British Prime Minister Boris Johnson yesterday said he was setting up a commission to look at “all aspects of inequality” following race protests across Britain.
Writing in the Telegraph newspaper, Johnson said there was “much more that we need to do” to tackle racism, despite “huge progress,” and added that the “substance” of the problem needed to be addressed, rather than the “symbols.”
There have been Black Lives Matter demonstrations in cities across the UK since the death of George Floyd while in police custody in the US on May 25.
Photo: Reuters
“It is time for a cross-governmental commission to look at all aspects of inequality — in employment, in health outcomes, in academic and all other walks of life,” Johnson wrote in the article, which was also published online late on Sunday. “We need to tackle the substance of the problem, not the symbols.”
Race campaigners have called for the removal of statues depicting some historical figures, and the toppling of a statue of 17th-century slave trader Edward Colston in the southwestern port city of Bristol is considered a defining moment in Britain’s Black Lives Matter movement.
Johnson said that a bronze sculpture of former British prime minister Winston Churchill outside the British parliament in Westminster should remain in place.
“We need to address the present, not attempt to rewrite the past and that means we cannot and must not get sucked into never-ending debate about which well-known historical figure is sufficiently pure or politically correct to remain in public view,” Johnson wrote.
Johnson condemned “thugs” who gathered in central London on Saturday to “protect” the boarded-up statue of Churchill, which has been defaced in recent weeks.
“It was utterly absurd that a load of far-right thugs and bovver boys [troublemakers] this weekend converged on London with a mission to protect the statue of Winston Churchill,” the 55-year-old leader and Churchill biographer wrote.
“He was a hero, and I expect I am not alone in saying that I will resist with every breath in my body any attempt to remove that statue from Parliament Square, and the sooner his protective shielding comes off the better,” he said.
Johnson said that instead of tearing down statues, more should be built of people regarded “worthy of memorial” by this generation.
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