The comments come as he announced the creation of a new committee that will examine social inequality.
Widespread protests have taken place throughout Britain in recent weeks, following the murder of George Floyd at the hands of the Minneapolis police.
Demonstrators argue that police brutality and racist discrimination are still rampant in the UK. But is this really the case?
And have the protesters on occasion, behaved too violently? Political Commentator Bob Lister gave his views on the matter.
Sputnik: Should Black Lives Matter protesters have been allowed to pull down statues of controversial historical figures?
Bob Lister: It’s really sad the way things have moved. I live in Poole and we went to view the Baden Powell statue a couple of days ago before it was boarded up, and there were scouts in uniforms and a sign on the Baden Powell statue saying “fifty-four million scouts worldwide, multi-racial, multi-cultural”, but yet there were a couple of people there who were saying that he was a racist.
This was just because he read Mein Kampf at some stage just to understand Hitler’s views; it didn’t mean that he was a supporter of Hitler, it just meant that he was trying to keep an open mind about other subjects, as any intelligent and educated person would do, they would read books from all sorts of sources to have a broader opinion and balance on a subject.
Churchill helped us win the war against Hitler, who was a racist, who murdered people who were anything but the so-called “Aryan” race, so he may have said something negative, but aren’t we all guilty of that at some time in our lives?
People like Baden Powell and Churchill are part of our history and heritage, tearing a statue down won’t ruin that, but why should they do it? It’s our culture, and it’s our history.
Sputnik: Have people in the UK overreacted to what was essentially a US domestic policing incident?
Bob Lister: It’s very sad what happened to George Floyd in the way that he died, but I understand that in the British Houses of Parliament they carried out a one minute silence for him, and I’m mystified why that did that personally.
Bob Lister: This country is very tolerant I believe, particularly for the past twenty or thirty years. In the 1930s and 1940s, people possibly had different views, but that was a different era. Why should people be castigated and have their statues torn down, because at some stage they said the wrong thing, but did a tremendous amount of good?
