Are we in the middle of a culture war?
What even is a culture war?
It’s not a terminology I’m familiar with at all.
Culture war, it sounds daft.
What do we even mean by the culture wars?
Our identity today is determined by how we understand our own history.
I’ve long believed this country is going through
a profound gramscian cultural revolution.
And I feel like it’s now coming to fruition.
And in the midst of a global pandemic statues
became a key battleground in that struggle.
You know when we’re arguing about a statue,
we’re arguing about whose history is forgotten.
A new front in the so-called culture war.
But does it have more to do with how we process our history of colonialism?
And why is the issue of statues more important in some cities, than others?
So we’ve come to Oxford for the day, with it’s dreaming spires.
This is where I actually went to university.
I studied history here
and there is a big battle about our history which is taking place.
And you know, a gentile kind of place that this is,
the struggles that began in the United States.
after the death and of course the killing of George Floyd
by the police brimmed out on the streets of this country.
Including this street here.
The reason, the focus of the struggle on this street was a guy up there called Cecil Rhodes.
Hey, how are you?
Hi Owen.
Great to see you.
Simukai Chigudu teaches African history
and is one of only a few black professors at Oxford University.
So Cecil John Rhodes is a Victorian imperialist whose major ambition in the late nineteenth century
and early twentieth century was to colonise Africa.
Now you must have walked past this statue hundreds of times?
Yes.
How does that make you feel?
You know, this is such a glorious position on which to frame him.
It’s easy to miss it right, he’s so high up,
you can walk past and not think about it.
How I feel about it, it’s a relic,
an anachronistic relic of a bygone era.
There were already calls for the Rhodes Statue to come down in 2015,
but they were reginited by the Black Lives Matter
movement last month.
Rhodes must fall started because of student activists in South Africa,
tired of colonial iconography ...
Tired of the crisis of representation of black and other minority ethnic people in our institutions.
You know, when we are arguing about a statue and whether a statue belongs on a particular plinth,
we’re arguing about whose history is told
and whose history is swept under the rug or forgotten.
And if we envisage this country as tolerant and democratic,
that also means being able to be much more inclusive in a public way
about the different sorts of people that make up the British isles.
Everyone talks about everyone,
that Britain and everywhere, we are in the midst of this inferno of a culture war.
What do you understand by culture wars?
Many of the same folks who are saying things like black lives matter,
many of the folks who are involved in movements like Me Too,
are sharply aware that it’s not only about being recognised in terms of identity,
but it’s also about the very material circumstances that shape the life chances of different sorts
of people.
And I think that framing things in terms of the culture war
is potentially a distraction from that.
And one that fuels the very sorts of jingoism that we see in the US,
in parts of continental Europe, even in parts of Africa, and that deeply worries me.
So I would be keen to push back on the culture war.
Hello Peter, my old friend …
Owen, it’s been so long ...
Obviously we’ve got to keep our distance.
We’ve got to keep our distance, I know you’re taking this very seriously.
I’m an unbeliever in all this stuff.
You don’t believe coronavirus exists?
I believe it's here but I don't think it's anything like a terrible plague ...
Someone who isn’t necessarily calling for the Rhodes statue to come down
is Mail on Sunday columnist Peter Hitchens.
So here he is again. So it commemorates his residence.
But it’s a good deal easier to get at than the other statute.
So this is a video of some chanting students ...
What did that summarise to you?
If I was look at that picture, that video, what did it represent?
It summarises the fact that the camera can lie.
I was walking along the pavement
and some people were chanting and I wasn’t particularly bothered by that.
But it looks as if they were pursuing me.
Should we be celebrating white supremacists
who are responsible for thousands of people who died?
No.
Absolutely not but you can’t forget that an awful lot of the wealth
and standing of this city is based on the activities of Cecil Rhodes.
He spent a lot of money here.
I’m not a militant opponent of the Rhodes Must Fall demonstrators,
what worries me much more is the general regime change aspect of pulling down statues.
When we say this regime change, let’s just consider the country,
we’ve got a Conservative PM.
Well we have a government which has been formed by the Conservative party.
Let’s not mix that up.
Totally different.
Whether you regard this as a conservative government or not,
the tearing down of statues won’t change any government.
It’s a part of it.
As with so many things it shines a light on the subject.
Isn’t the point that far more people now know about Cecil Rhodes
and have debated Cecil Rhodes than they’ve probably ever done?
This is why I like demonstrations, they draw people’s attention to things.
You could say quite reasonably, well, put it in a museum, it’s alright by me.
But that’s what they are arguing for.
I keep telling you, I’m not standing here saying leave Cecil Rhodes alone.
I’m not his spokesperson.
Don’t mix me up with the person you’d like me to be.
I am not him.
Why is it that we are both scared that we are on the losing side of the culture war?
Well I expect we both are, one of the problems with revolutionaries
is that they are almost always eaten by the revolutions they ...
The problem with counter-revolutionaries is that they always get eaten.
So we’ll get eaten by the same people for different reasons.
I think we’re both scared of each others-side on this war.
There’s nothing to be scared of from my side, my side is totally powerless.
Masks on, on the train
and as we head north the weather is significantly deteriorating.
And we are on the way to Liverpool.
And that is a city whose history cannot be divorced from the slave trade.
In the 18th century, Liverpool played a central role in the UK slave trade,
which contributed to much of the city’s wealth at the time.
But how does that legacy relate to its contemporary history
from the Toxteth disturbances in the 1980s,
to the protests we’ve seen over the past few months?
What kind of response are you getting to these banners?
So you felt a lot of solidarity?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Kerry and Buster Nugent are integral to today’s Black Lives Matter movement in Liverpool
After George Floyd, Buster started a one-man vigil outside this park
in Toxteth.
