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Interview of Leutha, by Georgie Wemyss
Interview
- Media metadata | Métadonnées multimédias
- interviewer | interviewer
- Georgie Wemyss
- interviewee | interviewé
- Leutha
- took place on | a eu lieu le
- 19 October 2023
- took place at | a eu lieu dans
- Online
- right held by | droit détenu par
- Leutha and Georgie Wemyss
GW
So thank you very much, for agreeing to be interviewed. I'm interviewing you as an activist and the focus of this interview is on the statue of Robert Milligan. Could you start off by just telling me about how you came to be interested in the Milligan statue?
Leutha
I don't think I really noticed it after it was installed particularly, until I read an article which appeared in The Islander. And that was kind of very much presenting Milligan, who I had not heard of previously, as this kind of ‘Father of the Isle of Dogs’ and it was then discussing the building of the West Indian merchants who, who built the Docks and then basically saying or recalling that in 1800 the Prime Minister declared a public holiday on the day the foundation was laid. “Could this happen again on the island? On the 12th of July 2000.”
I thought this it seemed to be quite strange, that an article that would celebrate this period in history with the West India Docks, basically founded by a consortium of plantation owners who wanted to protect their goods when their arrived in London by putting them in a docks with a wall around them.
GW
So when was this?
Leutha
This was in 1998, so we’d gone through the experience of having Derek Beackon, the BNP councillor elected locally in perhaps one of the lowest turnouts in a council by election, but he did actually manage to get elected. And that was a big shock for people, I think. The fact was he didn't really know what to do, Yeah, getting elected was as much as surprise for him as it was for anybody else, I believe. So once he was elected he didn't, really know what to do next. Apart from kind of reproduce the kind of BNP ideology.Basically they were a Nazi party.
GW
At the time in 1998, When you heard about the Milligan statue, was that when you first you heard about Milligan, were you living on the Isle of Dogs. What was your relationship with the Isle of Dogs?
Leutha
I had been living on the Isle of Dogs for a number of years, by then. In different places at different times. I moved around on both sides of the island. I'd also seen that the transformation of the sort of place where the Council were very keen to find people to take on Council flats because there was a surplus of housing in London at the time. And the kind of centre of the island is kind of wasteland. And then having seen Canary Wharf being built up since moving there in 1979, so I've been there, been living there for quite a while by that time.
GW
You live that through many of the changes that were taking place and the election.
Leutha
Yeah.
GW
But you literally didn't know that the statue was there.
You didn't know anything about it until that 1998 Islander article that you referred to.
Leutha
No.
GW
So you said a little bit earlier about what the statue represents.
Can you say a little bit more about that and also how you found out about that beyond what was in The Islander article?
Leutha
Well, what struck me was not so much what the statue represents, but it's positioning in a particular locality. I'm seemed to give it a particular signification in that it, it becomes a representation of power.
And I think there's another story running alongside this, and this is the Henry Moore statue of Old Flo, which was given to be put on a council housing estate and is now it’s in pride of place of one of the decorations of Canary Wharf. So it's like, the positioning of statues in an urban environment gives whatever that representation is, turns that into a kind of reference point as people move through that space. So in that sense, the representation is linked to precisely reading this piece in The Islander which has a particular take on Robert Milligan, that actually had been sparked off by the repositioning of the of the statue.
GW
So there's the statue reaching where well beyond its actual placement.
But then the placement being a way of spreading those kinds of ideas are you said it much better than me.
I just wanted to just ask you about The Islander and what it is, what was The Islander?
Leutha
The Islander was a I think it was a monthly or quarterly newspaper that was put out by the Association of Island communities and it's printed. And it was generally a widely available I would say. When I subsequently went to meeting of the Association of Island Communities I couldn't help getting the feeling that a lot of the people had known each other when they were at primary school. I'm not knocking it but that's what it was like for somebody coming in and that's what I felt. I mean I I think those sorts of relationships can have a beneficial effect on occasions. But on other occasions they can have a have a negative impact.
And I did feel that on reading this, this had been going on and this was the first that other residents get to hear of it, maybe they'd had discussions within the Association of Island Communities I don't know. But certainly. Yeah.
GW
And you haven't being wandering along the North Quay at that time because there wasn't really anything going on the North Quay at that time?
