The Picton Statue Controversy

Should the statue in Carmarthen be taken down?

There is a whole town named after Picton in New Zealand. He was held in very high regard as a soldier, despite his well known excesses in Trinidad, for which he was tried and convicted at the time, though the verdict was later overturned on a matter of law.

Wellington knew perfectly well that Picton was a hard bastard, but he also knew that hard bastards have their uses. There are times when you are grateful they are on your side.

Nothing typified this more than the crucial role played by Picton and his division during a pivotal moment at Waterloo, which as many will know was a battle that could easily have gone either way. Picton had already concealed the fact that he had been badly wounded at Quatre Bras, two days earlier. At Waterloo, he was killed during his division’s successful efforts to hold the allied line which was threatening to break. If it had broken, British history would have been very different.

The Carmarthen memorial was erected by public subscription and a grateful nation also erected a memorial to him in St Paul’s. I suspect, were these not there, no-one would be having a debate about Picton today, and that would be a pity, because if ever there was an example of a very severely flawed yet redeemable human being, Picton was it. If you say that the undeniable bad in his earlier life invalidates all his later service to his country, then you say a sinner is never capable of redemption. His contemporaries thought otherwise, and that should give us a certain pause today. (I appreciate that not everyone values the contribution to society of the armed forces, but it is probably still a majority who do).

There are few real saints and few real devils. Most of us fall somewhere in between, and Picton offers an example of someone capable of improving. As such, he should be talked about. Take down his statue and such talking will be confined to the tiny proportion of the population who visit museums. That would be a pity.

Please don’t bother to tell me I don’t understand how young people feel. I was, needless to say, never young myself.