To be utterly disgusted by the protests today.

[SoggySocksAgain]

Am I alone here?

I am utterly disgusted by what I have seen in the news.

I have said before all these protests are going to do is set back the cause of Race Relations in this country years.

So people who are oppressed should shut up in case their agitators push their cause further back?

I wonder how many said that of the suffragettes, stonewall, civil rights movement.

@AMileInMyShoes

As i say, he didnt deserve to die, ofcourse he didnt....
But i wouldn't be using this man as an example.
Sadly there are plenty of others they could use as an example of disgusting racism

Please fuck off. You just sound like a massive racist.

@MasakaBuzz Do you think racism is a modern invention? Racism has ALWAYS been unjustified, it doesn't matter when it was being done.

Of course people are intolerant of the protests because obviously the people who are taking part don’t give a stuff about putting peoples lives at risk by doing all this during a pandemic. I can be sympathetic with the protests (peaceful ones) in the US because the death of George Floyd happened and the protestors reacted in the moment. But nothing has happened in the UK to justify why people felt the need to go on a rampage in London. Just an excuse for a lot of people to behave like thugs.

Why would you want to keep a monument in honour of a slave trader?

I certainly have no problem with the removal of a statue of a slave trader, which should have been removed many years ago.

The actions in London went too far, especially when the horse's nose was broken.

@Mittens030869 I thought the horse was unharmed?

@Bflatmajorsharp

One of the purposes of the actions is surely to empower 'non racist people to become less tolerant' of racism.

@TornadoOfSouls

• Really? Because protesters have defaced some statues? Their tolerance must have been on the fragile side.

It’s perfectly possible to think that people shouldn’t deface public property while understanding why they did it.*

No because having protest involving thousands of people at a time of a major Pandemic is the height of irresponsibility. It’s going to antagonise the vast majority of the population. The population is on edge at the moment. This hasn’t helped. Before people mention the beach goers. They were not hurling bikes at horses, or defacing monuments.

@Livingoffcoffee

Look at the progress that has been made and build on it. It might not be fast enough, anymore than equality for women, or disabled people has been, but it is happening.

@Laaf80 Okay, I got that info from another MN poster, maybe it was wrong. But throwing a bicycle could have injured anyone so it was dangerous behaviour however you look at it. (As I say to my DDs when they throw something in a temper.)

@Mittens030869 I’m sure I saw a met tweet that the horse returned unharmed but I cannot find it.

I don’t agree with the violence at all, as another poster said the govt must have been rubbing their hands with glee.

However, it was a teeny minority that’s fucked it up for the hundreds of thousands who peacefully protested across the nation.

And no, I don’t think it’s great in a pandemic either but to be fair I’m sure most protestors were using instinct and staying alert 🙄

@Laaf80

I think most were trying to social distance, and I really understand why people felt they had to protest. I know that most were using masks and hand sanitisers as well. I suppose we'll find out in a few weeks whether the R rate goes up as a result.

It will be sickening if the government have an excuse to pass the buck, as they're handling of the pandemic has been really poor.

But nothing has happened in the UK to justify why people felt the need to go on a rampage in London. Just an excuse for a lot of people to behave like thugs

Black Lives Matter - so just because we haven't had a "touch point" (for want of a better phrase) incident like the USA, why does that mean we should ignore the massive racism problem we have too?
Why have we got a statue to commemorate someone who sent thousands to their deaths in the first place?
It should have been taken down years ago, why did nobody listen when people petitioned etc?

Ah, I thought I saw that the horse wasn’t injured or had a broken nose.

twitter.com/metpoliceevents/status/1269364341503123456?s=21

Yes I did see that most had masks and bar the London and Manchester the other protests I saw (Southend Folkestone Milton Keynes Cardiff Newham Tooting etc) were distanced.

[quote motherheroic]@MasakaBuzz Do you think racism is a modern invention? Racism has ALWAYS been unjustified, it doesn't matter when it was being done.[/quote]
@Laaf80

So people who are oppressed should shut up in case their agitators push their cause further back?

I just don’t think behaving like out of control thugs is going to help the cause one whit.

@motherheroic - of course racism isn’t a modern invention, and of course it’s never been justified. Neither was burning witches. Eventually we outgrew that - at least around these parts.

I think what I am trying to say is this country isn’t perfect, but the reaction to what happened in America here, is way over the top. We can do better, but if you antagonise people they will just dig their heels in. You can guide a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink.

There will be a kick back to these protests. The people that will suffer will be the BAME population.

Anyway I have said my peace. I will take my White Privilege and go and read Churchill’s “My Early Life“....!!! Whatever else he was or wasn’t he was a beautiful writer.

@MasakaBuzz I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree on that. I feel that someone who wasn’t racist before is unlikely to become more racist as a result of the BLM protests in the current context. I could be wrong, of course.

