As you know, Oliver Dowden laments threats to all British statues – indeed, this week found the Conservative chairman in Washington DC, making a speech about such things to an American thinktank. As a keen student of his joined-up theories, I’ve always looked forward to the day Oliver feels ready to give us his speech on the disgraceful 2012 removal of the Jimmy Savile statue from Glasgow’s Scotstoun leisure centre. Have we not got to live with our history? Debate it, yes, question it, yes – but ultimately preserve every handcarved wooden statue of a paedo in whatever family setting happens to boast one.
In the meantime, according to Dowden, woke ideology is putting the west at risk from countries such as Russia, even though Russians are so woke they have whole parks of torn-down statuary, featuring figures whose historical legacy they didn’t feel particularly minded to debate or live with when they were yanking them off the plinths. Absolute snowflakes.
I can’t remember whether the Tory chairman does street name culture-warring yet – only a matter of time, obviously – but he could certainly salute the tailors of London’s Savile Row for sticking with the name, no matter the vicious jibes about bespoke shellsuits that it doubtless drew from the wokerati of the time. And Oliver could also take issue with the users of the Scarborough footpath who no longer wished it to be known as Savile’s View, to say nothing of the local council which stripped Savile of the freedom of Scarborough. The monstrous television presenter’s ability to make use of said freedom was arguably limited at the time, given he was dead, but it was widely felt the act was symbolic and respectful of the victims.
Forty odd miles away in York this week, the issue raises itself once more in the wake of Prince Andrew’s decision to agree a multimillion-dollar settlement with a woman he has “no recollection” of meeting, not even when she was a trafficked minor, and not even when there’s a photo of him with his arm round her which also features convicted child sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell – a photo that was probably snapped by dead paedophile Jeffrey Epstein. According to the settlement statement, “Prince Andrew regrets his association with Epstein”. Which is weird, because when Emily Maitlis asked his HRH if he did, he honked: “No, still not … and the reason being that the people that I met and the opportunities that I was given to learn … were actually very useful.” Well quite. You don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater, and you don’t throw the Dummies Guide to Business out with the international child sex trafficker. In fact, you don’t even throw out the international child sex trafficker.
Anyway. For whatever reason, the city of York is mulling its ties with the Duke thereof, with councillors declaring they will seek to revoke Prince Andrew’s honorary freedom of their city at the next full council meeting. Excitingly for Dowden’s speechwriters, this is not an isolated incident. Mid and East Antrim council will hold a debate in June on the renaming of Prince Andrew Way in Carrickfergus, though Prince Andrew Park and Prince Andrew Gardens in south Belfast both look to be getting away with it as things stand.
By chance, a couple of weeks ago I read in the Shropshire Star about the residents of a Telford street who are also mulling a name change. Where once they were pleased or simply indifferent to live on Prince Andrew Drive, there are now differences of opinion among residents. Some feel that it’s time to freshen things up. “We think it should change,” said one, who was planning to write to the council. Others were more of the Dowden persuasion. “We don’t agree with what he might have done,” another neighbour told the paper, “but you can’t keep changing things. You can’t erase history. He’s still part of the royal family.” A further resident speculated that it wouldn’t make any difference. “I couldn’t be doing with the hassle of changing my address on everything,” she added.
That in some ways feels most relatably British – the weary understanding that your street is named after some out-and-out shit, set against the full spectrum bureaucratic horror show of attempting to do something about it. It’s the absolute knowledge that what should be relatively simple will pretty soon involve someone very nice at the post office explaining to you that while your street might have a new name, you’re going to have to pay for a redirection of mail from your own home, to your own home, as technically the mapping software hasn’t caught up. Next: the bank. By the time you’re into your second hour of robot chat assistant with Yodel you’re very much at the stage of “Fine! I give in! I have always lived in Harold Shipman Row, and I always will! Restore factory settings and leave me to my fuming.”
As one of the residents of Prince Andrew Drive commented tartly: “There’s another street near here called Sussex Close. I wouldn’t want to live there either!” Well now. That feels sufficiently generalised as to open a whole other can of worms. Could the entire county of Sussex suffer a kind of genre-killing, at the remote hands of two Montecito residents whose Spotify podcast has been taken into special measures? Given the deep-set establishment resistance to changing literally anything at all in the country if it relates to slavers and princes and other people who’ve “suffered enough”, we could be nearing the phase where it’s simpler for the Duke of York to hang on to his titles and York-based honours and so on, and for York itself to rebrand as something else entirely. Giuffre, say, or Maitlis.
For now, it all remains very unclear. The fact is, we simply don’t KNOW what we’re allowed to feel about any of our local community environments unless some politician who lives in London tells us – ideally while he’s twatting about in Washington. Washington DC, that is – not Washington Tyne and Wear, which might well wish to consider the unfortunate associations with some of the most shameless opportunists in the world.
Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist
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