PAT HOYOS APPARENTLY does not see any rationale in the calls for the removal of the statue of Lord Horatio Nelson.
If I recall, there were a few suggestions in the past that included the following:
Lord Nelson was a navy officer, so he should have been placed in a naval museum at the Pierhead.
As a navy officer spending long periods of time at sea, his statue should have been dumped into the sea off the Carenage.
As a British subject who would have paid homage to a British monarch, his statue could have been removed to nearby Queen’s Park.
As a British male subject who would have showed loyalty and homage to the monarch of the day, King George III, his statue could have been replaced at a site in King George V Memorial Park, St Philip.
For the past 15 or more years, other consistent rationales have been proffered in order to encourage the removal of Lord Horatio Nelson’s statue from its current location, including the following:
The statue of Lord Nelson occupies part of a space called National Heroes Square that is reserved for National Heroes of Barbados and Lord Horatio Nelson is not one of them.
There is an automatic linkage of the name Horatio Nelson to Trafalgar Square. Since April 28, 1999, there is no place named Trafalgar Square on the island of Barbados. The removal of the statue of Lord Nelson should have been simultaneous with the removal of the name Trafalgar Square.
For those who are not aware, there is nothing inherently British about Trafalgar. Lord Nelson defeated the combined naval troops of France and Spain off the south-west coast of Spain near a place Cape Trafalgar on October 21, 1805.
Eight years later in 1813, British rulers and landowners of the day built the statue of Lord Nelson at the top of Broad Street and called the area Trafalgar Square.
It took 25 years after the battle off Cape Trafalgar for the British to name Trafalgar Square – a location near Charing Cross, Central London. Another ten years passed before the monument of Nelson was started in England. The column and statue of Nelson at Trafalgar Square London was completed in 1843.
Only a few weeks ago, journalist Afua Hirsch of the British newspaper The Guardian said that Nelson’s monument in Trafalgar Square London should be torn down because he was a white supremacist, and of course it has brought verbal outrage against her.
– MICHAEL RAY
