As Liberal Democrats we like to think of ourselves as champions of liberty and the equal dignity of every person. That is why we should be uneasy with the statue of Oliver Cromwell outside the Houses of Parliament. It is not just a carving in stone. It is a symbol of honour placed at the threshold of our democracy by a state that still chooses to celebrate a man whose rule was built on conquest, massacre and the systematic displacement of entire peoples across Ireland, England, Wales and Scotland. If we take our values seriously, that statue should not be there.
Cromwell rose to power in the 1640s during the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. His campaigns did not begin and end in Ireland. In England he oversaw brutal sieges such as Colchester, where thousands of Royalist troops and civilians were killed or imprisoned after surrender. In Wales and Scotland Parliamentary forces under his command crushed resistance with fire, blockade and punitive reprisals. His rule brought death, hardship and economic devastation to many parts of England, from the grinding campaigns of the Civil War through to the harsh discipline of the Commonwealth.
Across the three kingdoms the death toll from battle, famine and disease may have reached the low hundreds of thousands in England, Wales and Scotland and several hundred thousand more in Ireland. In proportional terms this was a catastrophic loss. In Ireland alone estimates range from around 200,000 to 600,000 dead, with some high‑end studies suggesting that up to 40 per cent of the pre‑war population perished. Cromwell’s wars were demographic disasters, not minor skirmishes in a distant past.
His rule in Ireland was not simply a war of conquest. It was a project of ethnic and religious reordering. At Drogheda and Wexford his troops killed thousands of soldiers and civilians, often after surrender, in a deliberate display of terror. Beyond the battlefield his regime burned crops, drove people from their homes and imposed famine‑inducing conditions that devastated communities already weakened by disease and displacement.
His resettlement policy formally targeted tens of thousands of Irish Catholics for forced relocation west of the River Shannon. Under the Act of Settlement, around 40,000 landowners were ordered to move to Connacht and County Clare. The wider consequences were even greater. Confiscation and plantation pushed many more smallholders, tenants and whole communities off fertile land into poorer soils, while English and Scottish settlers took their place. At the same time tens of thousands of Irish men, women and children were transported as indentured labourers to the Caribbean and North Atlantic colonies, where many died in brutal conditions. This was not incidental upheaval but a centrally directed assault on Irish landholding and culture.
That legacy was never honestly reckoned with at the heart of the British state. When the idea of a public statue to Cromwell was first raised in the nineteenth century Parliament refused to fund it, arguing that such a monument should not fall on the taxpayer. That decision reflected unease about what placing Cromwell in bronze at the centre of the state would imply. The lack of public funding should have been a warning that his reputation demanded judgment, not celebration. Instead, over time, that unease faded. Cromwell was slowly repackaged as a defender of Parliament, while his role in conquest and displacement was pushed to the margins. The statue outside Westminster came to look like a neutral piece of history rather than a deliberate choice about whose memory we honour.
We as Liberal Democrats should be clear that the failure to understand the full moral weight of Cromwell’s rule has had real consequences. The sectarian fault lines created by seventeenth‑century conquest, land settlement and religious discrimination were never properly repaired. They were layered over rather than addressed. That unresolved legacy fed into the political and communal divisions that exploded into the Troubles in the late twentieth century. The violence and fear of those years were not caused by Cromwell alone, but they were made possible in part by a long tradition of refusing to confront how deeply his era shaped power, prejudice and land ownership.
Cromwell’s dispossession of the Irish also helped lay the groundwork for later catastrophe. The carving up of land, the reduction of the Irish peasantry to dependent tenants on poor western soils and the entrenchment of landlord power set the stage for the exploitative conditions that made the nineteenth‑century famine so devastating. When potato blight struck, the British state did not intervene with the urgency it would have shown for English or Scottish communities. The result was not just a natural disaster but a famine by policy, in which over a million people died and a similar number were forced to leave. Seen in this light, Cromwell’s resettlement policy was not a closed chapter. It was a prelude to a later humanitarian collapse that many historians treat as a colonial crime.
