- Question
What is the intellectual framing of the UK statues debate?
In June 2020 Bristol protestors rioting against the murder of George Floyd tore down a statue of Edward Colston. Having hauled it from its plinth, they eventually abandoned the statue in the city's harbour. Hundreds of onlookers gathered to watch, viewing this as a momentous step in the fight against racism. Colston is known as the man who built Bristol. He bequeathed his enormous fortune to the city upon his death. 300 years on, the scale of his legacy is visceral in Bristol's landmarks and architecture, and the names of its schools, concert halls, streets, restaurants, pubs and cathedral. Yet, his fortune was built on slavery, leading many to argue that the statue props up institutional racism in the UK. Since Colston's toppling, activists have circulated lists of hundreds more controversial statues they say must be removed to end racial inequality. Others call this type of campaigning problematic. They view the destruction of monuments as historical whitewashing. For them, this trend is an affront to British history that does not confront the real issues at play. So, who are these groups, what do they think, and why?
"Taking the statues down is an 'iconoclasm of the Woke!'"
This position frames the toppling of controversial UK statues as an 'iconoclasm of the woke'. It argues that destroying history is reductive and unproductive — casting the movement as cancel culture, a juvenile reading of history, and part of a wider assault on Western civilisation.
- We are witnessing a revolution against Western civilisation
- This is the latest battleground in the West's desperate fight for moral authority
- This is a racist attack on the UK's helpless white majority
- The fight against injustice should focus on changing the present
- The statues crisis typifies the rising tide of cancel culture
- Toppling statues represents a juvenile understanding of history
"Taking down the statues redresses protracted injustice"
This framing holds that taking down controversial statues redresses long-standing injustice. It argues one cannot oppose racism without acting to redress it, that the moment forces a reckoning with racism, and that statues themselves allow no nuanced debate.
"This crisis is an attack on the state!"
This is not a fight about history. Nor one about injustice. The battleground here is the nation, and how it is being systematically undermined by a vigilante mob. If we give in to this brutish idealism, we lose our most precious possession: Britishness.
"We should re-imagine what these statues stand for!"
This position holds that controversial UK statues should be re-imagined rather than simply venerated or torn down. It seeks a more productive path that neither honours the evils some statues represent nor encourages a vigilante culture of destruction — reframing what they stand for.