Should they be removed .

[Twobob]

A question asked on TV , should there be a debate in regards the removal of the statues of Nelson and Rhodes , because of their connection/involvement in slavery .

How would it go down across the water , or would anyone give a toss .

[quinner]

A question asked on TV , should there be a debate in regards the removal of the statues of Nelson and Rhodes , because of their connection/involvement in slavery .

How would it go down across the water , or would anyone give a toss .

when were statues involved in slavery.....?

[quinner]

Maybe the world should start with the most recent slavers........

[KatieMorag]

Article from the Guardian re Nelson's support of slavery:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/aug/22/toppling-statues-nelsons-column-should-be-next-slavery

[Mykidsmom]

yes i think they should come down....all they are are momentos of dark times in history...times that should not be celebrated....

and i think any of these monuments left standing in dublin should be removed too..

[quinner]

yes i think they should come down....all they are are momentos of dark times in history...times that should not be celebrated....

and i think any of these monuments left standing in dublin should be removed too..

Would that mean the Buildings in Rome that are monuments to slavery......where does it begin and end...?

[quinner]

Would that mean the Buildings in Rome that are monuments to slavery......where does it begin and end...?

Maybe knock down Toronto as it is a monument to the success of ethnic cleansing......

[KatieMorag]

I'm not sure where I stand on this issue. On the one hand, it can be construed as hugely insensitive at best and utterly reprehensible at worst to retain these monuments. But does anyone really go to Trafalgar Square, look up at Nelson in awe and say "wasn't he a marvellous bloke?" I really don't think so - it's just a landmark, surely? Fair enough, if Nelson's only claim to fame was being a racist, but I don't think he was being honoured for that highly regrettable facet of his personality. And as Quinner has suggested, if you started tearing down all these statues where would you draw the line?

[Mykidsmom]

Maybe knock down Toronto as it is a monument to the success of ethnic cleansing......

ehhh....no....and its not...go wind someone else hehehe....

these statues erected to these supposed heros, and left over bits of relics from the times the United Kingdom was supposedly great....all need to come down...nelson had no business standing in the centre of dublin....

[bojangles]

You may as well demolish the Pyramids , they were supposedly built with slave labour , and throw in the Great wall as well .

[rasher]

You may as well demolish the Pyramids , they were supposedly built with slave labour , and throw in the Great wall as well .

And the Mexican wall

[jembo]

Why not start to demolish every catholic church and institution in Ireland then? They were involved in slavery up until the closure of the Magdalene Laundries in 1996.


Thousands Enslaved by Ireland's Catholic Church


The Living Dead,Guilt by Illegitimacy

A sudden spate of TV exposés, docudramas and a major motion picture have brought to light one of the most shocking episodes in the history of the Catholic Church in Ireland — the existence of the now-notorious "Magdalene laundries," a sanctified form of slavery.

Operated by the Sisters of the Magdalene Order, the laundries were virtual slave labor camps for generations of young girls thought to be unfit to live in Irish society.

Girls who had become pregnant, even from rape, girls who were illegitimate, or orphaned, or just plain simple-minded, girls who were too pretty and therefore in "moral danger" all ran the risk of being locked up and put to work, without pay, in profit-making, convent laundries, to "wash away their sins."

They were completely cut off from their families, and many lost touch with them forever.

Stripped of their identities, the girls were given numbers instead of names. They were forbidden to speak, except to pray. If they broke any rule or tried to escape, the nuns beat them over the head with heavy iron keys, put them into solitary confinement or shipped them off to a mental hospital.

Over a period of 150 years, an estimated 30,000 women were forced into this brutal penance, carried out in secret, behind high convent walls.

Towards the end of the 20th century, the laundries began to close, as the power of the Church in Ireland diminished and as social attitudes became less puritanical. Incredibly, the last Magdalene laundry to shut down was in 1996.

‘We Were the Living Dead’

Mary Norris, 69, was committed to a convent laundry in Cork for two years. An articulate, intelligent woman, she was transferred from an orphanage at age 15 because she was "disobedient." Her number was 30.