Leutha
I used to wander around, on the Isle of Dogs. I found that it certainly helped me think about things by walking around. If I had something to think about, if I did it whilst walking, I found this beneficial – the physical exercise and then obviously I was coming across a whole range of different views and aspects of on the Isle of Dogs. And then looking at maps, things like the Charles Booth maps of the island, seeing where the some of the poorest areas from the Charles Booth maps were still the poorest areas.
So there's a whole load of stuff.
There's just so much to walk around and to see and do and all the time you area’s changing from this kind of, there used to be a high level glass walkway that went over the Millwall docks where Glengall Grove is now. You’d walk up the steps and then walk across this glass covered walkway to get to the other side of the island. It's now being replaced by I think it's kind of Dutch bridge, looks like to me anyway, but I think it can lift up.
GW
So that was kind of you're wanderings in the 1990s, were you might have seen it, but you didn't particular if you had you hadn't, you wouldn't have thought about it.
Leutha
I didn't really notice it. I could have walked by it and I and I think that often happens. That people get so used to something when they walk by it day after day after day and they don't really notice it. But when you're actually wandering and thinking about things, you're more likely to notice things than if you were concentrating on getting to work. You would be perhaps have a whole lot of other worries on your head that which mean you cut yourself off from such noticing such things.
GW
And then after you read the article and you kind of began to think about Milligan as a person and you became aware that there was, I think, Canary Wharf Group and various others were setting themselves up to celebrate the bi-centenary of the Isle of Dogs.
Leutha
Yes.
GW
on 12th of July 2000.
GW
Had you by then noticed the statue. In situ?
Leutha
I probably had a look at it as a result of the article. I can't specifically remember the first time I saw it.
GW
What were your kind of feelings about what was happening in the year 2000 in that space and if there's any way that you can remember any reference to the Milligan statue at that time? Please say.
Leutha
Well, I did send a response to The Islander in November 1999 in which I argued that the name Isle of Dogs goes back to Elizabethan days. And referring also to the play by Thomas Nash and Ben Johnson called The Isle of Dogs – of which there is no extant copy – but which actually establishes the name “the Isle of Dogs”over 200 years previously, and it seemed that this kind of, this separation of the building of the docks and the disappearance of that previous history needed an explanation and I expressed that I found it offensive that in the discussion of the West Indian merchants they'd failed to say that they were slave owners. I thought that, but it's like oomph – suddenly everything comes into existence at once. And then indeed when we start talking about what was happening at that period of time, with the whole the revolt against enslavement, in particular in Santo Domingo, where they successfully drove out the French. There's a whole context there which stretches beyond the particular interest of this particular country.
But then also specifically referring to the significant number of people within this country who did actually push for the abolition of slavery. So, the idea to have another toast to the prosperity of the Isle of Dogs seemed to be not really taking on board everything that that might mean. And then putting that in the context of the Stephen Lawrence inquiry. And I mean it was around the time I was getting involved with the Black and Asian Studies Association who are organizing a conference about archiving the experience of Black and Asian people in this country back through that period of time. So It was kind of, linked to that opening up of coordinating different archive material is linked to decisively to the activism and that the two go hand in hand. So you know you find something out, you see that this is being completely ignored. You say well. If you're going to talk about this, why not talk about the whole story?
So It got printed but it I there was never any real response to it.
GW
You, wrote the letter to The Islander?
Leutha
Yes.
I've got them up in front of me. Actually on a website. It just helps me remember what was in there
GW
And also you mentioned in your Virginia article and you, say yes, ‘it wants to celebrate Its bicentenary’, so I'm you are very much reacting against the use of the word ‘celebration’ as well.
Leutha
Exactly.
GW
Can you, when it when it actually happened?
I think you're article was published in 2000?
Leutha
Yes.
GW
Obviously you wrote it before the actual centenary events.
Can you remember anything again in those in those events that referenced the Robert Milligan statue or, Umm, where that it would have been a well, can you just remember any reference to it and if so or if not, any other kind of points that you might want to raise about that particular event?
Leutha
So one of the things, I sent letters to the directors of Canary Wharf raising a number of concerns with them, including a copy of the letter I sent to The Islander. So I sent that to all the directors of Canary Wharf Group and I sent them with copies to a number of councillors as well, and the local MP, Bernie Grant, Tony Blair and Ted Joh's of the Association of Island Communities and an activist list called the Mayday 2K list.
And yeah, I didn't get any reply.
However, I did feel that by writing to them, keeping a copy of it and publishing it then it would mean that at some future stage there could not say that they were unaware of it, or no attempt to be made to make them aware.
