...as Scouts step in to stave off threats to Baden-Powell
THE row over public monuments deepened when council leaders announced they would remove a statue of the Scouts founder Robert Baden-Powell.
Angry residents and former Scouts stepped in to halt council plans to remove the Dorset seafront statue after it appeared on a list of ‘racist’ monuments compiled by Black Lives Matter campaigners.
Authorities said they were taking down the statue in Poole for its own protection, after consulting with police. But the council then gave the bronze statue a reprieve after the police said it gave no such advice, while residents threatened to form a protective human shield and 20,000 people signed a petition to save it.
Lord Baden-Powell’s sculpture will now be given 24-hour protection instead while council leaders decide if it should be removed temporarily.
It is one of around 100 monuments and memorials across Britain to appear on a website, Topple the Racists, linked to the Black Lives Matter protests.
Baden-Powell’s name was added to the Topple the Racists list because campaigners said he committed atrocities against the Zulus during his military career, and that he sympathised with Nazism and fascism.
Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole Council leader Vikki Slade said the statue would be put into safe storage, reflecting the council’s recognition that ‘there are some aspects of Robert Baden-Powell’s life that are considered less worthy of commemoration’.
But within hours crowds had formed around the statue, which was installed in 2008 and faces Brownsea Island in Poole Harbour, where the Scout movement began.
Len Banister, 78, a former Scout, said: ‘They shouldn’t take it down, I will fight them off. If they want to knock it down they will have to knock me down first.’
The council later said that its contractors did not want to carry out the removal in a ‘media circus’, and delayed its plans for the temporary removal.
Mark Howell, the council’s deputy leader, said the initial plan to remove it was intended to protect a ‘much-loved statue’ from damage or destruction.