Patel also referred to the Black Lives Matter protests as “dreadful”
Home Secretary Priti Patel has said she does not agree with taking the knee in support of Black Lives Matter – and would have refused to do so last summer when the protests gathered pace across Europe.
The death of George Floyd at the hands of police in the USA sparked a series of anti-racism protests across the country, all aimed at shining a light on issues such as police brutality. The Black Lives Matter movement then began to spread across the globe.
In an interview conducted earlier this morning with LBC’s Nick Ferrari, Patel said she disagreed with the manner in which the protests were conducted.
“No I would not, I would not have at the time either. There are other ways in which people can express their opinions,” Ms Patel said.
“Protesting in the way which people did last summer was not the right way at all.”
As the Black Lives Matter protests hit the UK, it prompted many to question Britain’s involvement in the historic slave trade.
Patel said: “We saw statues being brought down and some councils making, quite frankly, a stance around statues and street names.”
A statue of slave trader Edward Colston is retrieved from Bristol Harbour. (Photo: Getty)Perhaps the most notable demonstration of this kind took place in Bristol, when protestors tore down the statue of Edward Colston and plunged it into Bristol Harbour.
Colston was heavily involved in the slave trade, but has numerous public buildings, schools and roads named after him in the vicinity of Bristol.
Similar questions were asked in Wales, where fellow slave trader Sir Thomas Picton was venerated with a Cardiff museum’s ‘Heroes of Wales’ exhibition.
That statue has since been removed, though a school in Haverfordwest is still named after him.
Patel saw the tearing down of statues as an attempt to re-write history.
“There are other ways in which those discussions can take place and, also, quite frankly I didn’t support that attempt to re-write history. I felt that that was wrong.”
