It’s easy to deal with a few offensive statues; less so with deep hurt and upset across the country

Editorial: The continuing arguments about Brexit, equality, the coronavirus response and now even public art have created bitter divisions, as well as anger and ugly scenes

Protesters throw a statue of Edward Colston into Bristol harbour during a Black Lives Matter protest rally

A straightforward case of criminal damage or a long-overdue blow for racial equality? The toppling of the controversial and increasingly offensive statue of Edward Colston in Bristol was the most striking of many symbolic acts during the recent demonstrations. Now that the effigy of this slave master has been drenched in red paint and dumped in the harbour, it is almost an academic question. It seems improbable, at any rate, that he will be restored to his former place of prominence.

The home secretary, Priti Patel, tweeted that “justice will follow”. It is an intriguing prospect. First, the group of demonstrators going about their alleged criminal joint enterprise at Bristol harbour was a large one. Second, given the financial cost of the damage, the case could go to a jury trial, and it would be a test of contemporary opinion to see whether they would be prepared to convict in such an obviously emotive case.

Sir Keir Starmer, backed by his shadow justice secretary David Lammy, certainly thinks that the law was broken, and that those who purport to make the law cannot condone criminal acts. Mr Lammy adds there is an honourable tradition of peaceful civil resistance, but that even Martin Luther King faced the legal consequences for his acts of resistance. It is not a cop-out to state that a more suitable contemporary home for the statue of a slave trader should long ago have been found. The authorities in Bristol failed to reach consensus, for whatever reason, and the results are well known.

The events of the last few days have opened up yet another unwelcome front in Britain’s seemingly never-ending culture wars. Although the battle lines are not precisely the same, the continuing arguments about Brexit, equality the coronavirus response and now even public art have created bitter divisions, as well as anger and ugly scenes.

As for the national statuary, it should be possible to try to find some sort of mechanism to both respect heritage and the past, and to better account for the real deep hurt and upset some symbols and monuments can cause. Mercifully, the number of statues and the like liable to outright destruction, rather than a graffiti protest, is small. No one, for example, seems keen in ripping William Shakespeare or Charlie Chaplin from their plinths in London’s West End, nor the magnificent neo-gothic monument to Sir Walter Scott in Edinburgh. Yet there are other, increasingly problematic figures who have been the centre of debate in recent times, such as the arch-imperialist Cecil Rhodes, memorialised above the entrance to Oriel College, Oxford, and whose name is associated with a number of institutions.

The part of the UK with the most unhappy and detailed experience of the power of sectarian imagery and rituals is Northern Ireland. There, under the peace process, a set of rules and a parades commission have dealt more or less satisfactorily with flags, banners, marches and the like, in a territory where terrorist violence was a way of life for three decades and political consensus is always fragile.

This, after all, is where the residents in some districts are moved to paint their kerbstones red, white and blue or green, white and gold.

Despite the unrest and the righteous anger shown in recent times, it should be possible to sort Britain’s relatively few problematic public monuments, with some sort of independent panel, and place the remaining offensive ones somewhere more secluded, and less close to open water.