If we would not place a figure associated with industrialised genocide at the heart of a modern democracy, we should not place a figure associated with imperial conquest and ethnic reordering in the same civic space. Cromwell belongs in a museum, not at the entrance to Parliament. There his actions can be studied, contextualised and judged. His role in constitutional history can be understood without demanding public veneration.
As Liberal Democrats we claim to stand for equality, fairness and human dignity. Those values sit uneasily beside the honouring of a man whose rule brought death and economic destruction to much of England, whose policies in Ireland helped sow the seeds of future famine and whose commemoration has contributed to a long refusal to face the roots of division on our own islands. Cromwell’s statue at Westminster should come down.
* Gareth McAleer is a Liberal Democrat member in Didcot and Wantage, and is active in the Liberal Democrat European Group.
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39 Comments
A man who reined for 5 years 368 years ago was pivital in the development of parliamentary democracy. If you want to sanatise history by removing statues – why not stop with Cromwell . Plenty of other to choose from – let’s stop referencing them in books , take down portraits, change names of roads and buildings …Where does this Woke BS stop ?
@Craig – I thought you had the beginnings of a sensible argument there, before you trotted out “Woke” (demonstrating in the process that you don’t know what it means).
Craig Levene 19th Apr ’26 – 10:04am..
Agreed! If we only put up statues of the ‘goodies’ there’d be a lot of empty pedestals around the country..
I strongly disagree.
I have never doubted who the good guys were during the English Civil War, namely the roundheads, and Oliver Cromwell was their leader. King Charles was in the wrong.
Cromwell has a far better claim to a statue in Parliament than any king or queen.
There is one point missing from the article. Who paid for the statue when it was erected in 1899? Parliament refused to pay. It was later revealed that the anonymous donor was Archibald Primrose 5th Earl of Rosebery and Liberal PM from 1894-95.
Statues are often controversial. As a child I heard the story of HM Stanley who on finding Dr David Livingstone in the depths of the African jungle was reported to have said “Dr Livingstone I presume”. Stanley whose real name was John Rowlands was born in the parish of Llanrhaeadr in the Vale of Clwyd. A statue of HM Stanley with hand outstretched in greeting was erected in the nearby town of Denbigh in 2011. It has been hugely controversial attracting annual protests. Eventually the Town Council held a Referendum on whether to keep the statue on the High Street or move it to the museum. Despite being told that Stanley’s statue in Kinshasa had been torn down the people of the town by a majority of 4 to 1 voted to keep the statue. It seems an eminently sensible solution to allow the people to decide on where they want these statues to be kept. We cannot change or erase history. We have to find some way to live with it however uncomfortable.
Wanting to tear down historical statues , monuments , portraits, sanatise books etc ….It’s what the Taliban did in Afghanistan. Everything viewed through the prism of their own righteousness. Like a latter day Matthew Hopkins – purity of thought. The ultimate in wokeness
@Craig, much more in sorrow than in anger:
“Wokeness”, from “woke – Aware of and alert to social injustices”.
Absolutely nothing whatever to do with tearing down or retaining statues; and indeed I would argue that if you aren’t “woke” you aren’t remotely liberal.
You actually have something of a sensible argument, as several people have acknowledged. Why do you insist on weakening that argument by the silly use of woke/wokeness as though (a) it were a bad thing and (b) the deployment of the word in a contemptuous tone automatically and without more settles the debate in your favour.
Craig: Cromwell did his very best to prevent democracy and keep power in the hands of the rich landowners. He decimated the Levellers who did actually want democracy (at least for all men) and summarily executed people who had the temerity to disagree with him. He disolved parliament and didn’t call another. He claimed not to want ‘the divine right of kings’ but ended up as King even if not in name. No democrat he.
Sorry Mohammed Amin, you’re wrong on this one. That isn’t to say the King was any better, but he ended up on the block and Cromwell ended up effectively as an absolute monarch for 5 years. No democracy there.
Whist it is true that Cromwell did what he is accused of it is unfair to put the whole blame on him. The wars of the Three Kingdoms were a civil war started by that man of blood Charles I. Not the Parliamentarians nor Cromwell in particular. If Cromwell comes down so also come down many others.
