A “statues” movement, with anti-racist activists from Black Lives Matter now listing all those in public space which symbolize, from their point of view, “white oppression”: this is the astonishing consequence, in Europe , the protest that followed the death of George Floyd in the United States, killed by a police officer in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on May 25.
Activists of Black Lives Matter thus launched the debate on a hidden colonial and imperialist past, to better denounce persistent inequalities and still sharpened by the Covid-19 crisis. In the United Kingdom, one of the main centers of European mobilization with Belgium, statistics show that blacks and other ethnic minorities have died in far greater proportion than whites.
Activists in Bristol Harbor spectacularly threw the statue of slavery master Edward Colston into the water. She was picked up on Thursday, June 11, by city hall services, and "Will be placed in a safe place, then added to the collections of our museums", they said. The day before, Marvin Rees, the mayor of the city in the south-west of England – a Labor of Jamaican origin – explained that he wanted to let the population decide which memory they wished to honor in place of the merchant of the XVIIIe century. Some have already suggested the name of Paul Stephenson, a civil rights activist, who in 1963 successfully launched a boycott of Bristol buses whose managers refused to hire black drivers.
At Oxford, it is the effigy of Cecil Rhodes, imperialist and great promoter of British superiority, that a group of students of the prestigious university and anti-racist activists wants to take down from the pediment of Oriel College. In London, the statue of Robert Milligan, an 18th century slave plantere century, was quietly debunked on Tuesday with the approval of the city’s Labor mayor, Sadiq Khan. It will join the Museum of London Docklands.
A reappropriation of history
In Glasgow, Scotland, the debate centers around the statue of William III of Orange, English king of Dutch origin, whose links with the slave trade have been unearthed. In Poole (south of England), it is the statue of the founder of scouting, Robert Baden-Powell, who is targeted when a group of residents and elected conservatives oppose his kidnapping.
You have 71.06% of this article to read. The suite is reserved for subscribers.
