Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced the creation of a commission on racial inequality, calling for tackling the "substance" of racism and not symbols, in reference to recent degradations of statues on the margins of anti-racist protests. “We have to tackle the substance of the problem, not the symbols. We must approach the present, not try to rewrite the past - and that means that we cannot and must not allow ourselves to be drawn into an endless debate over which well-known historical figure is sufficiently pure or politically correct to remain visible. of the public, " the conservative leader wrote in a column to the daily The Telegraph, published Sunday evening on the newspaper's website.
He announced the establishment of a commission to examine "all aspects of inequality" in employment, health and even university studies. The leader returned to the case of the statue of ex-Prime Minister Winston Churchill, located near the parliament, in London, and vandalized in the margins of anti-racism demonstrations triggered by the death of the asphyxiated black American George Floyd by a white policeman. The inscription "was a racist" was tagged under the name of the conservative leader, accused of having made racist remarks, in particular against the Indians.
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The statue has since been protected by a metal box. Thousands of protesters, supported by far-right groups, went to the parliament on Saturday to "stand guard" around the monument. Clashes took place between far-right protesters and the police, who made 113 arrests. Boris Johnson said it was "completely absurd that groups of far-right thugs and troublemakers had converged in London to protect the statue of Winston Churchill . "
Churchill "was a hero," wrote Johnson. "I will resist with all my might any attempt to remove this statue from Parliament Square and the sooner we can remove the protection that surrounds it, the better." Rather than unbolting statues, such as that of the slave trader Edward Colston, torn from its pedestal by anti-racist activists in Bristol (south-west England), Boris Johnson proposed to "build more and to celebrate the people who, according to our generation, deserve a monument ” .