Making public history: Statues and memorials

Abstract

In working on this edition Keira Lindsay and Mariko Smith have asked ‘whether monuments should be deconstructed, reconstructed or destroyed.’1 Clearly attention to statues and memorials has recently been explored in many countries. Certainly in Britain there has been much discontent as I shall explain, yet opposition to particular statues has seemed to ignore and overlook progressive memorials and historical measures – towards black and ethnic minority groups that have been widely developed and supported in the past.