GW
And did you go to have a look at the exhibition of at that time?
Leutha
I can’t remember now.
GW
Don't worry if you can't remember then.
Leutha
No, I can’t remember. I can remember the in the event of what happened was there was a there was a very ill-considered letter that appeared in the magazine produced on Canary Wharf. So, this was on May the 4th 2000. They're talking about the question of the issue that was ‘would you, Birch scum, who defiled the cenotaph?’
And one of the people who responded identified themselves with Canary Wharf management said ‘yes, I am ex RAF and think that not only should they be birched but they should be branded on the forehead so people know who they are’.
The paper was called The Wharf, and was a weekly paper for Canary Wharf and Docklands. And so I sent a letter in response and I mentioned that branding was a common practice used to deal with runaway slaves. Sometimes it was used anyway. Yeah, and there's no reason to think that it should quench the desire for Freedom and Justice today anymore than it did in slavery time. And then ah, that the suggestion becomes Perhaps a little more sinister when looking at it in light of the Canary Wharf proposal to celebrate of slavery on July the 12th.
GW
Did they publish it?
Leutha
Oh yes, it got published.
Yeah, the paper that the people producing The Wharf were not the same as Canary Wharf people. It was a different organization.
GW
Alright, OK.
Leutha
They were, yeah, but I did as soon as it came out. I got a phone call. Immediately the first time that I got response.
GW
So the phone call from The Wharf?.
Leutha
From the Canary Wharf Group.
GW
Uh from Canary Wharf, and what did they say?
Leutha
‘We must talk’.
And one of the things that that led to is that when they had the event on the Mudchute, which was the kind of a major area built with the soil from the docks, they made sure that they invited stalIs from all the British Caribbean Islands. I think they went through a mechanism between the British Caribbean Islands and their representation for events in this country, I think they went through those bodies, but they are actually all had a stall there from all the different West Indian islands.
I mean put it this way to have some event that actually recognizes the history and the fact that generally history is full of contradictions is like a step forward and by having that event and by having that range of people coming, they you know that a little information about the different different islands that they came from.
GW
I'm just looking through the program for the event Fun day programme.
I can just see what was happening on the main stage. They haven't really talked about that, but I'll probably find it somewhere in there. There was a debate in there as well a kind of discussion about the main gate, the Hibbert Gate, that was very much focused on rather than focusing on the statue because that was unveiled at the event.
Leutha
So there was a gateway, they had reconstructed this gateway which had a ship on the on the top, which was a representation of a ship called The Hibbert: George Hibbert, was one of the main people involved in the organization of slavery in Jamaica, and he was also a well-known for his calls for liberty in England, when it came to the relationship of the wealthy to the aristocracy in London. A strange mixture of authoritarianism and libertarianism, which I think unfortunately some people have reacquainted us with this in more modern times.
I mean, again, all of it's having a stimulus from what's going on around you that actually helps you trying to better understand how we've ended up where we are and what would be the best way to try and not destroy the planet. Because the way I see it is everything today, I see that they people who claim to be responsible for things aren’t being responsible for them at all, and the people who desperately would like to do something and apply the knowledge which the’ve built up over the years are often being ignored
GW
To move on to 2003 the opening of the museum, the initial opening.
Leutha
At that time, I had been working at the Saint Matthias Old Church, which was on Poplar High Street, the Church of the East India Company. This was before I started working for the Council originally full time. From that experience there I discovered when my sister was visiting that a gravestone, right by where we were standing, was actually our great, great, great grandmother's gravestone. It's kind of strange.
GW
That's amazing. How did you know that?
Leutga
My sister had been doing some family history and she recognized the name Creighton. And I've been trying to access the Port and River Archives. The team that was setting up the museum of Docklands up had some space round the back of Poplar High Street. I can't remember exactly where, but I can remember going up and seeing them, trying to find out whether one could access the archive or not and all those sorts of questions. And then it was around that time that the announcement of the funds to develop the museum had come through. And I was kind of looking forward to at being able to access some of the archive. So that was my kind of involvement. I didn't really notice the statue. It was more at the time of the when doing the London Sugar and Slavery gallery and the preparations for that.
GW
Because you were one of the people who was on the consultative group.
Leutha
Yes.
GW
So how did you get invited? Was it particular piece of work that you've been doing ?
