Originally Posted by
Chugalug2
Are you saying that the RAF used poison gas in "Air Policing"? If so, where and when?
The RAF certainly advocated it's use, and I mentioned it only as theythey regarded the use of poison gas as compatible with their air policing doctrine and certainly requested that they be allowed to use it. Whether they actually were allowed to deploy poison gas is less clear, although the army used gas shells during the same time period for basically the same purpose.
Anyone mentioned that putting today's measure to judge people from the past is idiotic ignorance?
Like that Edward Colston. Slave trade was nothing unusual at his times. The fact that he supported schools, hospitals and almshouses was. That's why he deserves to be remembered.
Colston was notable for two things really, his involvement in the British African Company in which he was responsible for enslaving perhaps a hundred thousand (and the death of a fairly high percentage of them), and his philanthropy in Bristol. In terms of judging him by the standards of his time though, the statue was built over one-hundred and fifty years after his death in 1895 and is pretty unremarkable (the Victorians built A LOT of statues). It portrays him as a one dimensional great man of the city for his philanthropy while not mentioning his life's work.
If he does deserve to be remembered then his whole life and work should be remembered, including his role in the slave trade, rather than the aspects that those who built the statue in 1895 deemed relevant.
And, to be blunt, the symbolic removal of the statue and wider recognition of Bristol's role in the slave trade is likely of more historical interest than yet another Victorian statue purporting to represent a great man of the city.