Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 4:32 pm on 18 January 2022.
Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. My constituency has the pleasure and the honour to host the statue of Betty Campbell, and because it has been created whilst Betty really is a living memory, she was able to draw on the evidence from people who'd worked with and trained with Betty, who'd campaigned with Betty, or who had lived with Betty, and all the work she did to really drive forward her passion for educating the next generation, and also her insistence that our history and culture has to be relevant to everyone in Wales, not just the dominant ruling class, and that black history is not just for the month of October, but all year round, which underpins our modern Welsh curriculum. It also starts to rectify the shocking absence of any statue of any real-life women anywhere in Wales. How did that happen? Well, we women all know how that happened. But, anyway, that's what we have to combat.
Some statues that litter our landscape commemorate dignitaries that either people today have never heard of or, on investigation, reflect parts of our past that we have little to be proud of. I think that's less true in Wales than it is, say, in London, but I'd like to explore with you how the Legall audit will allow us to address ignorance about the important contribution made by past heroes and heroines, whether of local or national importance, or how we're going to have an orderly removal or re-evaluation of people we no longer want to celebrate.