Museum Half Covers Up Slave Trader Portrait to ‘Reclaim History’
A museum has half-hidden the portrait of a British slave owner in a bid to “reclaim Caribbean history”. The Telegraphhas the story.
Beeston Long, an investor and former Bank of England governor in the early 19th century, commissioned a large portrait that now hangs in the London Museum Docklands.
This artwork has been draped in multi-coloured cloth as part of a project intended to “reclaim the histories of colonised Caribbean nations”, and celebrate the influence of the Windrush Generation.
Long, who oversaw expansion of the Docklands in London, had investments in Jamaican plantations worked by slave labour.
New information panels at the museum explain that artwork which may “obscure” or “sanitise” its links to slavery can “evoke emotional responses”. They add that museums should give a “voice to those whose cultures have been impacted by colonialism”.
Long’s vast portrait is now symbolically half-covered by Madras cloth, a material exported to the Caribbean during the colonial period, following suggestions from affected individuals.
The symbolic shrouding follows the removal of a statue of slave trader Robert Milligan, a bronze piece that was taken from a plinth outside the museum in 2020, at the height of Black Lives Matter protests, on the orders of Tower Hamlets council. It is understood to still be in storage inside the museum.
Welsh Labour ministers later issued advice to help councils and other state-funded bodies cover up or destroy artworks and public statues depicting “old white men”.
I was never that interested in museums but I have long since stopped visiting them and almost certainly never will again.
DiscoveredJoys
1 month ago
Perhaps we could set up an internet ‘list’ of institutions and how far they have been ‘marched through’? Then people could vote with their feet and show how much they approve or disapprove of each institution.
Jeff Chambers
1 month ago
This is not about “reclaiming history” – it’s part of the ideological framework of The Great Replacement. It’s an attempt to erase our history as the prelude to erasing us as a people. You’ll notice, for example, that only pictures depicting white people are covered up. Indeed, it follows the same preposterous scheme as the lie that Shakespeare was a black woman.
Yes, why weren’t the Benin bronzes presented as being the product of a slave trading culture, created to glorify their slave trading leaders and financed with the proceeds of the slave trade?
Maybe, or maybe these people are just losing their minds. Which is fine, except that if they have influence in our society, they make everyone else lose their minds and end up wrecking society.
I see as much purposefulness in these people as someone in a mental asylum going through a psychotic episode.
You’re right, of course, that they’re psychotic. But they’re lunatics with a political agenda. Specifically, they’re attempting to sever the thread of our collective memory as a people. And they are doing that in order to destroy us.
The danger I see isn’t their political agenda. The danger I see is treating their ideas as anything but the product of insanity. A failure to do so and take what they say even remotely seriously is a sign that they are infecting others’ minds with their madness.
They’re not psychotic. Just stoned (the American ones at least) and heirs to an enormous castle in the air made up of about 175¹ years of theories stacked on top of other theories. Something like this is bound to diverge ever more from reality until it appears to be totally insane when seen from a more realistic perspective.
These are the theologicans of the church of Marxism and their debates make as much sense to anyone outside of their group as highly learnt scholastic debates made to the people who drove the enlightenment.
I’m afraid the reality is much more mundane These people don’t have the intellectual or ideological sophistication you attribute to them.
They are simply going mad. And their ideas are mad and shouldn’t be treated like serious propositions.
Would you start arguing with someone you knew to be mentally ill? No you wouldn’t. You wouldn’t take what they say seriously. With these people it should be the same.
Anyone who doesn’t see all this as just plain madness and sees any trace of purpose in it should be worried, because they’re probably getting infected.
happycake78
1 month ago
I had never heard of this guy until know. So their actions have now spread his existence further afield. Or if they had not done this, one less person would have known about him. And I will be sharing this page far and wide. So more people know about him.
More evidence that the so called “educated” people in our society are losing their minds in increasing numbers.
ChrisA
1 month ago
I presume the Turks are going to start covering up all their history in the same manner (estimated 8 million slaves, but 3 times as many would have been killed on the spot), then the Italians, then the Greeks? Islamic society took minimum 35 million slaves through its barbarous 1400 year history.
Where does the self flagellation for past crime end?
The Turks aren’t going to do any such thing because their educated classes are not descending into psychotic madness.
The problem is our educated class, their madness, their hijacking of our culture and worse still our education system. Our universities and schools are in deep trouble. They are rife with gender, race, LGBT insanity.