Leutha
By that time, yes, part of my reading was focusing on discovering a number of African writers who had a link, in Tower Hamlets through the publication of these five writers here, at the end of the 18th century. And rather than dwell on Milligan, when I saw there is people were taking some time to get used to the idea that there was a problematic history, to actually focus on something positive and through that I got to work with the Tower Hamlets African and Caribbean Mental Health Organization (THACMHO).
And so then we basically from the first, I started off on my own, but after I met Harry Cumberbatch, he invited me to volunteer with them on developing the history walk, which over the next few years went through various kind of iterations and eventually by 2005 Hansib Press co-published the booklet. We the 1st edition had been done, thanks for the Council paying for the printing of it. It seemed to me to focus more on – I mean, I found it remarkable that we could create a walk through Tower Hamlets that involved not one or two but it’s actually five African writers who had interacted with the East End. And I thought that was much more interesting discussion to have and how the East End became a crossroads of different people, which is why it then became of particular significance, particularly with the people called the ‘Black Tories’, who were the people who fought for the British against the Americans. They had come back to London, but many of whom had become destitute. With the method of the benefit system of its day, meant you had to go back to the parish you came from. Which if you came from Rural England, that’s one thing, but if you if you grew up on a plantation that was now taken over by the American revolutionaries, you can’t very well go back there. And then the story is how a number of them went to settle in Sierra Leone, which I hadn't understood. There was some vague awareness of it but I hadn’t understood the significance of that. And then I became involved in in trying to better understand those stories.
GW
And so the stories would be told through the walk.
Leutha
Yes
GW
And were the participants of the walk people from the Tower Hamlets African Caribbean communities? Was it run by Tower Hamlets African Caribbean communities. Or was it both?
Leutha
It was the Tower Hamlets African Caribbean Mental Health Organization. And what we did, we looked at the material and then we divided it up so that different people would write different bits. So reading through it, you've got there's a little bit about, somebody selected the material and then at the end of it, there's a little bit of discussion of the of the different people who contributed to it.
GW
So I'm just trying to kind of draw it a little bit back to the questions because would it, would it therefore be fair to say that when we talk about what you and others feel about the statue, what else does it concern in, in what way?
Why does the statue attract disturbed concern? Are you saying that actually the statue, it was there and you knew it was there?
And you weren't reacting just directly to the statue, but all of these histories was not to engage with it, but rather to engage with something which was, which was more positive and which was more challenging of the kinds of histories that were being represented?
Leutha
Yes. And I would say to that, I was, something I came to appreciate later I can't remember,
I think it was around that time reading Claude Mckay’s piece about the Yellow Peril and Docklands. And one of the things that he remarked in this piece, which was published in 1920 in Workers Dreadnought, the Sylvia Pankhurst, that was that was published a little bit further north, just by Roman Rd.
I think it was and yes, so basically, what he says is, ‘the wealth is to be found in the docks, not in the homes of the rich’. And this thing that he was referring to, access to resources and a having people do the work. You need both of those. And then you've got a dynamic system which generates wealth and that is actually by controlling the docks and by controlling the port. That has a greater significance than pillaging the homes of the wealthy.
And that to me, then started to focus on his involvement, precisely when Sylvia Pankhurst and other people who he was involved with there, which he describes in his autobiography. I found that very interesting and then linking that with when we did the Seamen’s conference at the museum where we had a number of people who had been sailors, particularly with the Harrison line a company that recruited in Barbados. And so having their memories recounted at the dock where they're ship came in so they we were being in the building.
‘Oh! I remembered that over there and this over here!’.
Yeah, I kind of felt that was more important.
GW
And would you say that was shared by others in the group?
Leutha
I would say we all pretty much felt that.
Actually, the collection of those people's stories. And in the end, we had a conference and we had one of the dockers join us in a discussion of seamen of that from their memories of that period. So for sailors who came from the Caribbean probably first encounter London through the docks. And that's also something that comes across with Claude McKay. He, I mean, he spent a lot of time in the USA after he left Jamaica. So his account is of all of that.
GW
Why was it yellow peril?
Leutha
Because of the Chinese population in Limehouse, which at the time was the centre of the Chinese community in London, as I understand it anyway.
GW
So when was the Seamen’s conference?
Leutha
2004.
GW
So it's opened and they must have just about started getting all the criticisms about their empire gallery around that time?
Leutha
Yes.
GW
As well of so, I guess they were getting criticisms about the gallery and that was going to be heritage money being made available in the run up to the abolition of the slave trade bicentenary events.
