Or going with the music connection, Arnold Lane after Syd Barrett
tbh, I like my 'Tourist Dollar Lane' - because thats what its all about.
Current Affairs The Landmarks of Slavery;
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tbh, I like my 'Tourist Dollar Lane' - because thats what its all about.
Shevin Keedy
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But with mine they would need change only one letter and with the savings made here on public funds they could use it to buy more gloves and tights for nurses.
Uh - oh....
Houses of Parliament's art has a lot of racist history, says its curator
The curator of parliament’s extensive art collection has acknowledged that many artefacts that adorn the plinths and corridors of Westminster have a “racist history” and were bought with slave-owning and colonial wealth.
Melissa Hamnett, who is also the head of heritage collections in the Palace of Westminster, said that officials and parliamentarians were attempting to re-evaluate how to present the UK’s involvement in exploitation whilst commissioning new artworks that portray black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) and female MPs.
Hamnett, who took up her role last year, said the parliamentary authorities were looking again at the collection of more than 9,000 artefacts in light of the BLM movement and wanted to be open about the UK’s links to exploitative and cruel practices.
“The British empire is part of our story and we have to recognise that many of our collections have a racist history. Let’s be honest about that colonial and imperial past and also look at the slave-owning wealth that endowed some of the artefacts,” she said.
The highly decorative lobbies of the Palace of Westminster, which are open to the public, are dominated by 18th- and 19th-century depictions of powerful politicians, many of whom had close connections to the slave trade.
Those links were exposed several years ago by University College London. Researchers showed that 469 MPs had profited from and been compensated for their links to the trade in human beings, and dozens of those feature in the artwork around parliament.
Prime ministers whose families profited from slavery included Sir Robert Peel, the founder of the modern police force, and William Gladstone, who was similarly dependent on financial support from his family. His father, John Gladstone, was one of the largest slave owners in the British West Indies. Both Peel and Gladstone are portrayed dozens of times in paintings and statues in Westminster.
Many “absentee” plantation owners and merchants involved in the slave trade rose to high office in the UK and fought against abolition.
William Beckford, the owner of a 22,000-acre estate in Jamaica, was twice lord mayor of London and, in the mid to late 1700s, was one of 50 MPs in parliament who represented the slave plantations. An oil painting of Beckford hangs in a members-only room in Westminster.
William Alexander Mackinnon, the Tory MP for Dunwich, features in an oil painting from the collection, of a debate from 1860. His family was given compensation following the abolition of slavery, for profits lost on Mackinnon’s estate in Antigua.
While there has been an increase in the number of paintings and photographs portraying BAME politicians, including the former shadow home secretary Diane Abbott and the late Labour MP Bernie Grant, many of these hang in Portcullis House, the modern building across the road from the Palace of Westminster.
Of 300 statues on the parliamentary estate, just two are of BAME people: a bust of Learie Constantine, the first black peer and a West Indies cricketer, which is on loan from another collection, and a recently commissioned bust of the 18th-century writer and abolitionist Olaudah Equiano, who was enslaved in his early life.
Rather than shy away from the links to slavery, parliament should find new ways of explaining the bloody truth of that period to visitors, Hamnett said.
“Nearly all the parliamentary collection has this very definitive association with the building and its decorative history of Augustus Pugin, Charles Barry and a fine arts commission. That is part of the history we have to tell and explain why the building looks the way it looks today,” she said.
“We can’t change history; portraits reflect 19th-century parliamentarians at a time when parliament was not diverse at all.”
Parliament was exploring new ways of telling stories to the public, she said, including an expansion of the use of audio, mobile technology and QR codes. She said that visitors might be able to use smartphones to take them on a trail that would explain former MPs’ links to Britain’s exploitative past.
“We are constrained by how much additional context we can display alongside the art works because of the space and because this is a working building,” she said.
Asked whether parliament should consider removing some of the statues and paintings that glorified people who profited from a barbaric trade in humans, Hamnett said that decision would be taken on a “case-by-case basis” by politicians on the Speaker’s advisory committee on works of art.
Hywel Williams, the Plaid Cymru chair of the committee, which is made up of 11 MPs, said that parliament faced a particularly difficult task if it began removing long-dead leaders who were involved in cruel practices.
“You queue up to get in [to parliament] and you stand next to Oliver Cromwell’s statue. The dilemma we have is a collection which is full of people with skeletons in the cupboard. But you don’t defeat the past by removing its symbols; you use them for future reference,” he said.
Houses of Parliament's art has a lot of racist history, says its curator
The curator of parliament’s extensive art collection has acknowledged that many artefacts that adorn the plinths and corridors of Westminster have a “racist history” and were bought with slave-owning and colonial wealth.
Melissa Hamnett, who is also the head of heritage collections in the Palace of Westminster, said that officials and parliamentarians were attempting to re-evaluate how to present the UK’s involvement in exploitation whilst commissioning new artworks that portray black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) and female MPs.
Hamnett, who took up her role last year, said the parliamentary authorities were looking again at the collection of more than 9,000 artefacts in light of the BLM movement and wanted to be open about the UK’s links to exploitative and cruel practices.
