The Standards of The Time

It is a decision of the present which monuments should stand in the public square. Judging the past by the standards of the present is fundamental to that. 

What goes up must eventually come down. These things only ever go up for political reasons, and they only ever come down for political reasons. That is not a denial of history. That is history.

In any case, the monuments to slave traders are failures in their own terms. If the general public had remembered whom they depicted, then they would have come down a very long time ago.

And in any case, plenty of people could see what was wrong with slavery at the time. That was what did for it in the end. Nor am I talking only about the agitation in Britain, important though that was. 

The slaves themselves were alive at the time, and they were perfectly capable of appreciating the wrong that was being done to them. They rose in rebellion often enough, among the numerous other ways in which they expressed their disapproval according to what were, by definition, the standards of the time.

But what of this time? There was no real evidence to back up the claim that a brick had been thrown through the window of Angela Eagle's constituency office, yet that was repeated as gospel by almost the entire official media. It was quite big news, for weeks on end.

Whereas bricks have certainly been thrown through the windows of Dawn Butler's constituency office, and her staff have been attacked, compelling a Member of Parliament to close her office in her constituency. Yet this story has received only very limited coverage. Whatever might be the difference?