A number of statues and memorials were the subject of protests and petitions during the George Floyd protests in the United Kingdom in 2020.
A number of statues and memorials were the subject of protests and petitions during the George Floyd protests in the United Kingdom in 2020.
For several years, a campaign entitled Rhodes Must Fall had worked towards the removal of statues to Cecil Rhodes. A list of 60 statues, monuments and plaques considered by activists to "celebrate slavery and racism" was published online as an interactive map titled Topple the Racists by the Stop Trump Coalition. In addition to Rhodes, historical figures listed included Christopher Columbus, Sir Francis Drake, Oliver Cromwell, King Charles II, Admiral Lord Nelson, the prime ministers Earl Grey and William Ewart Gladstone. [1] [2]
The statue of Winston Churchill in Parliament Square, London, had graffiti sprayed on it over two successive days, including the phrase "Churchill was a racist", [3] [4] [5] alluding to his controversial racial views. [6] The memorial to Queen Victoria in Leeds was also vandalised. [7] On 5 June, a group of protesters sprayed the abbreviation "ACAB", meaning All Cops Are Bastards, on the memorial to Earl Haig in Whitehall, London; when soldiers from the Household Cavalry in plain clothes scrubbed the graffiti off, protesters shouted abuse at them for doing so. [8]
The statue of Edward Colston in The Centre, Bristol, was toppled and thrown into Bristol Harbour on 7 June. [9] [10] However in the subsequent criminal proceedings four people were charged with criminal damage but acquitted by a jury after a trial.
On the same day, a protester climbed onto the Cenotaph in London and unsuccessfully attempted to set fire to the Union Flag. [11]
A sculpted head of a black man was removed from the 18th-century inn sign of the Green Man in Ashbourne, Derbyshire. The act was performed by residents of the town, who said that they had done so in order to protect it from vandalism. The sculpture was later returned to the local council, its legal owner. [12]
In Oxford, a crowd of protesters gathered outside Oriel College, demanding that its statue of Cecil Rhodes be removed. [13]
On 9 June the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, announced the formation of the Commission for Diversity in the Public Realm, which would conduct a review of the capital's public landmarks. [14] The Labour politician Lord Adonis asked the Government to begin a public consultation on the statue of Robert Clive outside the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. [15] That evening the statue of Robert Milligan, a merchant and slave trader, outside the Museum of London Docklands was removed by the local authority and the Canal & River Trust. [16]
On 11 June the Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust, the Guy's and St Thomas' Charity and King's College London issued a joint statement announcing that the statue of Robert Clayton at St Thomas' Hospital and that of Thomas Guy at the hospital named after him would be removed from public view. [17]
In June 2020, the National Trust removed the Grade II-listed, eighteenth-century statue Dunham Massey Hall sundial from the forecourt of Dunham Massey Hall in Greater Manchester. [18] [19] [20] It depicted a kneeling blackamoor carrying the sundial above his head, a depiction seen as degrading, being categorised as a 'kneeling slave'. The statue was set up as one monument to honour the 1st Earl of Warrington by his son, the second Earl in c. 1735 and cast after a model by John Nost I for William III of England’s Privy Garden at Hampton Court Palace. [21]
A statue of Robert Baden-Powell in Poole, Dorset, was slated for temporary removal after criticism over events during his army career and his comments of support concerning Adolf Hitler and Mein Kampf , [22] [23] but initial attempts to remove it faced technical difficulties and local people later prevented council workers from removing it. [24]
The Shadow Foreign Secretary Lisa Nandy raised concerns about the Empire murals (1914–1921) by Sigismund Goetze in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in a letter to the Foreign Secretary, Dominic Raab. [25]
Following the toppling of the statue of Ras Makonnen, a functionary of the Ethiopian Empire, in Harar, Ethiopia, a bust of his son Haile Selassie was toppled in Cannizaro Park, Wimbledon, South West London. Demonstrations had spread across Ethiopia following the murder of Oromo singer and activist Hachalu Hundessa on 29 June 2020. The bust in London was destroyed by Oromo activists. [26]
The statue of Robert Clive in Shrewsbury was the subject of two petitions in favour of its removal and one against; the first two combined received about three times the number of signatures than the third. Shropshire Council voted 28–17 against taking any action to remove the statue. [27]
There were protests against the Melville Monument in Edinburgh due to the disputed belief that Henry Dundas, 1st Viscount Melville, whom it commemorates, led to a delay in the abolition of slavery, and due to his long association with the slave trade. Graffiti was sprayed onto the monument and calls were made for it to be taken down. [28] [29]
In a number of streets in Glasgow, activists placed new name placards under the names of streets named after individuals with connections to the slave trade. Among these is Buchanan Street, named after Andrew Buchanan, who owned plantations in Virginia, which protesters renamed George Floyd Street. [30]
The equestrian statue of Robert the Bruce, Bannockburn, was defaced with graffiti on 12 June. [31] [32]
Rhondda Cynon Taf County Borough Council announced "an urgent review of all local authority-owned sites and buildings in the county borough to determine what statues, busts, plaques and memorials are present at these locations. If it is the case that any of these may be deemed inappropriate then we will be requesting officers to ensure that they are removed from those particular locations". [33]
A statue of Thomas Picton is part of a display of statues named "Heroes of Wales" in Cardiff's City Hall, unveiled in 1916. In June 2020 the Lord Mayor of Cardiff, Dan De'Ath, and the leader of Cardiff Council, Huw Thomas, supported calls to remove the statue due to Picton's treatment of slaves. [34] A campaign to remove Picton's monument in Carmarthen also arose. [35]
A plaque in Brecon dedicated to Thomas Phillips, the captain of the slave ship Hannibal , was removed by an unknown person. Brecon town council said in a statement that it would "...in consultation with the local community and interested parties will take time to consider what, if anything, should take its place". The plaque had been "under review" by the council before its disappearance but no decision had been made on its future. [36]
Lieutenant-General Sir Thomas Picton was a Welsh military officer and colonial administrator who fought in the Napoleonic Wars. According to the historian Alessandro Barbero, Picton was "respected for his courage and feared for his irascible temperament". The Duke of Wellington called him "a rough foul-mouthed devil as ever lived", but found him capable.