So because you've been in these other events, they these you've been pretty much involved in various different ways you agreed to join that consultative group. I've seen your name there.
Leutha
Yes.
GW
Just go and going back to the statue, can you remember any discussion about having around the fact that this very much more challenging exhibition was going to be happening inside and the statue was going to continue standing up outside?
Leutha
I think the main discussion was about shrouding it in black cloth. Which I think was what actually happened and there were other things which again I found more interesting as part of the exhibition. For instance, the transformation of a portrait of George Hibbert who we mentioned before. And so the way that this was a painting done around 1811. I think it was shortly after or around the time of the that the Robert Milligan statue was actually made. And I think that In the exhibition they had an adaptation of it - of Robert Wedderburn.
GW
Yes, I remember.
I think it's still there.
Leutha
Yes.
And to me the transformation of that image went a bit further at that time, in terms of what was possible and in terms of that the seeing that image in the way that, that.
The way that Hibbert was dressed as a man of power, man of substance, of his time, and then the the story of Robert Wedderburn, which at this at the time I was working with Asher and Martin Hoyles and Shango Baku. The performance was a little re-enactment of speech. We had a historical introduction and then we started or having somebody sweep up, moaning about doing housework. And then Shango playing Wedderburn comes along and gives a speech and everything.
Like so that the whole of Robert Wedderburn, was something we were addressing through these these dramatized readings of these. This was all in 1820, at the time of the Cato Street Conspiracy trial. It seems that here is at the at the time of the conspirators were accused, he was already in jail. So they couldn't accuse him of involvement.
But maybe, having looked at some of his writings I think that he would have not been happy to proceed down the road that the conspirators did, which didn't lead anywhere apart from a few of them got hanged because they have been infiltrated.
Make it that what you will.
GW
Would you say that your view that the focus really needed to be on opening up people's minds and knowledge to figures such as Wedderburn and contexts that he was in umm with shared by other people, other people in in that group at the time we rather than a focus on the statues outside, we've got to do something about it.
Leuhta
I would think so. We were more focused on what we were doing and some of the other bits might come up in conversation from time to time, but didn't really become part of the focus of the group.
So we’d much rather be looking at how we could engage with the environment and – but at the same time, I think maybe the work that we were doing meant that when later on in the time of the Black Lives Matter, people were far more aware of the significance of Milligan.
GW
Yes, that's a really important point.
Leutha
Yes, I think we contributed to a shift in opinions in general and I think that by concentrating on the what was put in the Power Writers book I think that was. That was very important.
GW
Sorry, there was.
That was put in which book?
Leutha
The Power Writers and the Struggle against slavery.
That was the 2005 book put out by THACMHO.
There was an earlier question A4 format.
GW
So just to go back to that sort of shrouding, I've seen a picture of it.
I know that it's now been donated to the archives.
Leutha
Yeah.
GW
In 2007 it was swathed in black and tied with black robe.
have you got any memory of how it was decided that that was what would be done, and any memory of seeing it?
Leutha
I don't remember being involved in that discussion, but I remember seeing it.
GW
Do you remember in a sort of anybody's reactions to it at the time?
Leutha
I remember there was a discussion about how some people had raised the issue. And because there was no impetus to really deal with the issue, or how to resolve the issue by the time the actual the exhibition was opened. This was the compromise with an understanding that the matter would be looked at again later on, and I think one of the one of the aspects of it was that part of the installation involved a plaque which was put up there by the directors of the West India Company. Ah, and I think the fact that that was there with no commentary on it then.
GW
So the plaque that you're talking about, the sort of original words about the illustrious Robert Milligan., but that you saying that there wasn't another plaque k that was giving a different alternative story?
Leutha
Not that I remember. There might have been some curation of it that.
I think that might well have been, but I can't remember it.
GW
Yeah, I think I have got no record of anything alternative being put up there.
Leutha
No, but I think the shrouding of it by using a nonverbal means of communication meant that's something that everybody could agree on.
And so I think that was a very sensible way to deal with the issue at the time.
I don't know one necessarily wants to rush to deal with it
GW
Because there were different views within the group from the funders, from the directorship of the museum, from the British Waterways and LDDC, or who had some sort of involvement with it.
Leutha
Exactly.
Whereas by doing that, with the proviso that the question would be addressed in the fullness of time meant that people could focus on actually the rest of the exhibition, rather than being bogged down in the discussion in the Milligan statue.
