Unreliable Narrators

William Gladstone presiding over Upper Parliament Street

 

'One entered … through a narrow stone Gothic door, stained with soot … and the heads of Liberal statesmen stuck out above like gargoyles; on rainy days the nose of Gladstone dripped on my head when I came in.'

Graham Greene

 

I belong to Nottingham,
Dear old Nottingham town;
But what's the matter wi' Nottingham,
For it's goin' roun' and roun'!
I'm only a common old working chap,
As anyone here can see,
But when I get a couple o' drinks on a Saturday,
Nottingham belongs to me!

(With apologies to Will Fyfe)

Places can be shifty blighters.

They can foster a sense of pride and belonging, and a feeling of being part of a historical continuum.

A place becomes a part of you and you become a part of that place.

This can be particularly true of cities.

But places can also be problematic in terms of their identity, leading people to feel marginalised and even oppressed by certain elements of their physical surroundings.

As a white male living in Nottingham, I feel a profound connection to my city and a fascination with - and pride in - its past and present endeavours. Amongst other things, this has manifested itself as an interest in the many and varied features of our local built environment.

Among these features are a number of statues and plaques that commemorate the lives and achievements  of various individuals associated (for the most part) with the city.

The majority of those statues and plaques commemorate men, which reflects the situation nationally.

A New Statesman article in 2016 determined that a mere 2.7% of the UK's statues at that time were of 'historical, non-royal women'.

It's not as if Nottingham's history hasn't featured plenty of women worthy of recognition, and indeed the Nottingham Women's History Group, formed in 2010, has helped - in its own words - 'to celebrate, promote and research' the contributions of a number of them.

There are, of course, other ways in which the statues and plaques in our midst are unrepresentative of past and present demographics and attitudes. In particular, they almost exclusively commemorate white men and women.

If the historical tables were turned and I lived in a place in which statues and plaques largely ignored not only men's historical contribution to society, but also the contributions of white people, how would that make me feel?

Uncomfortable, perhaps? Angry? Disenfranchised? Or not really all that bothered? The conditioning of my lived experience makes it difficult for me to truly appreciate the potential implications.

Events and debates in recent years have shone a fresh spotlight on a particularly problematic element of our country's history - its involvement in the enslavement of Africans.

Regardless of the part it eventually played in the suppression of the practice, by the 1730s Britain was the world's largest slave-trading nation.

An article on the UK Parliament's Heritage Collections website points out that 'The rewards of the transatlantic slave system were everywhere. From the urban fabric of slave ports, to the grand homes of those made wealthy, to the jobs created in industrial cities, to the coffee and tobacco shops dotting British cities.'

2020 saw the publication of a review of Nottingham's statues and plaques, commissioned by Nottingham City Council to ascertain the extent of any links to the transatlantic slave economy. The review was commissioned after the international anti-racism protests that followed the killing of George Floyd in May of that year - protests that, in this country, included the pulling down of the statue of slave trader Edward Colston in Bristol.

The review found that there were '13 statues which commemorate 13 separate individuals with demonstrable links to the transatlantic slave economy' (four directly connected, nine indirectly linked) and '18 plaques which memorialise 12 people with demonstrable links to the transatlantic slave economy' (five directly connected, seven indirectly linked). Various other statues and plaques were noted as requiring further research to 'substantiate the possibility of connections'.

One of the commemorated individuals with demonstrable direct links to the transatlantic slave economy mentioned in the document is William Gladstone.

There are two Gladstone-related memorials in the City of Nottingham - a plaque in the Park Estate commemorating his felling of a tree there, and a head situated above the entrance to the Express Offices building on Upper Parliament Street.

Gladstone was British Prime Minister for a total of twelve years spread over four terms in the 19th century. He was a Liberal politician, hence the existence of the feature on the premises, which were home to the Nottingham Daily Express, a newspaper with similar political affiliations.

Though usually regarded as one of Britain's greatest Prime Ministers, Gladstone was the son of one of the largest slave owners in the British West Indies. His career was financed by his father and he defended his father's slave ownership early on in his political career, helping him to secure compensation for the liberation of his slaves.

This is just one small example of why it is healthy to consider the backgrounds of those individuals who past generations have chosen to venerate.

In 2020, The William Gladstone C of E Academy in Newark changed its name to The King's Church of England Primary Academy due to discomfort with Gladstone's links to slavery. Needless to say, this generated a certain amount of heated debate as to how we deal with the reverberations of our history.

Nottingham's two Gladstone memorials are relatively inconspicuous. By contrast, given the somewhat low esteem with which the memory of the British Empire is currently held, what debates would the city's statue of Queen Victoria be prompting today had it not been moved from its prominent location in the Market Square in 1953?

Nottingham's next statue will tell a somewhat different story.

Early 2025 will see the unveiling, in the Green Heart space in the Broad Marsh area of the city centre, of a bronze statue of a white mill worker and a black enslaved woman clasping hands.

The statue is the final phase of a project called Standing In This Place, a collaboration between sculptor Rachel Carter and a community history group called The Legacy Makers. The project website states that the statue will 'give representation to the under-represented and give voice and recognition to the contributions of thousands of unnamed women who were the driving forces behind the East Midlands cotton textile industry during Industrialisation.'

It goes on to say that 'The statue’s inclusion in a public park places Nottingham at the forefront of historic female recognition; and makes Nottingham a regional, national and global leader in acknowledging the significant contribution women have made to the British economy and society in their roles as enslaved workers in the Americas and Caribbean and as factory workers in industrial Britain.'

A worthy addition to Nottingham's statuary indeed, and one that will undeniably contribute to a broader perspective of the storied history of our remarkable city.

Nottingham belongs to all of us.

Nottingham awaits...

Printed Sources:

Women of Nottingham: A walk around the city centre by Nottingham Women's History Group (2011)

Nottingham City Review of Statues and Plaques - James Dawkins, University of Nottingham (2020)

Nottingham's Plaques and Statues - Terry Fry (Nottingham Civic Society, 1999)