LANCASHIRE trade unionists have extended their support to four people set to be charged with toppling the statue of a notorious slave trader.

The four are set to appear at Bristol Magistrates Court on January 25 2021 after having removed the statue of 17th century slave trader Edward Colston and thrown it into Bristol harbour during the international Black Lives Matter protests of June 2020.

Now, The Lancashire Association of Trade Union Councils, which represents around 30,000 workers from across the county has issued a statement supporting the removal of the statue and condemning the government’s proposal for a new law to protect such monuments.

LATUC secretary Peter Billington said: “The statue was pushed into the harbour as part of a protest against racism.

“The LATUC supports the removal of the statue, Colston was an English merchant and Tory Member of Parliament who was involved in the Atlantic slave trade.

“During his involvement with the Royal African Company it is estimated that the company transported over 84,000 African men, women and children to the Caribbean and the rest of the Americas.

“As many as 19,000 may have died on the journey, slaves were branded with the company initials RAC and closely shackled together.

“On each ship, hundreds of enslaved people lay in their own filth, disease, suicide and murder meant that between 10 and 20 per cent of them died during the six-to-eight-week voyage.”

The protests last summer saw people take to the streets across the world, including in East Lancashire which saw protests in Darwen’s market square and elsewhere, after the killing of George Floyd by police officers in Minneapolis, USA.

Lancashire Telegraph:

Black Lives Matter protests in Darwen

The removal of the Colston statue of became one of the most enduring moments of the protests in the UK.

Mr Billington said: "What Colston and others did was racist and inhumane and has effects on attitudes right up to today.

In a decent society, statues to people like him would have been removed long ago.

“The Government is proposing new laws to protect statues to people such as Colston.

“This is the same Government that created a ‘hostile environment’ for people from the Windrush generation and had to apologise for their treatment.

“It seems like not much has changed if preserving British culture involves respect for those who have committed inhuman crimes against black people."

The government, however, has said that such monuments should be safeguarded and “put into context.”

Communities secretary Robert Jenrick MP said: said: “We live in a country that believes in the rule of law, but when it comes to protecting our heritage, due process has been overridden.

“That can’t be right.

“Local people should have the chance to be consulted whether a monument should stand or not.”