The recently “unboxed” statue of Sir Winston Churchill remained unscathed at Black Lives Matter protests in London as the Metropolitan Police (Met) finally stationed officers to guard the monument to Britain’s wartime leader.
Police and counter-protesters formed a protective ring around Churchill’s statue to protect it from further acts of vandalism, as thousands of Black Lives Matter activists broke coronavirus laws to take to the streets of the British capital for the fourth consecutive week
Initially, the protests were ostensibly against the death of George Floyd in the United States, however they have since morphed into an attack on symbols and structures of the West in general, which the activists claim is fraught with “systemic racism”.
Metropolitan Police Commander Alex Murray said that the protection for Churchill’s statue was not planned, saying: “We won’t have pre-prepared cordons around statues, but we will act on intelligence and information and if we hear something like that is planned then we would act as the public would expect us to.”
The monument honouring Churchill was encased in a grey box to protect it from leftist iconoclast agitators, who had previously scrawled the words “was a racist” on his monument, with no intervention from the police.
Churchill was joined by the likes Mahatma Gandhi, George Washington, and the nation’s war memorial, the Cenotaph, all similarly entombed at the behest of London mayor Sadiq Khan.
Churchill’s statue was only freed from its prison ahead of the visit from French president Emmanuel Macron, who in contrast to Prime Minister Boris Johnson has taken a hard line against the removal of statues, announcing that the French government will not be removing any historical monuments despite similar pressure campaigns from Black Lives Matter activists in France.
The Black Lives Matter protests saw activists taking to the streets to protest, despite the government passing legislation banning public gatherings of more than six people earlier this week to prevent a second wave of Chinese coronavirus infections.
One of the leaders of the movement in London, a 29-year-old actress named Imarn Ayton, told Reuters that she is demanding a meeting with the Prime Minister to discuss the group’s grievances.
“I have been here every day, I am the person that leads 20,000 people every protest,” Ayton claimed, adding: “Everyone else seems to be in contact with me, except for Boris, so I would like a conversation.”
The BLM activist said that the nationwide protests would continue until the government acquiesced to their demands, saying: “It’s that simple. We protest or you listen. We want equality — to be treated fairly — that is all that we ask for, and for justice for those who have been harmed.”
What the actual demands the group is calling for remain somewhat nebulous, with their official fundraising page calling for the end to “imperialism, capitalism, white supremacy, patriarchy, and the state structures that disproportionately harm black people in Britain and around the world.”
BLMUK has also mirrored the movement in America by making similar calls for the “abolition of police” — a feature of the movement that has been picked up by leftist American politicians such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar.
Follow Kurt on Twitter at @KurtZindulka
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