Edward Colston was an English merchant, slave trader, philanthropist, and Tory Member of Parliament.
Blackamoor is a type of figure/visual trope in European decorative art, typically found in works from the Early Modern period, depicting a man of sub-Saharan African descent, usually in clothing that suggests high status. Common examples of items and objects decorated in the blackamoor style include sculpture, jewellery, and furniture. Typically the sculpted figures carried something, such as candles or a tray. They were thus an exotic and lightweight variant for the "atlas" in architecture and decorative arts, especially popular in the Rococo period.
The Emancipation Memorial, also known as the Freedman's Memorial or the Emancipation Group is a monument in Lincoln Park in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Washington, D.C. It was sometimes referred to as the "Lincoln Memorial" before the more prominent national memorial was dedicated in 1922.
The statue of Winston Churchill in Parliament Square, London, is a bronze sculpture of the former British prime minister Winston Churchill, created by Ivor Roberts-Jones.
Rhodes Must Fall was a protest movement that began on 9 March 2015, originally directed against a statue at the University of Cape Town (UCT) that commemorates Cecil Rhodes. The campaign for the statue's removal received global attention and led to a wider movement to "decolonise" education across South Africa. On 9 April 2015, following a UCT Council vote the previous night, the statue was removed.
More than 160 monuments and memorials to the Confederate States of America and associated figures have been removed from public spaces in the United States, all but five since 2015. Some have been removed by state and local governments; others have been torn down by protestors.
The statue of Robert Clayton stands at the entrance to the North Wing of St Thomas' Hospital, Lambeth, London. The sculptor was Grinling Gibbons, and the statue was executed around 1700–1714. Sir Robert was a banker, politician and Lord Mayor of London. As President of St Thomas', he was responsible for the complete rebuilding of the hospital, and associated church in the late 17th century. The statue was designated a Grade I listed structure in 1979.
The Charlottesville historic monument controversy is the public discussion on how Charlottesville should respond to protesters who complain that various local monuments are racist. The controversy began before 2016 when protest groups in the community asked the city council for the local removal of Confederate monuments and memorials. Other monuments became part of the controversy, including those of Thomas Jefferson because of his ownership of slaves and those of Lewis and Clark for their advocacy of white colonists over Native Americans.
Protests were held across the United Kingdom following the murder of George Floyd, a 46-year-old African-American man, by police officers while under arrest in the United States on 25 May 2020. Immediately following his murder, protests and riots occurred in dozens of cities across the United States. Protests were staged internationally for the first time on 28 May, with a solidarity demonstration outside the United States Embassy in London. They took place during the UK COVID-19 pandemic.
The statue of Edward Colston is a bronze statue of Bristol-born merchant and trans-Atlantic slave trader Edward Colston (1636–1721). It was created in 1895 by the Irish sculptor John Cassidy and was formerly situated on a plinth of Portland stone in a public space known as "The Centre" in Bristol, until it was toppled by anti-racism protestors in 2020.
A statue of Robert Milligan was installed at the West India Docks in London, in 1813. Milligan was a merchant, and was largely responsible for the construction of the West India Docks. After being put in storage in 1943, it was re-erected by the London Docklands Development Corporation in 1997.
A statue of Thomas Guy stands in the forecourt of Guy's Hospital in the borough of Southwark in Central London. The statue is Grade II listed.
The statue of John Cass is a lead figure by Louis-François Roubiliac of John Cass (1661–1718), the English merchant and Member of Parliament. The original statue of 1751 now stands in the Guildhall in London. There is also a fibreglass replica at the School of Art, Architecture and Design at London Metropolitan University in Jewry Street, installed in 1998.
The Dunham Massey Hall sundial is a lead sculpture depicting a kneeling Black man holding a sundial on his head. It was created during the early 18th century, and until 2020 stood outside Dunham Massey Hall, a stately home in Cheshire, England.
The Emancipation Memorial, also known as the Freedman's Memorial or the Emancipation Group was a monument in Park Square in Boston. Designed and sculpted by Thomas Ball and erected in 1879, its sister statue is located in Lincoln Park in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Washington, D.C. The Boston statue was taken down by the City of Boston on December 29, 2020, following a unanimous vote from the Boston Art Commission on June 30 to remove the memorial.
A number of monuments and memorials in Canada were removed or destroyed as a result of protests and riots between 2020 and 2022. These included six sculptures of Sir John A. Macdonald, the first prime minister of Canada, three of other figures connected to the Canadian Indian residential school system, two of Canadian monarchs, one of the British explorer Captain James Cook and one of John Deighton, a bar-owner whose nickname inspired the name of Vancouver's Gastown district.
The Picton Monument in Carmarthen, Wales, is one of a number of memorials commemorating Lieutenant General Sir Thomas Picton. He was the highest ranking British officer to die at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815. Picton was from Haverfordwest, Pembrokeshire. At the time of his death he had a property called Iscoed in Carmarthenshire.
