I have been watching the events of the past couple of weeks with an increasing sense of bewilderment. Having been quite badly ill with what turned out to be vertigo caused by a fluid imbalance in my ears and which caused my blood pressure to rocket, my attempts to find a calming oasis have been shattered by what has gone on.
Let's start by saying the global pandemic, the likes of which we haven't seen for almost exactly 100 years, has caused a lot of angst and anxiety the world over. People are scared for their lives and their livelihoods, which creates a powder keg situation where a slight spark will ignite it and bring tensions to the surface. That spark happened in Minneapolis with the killing of black man George Floyd by white policeman Derek Chauvin. There's no denying it was a horrific and senseless killing which, captured on film, showed police brutality at its fatal worst. Much is said of Floyd's criminal past and possible other factors, but that's irrelevant - once restraint is achieved that should be the end of it, the suspect should then be immobilised by other means - handcuffing, being placed in the police vehicle. Not murdered.
That this happened at all is shocking and a terrible indictment on civilised society and rightfully causes outrage - I get that. But why now, when sadly this isn't the first (nor likely the last) time that a civilian has been killed unlawfully by the police, and why the global reaction? As I said before, we're living in a powder keg situation right now, and this was it - the spark to ignite violent retribution. Protests have taken place all over the world, London especially has been a focal point of protests outside the US. Celebrities have spoken out, the sports pages (devoid of any actual sport to report) have been filled with punch and counter-punch, while companies have fallen over themselves to out-outrage each other.
It is obvious now that we have reached tipping point when it comes to respect for the law and authority, and the approach law enforcement agencies need to take. Respect is, however, a two-way street. If you are (rightly) to condemn police brutality, so must you also condemn brutality against innocent police officers who are just doing their job. In London over 40 police officers have been injured during protests (which the BBC prefaced as "largely peaceful" in their headline), while I hope all but a twisted view found the footage of the bicycle being thrown at a police horse nauseating. In the USA at time of writing four black police officers (one a 77 year old retired chief killed when answering an alarm about the looting of a pawn shop) have been killed by protestors with no outpouring of grief and anger that I've seen from those who have been most vocal about Floyd's killing. Do these black lives not matter because they were in uniform?
And therein lies part of the problem. While I have no doubt the overwhelming majority breaking virus restrictions to protest in the past week or so have honourable intentions and a genuine desire to see complete equity of treatment, there is an undercurrent of anti-authority anarchism behind it. Note the banners being waved about with their Socialist Worker font. And note also the stated aims of the Black Lives Matter movement, the starkest of which is to "defund the police". How many people who peacefully protested over the past week realised they were protesting under an umbrella banner of an organisation whose stated aim is to abolish the police? How many of the companies, celebrities and sportsmen who have donated huge sums to Black Lives Matter knowing that this is their ultimate goal? What alternative do Black Lives Matter suggest in order to maintain law and order on our streets?
My final word on this particular subject concerns celebrity reaction, which has been powerful but at times counter-productive. I have no reason to doubt Jermain Defoe when he says he has been stopped by police frequently because he's a black man driving a Ferrari - and this is clearly something in police behaviour that needs to change - if officers are genuinely stopping people purely because they think a black man driving a Ferrari clearly equals criminal, then that is outrageous.
However, you have things like ESPN NBA reporter Chris Palmer, who tweeted his support for burning down a building (which turned out to be a housing project development aimed at the poorest in society) then changed his tune when the gated community next to his was targeted. Nice NIMBYism there.
And then there's Anthony Joshua. I have enormous respect for Joshua as someone who spectacularly turned his life around from teenage criminal to world champion boxer. He is a living embodiment of what a young black man can achieve if he gets his head down and focuses his energy into positive action. He could have spoken out with a positive message about engagement, co-operation and mutual trust being developed to aid relations. However, instead he saw fit to deliver a speech at a protest fomenting a form of Apartheid by imploring black people to only buy from black businesses. His get out was that it wasn't his speech but he was speaking on behalf of someone who was unable to attend, but the fact is he said the words. What a wasted opportunity.
