The sinister war on statues

As statues are demolished and street names are erased, the history written into our urban landscape has long been under threat. Now, new guidance published by the Welsh parliament last week suggests that attacks on our collective past are about to escalate still further.

The guidance is currently being consulted upon and is due to be finalised later this month. It questions the existence of statues of such notable historical figures as the Duke of Wellington, Admiral Lord Nelson and other monuments it perceives to be glorifying ‘powerful, older, able-bodied white men’. The authors of this government advice have concluded that many of those commemorated as part of Wales’ past were actually ‘aggressors’ out ‘to expand the British Empire’.