The police killing of George Floyd has reignited racial tensions in both the United States and elsewhere, and it has also led to a questioning of the past – largely centered on monuments and statues.
In the United Kingdom, protestors have toppled the statue of slave trader Edward Colston, dragging the bronze monument into the harbour. In the United States, a number of statues have been removed or vandalised, including the beheading of a statue of explorer Christopher Columbus in Boston.
It is a debate which has somewhat reached Malta’s shores, largely centering on a monument of Queen Victoria, which sits in front of the National Library in Valletta. The proponent for the removal of this monument calls it a “colonial obscenity” which has no place in Malta’s capital.
Several figures have commented since on this – with Culture Minister Jose Herrera, who would be the person responsible for such a decision, being at the forefront of deriding what he labelled a “ridiculous idea”.
“Destroying monuments will in no way alter history”, Herrera said in Parliament earlier this week.
Herrera is indeed correct. History is not there for a person to like or dislike. It is there to learn from and if it is the case that someone is offended by it, then all the better because it means that the said someone is less likely to repeat it.
However, history is certainly nobody’s to erase or destroy.
It is interesting to note that the calls for the removal of the Queen Victoria monument in Malta are based on a premise which is far different from that being used to justify the removal of monuments abroad.
While the latter have called for the removal of statues and monuments glorifying and commemorating people who made a habit out of undermining racial minorities – be it through slavery, systemic racism or otherwise – the premise used in Malta is that the Queen Victoria monument is that it glorifies Malta’s British colonial overlords.
Let us for one second keep this premise in mind and assume that the monument does end up being removed. Where does one go from there?
Nobody needs any reminding that Malta spent its entire history, save for the last 56 years, as a colony subject to one ruler or another.
Malta’s capital city is named after the Grand Master of one of the said colonisers – a Grand Master who, prior to leading the Order, had advocated for the Order to be headquartered in Tripoli, rather than in Malta.
The Office of the Prime Minister is situated inside a building named after a region in Spain and adorned with its coat of arms. A number of other ministries are based in these Auberges.
Using the same anti-colonialist premise as is being used to call for the monument to Queen Victoria to be removed, should Malta’s capital be renamed? Should the coat of arms on each auberge be replaced?
The idea of the removal of monuments is, as Herrera said, a “ridiculous idea”. We cannot erase our past, but we can learn from it.
The reality is of course that what was acceptable in the past is not acceptable today – and that should be emphasized, if need be even next to the monument in question itself.
Simply following the “out of sight, out of mind” philosophy and thinking that by removing something then it does not exist anymore will serve no good to anyone. Education is key.
We must learn about and, more importantly, from our past and use it to improve our present. Trying to erase it is not the way to go.
Ultimately, those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.