Another slant on the statues debate - if you can call it a debate. There just seems to be a lot of shouting on both sides (as an aside, Mary Beard did a thought-provoking piece in the TLS).
Penrhyn Castle, on the outskirts of Bangor, in North Wales (which I have visited and blogged about previously) was built by the 1st Baron Penrhyn, who was both a slave owner and the proprietor of a large slate mine in North Wales.
Talk about Penrhyn Castle in North Wales and you'll get some rather angry looks from many of the locals. The 2nd Baron Penrhyn was notorious for his mistreatment of the workers in his slate mine and there are locals who, to this day, will not step inside Penyrhn Castle because of the manner in which their grandparents or great-grandparents were treated by the 2nd Baron.
Ask these people as to what they would do to any statue of him and you'll probably get the same response as from those who want statues of slavers removed. It's personal to them in a manner it isn't to others. In the case of the Penrhyn family, the slaving (the loss for which they were compensated by the government) was compounded by the abysmal treatment of their Welsh workers.
It's essentially a clash between the personal and the impersonal. From the personal side, there's nothing more that the locals would want than to tear Penrhyn Castle down due to it being built with the blood of their ancestors. For the impersonal it's a monument to Victorian, gothic architecture and a view into the lives of the nobs of that time and should therefore be preserved for posterity as a slice of history. Which is right? Both are. How is that managed by the National Trust? By bowing to pressure, not whitewashing the story of Penrhyn Castle and making it part of the historical narrative and exhibitions on display.
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