The Crude Maoist Origins of Today’s Culture Wars

In February 2017, the then Dean of Bristol Cathedral, the Very Reverend David Hoyle, announced he was “prepared to have a conversation” about removing the Cathedral’s largest stained-glass window because of its links to the prominent seventeenth-century philanthropist, slave trader and deputy governor of the Royal African Company, Edward Colston. After violent demonstrations against racism in a number of British cities in June 2020 and the toppling of statues like Colston’s, the Dean’s preparedness seemed prescient. (note: the four windows were replaced in 2023)

The Black Lives Matter (BLM) demonstrations in the wake of the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis on May 25, 2020, supercharged, amongst other things, the campaign against the legacy of Edward Colston. The Bristol experience is one instalment in a movement originating in the US but with European connections to remove the stigma of slavery, colonialism and racism by taking down statues, renaming…