The Football Lads

or the Guardian?

THE GUARDIAN is facing calls to “shut down” for hypocrisy after backing BLM protests when it branded Abraham Lincoln “abhorrent” in the US Civil War.

Originally called the Manchester Guardian, the paper was founded in 1821 by John Edward Taylor using profits from a cotton plantation that used slaves.

 

We live in a civilized democracy, what we’re seeing is mob rule and whats worse is our woke police bending the knee instead of upholding the law. Criminal damage is criminal damage irrespective of the self righteousness of the protagonists and their supporters.

 

Well well who knew ! Doubtless another inconvenient truth to be ignored by the many far left Guardian readers on here.

 

Some leeway has to be given to people whose views are a product of their time, but to completely dismiss Churchill's problematic opinions as mainstream for the period does a huge disservice to the many people who were working against those who thought like he did. Even for the time he was a thoroughly unpleasant character with some seriously dodgy views, and I find it completely unsurprising that the hero-worship of him gets some people's backs up.

If you really want to interpret history in terms of great men doing great deeds, Stalin did at least as much to win the second world war as Churchill. But the world quite rightly doesn't throw up statues everywhere to celebrate just that specific aspect of his legacy.

Regarding the Colosseum and the pyramids, I think it's fair to say that the world has had enough time to reflect on the legacy of the societies that built these things, and come to terms with it. When we learn about them we're made aware of the issues surrounding their construction and use, and society as a whole agrees that these elements of it were bad. When we can honestly look at our own society and do the same for colonialism or institutional racism, and when we've fixed the negative consequences of these things, then maybe we'll be able to honestly and sensitively give it another look. Until then, putting up statues to slave traders and racists probably isn't OK. Nor is lauding them as national heroes while shutting down any discussion of the many negative aspects of their legacies.

 

You're trying to conflate this particular event, and the wider events that surround it, and my reasoning of it, with "any crime". Murder is against the law, but we still account for it in cases of self-defence.

 

This wasn't a new thing, that statue had been asked to be removed several times.

As I said your view will be just a footnote in history. Interesting to note (unless ive missed it) that the police chose not even invesitage let alone to charge anyone, presumably because they realised they could never successfully prosecute anyone for pulling down the statue of a rascist slave owner.....

 

I don’t see that the statues were put up to slave traders or racists. They were put up to acknowledge the good they did in spite of the bad. Some people saw Nelson Mandela as a politically motivated terrorist, certainly the victims of the ANC would, if we can pull down a statue of Churchill to appease the angry mob of BLM protesters (for whom his statue hasn't been such a burning issue to date) how would that compare to victims of the ANC ripping up Mandela Gardens and demanding it be replaced ? As Nelson M himself once said ‘ I am not a saint, unless you think of a saint as a sinner who keeps trying ‘ Forgive us our trespasses, remember that from school ? .

 

Which bit of the plaque which reads "Erected by the citizens of Bristol as a memorial of one of the most virtuous and wise sons of their city" acknowledges the bad?

 

may have been posted earlier - I think the problem with a prosecution re the statue was that no one knows who actually owned it or who was entrusted to look after it.

 

None, but nor is there a plaque at Mandela Gardens acknowledging the victims of the ANC. I don’t see the difference, lets have it right.

 

There's a petition for a statue of Paul Stephenson, the black civil rights campaigner from Bristol to be erected where the Colston statue stood which is a great idea. He led a boycott of the Bristol Omnibus Company due to its refusal to employ black or Asian drivers, and refused to leave a pub until he was served which resulted in a trial based on a charge of failing to leave a licensed premises. These acts led to the creation of the Race Relations Act 1965, but I wonder if some people on this thread would have supported his prosecution at the time.

 

So you're saying Nelson Mandela is in the same moral territory as a slaver?

 

I’m saying that you can’t have it both ways, the ANC murdered innocent victims in the name of their cause, Mandela sought to justify it by claiming that the government forced them to it. Neither slaver nor terrorist murderer are acceptable so why is Mandela Gardens not being dug up in support of the victims of the ANC ??

 

Slavers and the apartheid regime in South Africa were the aggressors. Mandela and his freedom fighters were left with little choice than to turn to violent protest. They'd tried all other avenues and were told to shut up and take what was coming from their white oppressors.

Mandela and slavers are in no way related.

Slavers, white supremacists, the apartheid regime and Nazi's all sit in the same societal grouping.

Next you'll be saying the Brixton rioters are no different.

 

So criminality is in the eye of the beholder then?
we go back to a Wild West scenario where people do what they want when they want.

 

I agree with that as a principal, but the laws over Criminal damage is there to protect every human being not a select few when it suits.
Criminal damage is just that, is it OK for me to smash your car up because I claim the colour/make offends me?
Of course not, that would be ridiculous, but once you blur the lines there are no longer boundaries.

 

The suffragette movement got the vote through nothing more than quiet voices, cream teas, jam and Jerusalem? Oh no some took to violence and criminal behaviour.

Did it change owt? Bloody women now get a chuffing vote. How dare they?

Barnsley miners including members of my family had to meet fire with fire against Thatcher and her bully boy army. Technically the miners were the ones taking illegal action.

It's not always straight forward and sometimes a cause is more important than statutory instrument.

 

There have not been campaigns for years for it to be removed, there have been campaigns for the plaque to be reworded a significant difference.
Secondly it did not fall on deaf ears, it was reviewed and agreed to have changed but then neither the campaigners or the Charitable Foundation could agree on the wording so the Council parked it. Clearly the fact that it got that far shows that they were listened to.

 

That's clearly not what I'm saying. There can be actions which, though criminal in a strict sense, are morally justifiable. In such circumstances it is down to the authorities to determine an appropriate response, with an eye on the overarching moral aspects and the attitudes of society.

Let's turn it round. Prior to the case of R v R in 1991 it was legal for a man to rape his wife as the act of marriage deemed to be an inviolable giving of consent. Should the defendant in the case of R v R have been found innocent on the basis that at the time he committed the act it was technically not a crime?

 

Just remind me, how many miners took it upon themselves to destroy private property?
How many of them went armed in advance to cause that destruction?
My recollection purely from the History books is they stood their ground and fought with the Police etc which again is completely different to destruction of private property.
If I have got that wrong and the Miners did wantonly destroy private property then I am corrected.