Renewed calls to take down public monuments celebrating people and events now considered offensive have become a key part of anti-racism protests taking place around the world, but the removal of statues of slave traders is sparking concerns that important lessons from history might be swept under the carpet. Simplistic expressions of mob justice do no good and only serve to further polarise opinion, but we should avoid any knee-jerk reactions. Each statue will have to be reviewed independently because the backgrounds and contexts are not the same. Edward Colston, for example, whose statue was pulled down, was a Victorian re-invention. His statue was erected in Bristol 170 years after his death, representing the economic, social and political perspectives of the businessmen of the city at that time. There have been calls for the removal of Nelson in Trafalgar Square, because he was opposed to the abolition of slavery, yet this is one of the few monuments to portray black seamen, many of whom served in Nelson’s navy.

The measured response of Sir Geoff Palmer, an emeritus professor of Life Sciences at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh and Scotland's first black professor, is one that many could heed. He does not support removing statues relating to slavery, believing that they are part of black history and stresses the importance of facing up to the past and better educating the public about it. He has been a key participant in the proposal to amend a plaque on a controversial monument of Scottish politician Henry Dundas to explain that he was "instrumental in deferring the abolition of the Atlantic slave trade". Palmer told BBC Scotland that the new plaque would give the public the opportunity to see and "actually read the evil that this man has done. If we take the statue down, this will not be known". He said that adding clarifications to these monuments, rather than pulling them down altogether, would avoid erasing history: “My view is you remove the evidence, you remove the deed”.

How we view the past changes from generation to generation, with each viewing its past differently. History is a continuing conversation with and about the past. Looking again means re-evaluating, but re-evaluation is not just the process of knocking the great off their perches, but recognising the value of those who have been overlooked. As retired bishop, Richard Harries, put it on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme’s “Thought for the day” slot (12 June): “If history is a continuing re-evaluation of the past, then perhaps the full story can only be told when mankind no longer exists”. That’s a very long way off... 

Currently enjoying the “Museum of Lost Objects” series on BBC radio 4, which is tracing the stories of ten artefacts or sites in Syria and Iraq that have been lost through damage or looting, including the winged bull of Nineveh, the temple of Bel in Palmyra (see also my post of 12 September 2015) and the minaret of the Umayyed mosque in Aleppo. Having visited both Palmyra and Aleppo I found this particularly poignant. 

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Great to see Sophie Clapp, the Boots archivist, featuring on this BBC2 programme and such a natural in front of the camera! The concept of the series is that a family give up all their modern technology and live life as if in the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, and so on, where they find, of course, that their lives – and roles – would have been very different. Sophie talked about the revolution in makeup and how it started to become a necessity, rather than a luxury, for women.  

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There was an interesting article posted recently by Geoff Jones, Professor of Business History at Harvard Business School in the US, in which he argues that business history should be an essential part of business life. The MBA students at Harvard are asked to look at examples of successes and mistakes from the past, some of which he cites in the article. As decisions taken by business leaders can affect the lives of real people, Jones believes that learning from the past about the consequences of decisions should form part of every manager’s toolkit. Read the full piece here – http://www.livemint.com/Companies/LoGGBPJQiLwrAhhBPozQNN/Geoffrey-G-Jones--History-has-its-place-in-business.html
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There was an interesting article in The Economist a while ago about the recent economic crisis and the problems of using history analogies. Reporting on a lecture by Barry Eichengreen, economic historian, the article argues that the 2007-2009 has been judged to be the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s. The problem with using historical examples, however, is that there is rarely agreement about what history teaches us or, indeed, even about the facts themselves. The author cites examples such as the fear of 1930s style debt inflation that causes the central banks to cut rates whenever markets wobble, or the belief that World War II would resemble the defensive stalemate of World War I, which allowed the Allies to be pushed back. He concludes that historical analogies can be thought-provoking but that the parallels should not be taken too literally since history rarely repeats itself exactly.