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savvypaul wrote: ↑Mon Dec 06, 2021 1:49 pm My view is rather different. I think that if we want a more inclusive, less divided country, then we need to progress.

I did say “sometimes”, changing street names when nobody has a clue about the person for whom the street is named, or where the name could refer to one of several different people is pointless. Changing the name of a city where the eponymous individual was a murdering tyrant is a different matter.

Daniel Quinn wrote: ↑Mon Dec 06, 2021 5:45 pm I’ll start one which should put an end to em all

“People are multi faceted and frequently displays characteristics, traits and behaviour you will like and dislike , generally it’s I’ll conceived to focus on one at the expense of the other”

Pretty much what I meant with my "Churchill," post. He's probably the best example of the dichotomy in recent British history. A great wartime leader who was - so we're led to believe by those who were there - Britain's saviour. At the same time, he hated India and Indians with a passion and oversaw the murder of thousands of them by starvation due to an artificially created famine.

Churchill was told by the British secretary of state for India Leopold Amery that rotting corpses lined the streets of Kolkata.

“I hate Indians,” Churchill told Amery. “They are a beastly people with a beastly religion.” And at a war cabinet meeting, he said the famine was Indians’ fault for “breeding like rabbits”.

In actual fact, proof has come to light since that the murder of 3 million Bengalis in the Indian subcontinent in 1943. was actually Churchill's fault. The famine was caused by a policy decision taken by the Churchill government in the UK, to stockpile grain for the British during the war. Even in 1943, the year Britain officially declared famine in India, Churchill exported 70,000 tonnes of rice to the UK.

Remember, we were governing India at that time. We were, in theory, if not in fact, responsible for their wellbeing.

It took Hitler a total of 12 years (from 1933 to 1945) to amass the approximated 12 million deaths in what we know as the Holocaust. Churchill managed 3 million in a year.

He could give a bloody good speech though, and he was certainly more than instrumental in the winning of WWII.

The war ended, officially, on 2^nd September 1945, but by that time Churchill had been discarded by the country and Labour, under Clement Attlee, would govern Britain in the immediate post-war world.

The fact of the matter is, he probably was a "Great" Briton within the confines of the requirements of the poll, and he was also a murderous racist.

Oddly, to me at least, he was proposed for the honour by "Mo" Mowlam, a Labour Party politician, and a politician I respected. One wonders, if she ever looked beyond the veil, and saw the whole of Churchill's history before offering up his name. I'd like to think she did it out of ignorance.

Not sure when you last had experience of education savvy .I have 1 in junior school, 1 doing olevels, 1 doing a levels and 1 doing an acting degree at the royal college of speech and drama.

If I had to sit down and design a curriculum for each , I’m pretty sure I couldn’t do any of them better.

Daniel Quinn wrote: ↑Mon Dec 06, 2021 7:50 pm Not sure when you last had experience of education savvy .I have 1 in junior school, 1 doing olevels, 1 doing a levels and 1 doing an acting degree at the royal college of speech and drama.

If I had to sit down and design a curriculum for each , I’m pretty sure I couldn’t do any of them better.

All the Churchill teaching at my school was about the great war leader...

That is exactly what the teachings should be about, lest people forget, this country stood up to Germany when it was not ready for war, and gave other a belief Germany could be beaten.

I’m afraid your proving savvy’s point

Influence - The Psychology of Persuasion is an interesting book.

A theme of it is that we are primarily emotional beings and the secret to persuading us to a certain mindset is in pushing our emotional buttons.

Renaming streets is an emotional button pressing process. We feel outraged by the evil acts comitted by Savile. And therefore enough people will be motivated to rename any roads that bear his name.

There's not much logic in politics. There's a huge amount of emotion.

Listen to any major politician speak, especially when answering questions. The vast majority of what they say will be appealing to emotions.
They do that because it works.

Emotion, emotion, emotion.

History has always had a large political element in it. He who controls the histroy books / films / TV programmes controls the emotional spin put on it.

Like every other man, great or small, Churchill had feet of clay. If we only ever commemorated perfect people we migh have exciting road names like First Street or Steep Hill… hang on we already have one of those.

My view, fwiw, is that Churchill was not actively murderous, but he certainly considered non-whites to be inferior and, to some extent, expendable. He probably didn't view the Bengal famine as a particularly urgent matter.

Would his actions (or lack of) have been considered acceptable in the 1940s? What about one, two, three decades later? We'll never know, because it wasn't widely reported at the time and it wasn't widely taught in subsequent decades. Maybe, nowadays, it is.

Lindsayt wrote: ↑Mon Dec 06, 2021 11:10 pm Influence - The Psychology of Persuasion is an interesting book.

A theme of it is that we are primarily emotional beings and the secret to persuading us to a certain mindset is in pushing our emotional buttons.

Renaming streets is an emotional button pressing process. We feel outraged by the evil acts comitted by Savile. And therefore enough people will be motivated to rename any roads that bear his name.

There's not much logic in politics. There's a huge amount of emotion.

Listen to any major politician speak, especially when answering questions. The vast majority of what they say will be appealing to emotions.
They do that because it works.

Emotion, emotion, emotion.

History has always had a large political element in it. He who controls the histroy books / films / TV programmes controls the emotional spin put on it.

I think it depends on whether people feel threatened by the idea that their long held belief about Britain's past may not be the whole picture...and that those who might consider that they were on the wrong end of that particular stick might want to say something about it

For me, understanding that Churchill was flawed is not an insult to my identity, logically or emotionally And, I can admire Churchill as a wartime leader without needing that knowledge to boost my self esteem. In the same way that, if I were French, I wouldn't feel personal shame that the country was overrun and that there was collaboration as well as resistance. It's just events, circumstances and human nature. Britain had its fair share of cowards, looters, profiteers during WW2.

I'm not sure that my attitude is typical, though.