem is about his massive statue dominating the hilltop and skyline near Dornoch. For those who lack sufficient Gaelic, the last three lines (the final ought to be in italics) might be roughly rendered:
“You boast a lightning-spike like a wick on your skull
which will one day ignite you as a memorial candle.
Your vainglorious effigy will be earthed yet!”
AIR TRÀIGH DHÒRNAICH
Ceann slìom ròin
gu h-obann os cionn nan tonn
ach chan ann idir cho fìor àrd ri bathais
ìomhaigh mhòir sian-lìomhte Diùc Cataibh
air a’ chnoc chian ud mar fhamhair ri faire
le sùilean-cloiche spìocach gun aithreachas.
A-nuas sròn chrom leòmach a’ dùr-amharc
ris an tìr seo a mhion-phronn a dhòrn teann,
ri lìonmhorachd nan ìochdaran bochda
air na rinn e dìmeas, gun iochd a nochdadh
ach le crathadh-guaille reasgach gan sgapadh
mar ghainmheach sa ghaillean ga greasad
mar na mìltean de ghràinean nan sìoban
a chì mi ag èirigh a-nis mu mo chasan
gan sìor thogail gun chiall às an àite
gan sìor leagail gun rian san t-seòl-mhara.
Ach tha spìc-dealanaich mar bhuaic air do chlaiginn
a nì coinneal-cuimhne dhìot là dhe na làithean.
Thèid d’ ìomhaigh rìomhach a thalmhachadh fhathast!
“Fort William. Fort Augustus. Fort George”, the front line for implementing government policy of the ethnic cleansing of the Gaels. I’d be supportive of changing the names of these places (Maryburgh, or Baile Màiri, was the original name of the village next to the “An Gearasdan”).
Yes they were in essence all staging posts to further quell the highlanders. Indeed General Wade even built roads and bridges so that his forces could subdue any unrest quickly.
Wade even received a mention in God Save the King.
“Lord, grant that Marshal Wade
May, by thy mighty aid,
Victory bring.
May he sedition hush
And, like a torrent, rush
Rebellious Scots to crush.
God save the King.”
We should just rename Westminster the English Parliament.
That is what it is. It dictates to Scotland and refuses us democracy. And it’ll get worse.
And it’ll get worse.
Not if I can help it.
There is a councillor in Falkirk who wants to raise money for the preservation of The Roman Wall. That pile of Scottish rubble.
He wants to honour foreign invaders, murderers, rapists and allround no goods of the day. Then again he is one of the Pope’s followers.
Raise money for Falkirk Bridge? Nae chance! Most folk don’t even know where it is, or, it’s significance. And yet, Falkirk Council was once controlled by the SNP.
.
I like what the Welsh do, name the streets in their own language.
Well done to the Welsh.
Arise all you sons and daughters of Scotland!
Ooh er. Scotland’s year zero cometh. I have to keep reminding myself that Scottish nationalism is different to those other nationalisms.
What other country on earth proudly boasts of full-blown Stockholm syndrome in its national anthem?
“Those days are past now, and in the past they must remain!” (translation: “we were once cheekily defiant of our natural rulers, but thankfully we’ve long since grown of it ..”)
In the late forties early 1950’s when Cumberland Street and its back lanes were synonymous with overcrowded Edinburgh slums ( my late mum was a primary school teacher nearby and her room mate in the YWCA helped her to de-louse after work) you could have found a majority of its residents in favour of renaming it Connelly Street or MacLean Street but today its mainly Unionist residents would be shocked if a name change was proposed. (They might also, most probably, assume that it has aye been a smart address.)
My Constitutional Law tutor, Peter Wallington, was considered rather adventurous by his colleagues in the Old Quad when he bought a flat in Cumberland Street in 1972.)
Blisteringly accurate, ditto your previous but one.
“Yet we remain a parcel of cowards as a nation.”
As does my own.
Why not build a statue or name some streets for Willie McRae since Robin Cook was memorialized after the covert government killed him too?
All that will be corrected too.
You might need to erect something for me after this.
The attention I am getting at the moment is horrendous. I am hounded from pillar to post.
