Greg Wright: Lessons in history can't be bulldozed - the Cecil Rhodes controversy

Apart from leading an illegal war against a sovereign state, this individual fuelled a conflict that dragged on for more than 100 years and sent thousands of young men to their deaths.

Is it the sort of chap you’d like to see honoured in your home city? Probably not. So you’d expect there to be an outcry of colossal proportions if anybody suggested erecting a memorial to him in the heart of Leeds.

You’d probably write to your MP to try to force the whole crazy, offensive scheme to be scrapped.

You’d be too late I’m afraid, because such a statue already exists.

The statue of Edward, the Black Prince (1330-1376) has dominated Leeds city square for more than a century.

Unveiled in 1903, the statue was commissioned by one Colonel Harding, who said the hero of the battles of Crecy and Poitiers was “the flower of English chivalry, the upholder of the liberties of the English people and an emblem of manly and unselfish virtues”.

By 14th century standards, the Prince was a paragon. Today, we’d recoil at his brutality. But there is no sign of any campaign calling for the statue to be pulled down and replaced with something more politically correct.

For better or worse, the prince and his followers helped to shape modern Britain. Each observer can form their own judgement about whether he was a monster or a model of chivalry.

I thought about the Black Prince when I heard about the debate raging at Oriel College in Oxford over whether a statue 
of Cecil Rhodes, the imperialist who shaped Britain’s empire, should be 
pulled down because students find it offensive.

It’s not hard to see why we would 
find Rhodes and his world view intolerable.

The protesters argue that the statue is a glorification of the “bloody project” of British colonialism.

Last week, students voted in favour of removing the statue after hearing Rhodes described as a racist. One speaker even compared him to Hitler.

However, others questioned where the campaign could lead, and asked if statues of Winston Churchill and Oliver Cromwell would be next for the scrapheap.

They have a point. If the Rhodes statue falls, shouldn’t the statue of every other tyrant fall with him?

Cromwell is a perfect example. I’ve always regarded the placing of 
Cromwell’s statue outside Parliament as the ultimate act of irony.

He was no lover of Parliamentary democracy as we would understand it. He was also responsible for an invasion of Ireland which led to the mass slaughters at Drogheda and Wexford. If Rhodes’s statue goes, then Cromwell’s must also be demolished.

So, come to think of it, should Hadrian’s Wall because this is a symbol of a repressive regime that subjugated our citizens for centuries. The Tower of London should also be bulldozed, because it was the dark heart of an absolute monarchy that tortured and butchered innocent people. Clifford’s Tower in York must also be torn down, because the city’s Jewish population was massacred there in 1190. To be intellectually consistent, where can you draw the line?

Rhodes, and the beliefs that shaped him, have no place in modern Britain. But his statue reminds us of the strange forces that have formed society today. These beliefs may be repulsive, but we shouldn’t sweep them away and pretend they never existed.

This point was reinforced last year when I visited Nuremberg, which
retains buildings from the Nazi era. Part of the site that hosted the infamous rallies has been transformed into an exhibition about Hitler and his era.

It’s a place to pause and ponder. The message has additional power because, instead of destroying the Nazi edifices, the authorities decided to keep them. It’s hard to imagine a more potent way of confronting a troubled past.

Instead of demolishing the last vestiges of Nazism, the remains are allowed to stand as a warning more powerful than any textbook.

Rhodes’s statue has the same macabre resonance.

Greg Wright is deputy business editor of The Yorkshire Post.