It’s also worth noting that until recently Cromwell wasn’t the hero he is widely considered today, see for example Children of the New Forest.
‘I have never doubted who the good guys were during the English Civil War,’
There were no ‘good guys’. And for sure, it wasn’t started out of any concern for democracy. It was a war started over religion, and power and taxes.
What Cromwell did in Ireland is indefensible (and what right did he have sticking his oar in over there in the first place?).
He ruled like a king in all but name, and wanted his son to take over when he died. No concern for democracy there.
That said, you can probably find fault with all statues of historical figures. Who are any of us to say this or that one should go?
Ending the divine right of monarchies to rule & establishing the supremecy of parliament was fairly groundbreaking ! But alas there is always something to offend professional offence takers even a monument or a statue or a portrait.
“We cannot change or erase history. We have to find some way to live with it however uncomfortable.”
“That said, you can probably find fault with all statues of historical figures. Who are any of us to say this or that one should go?”
Wise words both if I may say so. If we erase anyone anyone feels uncomfortable with we will cease to exist. What matters is that today we fight those who seek to erase others.
William Wallace wrote an excellent summary about the Cromwell statue (and the role of the Liberal PM Lord Rosebery in personally paying for it) in the Autumn 2022 edition of the Journal of Liberal History.
Rosebery (a Liberal Imperialist) was probably the least impressive of all the Liberal Prime Ministers and his government ended in chaos. On the issue of the statue I can’t say that I spend many sleepless nights worrying about it.
Of course, Neil, your definition is right. Having said that, it’s the overreach of social awareness on subjects like this that has opened it up to criticism and, in some respects, ridicule. Let’s not be surprised if someone uses it as a slur against those wanting historical monuments removed.
Andrew Tampion 19th Apr ’26 – 4:43pm……It’s also worth noting that until recently Cromwell wasn’t the hero he is widely considered today, see for example Children of the New Forest…
Strangely, last week, rummaging through my attic, I came across an old copy of “Children of the New Forest” and started reading it.. I’ve reached the point where the ‘boy’ Clara was rescued by Edward..
@ expats Interesting to note, expats, that the author of, “Children of the New Forest”, was one Captain Marryatt, the son of a slave owner and anti-abolitionist.
Chloe, I’m not particularly surprised; I’m just deeply disappointed and saddened that someone on a Liberal forum appears to think “If I can deploy the word Woke in a derogatory way, that is the ultimate clincher”.
Sellar & Yeatman, I think, summed up the two sides in the Civil War remarkably well: the Cavaliers Wrong but Romantic; the Roundheads Right but Repulsive.
Cromwell was deeply unpleasant; but show me a leader of this country any time between 1485 and about 1760 who wasn’t. With the possible exceptions of Jane Grey, who seems to have been far too nice a person to survive as a queen, James II who dared to think that religious toleration might be an acceptable idea, and perhaps Anne, who was too dull to be really unpleasant.
Tristan. 2 examples to support your points.
1st in 1852 Abraham Lincoln wrote “My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or destroy Slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that.” Does Linoln’s statue in Parliament Square need to come down?
2nd civil wars are always bloody. They usually start out regretfully but, as both sides realise the other isn’t going to give up, become increasingly desperate. An example in the American Civil War general Sherman’s march through Georgia to the sea. “The March to the Sea was devastating to Georgia and the Confederacy. Sherman himself estimated that the campaign had inflicted $100 million (equivalent to $1038 million in 2025) in destruction, about one fifth of which “inured to our advantage” while the “remainder is simple waste and destruction”.[33] The Army wrecked 300 miles (480 km) of railroad and numerous bridges and miles of telegraph lines.”
It’s good to see that in the midst of not one but two geopolitical crises, continuing and about to escalate cost of living crisis, and increasingly ignored environmental crisis, we are as always razor focused on the things that matter to voters.
#Marin Pearce.
I agree.
Though Statues can start as celebrations of bad things they do also highlight history from which we can and should learn. Don’t try to erase history, use it to educate.
