Chair of Lambeth Independent Police Advisory Group and community activist Lorraine Jones said she wasn’t sure if the statue of former Prime Minister Winston Churchill should be removed because she hasn’t ‘personally met him.’
Lorraine Jones appeared on Channel 4 News yesterday to speak with presenter Cathy Newman about the recent protests and counter-protests across London.
Ms Jones suggested it’s time for the government to reexamine the historic statues around the city and promptly relocate any ‘that shouldn’t be there’ to a museum.
“I think that what needs to happen, which I know has already started, we need to look at the people that are being placed on a high pedestal in this society, the reasons why they are, and honestly and rightfully, if they are supposed to be removed through being heroes of slavery, it’s not a good sign, but I know that there’s some work going on around that,” Ms Jones said.
“And the sooner the government can make the decisions to take down the statues that shouldn’t be there, place them in a museum, like some people have suggested the better.”
When asked if Churchill’s statue should be removed, Ms Jones replied: “I’ve heard many arguments on both sides. Some say that he’s a racist. Some say that he’s a hero.
“I haven’t personally met him,” Ms Jones admitted. “But what I would say is that that question of whether he should remain should be put to the community.”
Ms Jones’ comments come just days after rioters in Philadelphia defaced a statue of Matthias Baldwin, an early abolitionist who fought against slavery 30-years before it ended.
In a similar display of ignorance, footage was circulating on social media earlier in the week of alleged Black Lives Matter protesters admitting they had no idea who Cecil Rhodes was despite supporting the removal of the Rhodes’ statue at Oxford University.
Yesterday's protest at Oxford for the removal of the Rhodes statue…
" To be honest I don't even know who he is" – BLM protester pic.twitter.com/dkz7rOfUL0— 🇬🇧 David Poulden 🥶 (@PouldenDavid) June 10, 2020
“Men don’t learn much from the lessons of history,” Aldous Huxley once said, “and that is the most important of all the lessons of history.”
If we did, perhaps we’d heed the warning from George Orwell’s dystopian classic 1984, which is appearing more like a work of prophecy than fiction each day.
Orwell envisioned a society under authoritarian control that dictated, not only the minute details of daily life, but history itself.
“Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered.
“And that process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.”
And any black dissenting voices found guilty of questioning this narrative, Huff Post has a message for you: ‘Shut up!’
Too many Black stars have made comments condemning the movement for Black lives. It may be time to leave some behind. https://t.co/1y8lFBUlg4
— HuffPost (@HuffPost) June 13, 2020
