The appetite for demolishing statues grows by what it feeds on. It is not out of place to ask why we construct such memorials in the first place. And should they be permanent?
I am happy to live in a town with only one statue. That I can contemplate with approval. It is in the market place and commemorates an outstanding journalist, Herbert Ingram. He it was who rose from humble beginnings to launch and edit the Illustrated London News. That is no longer with us but it was a significant addition to national life when it first appeared. It ensured Ingram’s place alongside Thomas Barnes, J.T. Delane, C.P. Scott and Harold Evans.
A free press is an invaluable contribution to a civilised society. That does not justify statues to commemorate individuals any more than it requires practitioners to be honoured by knighthoods or other distinctions. It could be said that such names are better unadorned as a mark of independence than garlanded with a lustre that fades with time.
Other considerations, however, apply in some areas of public life. And these will vary with the generations. A generation that erected a statue of Richard Hooker in the purlieu of Exeter Cathedral may well be succeeded in the future by a generation that dismisses thinkers like that as mischief-makers rather than serious inquirers into what is best for society. The statue of William Tyndale in Embankment Gardens by the Thames is a tribute to a giant in the history of the English Bible. That again may not guarantee the lasting value of a statue in the view of those who succeed us in a society where the level playing-field is king.
Any likely candidate for renown in the shape of a statue can hardly be anything other than a person of his or her generation. Edith Cavell can hardly be faulted but many heroes have been tainted by sharing in the common assumptions of their day. Nelson, Cromwell and Bomber Harris were not saints but they served their country and were applauded for doing so. They were men of their time.
The Angel of the North is not exactly a statue but it has no human shortcomings and reminds us that to be human, however distinguished, is to be flawed. A somewhat similar memorial is the one recorded in Acts 17.23. Both represent aspirations. The Greeks were too smart to go any further. The inscription on their altar read: ’To an unknown god’. Paul took up that aspiration and declared that God had made himself known in Jesus. That goes beyond statues.
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