Spreading False Information

Maxine Peake has been censured and Rebecca Long-Bailey has lost her political position over false stories that they perpetuated over the training of US police by the Israeli Secret Service. Basically they did not check the facts of what they posted/reposted in social media. I suspect that we have all been guilty of this. If we see something that agrees with our own world view/belief system/prejudices we will often republish without question; whereas if it is something that we disagree with we will tend to check it to prove it false or simply disregard it. 

Then of course there are the 'facts/quotes' that we all use everyday which are simply not true, much as we would like them to be true. "Preach the Gospel at all times and if necessary use words" is a saying that is often used and prefaced by 'as St Francis of Assisi said'. However this saying has never been found in any of his writings. St Francis did call for his brothers to practise what they preach, that is do not say one thing and then do another. (I suspect that we have all been guilty of doing this at some time).

“I disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it” is said to have come from Voltaire. It is not from Voltaire, the 18th-century philosopher, but it was a paraphrase from a biographer named Evelyn Beatrice Hall of what she thought Voltaire was thinking. So Voltaire never said one of 'his' most famous quotes.

This can then lead us onto the discussion of is there such a thing as objective truth? There are objective facts, the earth is spinning on its axis, but are there objective truths or does truth depend on our world view?

Thoughts on Statues

 I realise that I speak from a position of white privilege but some of the BLM protestors seem to be throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Someone like Colston, a slave trader, has no place in being honoured in any way. Yes slave trading was legal at that time, but it resulted in many men and women dying in appalling circumstances at sea and thrown overboard. These are crimes against humanity,. Whether the statue should have been removed in the manner that it was is debatable, but it should have been removed many years ago. 

But other people that they are protesting about, Robert Peel is one example did nothing wrong to the best of my knowledge. Peel's "crime" is that his father delayed an anti-slavery bill. To the best of my knowledge that was nothing to do with Robert Peel, yet he is being vilified. 

Henry Tate is coming in for some stick and there are some calls for the Tate Gallery to be renamed. Yet Henry Tate was not born until 1819, the slave trade was abolished in England in 1807. He started out as a grocer and eventually sold up and bought into a sugar refinery in 1859, slavery in the West Indies was abolished in 1833. So although he was involved with sugar refining it was not until 25 years or so after slavery was illegal. So this is why I believe that some people think that too much fuss is being over statues, particularly when there are40 million plus in forms of modern slavery.  An Indian friend of mind has pointed out to me, rather wryly, that three of the worst  offenders, India, Pakistan and Bangladesh once formed part of the British Empire.  

When we move to times closer to home the picture becomes murkier. Sadiq Khan a couple of years ago unveiled a statue of Millicent Fawcett the suffragette; yet judged by modern standards she was racist - should her statue come down? The are others such as Baden-Powell who are also being pilloried, I do not know enough about him to make any sort of comment but I think that you catch my drift. Slaver traders of any sort should not have any sort of honour, but some of the others that are being vilified biggest crime is being born when they were. A lot of the English upper class treated the "lower orders' of any colour , white. black, blue etc appallingly, it was the way they were brought up. It is not right and hopefully things have improved although to hear some politicians speak they are by no means perfect. 

Slavery still exists

Everybody seems to be "getting their knickers in a twist" about statues of imperialists (Rhodes) and slave owners/traders. Yet there is hardly a murmur about the 21 million to 40 million (dependent on your definition) of slaves that are in the world today. It is truly dreadful and I suspect that many of us, me included, are wearing items of apparel that were made by modern day slaves. We may no longer have the wooden hulks plying their evil trade across the seas but people are in similar or worse conditions than slaves in the plantations.

Removing statues and changing street names might make some people feel better, but surely it would be better to stop the abuses that are taking place today - or am I missing something?

Click here to learn about slavery today.

Judging the Past

Apart from being engulfed by the CV-19 pandemic we are now caught in the maelstrom of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement and all the protests initially caused by the murder of (black) George Floyd by a (white) policeman Derek Chauvin. The protest movement appears to have taken on a life of its own and in a few instances has been subverted by people more interested in rioting and looting than by those trying to right a great wrong.
Nevertheless the vast majority of the protesters are focussed on righting the wrongs of the past and those that are still happening today in many (all?) countries across the globe.


One of the symbols of the protests has been focussed on removing statues and place/street names honouring people who were slave traders. It has been pointed out that some of the slavers did many philanthropic acts; this is countered by so did Jimmy Savile but we don't erect statues to him. It should of course be pointed out that what Jimmy Savile was illegal whereas slavery was, at that time legal (still abhorrent and an affront to any decent human being). Slavery might now be illegal but if anyone believes that it is abolished they have not being paying attention to events around the globe.
So this leads onto the question of should we judge the past by the standards of today? There are thousands if not millions of people who were punished for committing acts that were illegal at the time but which are legal today. Homosexual acts spring to mind; over the centuries may people were imprisoned for carrying out these. Some have been posthumously pardoned, Alan Turing springs to mind. He did break the law and was cruelly punished. Should he have been and should all the others that were similarly barbarically treated be pardoned? They knew that what they were doing was illegal at that time and were caught and punished. In some cases the cruel incarceration gave rise to great art, De Profundis and the Ballad of Reading Gaol are two works by Oscar Wilde that spring to mind.
Cecil Rhodes is now coming under attack and there are increasing cries for his statue to be removed from where is is sited in Oxford.  Oriol College did not remove the statue when it was asked to do so in 2016 and said the figure "was a reminder of the complexity of history and of the legacies of colonialism".What will happen today is anyones guess, although if I were a betting man I would bet that it will be removed.
So how should we judge the past and how we should we teach it? How many today are taught about the Tolpuddle Martyrs? Their great bravery helped lay down the foundations of the trade union movement and the great reforms in working practices that are still prevalent today, although under constant threat. The present is built on the past for good or ill. We most certainly should not forget it or else we will be destined to repeat it. 


Many people were transported to Australia for committing acts that today would warrant no more than a slap on the wrist at the local magistrates court. Turing and some 50,000 others including Wilde have been pardoned, but this doesn't ease the pain and degradation that they suffered at the time.