Are we in the middle of a culture war?
What even is a culture war?
It’s not a terminology
I’m familiar with at all.
Culture war, it sounds daft.
What do we even mean by the culture wars?
Our identity today is determined
by how we understand our own history.
I’ve long believed this country
is going through
a profound gramscian cultural revolution.
And I feel like it’s now coming to fruition.
And in the midst of a global pandemic statues
became a key battleground in that struggle.
You know when we’re arguing about a statue,
we’re arguing about whose history is forgotten.
A new front in the so-called culture war.
But does it have more to do with
how we process our history of colonialism?
And why is the issue of statues more important
in some cities, than others?
So we’ve come to Oxford for the day,
with it’s dreaming spires.
This is where I actually went to university.
I studied history here
and there is a big battle about
our history which is taking place.
And you know, a gentile kind of place
that this is,
the struggles that began in the United States.
after the death and of course
the killing of George Floyd
by the police brimmed out
on the streets of this country.
Including this street here.
The reason, the focus of the struggle
on this street was a guy up there called Cecil Rhodes.
Hey, how are you?
Hi Owen.
Great to see you.
Simukai Chigudu teaches African history
and is one of only a few black
professors at Oxford University.
So Cecil John Rhodes is a Victorian imperialist
whose major ambition in the late nineteenth century
and early twentieth century
was to colonise Africa.
Now you must have walked past
this statue hundreds of times?
Yes.
How does that make you feel?
You know, this is such a glorious position
on which to frame him.
It’s easy to miss it right,
he’s so high up,
you can walk past and not think about it.
How I feel about it, it’s a relic,
an anachronistic relic of a bygone era.
There were already calls for the
Rhodes Statue to come down in 2015,
but they were reginited by
the Black Lives Matter
movement last month.
Rhodes must fall started because
of student activists in South Africa,
tired of colonial iconography ...
Tired of the crisis of representation of black
and other minority ethnic people in our institutions.
You know, when we are arguing about a statue
and whether a statue belongs on a particular plinth,
we’re arguing about whose history is told
and whose history is swept
under the rug or forgotten.
And if we envisage this country
as tolerant and democratic,
that also means being able
to be much more inclusive in a public way
about the different sorts of people
that make up the British isles.
Everyone talks about everyone,
that Britain and everywhere,
we are in the midst of this inferno of a culture war.
What do you understand by culture wars?
Many of the same folks who are saying
things like black lives matter,
many of the folks who are involved
in movements like Me Too,
are sharply aware that it’s not only
about being recognised in terms of identity,
but it’s also about the very material circumstances
that shape the life chances of different sorts
of people.
And I think that framing things in terms of
the culture war
is potentially a distraction from that.
And one that fuels the very sorts of jingoism
that we see in the US,
in parts of continental Europe, even in parts 
of Africa, and that deeply worries me.
So I would be keen to push back
on the culture war.
Hello Peter, my old friend …
Owen, it’s been so long ...
Obviously we’ve got to keep our distance.
We’ve got to keep our distance,
I know you’re taking this very seriously.
I’m an unbeliever in all this stuff.
You don’t believe coronavirus exists?
I believe it's here but I don't think
it's anything like a terrible plague ...
Someone who isn’t necessarily calling
for the Rhodes statue to come down
is Mail on Sunday columnist Peter Hitchens.
So here he is again.
So it commemorates his residence.
But it’s a good deal easier to get
at than the other statute.
So this is a video of some
chanting students ...
What did that summarise to you?
If I was look at that picture,
that video, what did it represent?
It summarises the fact that
the camera can lie.
I was walking along the pavement
and some people were chanting
and I wasn’t particularly bothered by that.
But it looks as if they were pursuing me.
Should we be celebrating white supremacists
who are responsible for thousands
of people who died?
No.
Absolutely not but you can’t forget
that an awful lot of the wealth
and standing of this city is based
on the activities of Cecil Rhodes.
