Michael McDowell: Why stop with Berkeley? Cicero was a slave owner too

Trinity College Dublin is an independent university and is as free to name, rename or de-name any part of its campus as any other Irish university.

Given that the Berkeley library was only built in the 1960s and was quite recently described by the college on its 50th anniversary as a “brutalist gem” in architectural terms, its name is hardly one of the institution’s ancient items of heritage. The other modern libraries in Trinity are named after Ussher and Lecky.

James Ussher, a scholarly bishop historian, wrote in 1626: “The religion of the Papists is superstitious and idolatrous: their faith and doctrine erroneous and heretical ... to give them therefore a toleration, or to consent that they may freely exercise their religions ... is a grievous sin”.

William Edward Hartpole Lecky, a 19th century historian and opponent of Home Rule, was a deal more tolerant of Papists but nevertheless wrote that Catholicism was “on the whole a lower type of religion than Protestantism, and it is particularly unsuited to a nation struggling with great difficulties”.

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That George Berkeley owned a small slave plantation in New England in the 17th century is hardly a startling revelation. That he felt morally justified in doing so is not surprising either. After all, he also baptised some of his slaves with a view to their divine redemption.

And even if the library is de-named and renamed, the name of Berkeley is still going to apply to the Californian city and university called after him.

The problem with zealous cancellation of historical figures is that it is completely unhistorical in a broader sense. Do we think less of Cicero because he, like most prominent Romans, was a slave-owner in a slave-owning society? Or do we simply say that most historical figures must be judged in their historical context?

The entire British economy depended for a few imperial centuries on racial subjugation, of which the Atlantic slave trade was just one barbaric example

I think that there is good reason to connect contemporary attitudes to slavery with modern racial discrimination against black people.

Nobody now cares much about papal galleys in the Mediterranean being rowed by Muslim slaves four centuries ago. Indeed, Christianity had a long-lasting philosophical discourse about whether the enslavement of Christians was morally defensible, while ignoring the moral issues in relation to the enslavement of people they regarded as heathens or pagans. Outright Christian condemnation of all slavery took a long time to emerge.

There is a difference, I think, between Americans adorning their cities with statues of Confederate generals and the decision of the Fellows of Trinity 60 years ago to name their “brutalist gem” library after George Berkeley.

The difference is the message that was intended. I doubt anyone in Trinity intended to cause offence to Catholics or to approbate the injustices of the Penal Laws when commemorating Berkeley, Ussher and Lecky. Nor were any Catholics offended by commemoration of Trinity’s liberal, Protestant origins and heritage, I imagine. If anyone wants to go prospecting for offence, they will find some nuggets in the writings of Berkeley, Ussher and Lecky.

But commemorating and glorifying the American Confederacy by monument in the post-Civil War era of reconstruction and Jim Crow laws had – and still has – an unmistakable message and meaning for black Americans. It is about current race attitudes and discrimination.

What about the UK? Toppling a statue in Bristol may satisfy some people as an analogy with removing confederacy monuments in United States.

The whole British imperialist project was based on subjugation of other people, justified by a theory of racial superiority and entitlement. The “guilty few” are not just those who ran slave ships or slave plantations. The entire British economy depended for a few imperial centuries on racial subjugation, of which the Atlantic slave trade was just one barbaric example.

Distancing Sinn Féin in 1919 from John Redmond’s stated ambition to make the British Empire “our empire” for the Irish, Eoin MacNéill described imperialism thus: “It takes to itself a body made up of predatory feudalism and predatory capitalism, of oligarchies seeking to dominate the earth given to the millions to inhabit and the industry exerted by the millions to make the earth inhabitable – in short to enslave the world.”

Fintan O’Toole drew our attention yet again this week to the racist and pro-slavery writings of the Young Ireland patriot, John Mitchel, which have been hiding in plain sight across a century of his commemoration and deification in Ireland. Even this paper (then strongly pro-unionist) wrote on his death in 1875 that Mitchel “descended into the grave without bringing the shadow of a stain on the fair name of his ancestors”.

I side with Diarmaid Ferriter in questioning Trinity’s wisdom in de-naming the Berkeley library. The arguments for cancellation of some names and monuments may have some validity in the US, but may lack it in Ireland.

The removal and later reinstatement of the Shelbourne Hotel statues on the erroneous suspicion that they were slaves should cause us to take a long-term reflective view of history.