The Guardian Weekly (2022-01-14)

Opinion

The Guardian Weekly 14 January 2022

48

Colston four’s critics are

deluded to think Britain

owes no historic apolog y

Nesrine Malik

I

t was inevitable, but the speed of it was

surprising. After the four protesters who

toppled the statue of Edward Colston

then helped to heave it into the harbour

were acquitted , Conservative MPs, the

rightwing press and the prime minister

himself unleashed their volley of rage at the

verdict. “ Vandals can’t change our history ,”

postured Boris Johnson on the front page of the Daily

Mail. A “ green light to ransack the past ”, said the Sun. “ A

monumental mistake ,” punned the Telegraph, weakly.

If one were a cynic, one would think the newspaper

stories, statements and tweets had been sitting in draft

form, waiting to be posted, emailed and published. The

responses were so rehearsed, so obtuse and so optimised

for a polarising landing, that it seemed less about Edward

Colston’s statue and more about their rigid vision of

Britain, a country that – in their eyes – has done no wrong ,

owes no apology and should show no humility.

Certainly that seemed to be the motivation of Suella

Braverman, the UK attorney general. For as soon as

the media screams died down, she made clear her

distaste at the trial’s outcome – predicated, lest it be

forgotten, on the decision of a properly convened jury

of her fellow citizens – by threatening to refer the matter

to the appeal court. There was “confusion”, she said. It

was necessary “to clarify the law ”. Clarity, one might

suggest, to better protect that never-to-be-questioned

version of Britain.

But that version of Britain, in which fi gures such

as Colston are remote characters from the past who

have no bearing on lives today, is a fi ction. The Colston

statue topplers, and the Black Lives Matter protest ers in

general, are the ones trying to drag Britain’s view of itself

closer to reality, one in which community relations are

still strained by deep inequalities that run, like cracks,

from the past to the present.

Maintaining fi ctions is hard work, so an army of

propagandists must mobilise to spin the lies that make

up this permitted view of British history. The narrative

UNITED
KINGDOM

▲The Colston
statue topplers
were found
not guilty

FINNBARR WEBSTER/
GETTY

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