Johnson and Macron vow to protect statues, refusing to erase country's history
The statue of former British prime minister Winston Churchill is seen defaced, with the words (Churchill) "was a racist" written on it's base in Parliament Square, central London after a demonstration outside the US Embassy, on June 7, 2020
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and French President Emmanuel Macron both pushed back against calls from "Black Lives Matter" protesters to remove colonial-era statues, despite growing global scrutiny of former colonial powers provoked by the death in police custody of George Floyd in the United States.
In an address to the nation on Sunday, Macron said France would be "uncompromising" in its fight against racism after days of demonstrations over alleged prejudice among police forces.
But he said the country would not obscure elements of its history or dismantle statues of public figures who may have advocated racist views or policies.
"The Republic will not wipe away any trace or any name from its history. It will not forget any of its works. It will not take down any of its statues but lucidly look at our history and our memory together."
He said this was especially important in Africa, where French colonial rule in several countries left a legacy that remains a subject of anger for many to this day.
Together, France and Africa need to find a "present and a future that is possible on both sides of the Mediterranean," he said.
Several demonstrations against racism and police violence against minorities have erupted in French cities in recent weeks.Protesters have rallied in particular around the case of a young black man, Adama Traore, who died in custody in 2016. It remains under investigation.
In the UK, Johnson said Britain cannot "photoshop" its cultural landscape and complex history as doing so would be a distortion of its past, amid an ongoing row over the removal of statues of historical figures.
"If we start purging the record and removing the images of all but those whose attitudes conform to our own, we are engaged in a great lie, a distortion of our history," Johnson wrote in The Telegraph.
Johnson also defended Winston Churchill and said it was "absurd and deplorable" that the former prime minister's monument should have been in any danger.
"He was a hero, and I expect I am not alone in saying that I will resist with every breath in my body any attempt to remove that statue from Parliament Square, and the sooner his protective shielding comes off the better," he said.
Many monuments of historical figures have been boarded up as anti-racism protesters taking to the streets across the UK. Earlier this month, a statue of Edward Colston, who made a fortune in the 17th century from the slave trade, was torn down in the port city of Bristol and thrown into harbor.
Johnson is an admirer and biographer of Churchill, and some of those close to him say he wants to emulate him.
But Churchill expressed racist and anti-Semitic views and critics blame him for denying food to India during the 1943 famine which killed more than 2 million people — aspects of his legacy which some say are not scrutinised enough.