While we’re considering statues in Parliament Square, I’m not sure that Churchill’s record was spotless: financial support from rather dodgy friends in 1930s, gungho imperialism in Egypt and South Africa, racial prejudice towards India and Indians …. Cromwell’s statue was erected outside Parliament partly because Victorian Tories blocked his inclusion among English and British monarchs/heads of state inside, because he was a regicide. The passage between the Lords and Central Lobby displays the Tory version of the Civil War on one side and the Liberal version on the other: 200 years later, they still differed bitterly about it.
It is worrying that well-meaning people strive to remove the sinews of our history, including statues and portraits of people who have invariably left a mixed message in our past. We need those examples of faulty humanity to remind us of what went wrong, and why nobody is 100% faultless. As has been said, those who ignore (or whitewash) history are eventually compelled to re-live it because the lesson has been forgotten. Cromwell, for all his cruelty and authoritarianism, needs to be remembered for the ending of the absolute monarchy and the divine right of kings, and the creation of parliamentary rule, even if that was not his intention.
Interesting to read William in the Journal of Liberal History on the subject of Cromwell’s statue a couple of years ago.
Also agree with William’s comment about Churchill. You can add pursuing eugenic sterilisation in a memo to Asquith in 1911, and force feeding of over 100 suffragettes when he was Home Secretary. If I’d been in Dundee in 1922 I know who I wouldn’t have voted for. Get him off that English £ 5 note p.d.q., please.
Correction : Churchill’s memo to Prime Minister Asquith was in 1910 not 1911.
Churchill wrote, “the multiplication of the feeble-minded is a very terrible danger to the race”. He proposed, “that roughly 100,000 ‘degenerate Britons’ should be sterilized and advocated labour camps for those deemed “socially undesirable”.
I am torn between several different instincts here, but my main one is the same as David Garlick’s above: whatever one thinks, this is a sideshow and a distraction.
That said, I think it is important to recognise how much pain there is specifically in Ireland and Northern Ireland about Cromwell’s legacy.
But my personal view is that civic statues are for people around whom there is a democratic civic consensus about the reputation of, and its not wrong to remove them if that consensus changes. For statues on the parliamentary estate, it would need to have a consensus of parliamentarians.
A simple majority isn’t enough. ‘Consensus’ in either context for me – for both erection and removal – would mean a supermajority (like, 60-70%) of representatives, and for parliament I would include the members of the House of Lords, even before reform.
The great thing about a statue is, whoever it is, there is probably a pigeon or seagull sitting on top of it passing the ultimate judgement.
David Raw 19th Apr ’26 – 7:54pm….@ expats Interesting to note, expats, that the author of, “Children of the New Forest”, was one Captain Marryatt, the son of a slave owner and anti-abolitionist…
David, Until now I wasn’t aware of his parentage but, having read ‘Mr Midshipman Easy’ (which is widely noted as being largely autobiographical), hHis personal beliefs appear to have been rather liberal for the period..
David Raw: Churchill may have been under the influence of the Webbs and the Fabian Society when he wrote that (these paragons of the British Left shared this view, and tended to advocate to their aristocratic and governing-class correspondents that Prussia under Bismarck was a good example of what a socialist state showing ‘national efficiency’ might look like).
Tristan, when these issues came up in Bristol (sadly without the democratic consensus among councillors for removal of the Colston statue in an orderly fashion being acted on) my brother in law, a fellow Bristol resident, proposed we make a compromise honour Colston and his family and descendant charities’ bequests to Bristol’s social and institutional fabric by renaming the sewage works after him. Its what he would have wanted.
@ Matt (Bristol). Whilst Churchill knew the Webbs, and in particular brought in Beveridge, I think his connection with the Fabians was fairly limited compared to such as Herbert Samuel, Charles Masterman and Richard Haldane.
Beatrice Webb’s diaries are a good read on all these characters, and in particular the Riddell Diaries are an interesting insight into Lloyd George’s character and behaviour.
@ Matt (Bristol) You might find this interesting on Jstor, it’s downloadable :
Journal article
Winston Churchill versus the Webbs: The Origins of British Unemployment Insurance
Bentley B. Gilbert
The American Historical Review
Vol. 71, No. 3 (Apr., 1966), pp. 846-862 (17 pages)
Published By: Oxford University Press
Thank you for reminding me why I left the Party.
