‘A licence to vandalise monuments’ as Colston statue-topplers cleared
MPs warn of ‘dangerous precedent’ after four activists walk free
PROTESTERS have been given the go-ahead to deface controversial monuments after a jury cleared four activists who toppled a statue of slave trader Edward Colston, MPs warned last night.
The ‘Colston Four’ were acquitted of criminal damage after the memorial was torn down in Bristol.
Critics last night attacked the ‘extraordinary’ verdict as a ‘vandals’ charter’ which they fear could hand other demonstrators a ‘dangerous’ licence to carry out similar acts.
Jake Skuse, 33, was accused of goading a feverish crowd into throwing the statue into the city’s harbour during a Black Lives Matter protest in June 2020.
Rhian Graham, 30, Milo Ponsford, 26, and Sage Willoughby, 22, were caught on CCTV looping ropes around the monument before they helped to pull it from its plinth. Some furious protesters spat on the statue and daubed it with paint.
It was then rolled 570 yards through the streets and dumped in the water where it sank.
An 11-day trial at Bristol Crown Court heard the mob caused more than £6,000 of damage to the statue, harbour railings and the pavement. The destruction was a defining moment in protests that followed the murder of black suspect George Floyd by a white police officer in
‘Thuggish behaviour’
the US. Responding to the jury’s verdict last night, Tory MP Peter Bone said: ‘I’m not privy to what was said in court, but if somebody topples a statue or any other structure, that is criminal damage and one would expect people to be punished for doing that.’
He insisted: ‘It’s a dangerous state of affairs which could now give licence to people elsewhere in the country to go around pulling statues down.’
Mr Bone said: ‘It’s a very strange decision. I hope the Government will do everything in its power to make sure there’s no room for people to commit criminal damage on the basis of some woke objective or other.’ Fellow Tory MP Tom Hunt said the verdict ‘feels like a vandals’ charter’. He added: ‘This sets a dangerous precedent. The idea that political extremists can remove any statue they like and not be punished... where does it end?
‘What happens if activists decide to take down Churchill’s statue in Parliament Square and dump it in the Thames? Will they escape punishment too?’
Another Tory MP, Lee Anderson, stressed: ‘I have never heard anything like it. Criminal damage is criminal damage regardless of who is represented by a statue. We live in a democracy and if people are offended by statue then they should use the local democratic process to have them removed and not mindless thuggish behaviour.’
The campaign group Save Our Statues tweeted: ‘Colston statue accused defy justice. Verdict not only gives the green light to political vandalism, but also legitimises the divisive identity politics it helped succour.’
During the trial, the activists did not deny their actions, but argued that they were justified because the statue was so offensive.
Mr Ponsford told jurors: ‘I thought that a statue that celebrates a figure such as Colston was disgraceful and offensive to the people of Bristol.’ Miss Graham, who is the half-sister of Rag’n’Bone Man singer Rory Graham, added that she acted out of ‘allyship and solidarity’ with people of colour.
Liam Walker QC, representing Mr Willoughby, said: ‘Each of these defendants were on the right side of history and, I submit, they were also on the right side of the law.
‘Colston’s deeds may be historical but...the continued veneration of him in a vibrant multicultural city was an act of abuse.’
But the prosecution insisted that the fact Colston, who died in 1721, was a slave trader was ‘wholly irrelevant’. William Hughes QC, for the Crown, said the case was about the ‘rule of law’ and the ‘cold hard facts’.
Judge Peter Blair QC told jurors to disregard political rhetoric, and to try the case purely on the evidence in front of them.
After being cleared, the Colston Four stood outside court alongside protesters carrying banners boasting ‘We toppled Colston’.
Three wore T-shirts designed by Bristol street artist Banksy featuring a stencil of the toppled statue’s plinth. Speaking to a crowd of supporters, Mr Willoughby said: ‘We didn’t change history, we rectified it.’ He added: ‘This is a victory for Bristol, this is
‘We rectified history’
a victory for racial equality and it’s a victory for anybody who wants to be on the right side of history.’
The statue, which was retrieved from the harbour and later went on display at a museum, is currently in storage awaiting the result of a public survey over what should happen to it.
Colston was a key figure in the Atlantic slave trade, but supported schools, houses for the poor and hospitals. Some buildings bearing his name in Bristol ditched it after the statue was toppled.
EXACTLY what message about the rule of law does it send out when violent agitators are cleared by a court after brazenly tearing down 17th century slave trader edward Colston’s statue?
The four Black Lives Matter protesters claimed it was a political act – not criminal damage. Inexplicably, the jury agreed.
Where does this madness end? With thugs having carte blanche to smash up any public property they don’t like in the name of the noble tradition of dissent? Once again, the law is an ass.