GW
Are you surprised that it stayed up for so long? After that, I mean we're talking about 13 years later, yeah.
Leutha
Yes, I mean, the thing is, again I would say with the shrouding of it, the very fact that it's covered by a shroud means that the psychological impact of seeing it Is quite different because you don't actually see it. You see the shroud enveloping it and I think I'm going back to the previous point about the representation and then the significance and how the having a statue can enhance particular view of a locality or view of the world. That the shroud was actually very effective in modifying that a bit like you know the William Gladstone statue up in Bow with the red hands. Are you familiar with that statue?
GW
Was tell me more.
Leutha
It's about the Bryant and May.
GW
I haven't seen it.
GW
So it's about the match women.
Leutha
Yes. And is it there's a statue of Gladstone erected by Bryant of Bryant and May.
And activists have been painting the hands red. For a number of years and it gets cleaned off and then it gets cleaned, painted on again, and then it gets cleaned off and then it continues like that.
And this is just like as long as it's there there’s gonna be people who want to repaint it. But actually that shows there is a remaining ah attitude in the community that understands that.
GW
That just reminds me of the point you made earlier about that letter to The Wharf.
Back in 2000, and why it was that there was suddenly a letter in there about defiling the cenotaph. Because I mean the cenotaph is normally only remembered in November, isn't it?
Leutha
Yeah
GW
People kind of forget about it for the rest of the time, so why in May there was suddenly a letter about a that.
I can't remember what else might have been going on at the time, but do you think it was
It was focused on. It was thinking about umm, particular statues on the Isle of Dogs.
Leutha
[This was the year that the statue of Churchill was turned punk]
No, I don't. I think they forgotten all about that. The whole way the question was posed.
It's like an invitation for somebody to go one step further.
‘Ohh no, merchants do good. They should be branded as well’
I mean, it's just like, if you have a shift of a discussion by taking one position and they will other people's take position little bit further out than that. And I think they were kind of hostage to fortune. I that that is a sort of game.
GW
And in that particular case.
Leutha
Yeah.
GW
What you were involved in the time and what you were wanting you, you and others were wanting to be the focus on and also your consideration of the fact of that exhibition and all of the work that went into its production, it did contribute to why people were aware of it later on and and that it was, if it was, then one of the first ones to be taken down after the Colston statue had been removed, in fact It was graffitied
Were you were aware of that it when it was being graffiti before it was taken down?
Or did you just kind of hear about it when it was removed?
Leutha
By that time, I was no longer living on the Isle of Dogs. I think I was aware. But not because I'd seen it directly, but probably saw it on social media or something like that.
GW
And so taking on board what you said about your in your involvement with the walks and with the seafarers and the focus that you wanted with the development of the London Sugar and Slavery Gallery. So and the fact that you wanted a lot more to be remembered and differently than just focused focusing on the statue?
Could you say a little bit more you've kind of said in answer to the others about the five African writers and about Wedderburn, but are there other kind of past events or particular people of the past that you've wanted to remember in the work that you've been doing in in that area?
Leutha
I can't think of anything off hand.
GW
You've already said those groups, I just wanted to see if there's any others.
Leutha
I mean, more recently there's now the business with the Rustat monument in Jesus College Chapel, part of the Church of England. It all went through some ecclesiastical court branch of the law, which most people are unaware of. And didn't really understand how it worked and now the master the college is a woman, she was trying to organize a rearrangement whereby this monument would be put in a historic area no longer in the Chapel. As regards Rustat, he personally wasn't only involved in the slave trade, but actually it was a former courtier of King Charles I, who after the restoratioin was involved in running in the Royal African Company. The fact that this company was set up by King Charles II to make money, particularly for his brother, the Duke of York, who became James II The ecclesiastical court dismissed the problem: oh well he was a loyal courtier and it wasn't illegal.
Well, the king had said it wasn't illegal. I mean, it's just like people who really did not understand the issues involved.
And then I came across a more curious memorial. No, I wouldn't say necessarily curious is the best word. A memorial which raises different questions, and that is the memorial to Thomas Corker in the Church of King Charles the Martyr,Falmouth.
And what I found interesting is that Thomas Corker, who some local activist raise this issue concerning, actually had a family in Guinea. And the whole way the slave trade was mediated on the coast, was often through families established with European men marrying the women of the African aristocracy. And through that, they would then have a certain status. So not only did they understand what happened in the slave trade after what the various European powers were doing, but they also grew up understanding the African culture from there others.
