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London protests on; despair over covering Gandhi, Churchill statues
The number of protestors swelled in central London on Saturday morning for a rally by the Black Lives Matter (BLM) campaign, and for counter-protests by other groups, despite appeals to stay away by Prime Minister Boris Johnson, London mayor Sadiq Khan and others.
Descendants of former prime minister Winston Churchill and those instrumental in setting up Mahatma Gandhi’s statue in London in 2015 on Saturday regretted that their statues needed to be protected due to potential harm from protests and counter-protests.
The number of protestors swelled in central London on Saturday morning for a rally by the Black Lives Matter (BLM) campaign, and for counter-protests by other groups, despite appeals to stay away by Prime Minister Boris Johnson, London mayor Sadiq Khan and others.
According to Khan, the mayor’s office had intelligence that far-right groups were planning counter-protests with potential of violence, and an attack on Nelson Mandela’s statue. The Greater London Authority under him is responsible for the statues in Parliament Square.
Meghnad Desai, chairman of the Gandhi Memorial Statue Trust, said: “It is a pity and a shame that the Gandhi statue in Parliament Square is to be covered up ahead of the BLM rally today. Gandhi has nothing to hide”.
“He is a pioneer of the struggle against imperialism and racism who inspired Dr. Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela,” he added, amidst calls by home secretary Priti Patel and others to remove the protective covering around the statues.
The statues of Churchill, Gandhi, Mandela in Parliament Square and the Cenotaph in nearby Whitehall have been boarded up to prevent them from being targeted. Last Sunday, Gandhi and Churchill statues were among those attacked by BLM protestors.
Nicholas Soames, Churchill’s grandson and former Conservative minister, said he was “deeply upset” at the statue being covered, adding that British society, according to him, has “lost its moral compass”.
He said: “I find it extraordinary that millions and millions of people all over the world who look up to Britain will be astonished that a statue of Churchill and the Cenotaph, our national war memorial, could have been defaced in this disgusting way.”
Emma Soames, Churchill’s grand-daughter, wants the statue to be placed in a museum: “It’s extraordinarily sad that my grandfather, who was such a unifying figure in this country, appears to have become a sort of icon through being controversial.”
“I think on the whole, people weren’t looking at the entire record of people when they put up statues for them, and even if they did we’d be living in a country of empty plinths I think”, she said, adding that the sight of her grandfather boarded up was “shocking”.
Scotland Yard imposed time and route restrictions on the protests by groups that include BLM, right wing and left wing affiliated groups.