He spent a lot of money here.
I’m not a militant opponent
of the Rhodes Must Fall demonstrators,
what worries me much more is the general regime
change aspect of pulling down statues.
When we say this regime change,
let’s just consider the country,
we’ve got a Conservative PM.
Well we have a government which
has been formed by the Conservative party.
Let’s not mix that up.
Totally different.
Whether you regard this
as a conservative government or not,
the tearing down of statues
won’t change any government.
It’s a part of it.
As with so many things it shines
a light on the subject.
Isn’t the point that far more people
now know about Cecil Rhodes
and have debated Cecil Rhodes than
they’ve probably ever done?
This is why I like demonstrations,
they draw people’s attention to things.
You could say quite reasonably,
well, put it in a museum, it’s alright by me.
But that’s what they are arguing for.
I keep telling you, I’m not standing here saying
leave Cecil Rhodes alone.
I’m not his spokesperson.
Don’t mix me up with the person
you’d like me to be.
I am not him.
Why is it that we are both scared
that we are on the losing side of the culture war?
Well I expect we both are,
one of the problems with revolutionaries
is that they are almost always eaten by the
revolutions they ...
The problem with counter-revolutionaries
is that they always get eaten.
So we’ll get eaten by the same people
for different reasons.
I think we’re both scared
of each others-side on this war.
There’s nothing to be scared
of from my side, my side is totally powerless.
Masks on, on the train
and as we head north the weather
is significantly deteriorating.
And we are on the way to Liverpool.
And that is a city whose history
cannot be divorced from the slave trade.
In the 18th century, Liverpool played
a central role in the UK slave trade,
which contributed to much of the city’s
wealth at the time.
But how does that legacy relate
to its contemporary history
from the Toxteth disturbances in the 1980s,
to the protests we’ve seen over the past
few months?
What kind of response
are you getting to these banners?
So you felt a lot of solidarity?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Kerry and Buster Nugent are integral
to today’s Black Lives Matter movement in Liverpool
After George Floyd, Buster
started a one-man vigil outside this park
in Toxteth.
We’re going to go to the Caribbean centre,
and meet some of our younger representatives.
Let’s do that, let’s do that.
This plinth here used to be of Huskinson,
the slave owner.
Right.
So the 81 riots, the following year,
was torn down.
Was it torn down by local people?
They didn’t wait for the council?
No, no, it was torn down,
it was taken down.
The Toxteth disturbances of 1981,
big moment here …
Absolutely.
Basically back in them days
it was about police brutality.
You could not come outside of this area,
which is like a thing called the Toxteth triangle.
You just couldn’t, you couldn’t move.
Young males were stopped and searched
every hundred yards.
They were just harassed to death.
I was 17 at the time so ripe for rebelling
and getting involved.
What about the police now?
Have things changed?
You know what?
It’s kind of mellowed out a bit,
but it’s still on the same thing,
it’s racial profiling.
We are trying to understand why
as a community, we’re …
Still left behind …
Why we’re still left behind.
Believe me, Liverpool is one
of the worst cities
for being 
a person of colour.
Within a week of Buster’s one man vigil
up to 7,000 people were on the streets.
Hiya!
How is it going?
So, how did you all get involved
in this new movement, what happened?
I grew up in Liverpool, I've lived in London,
I've experienced racism from all areas
and all aspects of life, and people
so I had to represent my city
and my community.
I felt like I had to go.
It’s bringing different groups together,
all different diversities, ethnicities, class,
cultures ...
As eye-opening and overwhelming as this is,
I really think this could be part of something
really revolutionary.
Why Britain?
Why was it so important
that it has to happen here?
It may not be as everyday
as we’re seeing in the US,
but it definitely happens here.
In my lifetime I know people we’ve lost
to police brutality
and if you speak to my grandparents,
my elders, aunties,
uncles, and people from the community,
they’ve been fighting for a long time for
justice especially
in the Toxteth and L8 community.
