Prime Minister Boris Johnson visits the M&S clothing department and other retail outlets in Westfield Stratford to see the COVID-19 measure taken before reopening tomorrow, in London, Britain June 14, 2020. Julian Simmonds/Pool via REUTERS
(Reuters) – Prime Minister Boris Johnson said that Britain cannot “photoshop” its cultural landscape and complex history as doing so would be a distortion of its past, amid an ongoing row over the removal of statues of historical figures.
“If we start purging the record and removing the images of all but those whose attitudes conform to our own, we are engaged in a great lie, a distortion of our history,” Johnson wrote bit.ly/37sQcXE in The Telegraph.
Johnson also defended Winston Churchill and said that it was “absurd and deplorable” that the former prime minister’s monument should have been in any danger.
“He was a hero, and I expect I am not alone in saying that I will resist with every breath in my body any attempt to remove that statue from Parliament Square, and the sooner his protective shielding comes off the better,” he said.
Reporting by Bhargav Acharya in Bengaluru; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman