Save Our Statues... from being used as pawns

The government is stoking fear around statues to justify their draconian measures.

The Save Our Statues Twitter campaign that I started had nothing to do with hate. It was a defensive response to a genuine threat specifically targeting statues. Which is why it makes me so sad to see our statues now being coerced into a new fight serving antagonist agendas.

The current marches have nothing to do with statues. Hundreds of thousands have marched past them, 99.9% without a second glance. The small amount of graffiti we’ve seen was not about the statues, as it was in 2020. In any crowd a hundred thousand strong, you’re going to find one idiot. That’s no reason to condemn the hundred thousand. Unless, that is, you have an ulterior motive.

In 2020, Colston was literally hauled down by a mob and a Union Flag on the Cenotaph nearly set on fire. What have we seen in 2023 that is even remotely comparable? Yet the vitriol emanating from social media, the legacy media and the government – all in lock step - has been incomparably more. And that should raise eyebrows.

Why are people so much more enraged by imagined attacks in 2023 than they were by actual attacks in 2020?

I do wonder if 2020 was some kind of preparation for this moment. The government did almost nothing to quell those attacks and, arguably, through expressions of “understanding”, did quite a lot to encourage them. They were happy to fuel the fires and for campaigns like mine to grow, ready for a moment like this when they could mobilise that passion to their own aims. Their own aims of forever wars abroad and forever increasing state control at home. This latest crisis serves both nicely. The media has been furiously stoking the religious divide for years and the Conservative Party knows that it’s safe ground to fall back on at a time when they are far behind in the polls.

And so, with no real damage done and no specific threat identified, they are already sounding out the ground for banning protests. Something it never even contemplated in 2020, even in the midst of what they were insisting was the most deadly pandemic in history. To my knowledge, Rishi Sunak didn’t utter a word when the Cenotaph was attacked by an arsonist. Yet now he is issuing hysterical statements about “clear and present risk”.

It doesn’t add up. The only way there’s going to be any trouble around our statues is if a bunch of sun-burned neo-Nazis turn up to “defend” them. Which is, of course, now inevitable and does, of course, play right into the government’s hands. Expect more freedoms to be curtailed imminently.

I stand against using statues as political pawns, whether that’s by the ‘left’ in 2020, or by the ‘right’' in 2023. Anyone who genuinely wants to save our statues should be standing against those who seek to co-opt them to their narrative, whoever they are, rather than blindly sticking to the ‘side’ the media has told you that you’re on.

Is it a coincidence that current attempts to shut down divergent views about Palestine are coming at exactly the same time as the Online Safety Bill became law? The current conflict is being used to justify all the government’s recent power grabs, from the Policing Bill curtailing the right to protest, to the Online Safety Bill curtailing free speech.

And so my Save Our Statues campaign has come to an end and I’m glad that I shall play no more part in the ongoing psyops to divide and control us. I remain proud of what we did and the statues we undoubtedly did save, but I’m also sad that the movement I helped create has morphed into one of hatred and will now be used to bolster support for war and as justification for draconian assaults on our freedoms.

Keep questioning and keep your eyes on the real enemy.