I am dying from cancer that has spread from the kidney and adrenal gland that was removed, to both my lungs, but that makes no difference to this lot.
They lack empathy.
I have NOT broken on single Law. Never so much as a parking ticket. However, I do kick up fairy muck, when I come across a wrong that affects me.
So, do your damndest you parasites!
Robert Crawford
I’m very sorry to hear that.
One of my best friends said to my son, after I had been telling them about my kicking up “fairy muck” as you put it about something that affected me: ‘ Oh but you don’t know your dad like we know him ‘
to which my son replied ‘ oh but I think I do.’
Is there some source for the State’s involvement in Robin Cook’s death?
Bert.
None that I’m personally aware of but like so many ‘conspiracy theories’ (often so named to discredit them), it’s an event that qualifies the adage that if the words don’t add up, then it’s probably the truth that was missing from the equation.
Now as to the late Dr David Kelly and Gareth Williams…
The American Civil War or as known in the South, the War of Northern Aggression was fought by the South to uphold the States Rights to secede.
Slavery was then just a side issue, introduced later to justify the Norths illegal attack on the South. It was a war fought between the states and the federal government over issues of sovereignty and whether or not individual states could secede from the Union.
From a southerner’s perspective such monuments could be seen to be honouring not slavery or slave holders but nationalist heros , such as Genr Robert E.Lee, who can be considered even freedom fighters, who took part in what was ultimately a failed rebellion against the central government.
The scars of the conflict still run deep in the South and economically the Southern States have not fully recovered.
The victors write the history and the demolition of monuments and the demonisation of flying the Confederate Flag can be considered as an attack upon the culture of the South.
Some parallels with Scotland after the ’45 and Highland Clearances.The Scots and Irish were the first slaves on the American continent, but the climate was not suitable for whitemen ,who died in droves, so black slaves were introduced and shipped by Scots and English Companies.
The slaveholders seceded because they’d convinced themselves that the election of Lincoln was a mortal danger to their capital in human property. (Southern slaves at that time being worth multiple times more than all the industrial and merchant capital in the US combined). The non-slaveholding majority were suckered into going along with them and later doing most of the fighting through appeals based on racism and fear of slave insurrection.
Doesn’t mean there was anything more noble about the North’s cause. Lincoln was as racist as the day is long and had no intention of freeing a single slave when he started the Civil War. He was forced into granting emancipation only by the unmanageable numbers of slaves that fled to union lines.
It’s nothing but a self-congratulatory fantasy that the civil war was a crusade to free slaves from bondage; and its a malign delusion because it’s been used ever since to try and sanctify all US military operations.
Here is the book making the point that you posted, based on the author’s research.
https://www.amazon.com/Forced-into-Glory-Abraham-Lincolns/dp/0874850851
And here is a discussion with the author:-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpe4XSw085s
Interesting vimeo conversation (c.2011) with writer Aindrias Ó Cathasaigh. James Connolly discussed in wider context of how socialism and Irish language relate. Perspectives on history evaluated.
https://vimeo.com/24571902
Are you in fact saying that Scotland likes using the names of its oppressors as White supremacists do? Like pit-bull terrier owners displaying their pert little gonads while proxy-hunting for babies to throttle?
There is a vile part of American and British society that glorifies in the continuing tribulations of the Muslims.
Mrs May’s pet testicle Boris Johnson and the BBC are both trying to use Trump’s red-neck comments as an excuse to get back to the dark days of sponsoring Al Qaida and Daesh. Trump is caught between a dropped bollock and a bronze bollock of a horse. You see shat I mean? The red-necks who hate the Muslims also hate the head-choppers their own leaders support. We could theoretically organise a love-in between the muscley-tattooed white supremacists and the world’s peace-loving Muslims over their mutual hatred of John McCain’s pit-bull terrorists. Just a thought.
Sorry I still have no w in my keyboard.
Absolutely spot on, Craig, If the imperial power has relinquished the power to name our streets then we should be using it. It’s exactly what ‘work as if you lived in the earlier days of a better nation’ means.
Within 40 years of the clearances, the same spirit was handing out small pox blankets to the Native Americans. What they did they did first to the Scots.