“The British empire is part of our story and we have to recognise that many of our collections have a racist history. Let’s be honest about that colonial and imperial past and also look at the slave-owning wealth that endowed some of the artefacts,” she said.
The highly decorative lobbies of the Palace of Westminster, which are open to the public, are dominated by 18th- and 19th-century depictions of powerful politicians, many of whom had close connections to the slave trade.
Those links were exposed several years ago by University College London. Researchers showed that 469 MPs had profited from and been compensated for their links to the trade in human beings, and dozens of those feature in the artwork around parliament.
Prime ministers whose families profited from slavery included Sir Robert Peel, the founder of the modern police force, and William Gladstone, who was similarly dependent on financial support from his family. His father, John Gladstone, was one of the largest slave owners in the British West Indies. Both Peel and Gladstone are portrayed dozens of times in paintings and statues in Westminster.
Many “absentee” plantation owners and merchants involved in the slave trade rose to high office in the UK and fought against abolition.
William Beckford, the owner of a 22,000-acre estate in Jamaica, was twice lord mayor of London and, in the mid to late 1700s, was one of 50 MPs in parliament who represented the slave plantations. An oil painting of Beckford hangs in a members-only room in Westminster.
William Alexander Mackinnon, the Tory MP for Dunwich, features in an oil painting from the collection, of a debate from 1860. His family was given compensation following the abolition of slavery, for profits lost on Mackinnon’s estate in Antigua.
While there has been an increase in the number of paintings and photographs portraying BAME politicians, including the former shadow home secretary Diane Abbott and the late Labour MP Bernie Grant, many of these hang in Portcullis House, the modern building across the road from the Palace of Westminster.
Of 300 statues on the parliamentary estate, just two are of BAME people: a bust of Learie Constantine, the first black peer and a West Indies cricketer, which is on loan from another collection, and a recently commissioned bust of the 18th-century writer and abolitionist Olaudah Equiano, who was enslaved in his early life.
Rather than shy away from the links to slavery, parliament should find new ways of explaining the bloody truth of that period to visitors, Hamnett said.
“Nearly all the parliamentary collection has this very definitive association with the building and its decorative history of Augustus Pugin, Charles Barry and a fine arts commission. That is part of the history we have to tell and explain why the building looks the way it looks today,” she said.
“We can’t change history; portraits reflect 19th-century parliamentarians at a time when parliament was not diverse at all.”
Parliament was exploring new ways of telling stories to the public, she said, including an expansion of the use of audio, mobile technology and QR codes. She said that visitors might be able to use smartphones to take them on a trail that would explain former MPs’ links to Britain’s exploitative past.
“We are constrained by how much additional context we can display alongside the art works because of the space and because this is a working building,” she said.
Asked whether parliament should consider removing some of the statues and paintings that glorified people who profited from a barbaric trade in humans, Hamnett said that decision would be taken on a “case-by-case basis” by politicians on the Speaker’s advisory committee on works of art.
Hywel Williams, the Plaid Cymru chair of the committee, which is made up of 11 MPs, said that parliament faced a particularly difficult task if it began removing long-dead leaders who were involved in cruel practices.
“You queue up to get in [to parliament] and you stand next to Oliver Cromwell’s statue. The dilemma we have is a collection which is full of people with skeletons in the cupboard. But you don’t defeat the past by removing its symbols; you use them for future reference,” he said.
peteblue
Welcome back Wayne
No it’s not. It’s an African American spiritual song. Nothing to do with slaves. Mind you, they can get them for cultural appropriation .......
Still wasn’t good enough for Cromwell.
Who is actually calling for it to be banned out of interest?
The binman chronicles
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Knock it down I say, save the 6 billion in restoration while they are at it. Win win.
peteblue
Welcome back Wayne
The media I think..........
Tea_drinker
Player Valuation: £15m
Theres a theory that it was sung by slaves to inform each other that members of the underground railway were close by.
NilSatisOptimum
Player Valuation: £70m
Censor it on the grounds of commercial sensitivity...
Its brilliant all this sudden empathy, its like the an essence of Corbynism wafted through the nation during lockdown and has woken people from their cultural malaise of me myself and I. Whatever it is, refreshing to see a factual reflective account going on about Britishness.
Anyway its pretty easy to understand why this song is perhaps bad taste. A country synonymous with historical slavery uses a song originally sung by slaves, in a sporting event to emphasize the endeavours of their team...
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Looks like the RFU have proactively decided to review it, the media have reported it and then the PM has seen an opportunity to jump in.
davek
Player Valuation: £150m
Anti-racism and massive government inervention into the economy. It's like Corbyn won in December...if only he had, we'd have a lot more survivors of this virus too.
NilSatisOptimum
Player Valuation: £70m
The intial herd immunity direction and 10 years of Austerity the latter would have not changed anything intially, these Tory Governments are always going to kill more people.
Find it fascinating how this English Government is struggling to impose its ideology now. They certainly would have schools back thus mummy and daddy had child care in primary school. Its gringe they are desperate now trying to tie itself 4th July, COVID independence day, the fawning is embarrassing.
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