GW
How do you spell Corker?
Leutha
You it gets built in a number of different ways. One in relationship to this particular monument is CORKER. But the name is also Caulker in other parts of the world in Africa and in America. So one of the things I learned is that I'm using text strings for searches is good, but understanding what other names or other text strings might be used as regards the same person. Yeah, there's still a lot of work to be done there. So I really wanna pick up on the connections.
GW
Yeah, yeah, that's such an interesting piece of knowledge. I had no idea about those relationships., but I wonder if other people in the whole Cast in Stone Group do because of, you know, being based Exeter University being much more that part of the world.
Leutha
I'd be very interested to find out. I know there's a there's a booklet that was put out by Kate Thomas. And I think the, some discussion going on with the with the vicar and then the vicar moved on and there's a new vicar and I think it's they're hoping to deal with it.
GW
That's really interesting.
Leutha
What I've been saying. One last thing on that, there’s a book by E. Louise, one of the descendants of Thomas Corker in living in America. Elizabeth Clevland Hardcastle, 1741-1808 is about some of Thomas Corker’s family based in Guinea who moved over to America, South Carolina, I think. But Louise went to visit the church and she had a document drawn up establishing the birth certificate as regards Thomas Corker.
In her book, she goes and she gets this documentation in 1978 when she was researching her book. And in all the discussion, the fact that this descendants have Corker in both Guinea and in South Carolina has not been thought about. I don't know if it's really that they've been involved in discussion or not.
GW
Yeah, but yeah, for contextualization as well of what you're in, you could be interested in.
L
OK.
GW
I wanted to get on to some of the sort of further questions.
There's not much to be said about barriers that you might have faced in in wanting to get the statue removed or something because you made the decision that that wasn't the main.
That's not the main focus of your energies, but it's but, but nonetheless the energies that you put into the museum work did contribute to it, but maybe you know that questions and if you, if there is anything that you would say about barriers, cause maybe if you hadn't been so aware of the type of barriers that there are that prevent the statue just being taken down, that you might have, you might have thought differently about it.
I mean, did you did you think that it's not worth really spending time because you would have to spend too much time if you really wanted to have it taken down or wasn't it that important to you?
Leutha
I think maybe the statue itself is one thing. The power that it signifies is something else. And I think that by focusing on what we focused, that meant that the statue has moved. There's sufficient documentation there that anyone who visits the museum and looks at it from various angles, they will start to see that the arguments which had been developed in defence of Colston, they were gonna have a lot of problems with. And they couldn't really just reproduce those arguments. So, they thought, well, why don't we take it down? Otherwise, it might look what happened with Colston might happen to that statue and have to, like, you know, keep it under constant surveillance. And then where's all that going to go?
GW
Back when you were doing the consultative work and wanting to raise issues such as those of Wedderburn, were you made aware of the fact that the statue didn't belong to the museum, that it was on British Waterways land. That they couldn't do anything about it anyway?
Leutha
I don't know. Maybe they did and that's why we didn't want to take the matter on. Maybe if they said that, then we would. It's quite easy to tell. If, when you're having a discussion with people, people are kind of see some hope at the end of the, you know, that we might get somewhere. So in terms of saying, you know, you’ve only got so much energy, where is it this place to spend it? And if they say oh, you've got to go through these people and these people and these people you think it would be much better if a museum paid worker did it than me!
GW
So just to get a frank view from you, in an ideal world, what would happen to the Milligan statue? So it was taken down, it was then handed by the what's now the Canal and Rivers Trust, which took over from British Waterways. It was their property and they then donated it to the museum. What do you think should happen to it now?
Leutha
Well, I thought about this, and it reminded me a bit of the bringing down of the Vendome column in Paris. The painter Courbet’s role in that. I read a discussion about this from Asger Jorn, the Danish artist involved in the 10000 Years of Nordic Folk Art project.
He distinguished between the 3 levels of vandalism he saw going on in establishing the Vendôme column. The Vendôme refers to the Vandals, it was a town that was built by the Vandals, so the whole question of vandalism is already in the nature of the Vendôme column. Then Napoleon vandalized it by having it erected with himself on the top. The “great leader”. And then, Courbet who was advocating at the time of the Paris Commune that it should be brought down. Well, he wanted it brought down. During the Paris Commune, the communards did it on the basis that they could melt it down and to create cannonballs from the metal with which to defend themselves. That's what I thought. I didn't come up with any ...
