Monuments to Our Enemies, Pt 2: Lloyd George
If I keep this one up I should still be updating it in a couple of decades time. But aside from the odiousness of the politician in question - a man who prefigured generations of liberal imperialists by presiding over perhaps the most squalid and pointless war of mass murder in history, rightly remembered for an unguarded comment that 'we reserve the right to bomb niggers!' - what is interesting in this recent statue is how it exhibits the astounding, if occasionally amusing, decline in the public plastic arts under Social Thatcherism. There are loads of these things about, sculptures made by seemingly Jeff Koons-damaged supermarket decorators, scattered around the occupied metropolis. Most are distinguished by an icky sentimentality: 'Animals at War', 'Women at War' (incurring the ire of Private Eye's 'Piloti' for its placing next to Lutyens' minimalist, pre-kitsch war memorial on Whitehall), the Lawnmower Man canoodling colossi at St Pancras, etc. Seemingly shifted from a place on one of the eaves of Bluewater, this is a compendium of the style's mannerisms: cartoonish features, a hint of 'drama' (the tails of his jacket billow in the wind as he throws his biting rhetoric at Asquith!), the over-buffed Disneyland sheen. This is the public sculpture the age deserves - monuments to moralist mass murderers modelled by the artists of an idiot consensus.
posted by owen hatherley at 6:50 pm
9 Comments:
With any luck the statue was funded by a PFI, which means it'll fall apart in the next few years.
I agree is a flashy and vulgar piece of sculpture, but the press argument that it is a monument to a racist/imperialist was just humbug.
L-G is "rightly remembered for an unguarded comment that 'we reserve the right to bomb niggers!' "
More likely routinely misquoted by people who have only read Noam Chomsky's poorly researched journalism.
Lloyd George almost certainly used the phrase "the right to bomb niggers" but he was being quoted by Frances Stevenson (his personal secretary/mistress/second wife)using it in the context of criticising the stance of Ramsay MacDonald's government in the Geneva Disarmament Conference of 1932 - some twelve years after leaving office.
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/David_Lloyd_George
I am aware of this, and also aware of what you get if you put the quote into google, hence 'unguarded comment'. Whether he was using it to criticise or describe MacDonald's policy is a moot point. Incidentally, I note you don't mention the fact he was running the country during the First World War, a conflict surely even the most craven liberal would be incapable of justifying.
'Noam Chomsky's poorly researched journalism'....good lord.
"More likely routinely misquoted by people who have only read Noam Chomsky's poorly researched journalism. "
is this meant to mean that the misrepresentation of this quote as supporting such a policy follows from the same misrepresentation of this statement in Chomsky's journalism? If so where? Or are you suggesting such a misrepresentation would be the sort of thing one would expect of Chomsky readers, the supposed errors in Chomsky having a rather more circumstantial relation to those of his readers?
...Public Enemy used to say Louis Farrakhan was a prophet. Same thing with Brian Haw, sort of. You would straight off know not to base your ideas on his "analyses". Given he's not a disinformer this way I think you can respect what he's about. A righteous man.
More precisely, what I find so gross (and strangely contemporary) about David L-G was the way he had a sort of simulacra of 'principle' which actually made very little difference to policy. He acknowledged that the First World War was a ludicrous bloodbath based on lies and still waged it; he criticised elements of British imperialism while making no effort as Prime Minister to dismantle it (the 'bomb niggers' comment is in no way uncharacteristic, just unusually candid); for the ridiculous, punitive Treaty of Versailles; for sending troops to Russia in the Civil War as soon as the slaughter on the Western Front was over; oh, and then there's his Great Achievement, a half-cocked attempt at a Welfare State for the deserving poor, one of the reasons why his party descended into well-deserved irrelevance after the early 1920s.
At least Churchill was an honest thug - Lloyd George was a thug with a conscience, and there's little more grotesque.
Brian Haw - yeah, one wouldn't want to base an analysis on one of his speeches. An interesting speaker, though. Lots of rhetorical questions...
that's mean of me to put "analyses" in quote marks instead of finding an exact word. He's right basically and he knows he's right.
yes, the Russian "adventure" at the end of WWI - particularly shameful
is this meant to mean that the misrepresentation of this quote as supporting such a policy follows from the same misrepresentation of this statement in Chomsky's journalism? If so where?
The Guardian, July 5, 1994
http://www.chomsky.info/articles/19940705.htm
IIRC there was some correspondence in the paper at the time.
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