STUDENTS this week defaced a mural featuring Rudyard Kipling’s poem 'If' in a protest against what they called his “racist” work. 

Is this an example of the kind of daft stunt that students have engaged in for time immemorial or do they have a valid point?

Kipling’s poem was painted on a wall at Manchester University's union building, but student leaders replaced it with a piece by the American poet Maya Angelou, to reverse a process in which “black and brown voices” have been written out of history, they said. 

If all students are keen to erase memories of those who held racist views then might we expect Cambridge University’s Churchill College to change its name because Britain’s wartime PM referred to Indians as “a beastly people with a beastly religion” and said: “Aryan stock is bound to triumph”?

Racists should never be held up as heroes or as exemplars of British values, even those who became Nobel laureates or wrote stirring speeches.   

Kipling’s popularity waned considerably in the second half of the last century after he became widely regarded as an apologist for colonialism. In the light of his 'take up the white man's burden' views his work may well have no place on the wall of a progressive and diverse place of learning in 2018.

Nevertheless we feel uncomfortable about attempts to erase writing, which has undertones of book burning, and with the current ‘no platforming’ movement found in many universities, which seeks to silence rather than debate with people whose views clash with one’s own.

It is also a shame that the Manchester students thought it necessary to cross the Atlantic in search of an acceptable poetic voice when they have Lemn Sissay, Carol Ann Duffy and even John Cooper Clarke on their doorstep.

Clarke’s wonderfully profane 'Evidently Chickentown' would make a fine addition to any wall.