Wednesday 10 June 2020

A number of years ago, while I was teaching at Brechin High School, I was part of an annual trip to Auschwitz concentration and death camp in Poland. To this day I can recall the depth of silence that descended upon this group of bright, lively teenagers, from schools throughout Scotland, as we walked around the camps. There was nothing to be said in the face of the reminders of the depths of horror and cruelty to which we humans can descend. Auschwitz stands as a monument to systematic, industrial murder. I truly believe that all of us who made that trip, both teachers and pupils, were profoundly changed that day. It was a powerful confrontation with darkness, moreover, a darkness that hangs over all of us. For to me, of all the horrors that I met that day, the one that lingers most in my mind, is the fact that, those who perpetrated and carried out the foul deeds of the death camps were just ordinary men and women. They engaged in monstrous acts but, in many ways, were little different from me. Auschwitz reminds me of the dark truth that all of us, given the right circumstances, have the capacity to be ‘monsters.’

I write this today simply because, if some people had had their way, the death camps would have been pulled down, bull-dozed from our sight and memory, after 1945. That did not happen at Auschwitz, and so it remains as a lesson, a powerful point of learning, education and reflection. The camps’ continued presence has contributed, I believe, to making our world a better place. To those who feel compelled to pull down statues, such as that of Edward Colston, whose likeness crashed beneath the water in Bristol, please resist the impulse. While I understand their desire to remove these people from their seeming pedestals of honour, I would argue that by simply pulling them down we do ourselves, the memory of those thousands of people whose misery they profited from, and future generations, a great disservice. It some ways it is just too easy to pull them down. It affords those involved an easy sense of righteousness. It also lets the rest of us off the hook.

Even the most cursory understanding of the history of the UK over the past three hundred years reveals that the basis of much of our wealth, industry and commerce was largely founded on the trans-Atlantic slave trade and the plantation system that it sustained. Put simply, no cotton, sugar or tobacco, no industrial revolution, no modern Britain as we know it. We all of us, in Britain, have enjoyed to some extent, the fruits of this evil system. My first academic degree was gained in Glasgow at an establishment that benefitted greatly from wealth generated directly from the slave trade. How can I mourn, acknowledge and repent my part in this if the knowledge of it is not known? Glasgow, as you know, is full of streets named after illustrious citizens from its past who we now know made their fortunes from the slave trade and plantation system. Leave their names up I would urge, but take steps to inform those who look at these names as to who these people actually were. Encourage people to question what kind of society it was that actually saw fit to honour these people. Let people reflect on how the wealth of these ‘worthies’ and their largesse towards their home cities meant that their dubious business dealings were more easily overlooked by the civic fathers of the day. By doing this we will all have an opportunity to perhaps hang our heads in shame as we realise our share and complicity in it all. The same applies to the removal of statues. Leave them where they are but replace the plaques around them with ones that tell the truth of who these people were, lest we forget

All societies and individuals have to have the means and opportunity to confront their dark, or shadow, sides. Nothing is gained, and it is both psychologically and spiritually unhealthy and unhelpful, by merely sweeping what we do not like away, pulling it down and hiding it under the waters of forgetfulness. Out of sight, out of mind, as they say! Jesus said that ‘the truth will set you free.’ Some truths are uncomfortable, painful, shameful and unwelcomed. Unless, though, we are prepared to acknowledge, confront, and own them, then we will never be free of their taint and hold over us. Forgiveness and transformation require the courage to be honest, transparent, humble and repentant. Only then can we in the present be truly free, and perhaps, in some small way, extend that freedom and dignity posthumously to the millions, who over the centuries, were denied it.