We’re going to go to the Caribbean centre, and meet some of our younger representatives.
Let’s do that, let’s do that.
This plinth here used to be of Huskinson, the slave owner.
Right.
So the 81 riots, the following year, was torn down.
Was it torn down by local people?
They didn’t wait for the council?
No, no, it was torn down, it was taken down.
The Toxteth disturbances of 1981, big moment here …
Absolutely.
Basically back in them days it was about police brutality.
You could not come outside of this area, which is like a thing called the Toxteth triangle.
You just couldn’t, you couldn’t move.
Young males were stopped and searched every hundred yards.
They were just harassed to death.
I was 17 at the time so ripe for rebelling
and getting involved.
What about the police now? Have things changed?
You know what? It’s kind of mellowed out a bit,
but it’s still on the same thing, it’s racial profiling.
We are trying to understand why as a community, we’re …
Still left behind …
Why we’re still left behind.
Believe me, Liverpool is one of the worst cities
for being a person of colour.
Within a week of Buster’s one man vigil up to 7,000 people were on the streets.
Hiya!
How is it going?
So, how did you all get involved in this new movement, what happened?
I grew up in Liverpool, I've lived in London,
I've experienced racism from all areas
and all aspects of life, and people so I had to represent my city
and my community.
I felt like I had to go.
It’s bringing different groups together, all different diversities, ethnicities, class,
cultures ...
As eye-opening and overwhelming as this is,
I really think this could be part of something really revolutionary.
Why Britain?
Why was it so important that it has to happen here?
It may not be as everyday as we’re seeing in the US,
but it definitely happens here.
In my lifetime I know people we’ve lost to police brutality
and if you speak to my grandparents, my elders, aunties,
uncles, and people from the community, they’ve been fighting for a long time for
justice especially
in the Toxteth and L8 community.
It’s nothing new to us at all.
So the movement has partly targeted statues of slavers, colonialists, and others,
why does that matter?
For me, I feel like the statues argument is an interesting one,
because I don’t have the answers.
I recently had a conversation with someone about the psychological impact of living
in a city like Liverpool with a history so dark and deep
as it is around the slave trade.
Does it have any subconscious affect on us? We don’t know.
But we do know our history in Liverpool.
When I walk down to the docks.
I don’t know if youse have been there, you feel that?
You will feel that.
If you go to certain areas you will feel the energy is different …
If the statues remain, let’s at least be honest
about why they are still here,
or why they were here in the first place,
let’s talk about their entire legacy and then people can judge what they want to judge.
Are we in the middle of a culture war?
What is a culture war?
It’s not a terminology I’m familiar with at all. Culture war ... it sounds daft.
This is ending a war.
This is to get to peace. So to put the war in it ...
Its negative.
Yeah yeah, when I think of war, I think of horror, I think of death ...
And this is, it sounds a bit cheesy but I genuinely think this is a rebirth.
That’s proper cheesy innit?
It you don’t understand what’s going on, it’s very easy to be like,
yeah it’s a culture war,
the black people hate the white people for some reason.
I was like, no, no no, it’s not that at all.
These protesters are obviously very aware of the legacy of the city they live in
and how important the docks were to that.
The docks are also home to the UK’s only slavery museum
which is attempting to confront our colonial past head on.
It was still closed because of the pandemic,
but we were fortunate enough to get a special tour with Dr Richard Benjamin.
I mean some would go, this is a terrible history, but it is the past.
Is this really something we have to relitigate in the here and now?
Yeah, because it is the here and now.
There are examples today where black people are still not treated as equal citizens.
As is proven by many of the horrendous murders that still take place.
So who’s this guy here for example, what are we looking at there?
So Thomas Golightly, he’d be one of the many mayors of Liverpool,
who would have also been pro-slavery.
So he would have profited from them maybe?
Yeah.
Do you think there’s a sense of guilt here?
Well, Liverpool made an official apology in 1999,
make of that what you will.
It was a step in the right direction.
As is having a museum.
What’s the point of an apology, wouldn’t some people go,
these people responsible are long dead.
Well the individuals themselves might be long dead
but legacies aren’t, are they? That’s one of the things.
You shouldn't necessarily feel guilty about it but there are the remnants with us
today, very much.
Do you think people get defensive about it?
Some are, but equally I’m someone who will not just talk about this white privilege.
My mum’s white, OK? She married a black man,
so no one needs to tell my mum what it’s like to be anti-racist.
So sometimes it does kind of grate on me a little bit
while everyone expects every white person to feel guilty.
It's not about that.
What I think is happening now is that people who it doesn’t affect, they are thinking,
do you know, yeah,
I get it a bit more now, I get that there’s racism,
I get that there’s unconscious bias,
but it doesn't affect them on a day to day basis.
So if this helps some people think, how do I act, how do I think of people of
African decent?
Maybe we’ll move forward.
What’s your hopes and dreams for what this movement is going to archive?
I want to see the outcomes in education, within our own organisations, within our own
businesses.
I’m still learning, I suppose you’re still learning
that's why you’re doing this documentary.
So for me the hope is that we have some real outcomes, measurable outcomes as well.
Are you worried this will just fizzle out?
We can’t change our colour, we can change our race,
we can’t change our history, we can't change our ancestors,
so that fire will never fizzle out in our hearts.
You’re very moved by that, aren’t you?
I am, I’m just so proud ...
Talk to him …
It's alright, take your time, take your time.
I’m just really proud of them and I’m touched that they’ve got the passions
and the emotion to take it forward.
We’re getting on a bit now so we really need these young people
to take this movement forward.