last month, white police officer of Minneapolis killed the African American. After a couple of days, a slow eight minute massacre, captured on video, sparked passionate protests across America and in Europe. Now the supporters of the movement Black Lives Matter requiring the demolition of the statues of slave owners and colonists. And them in one only the British Westminster 9,000.
a Few years ago, before the mass protests, the U.S. government dismantled several monuments of military and political leaders of the defeated southern Confederacy that fought to preserve slavery in 1860-ies. That is to say, out of sight, but the movement of the BLM found and destroyed a new one.
In Amerikanskom Richmond Columbus monument brought to the nearby pond, drowned, and made a makeshift tombstone on the water’s edge with the inscription “racism, you will not be bored” (Racism, you will not be missed). There’s also toppled a statue of Confederate President Jefferson Davis.
the same thing happened with a three-meter bronze Columbus in Saint Paul, Minnesota. A similar statue in Boston not only beheaded, but also broke the rope on the ground.
two days before in the English city of Bristol anti-racist activists demolished the pedestal of a statue of the slave trader Edward Colston and threw her into the river under the cheers . However, the mayor supported the initiative and said that is not experiencing feelings of loss.
But occasional acts of vandalism is nothing compared to the prospect of the destruction of 9,000 artifacts that adorn the pedestals and the corridors of Westminster. They all have a racist history and all has been bought on the slave and colonial wealth.
“the British Empire is a part of our history. And we must recognize that many of our collections have a racist history. Let’s honestly talk about this colonial and Imperial past, and also look at the slave wealth, which has led to some artifacts,” said the head of the heritage collection in the Palace of Westminster Melissa Hamnett.
to open to the public lobbies flaunt images of influential politicians of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, many of which were closely associated with the slave trade. And it only became known a few years ago. University College London proved that the 469 members of Parliament have benefited and received compensation for its ties with human trafficking, and dozens of them depicted on the artwork.
Prime Ministers whose families profited from slavery, included sir Robert peel, the founder of the modern British police, and William Gladstone, 4 times elected to the post of Prime Minister. His father, John Gladstone, was one of the largest slaveholders in the British West Indies. And peel and Gladstone dozens of times depicted on pictures, their statues also XP��value in Westminster.
“We can’t change history. But Parliament is exploring new ways to tell the public when the former deputies of the exploitative past of the UK,” said Hamnett.
But the question whether the Parliament to consider removal of some of the statues and paintings glorifying the people who profit from the barbaric trafficking Hamnett said: “This decision will be taken in each specific case by a special Committee.”
Hywel Williams, chair of this Committee, which consists of 11 deputies, greatly puzzled by such a prospect. “Parliament is not ready to lose the dead leaders, who were involved in the mistreatment of people. Here you are standing in line in the Parliament and admire the statue of an English commander Oliver Cromwell. And so – can not. The main dilemma was that the entire collection consists of portraits of people with skeletons in the closet. You do not win the past by removing its symbols. You use it for a future benchmark,” he said.
