‘If you think Churchill is racist, wait ’til you hear about the other guy’
This sentence is one which is the go-to response to those who rightly point out that former prime minister Winston Churchill was a racist. Few people, if any, deny that Churchill was a racist – his words are there for all to see – but the idea seems to be that the human brain only has enough space to condemn one racist at a time.
The death of George Floyd and the subsequent Black Lives Matter protests and marches around the world have led to discussions and re-examinations of figures that Britain has placed on a pedestal. Literally.
In recent days, a statue commemorating slave trader Edward Colston was torn down in Bristol and chucked into a nearby river. Meanwhile, the statue of Winston Churchill in Parliament Square was sprayed with the words ‘Was A Racist’.
JOE spoke to a group of Tory MPs who helped clean the statue and who say that if protesters write on the statue again, they’ll be back out to clean it again.
"Winston Churchill actually is a character who fought racism."@Matt_VickersMP explains why a group of Tory MPs cleaned the Churchill statue in Parliament Square. pic.twitter.com/PmOpcEJdrb
— PoliticsJOE (@PoliticsJOE_UK) June 8, 2020