It was Europeans who attempted the genocide of America’s indigenous peoples, and there was no shortage of Scots, Irish, Welsh and English amongst them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Scottish_Americans
Robert E Lee was a general in the American civil war who chose to fight on the side of his home state, Virginia. Despite ending up on the losing side and losing his family’s estate (Arlington, which was seized by the North to be used as a grave yard for the Northern dead) he was memorialised in the defeated Southern states by statuery. Should those states be instructed by a victorious North to remove these statues because some people have decided that they are offended by them, 150 years later? Here is the irony. Craig Murray would have us rename Cumberland street 250 years later because it disturbs his own narrow nationlist view of the world, but fails to acknowledge that this has not happened because others do not share his concern that this is an issue that needs our urgent attention. The last thing that Scotland needs are Nicola Squares and Alec Streets.
Agree completely. If only they’d remove some of the artistic dross that’s gone up in England in the last 15 years, though. And the phallic office blocks paying tribute to our new rulers, the Qataris.
I get the impression that, had Craig been advising Charles Stewart on the eve of Culloden, he would have told the prince to accept battle on unfavourable terrain, with outmoded tactics and exhausted troops, against an enemy who had chased him all the way from Derby, rather than saying ‘ hang on a minute, you mad impetuous fool, how the hell do you expect this to work?’
Speak for yourself, Craig! I have never accepted the rule of Westminster over my community, and I never will. I will struggle for freedom until my dying day, and bend my knee to no one. My respect goes to those who earn it through their deeds.
Keep the old names in a spirit of irony; after all, one state is as bad as another.
Your comments about the General Lee statute at Charlottesville are spot on and there is an article in the Los Angeles Times today stating the case for its demolition better than I can. Robert E Lee swithered about whether to join the Union or the Confederate forces and finally sided with the Confederacy because he felt a duty of loyalty as a Virginian to his home state rather than either an ideological adherence to states’ rights or because he was an avid believer in slavery. In fact his views on race were probably fairly typical of the bougeois elite of his day. After the Civil War he campaigned for reconciliation between North and South. Nevertheless because the statue has been adopted as a cause celebre by an alliance of evil people it must come down.
We have a more justifiable case for statue removal in Scotland in the case of the statue of George Granville Leveson-Gower, Marquess of Stafford and first Duke of Sutherland which unforgivably still dominates Golspie. He had few of Lee’s redeeming features.
But Craig, are you sure that Cumberland Street is named after ‘Butcher Cumberland’? It runs parallel to Northumberland Street and may be named after the English county. Having said that the Scottish cringe manifests itself in the number of Union Streets, George Streets and George Squares etc. which litter our land.
I’ve just received an email from Greg Palast site on the Charlottesville thing.
There are photos of the events that might interest some:
http://www.gregpalast.com/
Bert.
Following on from the previous comment; several people have remarked upon the refusal of DJT to condemn the white-supremacists in Charlottesville. We may recall a few months ago, when the well-to-the-right speaker: Milo Yianopoulus, was to speak at Berkeley and was stopped by SJWs who did not share MY’s views, it was DJT that immediately threatened the university’s funding.
This says everything about the strumpet we have in the oval office.
Bert.
The postboxes in dublin have been repainted green from pillar box red but they still have GR engraved on them…..
A man with a Set -20 mins ..” UNLESS YOU ARE NAETIVE AMERICAN ”
s://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFx-nypS3Ac
Native
Nativehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFx-nypS3Ac
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFx-nypS3Ac
“History should not be destroyed, and there is a place for such statues in appropriate explained context in museums,” says Craig.
But is that what really happens to such statues? Aren’t they really just hidden away in some back room or in a store room — or quietly disposed of?
For example, what finally happened to the statues of Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis and P. G. T. Beauregard that were taken down in New Orleans?
http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/05/19/529130606/new-orleans-prepares-to-take-down-statue-of-gen-robert-e-lee
“The [Jefferson Davis] statue has been placed in storage at an undisclosed location. The city has stated that it will be relocated, but no specific plans have been announced.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jefferson_Davis_Monument