In an online article forThe Daily Telegraph, Patrick O'Flynn, the former Ukip and SDP MEP, has slammed the government for their 'miserable, cowed and cowardly' response to the recent protests.
The 'Black Lives Matter' protests, in response to the killing of George Floyd by an American police officer, took place in a number of cities throughout the UK and were, for the most part, peaceful and well- meaning. However, reports have emerged this morning of Edward Colston's statue being toppled and dumped in Bristol harbour.
The seventeenth century Bristolian's legacy as an MP, merchant and philanthropist has been overshadowed by his avowed support for the slave trade and the presence of his statue has long been a source of controversy. Yet, whatever one's personal opinion on Colston, few would agree that resorting to criminality is the best way to express one's disquiet with his statue's existence.
Statues are erected at different times in history for different reasons and they can, and perhaps should, stand as a testament to humanity's ills as well as its goodnesses. Some people may disagree with that and there is room for a perfectly healthy debate to take place.
However, if you were looking for an example of an uncontroversial statue, an immortalised individual to whom no sane person could object, you might well choose that of Winston Churchill in Parliament Square.
There he is in black bronze, his head tilted away from the House of Commons as though symbolic of his ability to look outside of conventional wisdom. A more appropriate statue of a more appropriate person in a more appropriate position would be hard to find.
And yet this statue, while thankfully not removed, was also vandalised over the weekend; daubed with a slur that does not deserve repeating in these pages.
It was this, in particular, that so incensed O'Flynn in his telegraph column:
"So what extraordinary powerful force was it that was able to cut through Britain’s defences to perpetrate these extraordinary and repeated insults to the greatest generation of Britons, the ones who stood alone against Nazi Germany and then played a leading role in its defeat? And which supine bunch of left-wing politicians formed the Government that allowed it to happen?
"Well, extraordinarily, the force was just a rabble of assorted leftist agitators, student activists and yobs out for a ruck. And the Government was a Conservative one, led by somebody who claims Churchill as his hero and guiding light."
O'Flynn went on to slam the cabinet for waiting until Sunday evening to issue a 'fitting or unqualified condemnation.'
He did however praise junior minister Kemi Badenoch:
'As a black woman herself, she showed enough gumption and patriotism to tell an array of leftist MPs that Britain was one of the best countries in the world in which to be black. Her elevation to the Cabinet cannot come soon enough.'
He concluded with a warning for the government:
'If Boris Johnson permits the acts of desecration that have occurred these past few days ever to occur again then he is toast. And he will deserve to be.'
Photo by Arthur Osipyan on Unsplash