David Bertram: Sure, the high level of Lib Dem interest in statues and ancient history is somewhat unappealing.
But, haven’t there been bigger issues over the years – like the Clegg coup, the Coalition, the Swinson “Prime Minister in Waiting” episode, and now the “Stunts R Us” manifesto – that might have persuaded members to tear up their membership cards?
@ David Allen
“the Clegg coup”
You mean the leader elected by a majority of members on the basis of his known ideas (The Orange Book) leading the party in line with those ideas?
Perhaps the real offence was wanting and having real political power for a change.
@ Tristan Ward “You mean the leader elected by a majority of members on the basis of his known ideas (The Orange Book) leading the party in line with those ideas?”
By the majority of the members ? By the skin of his teeth with questions about late postal ballots. Probably less embarrassing than future events in 2011 though.
I admire your loyalty, Tristan, but not sure the electorate agreed with you. Losing 49 seats and dropping from 6.8 million votes to 2.4 million votes in 2015 is an uncomfortable historical fact.
Tristan, by “leading in accordance with those ideas” do you mean opposing the party’s policy on tuition fees despite losing a second vote in conference, and then abandoning all pretence of accepting the vote through his negotiating team dropping it from the coalition agreement (to the astonishment of the Conservative negotiators)? Or perhaps personally fronting an Election Broadcast “An end to broken promises” before the 2010 General Election, signing a pledge not to support an increase in tuition fees and then reneging on both in the most devastating act of self harm any leader of our party has ever achieved. Or perhaps continually giving in on important matters to David Cameron at the start of coalition and then being impotent when the Cons refused the agreement on constitutional reform.
Yes Nick was elected by a majority of members, but he then surrounded himself with a coterie of yes persons and led in the most incompetent manner of any PM in my lifetime (except Liz Truss). I don’t think people voted for that.
Tristan,
“The Clegg Coup” is the title of a book written by an activist who took part in it. He chose that title to celebrate Clegg’s success in wresting control of the Party and reorienting it from centre-left to centre-right. He also chose that title in gleeful celebration of the deceptive way in which that success was achieved.
Clegg campaigned for the leadership on an anodyne political platform, but once elected, came out in his true colours by announcing a new US-style neocon proposal for “Big Permanent Tax Cuts”.
Clegg could not have foreseen that he would then get the opportunity he craved to join a right-wing Tory Government. But he seized his chance with alacrity when it came.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Clegg-Coup-Britains-Coalition-Government/dp/1908096098
@ David Evans
I totally agree with you about the hideousness of the tuition fee pledge and its aftermath. It should never have been made given the strong possibility of a hung parliament, or having been made it should have been honoured – and it could have been.
It is a black mark indeed. Hats off to the Lib Dem MPs who rebelled on the relevant vote.
“Nick led in the most incompetent manner of any PM in my lifetime”
Nick Clegg was not Prime Minister – I assume that is a typo.
@ David Evans, could I ask without the least bit of pompousness or sentimentality, is this the same Nick Clegg who campaigned against ‘a Tory VAT bombshell’ in April 2010 and then voted for an increase in VAT from 17.5% to 20% in May, 2010 ?
I restate my interLib 2024-03 review of the 2nd volume of Ronald Hutton’s superb biography of Cromwell (hope there’s a third, like Wedgewood he struggled with 1647).
“The siege of Drogheda is often regarded as the greatest wart on Cromwell’s
career, especially within the nationalist Irish national myth, though
even there it has been subject to revisionist thinking. The difficulties of
battlefield communication in the 17th century at Wexford aside,
Cromwell did, by and large, keep his word– surrender and be spared,
fight on and be slaughtered. Limerick does not feature in this book, but
Cromwell had left Ireland by then and the campaign was in the hands
of his lieutenants. Hutton’s verdict is ‘could have done better, but
nothing unusual in the context of warfare at that time’.”
Shouldn’t you lot be down those mean streets for the local elections? Wake up, not woke up.