GW
Make kind of make some cannonballs.
Leutha
Send them back in time to the Paris commune. I don't know.
I mean that's what I thought in response.
I didn't come up with anything conclusive …
GW
So finally another kind of quite broad question which is around this idea of heritage. And why is heritage or it may or may not be important. I know different definitions of what heritage can be to different people, but what's your idea and why may it or may not be important to you or anyone else?
Leutha
I’m very much influenced by notions of psychogeography i.e. as you move through an area, you're influenced by the built environment. You're influenced by the accompanying statues. You're influenced by the architecture and certainly the idea that heritage is one particular element of that that can be seen as relating to the past in particular, or is it? or the certain ambiguity there? To what extent is it based in the past? and what extent is it projecting in the future?
So really, the more I think about it, the more I changed my mind on that. But, I find the thinking about it, that is what is interesting. Because by thinking about it, it helps me better understand what these different elements around me, generally called ‘Heritage’, what they actually signify and what they can mean. Since living in Ipswich and looking a lot the wooden carvings. I never realized how many wooden carvings from the kind of late medieval period through to - a lot of the hammer-beam roofs in the churches and everything like that. Ihere’s a lot going on there, right? So really, I just think that by having these things, we can go and physically interact with and look at directly walk through walking side, walk around and everything like that. A lot of that is regarded as ‘heritage’, but I see it as something actually that is existing in in the real world around us and that it's actually to have a creative interaction with that, which can best be done in relationship to other people and listening to what they've got to say and listening to, you know, they bring extra bits to the to the discussion. That's what I think is important.
GW
Thank you for sharing all of that. And is there, is there anything else that you wanted to say because you said that you said the beginning that this is kind of led you to think more around public memorials? I mean, you said a bit about the wooden statues around where you are. Is there anything else that generally about public memorials that you wanted to say more on?
Leutha
It's something I learned to do is to take time and a particularly now that I've retired, I've got less pressure to go out and work. The opportunity to just go around and look at stuff and find out a little bit more, there's so much available on the Internet now.
And one of the things that throughout that period was, I did a spell at The National Archives, on the Moving Here Project and that was back in 2003-2004 in the that was all linked in with conference we had about Seamen.
But most of that stuff, you know, oral history recordings I made, it's probably buried somewhere, but it's not online available. And around that same time I started contributing to Wikipedia. And the stuff that I contributed to Wikipedia has changed – but pretty much most of it is all there. So, I then started to think about what I like about Wikipedia. And how that opens up opportunities for a collaborative process of sharing histories at the same time as recognizing that it also due to different imbalances in society, in who has access to the Internet, in who has free time to do such activity , that it reflects a lot of the biases in general society. But the fact that there's an awareness of this and it's possible to do something about it, even if it’s done, one can't expect to resolve any account of the world that is around us is going to have these biases in because it's a reflection of the world, but by better understanding those biases, we can better understand how to remove the causes of those biases.
GW
Is this something that you're continuing to do?
Leutha
Yes. And it also led me to continue certain inquiries as to how in terms of computer technology in the Internet, these things can be constructed in a way, that generally preserves transparency.
But also with a certain amount of clarity and that enables some long term process, and the very fact that it’s now become, when I started with, you know, a handful of people picking up various things, but how now, I feel more confident that the material on Wikipedia and the related commons site and other sites like that will still be around and generally accessible, certainly for the time being. And that is the lesson that I've learned comparing that to people at The National Archives, feel I was surprised, but I feel that the political pressures under them mean that they are less likely to continue public access to various projects which they get funded for.
GW
Which ties up very nicely with your idea of what heritage can be. That's inspiring to know that that Wikipedia can work in that way.
Leutha
Yes, I mean it, it's it has various activists, I think some of them involved in the Cast in Stone project, there’s various people doing things and I think the Whose Knowledge? is that the group that's involved with that? That, I think is you know important way forward, that actually it's not just Wikipedia itself, it's the opportunity. If people step forward and take them, and which I can, I think you'll probably learn one of my other reflections on academia, is too often it seems to be a bit like kind of set up to establish people's credentials to join the civil service or some other corporate whatever. I think there's a lot of people in academia resisting that, but I think they often find it harder and harder to do so. So, I think it actually finds ways for people to connect up which might survive any problems that arise in that area in the not-too-distant future.