A statue of the paradigmatic modernist author Virginia Woolf has had a QR code added that when scanned brings up a presentist explanation of her “unacceptable imperialist attitudes and offensive opinions” (GB News, Mail, Telegraph).
It is part of a scheme by Labour’s Camden council in London, which was drawn up in the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests to address the connections between local monuments and “racism, slavery… imperialism”. Backed by National Lottery funding, the QR code initiative forms part of a pilot project, titled ‘RePresenting Bloomsbury’, which aims to make “meaningful connections between our diverse communities and Camden’s public realm”.
According to Camden People’s Museum, ‘RePresenting Bloomsbury’ will “ensure public memorials and the individuals commemorated are presented through “multiple, diverse perspectives”. This will include “any discriminatory ideas or behaviours, as well as positive contributions to society”.
Attached to a statue of the author of Mrs Dalloway and To The Lighthouse in Bloomsbury’s Tavistock Square is now a QR code, which when scanned brings forth the voice of The Party with a lengthy explanation of her “unacceptable” views.
The basis of the Council’s vexation with Virginia Woolf appears to be that she had the effrontery to be born in 1882, rather than more recently.
A short biography of the author says: “Her diaries and letters also present challenging, offensive comments and descriptions of race, class and ability which we would find unacceptable today.”
It adds that Woolf, and other members of her literary set, the Bloomsbury Group, dressed in blackface as Abyssinian royals for a hoax which showed her to be “someone who was a product of imperialist attitudes of the time”.
The overview also notes that she had negative and offensive views of Jewish people despite marrying Leonard Woolf, an author of Jewish heritage.
Extracts from her work have been criticised by some for the use of racial epithets such as “n*****”, and her diaries include remarks labelled as racist, including a description of skin as “black as a monkey’s”.
Bertrand Russell, the philosopher, has also been swept into Camden Council’s statue review with a QR code. His early views on empire and race, which he later repudiated, are discussed via his monument in Red Lion Square.
The outline notes that he ultimately supported gay rights, women’s rights and the rights of people from different races but that works written in the 1920s were suggestive of “white supremacy”.
In 2021, Camden renamed Cecil Rhodes House over concerns about the empire-building policies of the late 19th-century English mining magnate and politician.
Writing for the Telegraph, Virginia Woolf’s grand niece Emma Woolf described the decision as “hurtful and disrespectful”, and “verging on Orwellian”.
“My problem with this whole debacle is that there’s no nuance,” she says. “Yes, she made irreverent comments and quips to friends in letters, for example, “I’m to marry a penniless Jew”. Of course we wouldn’t use that language now, but she was born 142 years ago. These quotes out of context may well sound anti-Semitic, snobbish and sneering – but she was saying it in a loving, affectionate way.”
Emma Woolf adds: “This woman was a writer who committed everything she’d ever thought, felt and struggled with on to paper; complex, thoughtful, hard-won words that she’d agonised over. And she’s reduced to a statue in a park with a QR code telling people what to think about her.”
This isn’t Camden’s first foray into identity politics inspired social engineering.
Following the worst excesses of the Black Lives Matter movement, in 2021 the Council renamed Cecil Rhodes House over concerns about the empire-building policies of the late 19th-century English mining magnate and politician.
The same year, it spent £93,000 on Critical Race Theory inflected ‘anti-racism training’ to teach staff about divisive, essentially contested terms like ‘white privilege’, ‘microaggressions’ and ‘internalised racism’ while at the same time slashing management/back office roles and frontline staff to save £230,000.
It was also recently accused of “needlessly discriminatory behaviour” after demanding that companies in its supply chain “align” with its “values”, and prove their commitment to radical LGBTQ+ ideology. According to information released by the Labour-run local authority, it has begun asking businesses “to demonstrate their commitment to LGBTQ+ equality before we procure them”.
Building this commitment into the procurement process is, the Council says, not just about being more “inclusive” and working “with businesses whose values align with our own” – it’s also an attempt to leverage its “position of power” to “positively influence” society.
The Council first submitted – in both senses of that word – to Stonewall’s Workplace Equality Index in 2019, and is keen to point out that it did so “with the support of colleagues in our Rainbow Network”. More recently, it boasted about having reached #47 in Stonewall’s progressive league table, an achievement that meant it was: “Top out of all local authority entrants. This is something we are really proud of!”
