Boris Johnson Says He Will Defend Winston Churchill’s Statue ‘With Every Breath in My Body’ as the Battle Over the UK’s Memorials Intensifies

The British Prime Minister Boris
Johnson has defended Winston Churchill from protesters who wish to
bring down a monument celebrating the wartime prime minister in
London.

Johnson argued in an op-ed
for The Daily
Telegraph that the
debate over monuments to
problematic historical figures that is currently roiling the UK
glosses over the real issue of racism in contemporary society. “We
need to attack the substance of the problem, not the symbols,”
Johnson said. He vowed to establish a commission to tackle systemic
inequality in the country as well as to build more monuments
celebrating the accomplishments of Black Britons—but some remain
skeptical that he will prioritize these steps. 

The op-ed was published after
a statue to a slave trader
came down in Bristol last week during ongoing Black Lives
Matter demonstrations. Since then, protesters have set their sights
on other monuments to problematic historical figures, including
Winston Churchill.

While the wartime prime minister
is often celebrated as a hero for his role during World War II, it
is seldom mentioned that he also held racist beliefs. Among other
things, such as advocating the use of chemical weapons against
“uncivilized tribes,” Churchill once refused to admit wrong had
been done to Native Americans or aboriginal Australians, as “a
stronger race, a higher-grade race… has come in and taken their
place.” 

Ahead of a weekend of fiery
protests between BLM demonstrators and far-right extremists coming
out of the woodwork to “protect” statues, the Mayor of London Sadiq
Khan made the decision to board up some of London’s
more controversial monuments, including those to Churchill and
Nelson Mandela.

While Johnson condemned the
actions of protesters who purportedly came to the statue’s
“defense,” he said that it is “absurd and deplorable” that
Churchill should be the subject of attack in the first place. The
former prime minister happens to be a personal hero of
Johnson’s and the subject of his 2014 book, The Churchill
Factor: How One Man Made History.

“Would it not be better and more
honest to ask our children to understand the context, to explain
the mixture of good and bad in the career of Churchill and everyone
else?” Johnson wrote. “I will resist with every breath in my body
any attempt to remove that statue from Parliament
Square.” 

The politician also weighed in
on the wider debate about monuments, saying that he is “extremely
dubious” about “the growing campaign to edit or photoshop the
entire cultural landscape.” 

Some have received Johnson’s
pledge to tackle the underlying issue of inequity as disingenuous
considering his own history of racist remarks, including once
arguing that colonialism in
Africa should have never ended and referring to Black Africans
in 2002 as
“piccaninnies” with “watermelon smiles.”

For Labour politician David
Lammy, Johnson’s calls for a review of the systemic inequalities in
UK amount to too little, too late. “The time for review is
over,” he wrote on Twitter.
“The time for action is now.” In penning the op-ed on Churchill,
Lammy said, Johnson was doing exactly what he ostensibly railed
against: fostering further division and distracting from the real
issues.

The post Boris Johnson Says He Will Defend Winston
Churchill’s Statue ‘With Every Breath in My Body’ as the Battle
Over the UK’s Memorials Intensifies appeared first on artnet
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