‘Shameful’: Boris Johnson condemns threats to Churchill statue
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Friday it was “absurd and shameful” that a statue of Winston Churchill was at risk of attack by protesters.
In his strongest statement yet on a growing trend to challenge the legacies of past leaders, the PM pushed back against a wave of protests against statues of historic British figures around the UK.
Anti-racism protesters have staged demonstrations since the death of US black man George Floyd after a police officer knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes while detaining him on 25 May.
They have put statues, like that of Churchill, at the forefront of their challenge to Britain’s imperialist past.
The statue of Edward Colston, who made a fortune in the 17th century from the slave trade, was torn down in the city of Bristol on Sunday by demonstrators taking part in a worldwide wave of protests.
Before new protests on Friday and at the weekend, London mayor Sadiq Khan ordered the Churchill statue opposite parliament to be boarded up. Demonstrators had defaced the statue of Britain’s wartime Prime Minister on Sunday. The Cenotaph and a monument to Nelson Mandela have also been protected.
“It is absurd and shameful that this national monument should today be at risk of attack by violent protesters,” Johnson wrote on Twitter of the Churchill statue.
“Yes, he sometimes expressed opinions that were and are unacceptable to us today, but he was a hero, and he fully deserves his memorial. We cannot now try to edit or censor our past. We cannot pretend to have a different history,” he wrote, calling on people to avoid the protests.
Johnson is an admirer and biographer of Churchill, and some of those close to him say he wants to emulate him.
Johnson has said he hears the “undeniable feeling of injustice” of those protesting but has also appealed to demonstrators to abide by social distancing rules to prevent a second wave of the novel coronavirus.
“Whatever progress this country has made in fighting racism – and it has been huge – we all recognise that there is much more work to do,” he said. “But it is clear that the protests have been sadly hijacked by extremists intent on violence.”