Delingpole: First they came for the statues. It will be people next…

Perhaps not since the era of Oliver Cromwell, when Puritans smashed and burned any work of art or architecture they deemed impure, has Britain engaged in such a frenzy of iconoclasm.

Across the country, mobs of petty tyrants, puffed up with self-righteousness and moral fervour, are plotting which little piece of British history they can vandalise or destroy next. Ironic, perhaps, given Oliver Cromwell himself is now on the list of condemned statues.

In Bristol they have already succeeded with the statue of 17th-century merchant, slaver and city benefactor Edward Colston (whose statue – with the apparent acquiescence of Bristol police), they pulled from its plinth and dragged into the sea.

In London, they spray-painted (‘Racist’) a statue of Winston Churchill in Parliament Square. The statue remains upright, so far. But today they had better luck in East London with a statue of Robert Milligan, another slave trader, which was torn down from its plinth on the orders of the Canal and River Trust — supposedly in response to public demand. (There was a petition with a fairly modest 3,000 signatures)

In Oxford, they’ve revived the long-simmering campaign (copied from mob tactics used in Cape Town, South Africa) to remove a statue of Cecil Rhodes from Oriel College. Hundreds of undergraduates chanted ‘take it down’, blocked the High Street with a sit-down protest during which all but one of them took a knee for eight minutes, 46 seconds in solidarity with George Floyd…