2020: Putting up a statue of Margaret Thatcher
A statue of Margaret Thatcher is to be erected in Grantham with local authority backing. Mrs Thatcher is remembered for a number of reasons, one being her view that Britain was being ‘swamped’ by immigrants.
If 2020 saw a furore over the toppling of a statue of slave trader Edward Colston in Bristol and the intervention of Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden to prevent the moving of another slave trader from the front of the Museum of the Home in Hackney, clearly 2021 will be a year of continuing protest.
It’s not so much the statues that are the issue, central though they are to Tory culture wars, but what the whole thing says about official attitudes to racism and Britain’s imperial past.
Taking down or moving statues of racists is at best discouraged. Putting up a statue of someone who many would see as having racist attitudes, at least on some issues, is perfectly ok.
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