In praise of statue-toppling

I couldn’t disagree more with Sir Keir Starmer (it was ‘completely wrong,’ ‘it shouldn’t have been done in that way’) or with Boris Johnson (‘if people wanted the removal of the statue there are democratic routes which can be followed’). No, there was something magnificent about the sight of the Bristol mob throwing into the harbour the statue of a man whose trade was notorious for throwing sick slaves with no monetary value into the sea. 1890s Britain raised that statue. 1890s Britain — the decade in which my grandparents were children, for heaven’s sake — had only just closed the slave market in Zanzibar: and if you want to know more about that stain on our fairly recent history, read Alastair Hazell’s enthralling, horrifying The Last Slave Market: Dr John Kirk and the Struggle to End the East African Slave Trade.

If we’re entitled to feel pride at the achievements and virtues of our forebears, why should we not feel shame at their sins? If there is significance in erecting monuments to those we admire, who can deny the significance of tearing down monuments to those we don’t? Be honest.