Fury over Remembrance Sunday rappers condemning Churchill

‘We were so disgusted that we just walked away and saw others walk away too. It wasn’t the time or place’

THE Imperial War Museum has apologised for “offence” caused by a “grotesque” rap that condemned Winston Churchill over his “hand in a famine” at a Remembrance Sunday event.

Performers made a speech questioning how Britain remembers its war dead immediately after a two-minute silence in the museum’s foyer, but audience members walked out in protest at the politically charged piece. During the performance, entitled Breaking The Silence, a girl shouted: “How many remember that it wasn’t only Churchill who fought? The same man who had a hand in a famine in 1943 wiping out three million Bengalis, denial, displacement, malnutrition, starvation, without any apologies.”

The rap claimed that war remembrance occasions “forget... those whose skin isn’t porcelain” and that “we fail to remember one sixth of all our forces were south Asian, fail to remember anyone who wasn’t caucasian”.

The Imperial War Museum said it “apologise[s] to anyone who attended who was offended or upset by the performance in any way” and accepted it “was not the moment” for the rap. The taxpayer-funded museum had invited teenagers to “draw on their own personal and family histories” in a “spoken word performance” with the south-east London-based Midi Music Company.

Rosemarie Harris, from Stafford, walked out and her donation was refunded.

“I think insulting Churchill in that place on that day was grotesque,” she said.

“We were so disgusted that we just walked away and we saw others walk away too. I asked on principle for our donation back. We felt it wasn’t the time or place to be coming out with a political agenda.”

Col Richard Kemp, the former head of the British Armed Forces in Afghanistan, said: “It’s really shameful and the Imperial War Museum is betraying everything it should be standing for.” Shauna O’briain, who goes by the stage name MC Angel and helped organise the rap, said: “Nothing about war should ever feel comfortable, it was uncomfortable for me to listen to the fact that we haven’t given as much attention to black and brown soldiers who died in the war.

“Our young people just brought their views and opinions there and their views and opinions are valid.”