The moment we compartmentalise, the battle is lost, and this is where this whole thing mirrors a society that is determined to compartmentalise. The phrase "cultural appropriation" is something I'd ban were I in charge as it is something that is completely meaningless. People have been taking ideas from other cultures since the dawn of time, it's part of what enriches the planet and encourages the melting pot that is an admirable aspiration. So Jamie Oliver has launched a ready meal based on a jerk recipe? So flipping what! So a celebrity dares to wear a Chinese-style dress? Big flipping deal! So someone decides to braid their hair? Wow, call the thought police! What next - the banning of Spaghetti Bolognese unless you serve exactly the ingredients of the original recipe? The banning of white people playing rock music because it originated in black culture?
No, instead of compartmentalising cultures and banning others from utilising yours, celebrate the fact that someone else feels so inspired by your culture that they wish to adapt it for themselves. Imitation and flattery, you get it, right?
Anyway, the further attempt at subversion has emerged in recent days with attempts to airbrush history through the vandalism (and in one case, the removal) of monuments to historical figures. We'll ignore the lame-brained vandalism of the statue of Abraham Lincoln (you know, the guy whose desire to end slavery caused the US Civil War and his own assassination), a worrying movement has sprung up dedicated to erasing most of the UK's monuments if the person being commemorated ever said or did anything contrary to today's standards.
Churchill has been a target for a few years - there's no denying that beneath the surface he was a bit of a wrong 'un. A heavy drinker, quite an unpleasant character with views that wouldn't be tolerated today. However, when it came to defeating the ultimate racist, who murdered several million of his own people because they didn't conform to his standards of what constituted human civilisation, Churchill came to the fore to protect this country, and should be celebrated in this manner. This doesn't mean people shouldn't denounce his bad side, I get that, but that's no reason to vandalise his statue or call for its removal.
The argument for removing the statue of Edward Colston in Bristol on Sunday was "but he was a slave trader" - yes, I get that, but at what point is his statue commemorating this fact? The simple truth is, if you were a trader in a port city in that era, particularly Bristol and Liverpool which served as prime ports for imports from the "new world" and Africa, chances are one of the items you'd be trading, alongside raw materials, foodstuffs and tobacco, would be slaves. This may seem unpalatable now, and rightly so, but again this is to judge people of yesterday by today's standards. While a small part of his trade wealth was from the buying of slaves from black slave masters, he more than put back into the city of my alma mater through his philanthropy. And it is this philanthropy that means Colston's name is forever connected positively with the development of the city.
And it has spread like wildfire. I admire the brass tack of Ntokozo Qwabe, the UK leader of the "Rhodes Must Fall" movement, in what's a brilliant piece of "biting the hand that feeds" - Qwabe himself got into Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship. So here we have someone who clearly feels that strongly about Sir Cecil Rhodes that he wants him airbrushed from history, yet was happy to take his money and study at the university which hosts the people whose education was paid out of his pocket.
While there are arguments surrounding why there's a statue of Mahatma Gandhi in London, he's now on the hitlist because he, in common with much of science in the early 1900s, was a proponent of eugenics. We'll forget his other stuff, like his non-violent battle to gain independence for India.
And the hits just keep coming. Thomas Guy, you know, he of Guy's Hospital. Sir Robert Peel, a great reforming Prime Minister who did so much to improve lives for the poorest at a time when they were disenfranchised - which ultimately cost him his career when he repealed the Corn Laws. But not noted anti-Semite Karl Marx. Funny that. How about Joseph Rowntree?
The spread continues to popular culture - the BBC has announced it has pulled Little Britain from its on demand services. Why? Because one of their recurring sketches featured some racists and at times Messrs Lucas and Walliams might have blacked up. As usual, this spectacularly misses the point. When people laughed at the racist sketch (and I'm sure some did - I didn't but that's because I considered that sketch to be simply unfunny), they were laughing about the fact these people were so prejudiced, not agreeing with them. Likewise back in the day there was Alf Garnett - it was always important to note that he was someone to be laughed at, not with, and that Garnett's prejudices always came back to haunt him and make him out to be the monster.
Anyway, if you've reached the end of my diatribe, congratulations. If you can take away anything from this, I'd hope it's to take a deep breath, step back, survey the situation, celebrate our history and heritage while being mindful of the fact that we live in different and more enlightened times - at least on the surface (modern slavery is very much a thing in a number of cultures). If you search for the bad in every historical figure, you'll find it, but if they're overall on the right side of the ledger, celebrate this. Respect authority and expect respect back. Be colourblind, don't compartmentalise by seeking to create artificial divides. Celebrate diversity but don't denigrate those who seek to celebrate yours.