On one occasion, she said, the nuns actually ordered the girls to pray for those held in Soviet prison camps, a bitter irony, as she considers the convent laundries "an Irish gulag."

Though it was clearly very painful for her, she took us around the convent — now abandoned — where she had suffered so much.

"In the winter, it was freezing cold, and in the summer, it was like the desert, it was so hot with the steam," she said. "We were the living dead. We weren't treated as human beings, as individuals. We were just part of the workforce. Nothing more, nothing less."

Guilt by Illegitimacy

Sadie Williams, 64, spent a total of four years in two different convent laundries. She was 14 when she was virtually kidnapped by two women who had determined that she was "in moral danger." Williams liked to take a walk in the evenings, after working all day at a bed and breakfast in Dublin. She said the women considered her much too attractive to stay out of trouble.

She was only 14 when she ended up in a convent laundry outside town as "Number 100," and locked into a cell each night. She says she almost never saw daylight.

"Oh, it was dreadful," she said. "I cried and cried all the time, and kept asking why, why wasn't I getting out. And I would write begging letters to my mother. When I finally got out, she was already dead and buried three years. But I was never told, even though I was writing, still writing letters to her."

She has since learned that the nuns stopped all her mail. Her mother wasn't married, so Sadie was considered to be guilty of the sin of illegitimacy.

No Apology

There have been no direct reparations from the Irish Catholic Church to the tens of thousands of women it used as slave labor. Nor has there been a formal apology. It's not even known how many victims of the Magdalene laundries are still alive: they are not organized, and many don't want to talk about this terrible part of their past.

Very few Churchmen in Ireland will comment on the scandal. An exception is Willie Walsh, the Bishop of Killaloe. Over a cup of tea in his residence, he said that it is "a source of pain and shame."

"These girls were rejected by society, and the Church in some way thought it was giving refuge to these girls," he says. "I suppose … the Magdalene laundries was in some instances a form of slavery."

The Rev. Patrick O'Donovan is more outspoken.

"It's an appalling scandal," he says. "You could compare them to concentration camps. … The nuns thought they were doing good. … They didn't realize the damage they were doing."

Mary Norris has campaigned to have a simple memorial built in the convent where she was held. Thirty names are engraved on a simple headstone; dating from 1876 to 1973. Some women spent their entire lives in these institutions. Having been cut off from their families, they had nowhere to go.

Norris says she no longer hates the nuns who oppressed her. "If I hated them," she says, "they'd still be winning. They'd still have control over me."

http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/story?id=129865&page=1

[jembo]

Throughout Ireland there still stand thousands of reminders of the Catholic Church which was involved in the salvery of Irish women for nearly 150 years.

Even though the perpetrators of this evil practice against their own people have apologised (state included) the reminders still stand today. If we are to remove all reminders of slavery, should not the government buildings be removed as well, after all they (the government) were complicit in this most evil of practices. In other words,where do we start and where do we finish with the demands to remove reminders of slavery.

Ireland finally says sorry to the 10,000 'Magdalene Sister slaves' of its Catholic workhouses who were locked up and brutalised by nuns
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...#ixzz4sLTUYClu
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook

[DAMNTHEWEATHER]

Leave them / it all there as reminders that it should never happen again....Stick a sign on them.... a red plaque would do the trick as opposed to a blue wan....telling the truth of who they were and what they / it stood for.....removing such statues and buildings only helps to hide past atrocities.....let them / it be named and shamed.....spat on and worse if ye fancy

[quinner]

Leave them / it all there as reminders that it should never happen again....Stick a sign on them.... a red plaque would do the trick as opposed to a blue wan....telling the truth of who they were and what they / it stood for.....removing such statues and buildings only helps to hide past atrocities.....let them / it be named and shamed.....spat on and worse if ye fancy

So you want The USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand etc all kept but spat-on because they are monuments to Ethnic-Cleansing...