Personally I feel less sympathy for the beachgoers, who were simply acting out of selfishness, and for the lazy, anti-social people who have littered and defaced our beaches and countryside.

@Laaf80

So people who are oppressed should shut up in case their agitators push their cause further back?

I just don’t think behaving like out of control thugs is going to help the cause one whit

So the hundreds of thousands that peacefully marched should be ignored and silenced in favour of the small violent bastards?

MasakaBuzz what Churchill stood for is beyond irresponsible - it's reprehensible.

The vast majority of people who attended the protests didn't hurl or deface anything. I went to local protests and, as my age, it was wiser than going somewhere with thousands of people. Most of the people protesting were young - they are at far, far less risk from the virus than institutional and structural inequalities in many ways.

Many wore masks, no-one went to the pub afterwards. I'm sure that the vast majority went home and will practice their usual social distancing, transmission minimisation measures as usual.

It was their choice to go. They were protesting against racism, police brutality and violence which goes back hundreds of years.

It wasn't a bit of a jolly.

@Livelovebehappy

Of course people are intolerant of the protests because obviously the people who are taking part don’t give a stuff about putting peoples lives at risk by doing all this during a pandemic. I can be sympathetic with the protests (peaceful ones) in the US because the death of George Floyd happened and the protestors reacted in the moment. But nothing has happened in the UK to justify why people felt the need to go on a rampage in London. Just an excuse for a lot of people to behave like thugs.

How many people attended these protests? How many protests weren’t peaceful?

You clearly are living under a rock. Focus on real issues!! Don’t be so uneducated “nothing has happened in UK”

I think you need to go and google why black people are at a disadvantage regarding getting jobs and being more at risk of being stopped and searched by the police. Read the tragic stories.... not to mention people’s ignorance just because they are non ethnic themselves you feel there is no issues concerning race

Maybe in your world

And yes let's judge Churchill by the standards of his time.

It wasn't compulsory in the 1930s and 40s to believe in 'superior races', let alone spout this shit from a position of leadership.

People did take notice.

Not everyone. And not everyone who took notice did anything. What did you do MadameMarie?

[quote Laaf80]@Laaf80

So people who are oppressed should shut up in case their agitators push their cause further back?

I just don’t think behaving like out of control thugs is going to help the cause one whit

So the hundreds of thousands that peacefully marched should be ignored and silenced in favour of the small violent bastards?[/quote]
It’s isn’t right, but I would put money on the small, violent bastards being the abiding memory of these protests.

@TornadoOfSouls - I think you are right. We need to agree to disagree. I hope you turn out to be right.

Anyway I have said my piece - probably quite contentiously. Thank you to those who have engaged politely with me. I will bail out now.

I love Churchill as a writer, and I love the statue of him in Parliament Square, which is why I hate the unnecessary defacing of it. However I will go and educate myself about some of his racist views.

lemonadeanddaisychains but I’m not saying no protests full stop. If people in the UK feel there are massive racism issues, then why not protest after the pandemic? The people in the US reacted in the here and now in the immediate aftermath of George Floyd’s murder, but the point I’m making is that it wasn’t necessary for the U.K. to throw protests into the mix right now when we are currently a country on the edge with all the other crap going on - social distancing, deaths of loved ones, an economy in danger, people losing their businesses or jobs.

Lock down was put in place for the NHS not to stop the COVID.

Protest after when??? There’s no cure for COVID and things won’t be going back to normal for a LONG time. You don’t honestly expect people to wait on Borris do you

It's interesting when it comes to the Colston statue. I don't know just exactly why Bristol local government was so loathe to remove it, and half wondered if there was a reason they couldn't, such as some sort of legal tie between an endowment and the statue or something.

And then I think about the removal of Savile's gravestones, which is in somewhat a similar context and really begs the question of what we should do about monuments to individuals that have caused incredible harm.

Which brings me to Marx in Highgate Cemetery. Would people support removing that monument tomb?

After all, the man is responsible, through his writings, for the deaths of millions of people across the globe. And if you think Churchill was racist, then you would be bowled over by the horrendous and wide-ranging racism of both Marx and Engels. Both of them make it very clear they regarded people of my mother's ethnicity as pretty much demon animals from hell.

So if Colston can go, and Savile, and Churchill is fair game, why can't we get rid of Marx as well?

@Packingsoapandwater I agree with you. I live in Leeds and feel affronted by regularly seeing the name Saville in street and road names. Even for a room in a Social Services building. For an SA survivor, that really was an affront!

The problem is, our historical heroes are human beings who do bad things, which sometimes aren't spoken about until after their deaths, sometimes long after, as in the case of Colston.

Although seeing as the slave trade was abolished long before the statue was erected, as I understand it, the question is why is would have been erected in the first place??

That should say, 'The question is, why would the statue have been erected in the first place?'