I warned you in my column on Friday that kneeling before a baying mob and showing your ‘empathy and tacit support’ for Black Lives Matter would end in trouble and sure enough it did this weekend.
The sight of British cops running away from the mob made my blood boil. My dad an ex-copper would have been spinning in his grave at the sight, so thank god we had him cremated!
But seriously, is this where our great nation has ended up? In a kind of ‘fashion label anarchy in the UK’ dressed in Nike trainers and colour co-ordinated shell suits?!
This revolution is not being televised but it’s certainly being videoed on every scumbags’ mobile phone as the Antifa mob decide which parts of our history, culture and arts are now acceptable in their ‘modern world’.
Did you see the moron trying to set fire the Union flag on the cenotaph dressed in matching tracksuit? He didn’t succeed but his intent was clear. Meanwhile some of his mates no doubt thought it was acceptable to daub a slogan on Churchill’s statue calling him a racist on the anniversary of D day.
Clearly these vandals skipped history lessons at school otherwise they might have found out who the real racists and fascists were.
Dis-United Kingdom
Where was Boris this weekend as the mobs took control of the streets? Where was Cressida Dick or the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan?
Why wasn’t London locked down and this protest banned due to Coronavirus?
If the protest was going to be allowed why weren’t the statues protected with a ring of steel of tooled-up police officers?
At the very least after the rioting and the injuries to the cops including the female mounted officer Johnson should have been on TV on Sunday morning addressing the nation and saying enough is enough.
Instead Boris dithered and delayed and waited until Monday evening, long after the horse had bolted, metaphorically and literally, to address the nation and act the tough guy in a video address to the 'Dis-united Kingdom'.
This should have happened on Saturday and Sadiq Khan and Dick of the Yard should have been with him and stated in no uncertain terms that the police would go in hard and with as much force as necessity to stop any more law breaking and rioting.
Their silence over the weekend was deafening.
Policing is Not About PR, it’s About Upholding the Law
Instead we had a top copper, Andy Bennett, in Bristol deciding not to intervene when the Colston statue was pulled down and the mob were allowed to tow the statue through the city and throw it into the harbour.
Bennett won an award last September for ‘Valuing Difference” for his work on ‘Hate crime’ There’s a surprise!
Speaking at the time he said, "Over the past two years I have made it my personal mission for the police in Bristol to build new and lasting relationships with the people of Bristol and in particular our BaME and LGBT+ communities".
Was this the reason he didn’t intervene on Sunday?
Not according to his Chief Constable, Andy Marsh, who said that if Bennett had intervened there would have been a 'very violent confrontation'.
Yup mate, that’s called policing a riot!
The Chief’s most telling comment however is this, “Can you imagine scenes of police in Bristol fighting with protesters who were damaging the statue of a man who is reputed to have gathered much of his fortune through the slave trade?”
It is not the police’s job to assess the PR ramifications or politically correct analysis of their actions, it is their job to uphold the law, mate.
Revisionism and Mob Rule Are Not Democracy
I've got no time for slave traders and I certainly don’t need to be lectured on the horrors of slavery by some uneducated yob who saw one episode of Roots years ago. Which is exactly what the Biased BBC keep putting up for interview to hammer home the idea that all white Brits are racist. Their reporting of this whole episode has been an absolute disgrace and a propaganda machine for the Black Lives Matter campaign. Impartiality has been abandoned once again to suit their biased agenda.
I know that we Brits turned slavery into an industrial process and I believe it was a holocaust which our children should be fully educated about.
There’s also a legitimate debate to be had about these statues and whether they should be removed. However, both the debate and decision has to be one taken by the population in a democratic and open process, not by the mob.
If we give in to the mob where does it stop? Do we raze to the ground most of Bristol, what about Liverpool or the Tate Gallery?
However, we cannot change our past, only our present and future by educating ourselves and our children about our history, warts and all. For example, I think Michael Portillo's Empire shows on Channel 5 are doing this brilliantly at the moment.
However cultural or historical revisionism and erasing of events or opinions which we are now uncomfortable with is not the way forward in a modern tolerant democracy. Nor is bowing to the mob!