The Black Lives Matter movement has been the inspiration for the toppling of statues all over the western world. It was some of the citizens of Bristol who inaugurated the trend with the turfing of their city worthy Edward Colston head-first into the harbour three weeks ago on account of his slave-trading links. He was subsequently retrieved from the river by the council, although he has not been replaced on his plinth while they mull precisely where to house him.
Except for the period immediately after independence, Guyana has mostly had a more relaxed approach to the matter of statues and the like. Of course, there is very little statuary for the citizens to concern themselves about. The Dutch companies which owned Essequibo, Demerara and Berbice were interested primarily in profit, and for that reason administration was delivered on the cheap; they were hardly about to invest in erecting likenesses of their governors, or even the Prince of Orange. And after the British arrived, for many decades this was too small and fractious a society for them to want to make grand gestures in marble or bronze.
Statues are a product of their time. They are sometimes put up out of respect for some accomplishment of the individuals involved, or a stance taken by them, such as in the case of Isaac Newton or Florence Nightingale, but the majority of those adorning the streets of western Europe do not fall into this category. Most of the ones found in Guyana do, but then with two exceptions they have been commissioned since independence, starting with Hubert Nathaniel Critchlow, the founder of the trade union movement here.
Of the two colonial era examples, they were both busts – when the authorities or others did invest in images it was on a small scale – and one has been destroyed in recent times. In what can only be described as a disgraceful episode, the bronze effigy of Rev John Smith of 1823 fame was stolen from the Congregational Church in Brickdam by a scrap metal dealer or dealers, and was presumably melted down. Needless to say, Georgetown’s Finest did not bestir themselves with any energy to track down the perpetrators of this desecration of the nation’s and the church’s heritage.
The other still sits on its plinth outside the City Engineer’s department. It is of William Russell, a fairly typical post-slavery era planter who ordinarily would have nothing much to recommend him for this form of earthly immortality. His claim to fame is the fact that he solved the problem of supplying water on a consistent basis to Georgetown, where other expensive and elaborate schemes had failed. Prior to that, when the Lamaha canal dried up during a prolonged dry season, people had to go upriver to Sand Hills to obtain fresh water.
Russell was removed for a time when anti-colonial and plantocracy considerations were considered to outweigh engineering ones, but then the council had a rethink, and he was restored to his former site. This country, however, unlike the UK does not have a problem confronting its history, and while the quality of what is taught here leaves much to be desired in many instances, all schoolchildren learn in outline about slavery and indentureship and know that it is out of this historical context that our modern society was forged. In the case of Britain in contrast, it is a question of a serious deficit in their teaching of history in the schools, and the need to tell a much more rounded story of how the nation became economically dominant and what its rise owed to the trafficking in and exploitation of human beings.
Guyana does not have any effigies in the category of donors to towns or institutions such as a Colston or a Rhodes, although Barbados might have to look at the matter of Codrington College. In the UK, certainly, anyone who won a battle or a war, such as a Nelson or a Wellington, could expect to grace a street or a square, but the vast majority of individuals, certainly in former colonies, who find permanence in marble or bronze have done so only by virtue of the position they held in society. Not surprisingly, therefore, there are any number of kings and queens deposited around the world, in addition to their officials such as governors and viceroys.
In this country, we have two examples of these, a bust of Governor Carmichael Smith and the statue of Queen Victoria. The first-mentioned was rescued some years ago from the ground at the back of what is now the Burrowes School of Art by President Granger before he became head of state. His efforts at least ensured the survival of some image of what one of Guyana’s more prominent administrators looked like.
He was probably unceremoniously dumped in the first place because he was associated with the Damon incident. While that would not be an argument for discarding him, it is clear that those who decided to do so also did not know much about history. He commuted all the death sentences given in the case, except that of Damon himself, which it is thought he would have done too if he could have got away with it. As it was, he became the victim of a vitriolic campaign against him by the planters on account of the commutations, through the agency of what was the planters’ tabloid of its day, the Chronicle (no historical relation to the modern paper of that name). He sued the newspaper but lost in a court sympathetic to the plantocracy.
Then there is our only true colonial statue, Queen Victoria. That monarch does not have associations with the slavery era because she was born long after the abolition of the trade, and was not yet queen at the time of the Abolition Act, although she acceded just before full emancipation.
According to historian Nigel Westmaas, the sculptor of the statue was Henry Richard Hope-Pinker, and it was unveiled in front of what were then known as the Victoria Law Courts in 1894. She was beheaded quite literally by an explosive device in 1954, and as we reported, was vandalised by red paint in 2018. It should be added that after independence she was unceremoniously hauled down and discarded at the back of the Botanical Gardens and during the process she lost her forearm. As in the case of Russell, it was eventually decided the statue should be returned to its original site, since our history is what it is, and the queen is symbolic of that history. It might be noted that Victoria is still missing her forearm. (As an aside perhaps it should be remembered that after independence Burnham sold the lions on the bridge over the Avenue of the Republic canal because they were colonial symbols. It was not a popular move because never mind their colonial associations, the public saw them as an aesthetic feature. The grumblings about that continued for years.)
While this is not an argument for retaining the statue in situ, it is nevertheless worth mentioning that Victoria was in some respects more liberal in outlook than either her governments or her household. In the last 14 years of her life, she employed an Indian who started as a servant and ended as her secretary and teacher. He taught her Urdu, in which she became fairly fluent, developed a taste for the curry he introduced her to – chicken curry and dhal was her favourite – and faced down those around her on the question of his race, accusing them of “race prejudice.” She also sent artists to India to paint ordinary people and artisans so she could understand the real India.
She was still, of course, Empress of India and the titular head of a vast empire, and it is on these grounds critics want the statue removed. It must be said there is simply no argument for destroying it. Obliterating statues does not erase the past; that remains what it is no matter how many bronze worthies are tossed into the harbour. Furthermore, one does not want the younger generation to forget the past; they need to know who the oppressors, for example, were, and they will also want to know what they looked like and how they were presented to the public in their time. Statues are not our history, they are symbolic of our history, as well as constituting part of our material heritage. And it is worth saying again we do not choose our history or our heritage. What is important to know is a person’s place and context in the historical narrative, and their significance whether negative or positive or both. Everyone nowadays in Guyana knows what Victoria represents, and they will still do so even if she is moved.
So should she be moved to a more obscure public space? (It is difficult to see her fitting into our museum.) The great public buildings of Avenue of the Republic belong to the same era as the statue, and the statue is a part of that complex. Why not continue to treat the movable and immovable heritage there as an integrated whole? The colonial development in this part of Georgetown will not be changed by relocating the statue. Children can be taught about what it represents without having to traipse to the back of the cemetery or wherever else it is the movers have it in mind to relegate it.`
