The Changing Shape of Cultural Activism: Legislating Statues in the Context of the Black Lives Matter Movement

The resurgence of Black Lives Matter protests in summer of 2020 presented an opportunity for a critical national conversation about Britishness and history. But rather than listening to activists’ concerns, the government has introduced legislation impeding the democratic process of removing statues.

The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill (2021) takes a damaging, punitive approach to contesting statues. Repeated references to summer 2020 make clear that the Bill is a response to the Black Lives Matter protests and, in particular, to the toppling of the Colston statue in Bristol.

As part of a wider project based at CoDE (the Centre on the Dynamics of Ethnicity) at the University of Manchester, the authors of this briefing, alongside Professor Gary Younge, are conducting research into the global contestation of statues that commemorate slavers and colonisers.

Focusing on in-depth interviews in the UK, the US, South Africa, Belgium and Martinique, they ask why and how activists have challenged these monuments. They also investigate the diverse ways that local and national governments and institutions are responding to critical engagement with public space. Alongside these case studies, the project has included a series of online workshops convened by Dr Sadia Habib. - Whose Statues? Whose Stories? - with young people from the Manchester Museum OSCH Collective and beyond exploring creative responses to local statues in their towns and cities.

In stark contrast to claims that activists are erasing history, the research reveals that cultural activism encourages a deeper and more critical engagement with history in all its complexity.