a divisive figure, you might say
his anti-catholic sympathies earned him the nickname 'orange peel' during his six year stint as irish secretary
disfranchisement of poorer irish voters - removed 175,000 irish catholics from the electoral rolls
CityCyclingEdinburgh Forum » Events, rides etc.
Edinburgh demo this Sunday 2 pm
(119 posts)-
Posted 4 years ago #
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Macron taking a very different line on French statues
Posted 4 years ago # -
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The new government commission on racial inequalities is being set up by a No 10 adviser who has cast doubt on the existence of institutional racism and condemned previous inquiries for fostering a “culture of grievance”, it has emerged.
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“
Mirza was a member of the Revolutionary Communist Party, a small Trotskyist group that dissolved in 1997.[12][13] She contributed to its magazine, Living Marxism, which was dissolved after losing a libel case to ITN over the Bosnian genocide. The magazine was replaced by the Spiked website, for which she has written articles.[14] Many of Mirza's Revolutionary Communist Party colleagues became influential in Conservative Party Eurosceptic circles
“
Posted 4 years ago # -
RCP to tory euro skeptic. Same level of bonkers
Posted 4 years ago # -
Who's up for doing a statue defenders flash mob round the Paolozzi foot in Picardy Place?
Posted 4 years ago # -
@IWRATS, you are now a Paolozzi Pal? Who'd a thunked it
Posted 4 years ago # -
Gotta defend are statues. Way of life innit? These KLM guys cant get away with it.
Posted 4 years ago # -
KLM the Dutch Airline, racists?
Posted 4 years ago # -
he means KLF I think
Posted 4 years ago # -
He is obsessed with the Mu-mus hence when he tried to type BLM he fluffed it?
Posted 4 years ago # -
And I drive an ice cream van!
Posted 4 years ago # -
Some statues got extra protection from football fans a while ago -
Posted 4 years ago # -
Demo today at Dundas statue at St Andrew Square.
Socially distanced - against racism.Bigger one in Glasgow's George Square.
Right wing demonstrators there have been causing trouble - reportedly 'protecting statues'. Press photographer was abused and threatened as they came from ethnic minority.
Posted 4 years ago # -
Not heard how it went in Edinburgh.
In Glasgow the anti-racist peaceful demo was boxed in by police at end. This action not taken by against not peaceful loyalist demonstrators earlier in week openly using bigoted and sectarian language as reported widely in media (or not depending on what you read).
- "THE Justice Secretary has spoken with Orange Order Grand Master Jim McHarg online amid fears of sectarian and racist disorder running out of control.
Humza Yousaf and the First Minister have been outspoken about the “racist thuggery” on show at some recent protests in Glasgow’s George Square."
Edinburgh demo700 turned up with musician Joseph Malik (favourite on Vic Galloway's show) and Irvine Welsh speaking.
A few Unionists put the counter argument and disagreed with Welsh's comparison of Dundas to having a statue of Jimmy Saville in your city (!)
Posted 4 years ago # -
Savile evil at individual level. Dundas evil on global as well as individual level.
Posted 4 years ago # -
A "Listed Buildings Consent" planning application for putting a new brass plaque on the Dundas statue has been submitted.
Link to planning portal (hopefully).The plaque will read:
At the top of this neoclassical column stands a statue of Henry Dundas, 1st Viscount Melville (1742-1811). He was the Scottish Lord Advocate, an MP for Edinburgh and Midlothian, and the First Lord of the Admiralty. Dundas was a contentious figure, provoking controversies that resonate to this day. While Home Secretary in 1792, and first Secretary of State for War in 1796 he was instrumental in deferring the abolition of the Atlantic slave trade. Slave trading by British ships was not abolished until 1807. As a result of this delay, more than half a million enslaved Africans crossed the Atlantic. Dundas also curbed democratic dissent in Scotland, and both defended and expanded the British empire, imposing colonial rule on indigenous peoples. He was impeached in the United Kingdom for misappropriation of public money, and, although acquitted, he never held public office again. Despite this, the monument before you was funded by voluntary contributions from British naval officers, petty officers, seamen, and marines and was erected in 1821, with the statue placed on top in 1827.
In 2020 this plaque was dedicated to the memory of the more than half-a-million Africans whose enslavement was a consequence of Henry Dundas’s actions.
Posted 4 years ago # -
Thought plaque already in place.
(Presume temporary one?)
Posted 4 years ago # -
yes think that text is already on the information board at the fence?
Posted 4 years ago # -
That makes sense. This application is for a plaque on the column itself.
Posted 4 years ago # -
Application has been live for a week or so (says 17th August, but it was in today's weekly round up).
Comments Received: 68
Objections: 46I utterly despair.
Posted 4 years ago # -
Can I suggest the extra line
"And yet someone commissioned this massive statue".
Who on earth is actually opposed to this? The statue is still there - nobody's hiding it - the truth about who it commemorates has just been stated....
Posted 4 years ago # -
“Who on earth is actually opposed to this?”
Presumably those who believe history is ‘fixed’ and cannot be updated by additional information that may or may not have been suppressed.
Some who think new plaque goes ‘too far’ and/or is inaccurate.
Perhaps also some who think that this bit of built environment is so sacrosanct that it shouldn’t be altered in any way!
Posted 4 years ago # -
More likely to be those who think that it should be torn down rather than a plaque added.
Posted 4 years ago # -
@algo - the line you are seeking is implicit in the factual statement that sailors out of their own pocket paid for the statue.
Prof Geoff Palmer has struggled for some considerable time, most notably against the historian Michael Fry and relatives of Henry Dundas who take a revisionist line that Dundas was being pragmatic in arguing for phasing in of abolition. I find this difficult just from reading what he did to his first wife. So these forces may be objecting and indeed anyone who wants to have the statue torn down will be objecting. Prof Palmer is not asking for the statue to come down. Just for the wording change that has already occurred on the notice board.
YOu can argue that the whole of the New Town should be raised to the ground, built as it was on the surplus extracted from peasants in Scotland and then slaves in Jamaica and India.
This would also make room for the cars that people in Edinburgh are addicted to
Posted 4 years ago #
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