London mayor takes aim at statues of imperialists

London’s mayor has said that more statues of imperialist figures could be removed from Britain’s streets after protesters knocked down the monument to a slave trader, as the killing of George Floyd by a white policeman in Minneapolis continued to spark protests — and drive change — around the world.

On the day Floyd was buried in his hometown of Houston, Texas, London Mayor Sadiq Khan said he was setting up a commission to ensure the city’s monuments reflected its diversity.

The Commission for Diversity in the Public Realm will review statues, murals, street art, street names and other memorials and consider which legacies should be celebrated.

“It is an uncomfortable truth that our nation and city owes a large part of its wealth to its role in the slave trade and while this is reflected in our public realm, the contribution of many of our communities has been willfully ignored,” Khan said.

Demonstrators across the UK are also seeking to right historical injustices and remove symbols of oppression.

In Oxford, campaigners are calling for the removal of a statue of Cecil Rhodes, a Victorian imperialist in Africa who made a fortune from mines and endowed the university’s Rhodes scholarships.

In Edinburgh, Scotland, there are calls to tear down a statue of Henry Dundas, an 18th-century politician who delayed Britain’s abolition of slavery by 15 years.

At weekend protests in London, demonstrators scrawled “was a racist” on a statue of Britain’s wartime prime minister Winston Churchill.