Britain’s left-wing Labour Party has announced that all local councils where the party is in power will undertake a review of the “appropriateness” of statues to determine whether they should be removed over their connections to the UK’s colonial past or the slave trade.
The Labour Party has followed the lead of the Mayor of London, who announced on Monday that he would be creating the “Commission for Diversity in the Public Realm” with the purpose of removing historical monuments, statues, art, and street names throughout the city to reflect the British capital’s ‘diversity’.
The party as a whole has now adopted this policy, with all 130 Labour councils announcing that they will undertake similar reviews.
“We have consulted with all Labour council leaders, and there is overwhelming agreement from all Labour councils that they will listen to and work with their local communities to review the appropriateness of local monuments and statues on public land and council property,” Labour leaders at the Local Government Association said, per the Daily Mail.
The decision by the Labour councils comes as leftist radicals have used the Black Lives Matter movement to launch a full-scale assault on British historical figures.
On Saturday, the statues of Abraham Lincoln and Sir Winston Churchill were vandalised during a BLM protest. Since then, monuments across the country have been targeted, with vandals dumping a statue of Edward Colston in the harbour in Bristol.
A statue of former British monarch Queen Victoria was also defaced, with graffiti scrawled on the monument referring to the Queen as a “whore”, “racist”, and a “slag”.
There has been some pushback against the new Cultural Revolution that has been ushered in by the Black Lives Matter movement.
Conservative MP Simon Clarke wrote: “Our history is complex, as is inevitably the case for any nation state of at least 1,200 years. Rewriting parts of that history, or seeking to erase them because they are painful, or trying to impose today’s morality on people from a different era, does not bring enlightenment.”
“We should also recognise, as I absolutely believe, that the United Kingdom has been overwhelmingly a force for good in the world. Hating ourselves & our past is enfeebling in the face of those who would deliver a darker and dystopian future if the West retreats into introspection,” Clarke warned.
The Conservative MP for Mansfield, Ben Bradley, said: “On a country built on empire we won’t have an awful lot of heritage left if you start to tear down everything that might have been associated with racism, slavery or violence. Our history teaches us important lessons, and we cannot change it, however uncomfortable it may be.”
Scotland’s first black professor, Sir Geoff Palmer, noted: “If you start removing statue or street names to do with slavery, in 50 years’ time you will forget the history of slavery. Maybe some racists might be quite happy for you to take them down because you’re taking down your history.”
Follow Kurt on Twitter at @KurtZindulka
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.