Large parts of our society have been hijacked and taken over by mad people. Literally mad. People who think it’s important for everyone to state their preferred gender. Anyone with half a functioning brain should immediately see their insanity.
History itself must be abolished because it is full of greedy, flawed people making bad decisions. This is the reductio ad absurdam of these stupid, resentful, virtue signalling idiots. Support History Reclaimed!
No Caribbean nations were ever colonized. Islands in the Caribbean were first conquered by Spain and the Spanish conquerors dealt with the real natives, if any. As the power of Spain vaned, various other Europpean states conquered some of these Spanish islands. They grew economically valuable agricultural products there and satisfied their need for workers by colonizing the islands with slaves of African descent they had bought from African rulers in Africa. Caribbean states (not nations) only came into being after these European countries turned them over to the descendants of the slaves which had been used to colonize, that is, populate them.
This is not about reclaim the histories of colonised Caribbean nations or celebrate the influence of the Windrush Generations. It’s about British left wing politicians intentionally spreading lies about British history in order to subjugate the native population of Britain which – by the way – had nothing to do with all these Caribbean enterprises of a comparatively few rich people in the pretty distant past (significantly more than 200 years ago).
Reclaiming British history from these people would be a much more worthy and much more urgent enterprise.
The British Government bought the manumission of the slaves in British Caribbean territories. Thus avoided having to send a military force and bloody conflict, which probably would fail, or protracted legal cases.
The Left blob say this “compensated” slave owners. Well it did, that’s how the slaves got freed. The alternative was… ?
Better question: Why should there be an alternative?
The decision to abolish slavery effectively dispossessed a bunch of people who lost a valuable part of their property they had acquired and maintained at a considerable cost in a hitherto perfectly legal way. People are entitled to do anything that’s legal and if it’s legal to own slaves, they’re entitled to own slaves and the state has no moral or other right to rob them without compensation.
In practice, manumission worked like something like this always works: A compulsory purchase was legally decreed and the British state which was now the new owner of the slaves then set them free. That was the legally proper way and that Communists believe it should just involve someone shouting “In the name of the people, you are … !” to abolish any kind of property right is just their theory.
DontPanic
1 month ago
Does this exhibition mention the Romans and the Vikings ? Or those in the countries who traded humans with the traders.
RTSC
1 month ago
So glad I went to the Museum of Docklands last year to see the Mudlarking Exhibition, because I’m now boycotting it.
marebobowl
1 month ago
Instead of trying unsuccessfully to erase history, why doesn’t the socialist UK designate a room of artwork of slave traders, for those who are interested in history. Those who choose to deny history need not go into this room.
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You don’t ‘reclaim’ history by hiding it. Instead you use it, warts and all, to learn lessons for the future.
This obviously won’t work if what’s wrongly called history is really political fiction invented in our times.
I was never that interested in museums but I have long since stopped visiting them and almost certainly never will again.
Perhaps we could set up an internet ‘list’ of institutions and how far they have been ‘marched through’? Then people could vote with their feet and show how much they approve or disapprove of each institution.
This is not about “reclaiming history” – it’s part of the ideological framework of The Great Replacement. It’s an attempt to erase our history as the prelude to erasing us as a people. You’ll notice, for example, that only pictures depicting white people are covered up. Indeed, it follows the same preposterous scheme as the lie that Shakespeare was a black woman.
Yes, why weren’t the Benin bronzes presented as being the product of a slave trading culture, created to glorify their slave trading leaders and financed with the proceeds of the slave trade?
Maybe, or maybe these people are just losing their minds. Which is fine, except that if they have influence in our society, they make everyone else lose their minds and end up wrecking society.
I see as much purposefulness in these people as someone in a mental asylum going through a psychotic episode.
You’re right, of course, that they’re psychotic. But they’re lunatics with a political agenda. Specifically, they’re attempting to sever the thread of our collective memory as a people. And they are doing that in order to destroy us.
The danger I see isn’t their political agenda. The danger I see is treating their ideas as anything but the product of insanity. A failure to do so and take what they say even remotely seriously is a sign that they are infecting others’ minds with their madness.
They’re not psychotic. Just stoned (the American ones at least) and heirs to an enormous castle in the air made up of about 175¹ years of theories stacked on top of other theories. Something like this is bound to diverge ever more from reality until it appears to be totally insane when seen from a more realistic perspective.
