YP Letters: Heroes and villains of rewriting the past

ANDREW Vine looked (The Yorkshire Post, April 5) at the recent student fad for rewriting history and calling for re-evaluation of lives of such as James Cook, Cecil Rhodes, and even Queen Victoria with calls to have their statues removed from public prominence.

I was prompted to wonder if their strictures would extend to re-evaluations of the venerations of Nelson Mandela and give rise to calls for the removal of his statue from Parliament Square, and the renaming of the many streets and buildings bearing his name.

Nelson Mandela’s terrible imprisonment was suffered for his expressed belief in “militant action” when the African National Congress was allied to the South African Communist Party, and he pursued a course of violent insurrection in “the armed struggle” against apartheid. A review of his life might show precious little evidence that he sought to moderate his wife Winnie’s so-called football club’s murderous excesses, not least the way their lynch mobs tied victims to lamp posts before setting fire to petrol filled tyres placed round their necks.

Rewriting the past isn’t necessarily such a straightforward exercise.