It’s nothing new to us at all.
So the movement has partly targeted statues of
slavers, colonialists, and others,
why does that matter?
For me, I feel like the statues argument
is an interesting one,
because I don’t have the answers.
I recently had a conversation with someone
about the psychological impact of living
in a city like Liverpool with a history
so dark and deep
as it is around the slave trade.
Does it have any subconscious affect on us?
We don’t know.
But we do know our history in Liverpool.
When I walk down to the docks.
I don’t know if youse have been there,
you feel that?
You will feel that.
If you go to certain areas
you will feel the energy is different …
If the statues remain,
let’s at least be honest
about why they are still here,
or why they were here in the first place,
let’s talk about their entire legacy and then 
people can judge what they want to judge.
Are we in the middle of a culture war?
What is a culture war?
It’s not a terminology I’m familiar with at all.
Culture war ... it sounds daft.
This is ending a war.
This is to get to peace.
So to put the war in it ...
Its negative.
Yeah yeah, when I think of war,
I think of horror, I think of death ...
And this is, it sounds a bit cheesy
but I genuinely think this is a rebirth.
That’s proper cheesy innit?
It you don’t understand what’s going on,
it’s very easy to be like,
yeah it’s a culture war,
the black people hate
the white people for some reason.
I was like, no, no no,
it’s not that at all.
These protesters are obviously very aware
of the legacy of the city they live in
and how important the docks were to that.
The docks are also home
to the UK’s only slavery museum
which is attempting to confront
our colonial past head on.
It was still closed because of the pandemic,
but we were fortunate enough to get a special tour
with Dr Richard Benjamin.
I mean some would go, this is a terrible history,
but it is the past.
Is this really something we have to relitigate
in the here and now?
Yeah, because it is the here and now.
There are examples today where black people
are still not treated as equal citizens.
As is proven by many of the horrendous murders
that still take place.
So who’s this guy here for example,
what are we looking at there?
So Thomas Golightly, he’d be one
of the many mayors of Liverpool,
who would have also been pro-slavery.
So he would have profited from them maybe?
Yeah.
Do you think there’s a sense of guilt here?
Well, Liverpool made an official
apology in 1999,
make of that what you will.
It was a step in the right direction.
As is having a museum.
What’s the point of an apology,
wouldn’t some people go,
these people responsible are long dead.
Well the individuals themselves
might be long dead
but legacies aren’t, are they?
That’s one of the things.
You shouldn't necessarily feel guilty
about it but there are the remnants with us
today, very much.
Do you think people get defensive about it?
Some are, but equally I’m someone
who will not just talk about this white privilege.
My mum’s white, OK?
She married a black man,
so no one needs to tell my mum
what it’s like to be anti-racist.
So sometimes it does kind of grate
on me a little bit
while everyone expects
every white person to feel guilty.
It's not about that.
What I think is happening now is that people
who it doesn’t affect, they are thinking,
do you know, yeah,
I get it a bit more now,
I get that there’s racism,
I get that there’s unconscious bias,
but it doesn't affect them
on a day to day basis.
So if this helps some people think,
how do I act, how do I think of people of
African decent?
Maybe we’ll move forward.
What’s your hopes and dreams
for what this movement is going to archive?
I want to see the outcomes in education,
within our own organisations, within our own
businesses.
I’m still learning,
I suppose you’re still learning
that's why you’re doing this documentary.
So for me the hope is that we have some real
outcomes, measurable outcomes as well.
Are you worried this will just fizzle out?
We can’t change our colour,
we can change our race,
we can’t change our history,
we can't change our ancestors,
so that fire will never fizzle out
in our hearts.
You’re very moved by that, aren’t you?
I am, I’m just so proud ...
Talk to him …
It's alright, take your time,
take your time.
I’m just really proud of them
and I’m touched that they’ve got the passions
and the emotion to take it forward.
We’re getting on a bit now
so we really need these young people
to take this movement forward.