These are the theologicans of the church of Marxism and their debates make as much sense to anyone outside of their group as highly learnt scholastic debates made to the people who drove the enlightenment.
¹ The Communist Manifesto was published in 1848.
I’m afraid the reality is much more mundane These people don’t have the intellectual or ideological sophistication you attribute to them.
They are simply going mad. And their ideas are mad and shouldn’t be treated like serious propositions.
Would you start arguing with someone you knew to be mentally ill? No you wouldn’t. You wouldn’t take what they say seriously. With these people it should be the same.
Anyone who doesn’t see all this as just plain madness and sees any trace of purpose in it should be worried, because they’re probably getting infected.
I had never heard of this guy until know. So their actions have now spread his existence further afield. Or if they had not done this, one less person would have known about him. And I will be sharing this page far and wide. So more people know about him.
So maybe that was the plan all along? Cause an outcry and start a debate about the sins of the past? If so, then possibly it works.
More evidence that the so called “educated” people in our society are losing their minds in increasing numbers.
I presume the Turks are going to start covering up all their history in the same manner (estimated 8 million slaves, but 3 times as many would have been killed on the spot), then the Italians, then the Greeks? Islamic society took minimum 35 million slaves through its barbarous 1400 year history.
Where does the self flagellation for past crime end?
The Eloi always ended up being eaten by the Morlocks.
The Turks aren’t going to do any such thing because their educated classes are not descending into psychotic madness.
The problem is our educated class, their madness, their hijacking of our culture and worse still our education system. Our universities and schools are in deep trouble. They are rife with gender, race, LGBT insanity.
Large parts of our society have been hijacked and taken over by mad people. Literally mad. People who think it’s important for everyone to state their preferred gender. Anyone with half a functioning brain should immediately see their insanity.
And the Spanish and Portuguese who used many more slaves.
and when will we cover the pyramids?
History itself must be abolished because it is full of greedy, flawed people making bad decisions. This is the reductio ad absurdam of these stupid, resentful, virtue signalling idiots. Support History Reclaimed!
What is needed is a new section at London Zoo to put them in, and on display.
No Caribbean nations were ever colonized. Islands in the Caribbean were first conquered by Spain and the Spanish conquerors dealt with the real natives, if any. As the power of Spain vaned, various other Europpean states conquered some of these Spanish islands. They grew economically valuable agricultural products there and satisfied their need for workers by colonizing the islands with slaves of African descent they had bought from African rulers in Africa. Caribbean states (not nations) only came into being after these European countries turned them over to the descendants of the slaves which had been used to colonize, that is, populate them.
This is not about reclaim the histories of colonised Caribbean nations or celebrate the influence of the Windrush Generations. It’s about British left wing politicians intentionally spreading lies about British history in order to subjugate the native population of Britain which – by the way – had nothing to do with all these Caribbean enterprises of a comparatively few rich people in the pretty distant past (significantly more than 200 years ago).
Reclaiming British history from these people would be a much more worthy and much more urgent enterprise.
The British Government bought the manumission of the slaves in British Caribbean territories. Thus avoided having to send a military force and bloody conflict, which probably would fail, or protracted legal cases.
The Left blob say this “compensated” slave owners. Well it did, that’s how the slaves got freed. The alternative was… ?
Better question: Why should there be an alternative?
The decision to abolish slavery effectively dispossessed a bunch of people who lost a valuable part of their property they had acquired and maintained at a considerable cost in a hitherto perfectly legal way. People are entitled to do anything that’s legal and if it’s legal to own slaves, they’re entitled to own slaves and the state has no moral or other right to rob them without compensation.
In practice, manumission worked like something like this always works: A compulsory purchase was legally decreed and the British state which was now the new owner of the slaves then set them free. That was the legally proper way and that Communists believe it should just involve someone shouting “In the name of the people, you are … !” to abolish any kind of property right is just their theory.
Does this exhibition mention the Romans and the Vikings ? Or those in the countries who traded humans with the traders.
So glad I went to the Museum of Docklands last year to see the Mudlarking Exhibition, because I’m now boycotting it.
Instead of trying unsuccessfully to erase history, why doesn’t the socialist UK designate a room of artwork of slave traders, for those who are interested in history. Those who choose to deny history need not go into this room.