Sunday 14 June 2020

Of Gandhi and Gladstone


I'd say that the BBC journalist responsible for the website report Calls to remove 'racist' Gandhi statue in Leicester is unsympathetic to those calls, given that all the people quoted argue the same thing - that the statue should stay. 

In contrast, the BBC journalist responsible for the report headlined William Gladstone: University of Liverpool to rename building over slavery links writes like an anti-Gladstone campaigner, with not even the faintest whiff of an opposing view. 

This latter article includes the following:
Liberal politician William Ewart Gladstone was born in Liverpool in 1809 and is the only person to have been prime minister on four separate occasions.  
He is described as having "ultra-conservative" views... 
Being startled at Gladstone of all people being 'described as having "ultra-conservative" views', I looked for the source of that claim and found it at www.gov.uk. Here's what it says there:
Liberal politician William Ewart Gladstone was born in Liverpool in 1809 and is the only person to have been prime minister on four separate occasions.  
Gladstone was elected Tory MP for Newark in December 1832, aged 23, with ultra-conservative views.   
Ah, so the BBC churnalist who copied and pasted that didn't even copy and paste it accurately. Though he may have entered Parliament as an "ultra-conservative" the great Liberal PM famously didn't remain one. The Gladstone of 1832 wasn't the Gladstone of 1882. 

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