empire

An Update On Cromwell, The City Of London & Contested Heritage

Since we last wrote about the seven highly offensive Oliver Cromwell memorials we’re aware of in the City of London, the only one that isn’t under the direct control of the City of London council has had a very ephemeral looking Contested Heritage notice attached to it. While we’re not massively impressed by a flimsy notice attached with blu-tack to the bottom of a plinth where it will evade the notice of many people, at least St Giles church has made a start on dealing with this issue. That said, we’d like to see a conclusion in which the Cromwell bust is removed from St Giles, Cripplegate, and placed in a museum dedicated to the horrors of slavery and colonialism – alongside the larger Cromwell bust in Guildhall Yard and the smaller one on display at the ground floor reception of Cromwell Tower.

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Racist Memorials In The City of London, Islington & Beyond

The effort to remove memorials celebrating slave traders, racists and colonialists, is part of a broader struggle against institutional racism. This struggle can’t be confined to one geographical area such as the City of London. Even if the City didn’t border Islington and share the EC1 postcode with this neighbour, we would have been dismayed when within four days of the statue of slave trader Edward Colston being pulled down by activists in Bristol on 7 June, Islington council had managed to issue a hasty and disingenuous statement on the matter. The local press immediately reproduced the council’s absurd claims under the dubious headline “Islington ‘does not have any statues or memorials celebrating the slave trade’ “. Here we look at some problematic memorials in Islington, move back to the City, and then shine a spotlight on the racist British colonialist Sir John Alexander MacDonald who has memorials in St Paul’s Cathedral, Westminster Abbey and across Canada – where he was the first prime minister.

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Tim Hailes & The Bizarre Twists & Turns of ‘Patriotism’ in the City of London

He may not have been to Eton or have a great grandfather and grandfather who’d been Lord Mayors of London like William Russell, but Tim Hailes is another perfect candidate for top office as far as the City of London establishment is concerned. Hailes has worked for J P Morgan since 1999 where he is a Managing Director & Associate General Counsel in the Legal Department. He’s also a liveryman, a freemason (most Lord Mayor’s belong to this men only club) and no longer a Tory student activist (he was as a young man). Since conservatives in the City stand as independents, and not all of them want to overtly display any political colours, those who don’t belong to the Tory party – even if they once did – can group around The Royal Society of St George. Timothy Russell Hailes, alongside quite a number of his fellow City councilors, is a member of this ‘minor English institution’.

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