George Floyd Protests in Hyde Park

Change tends to be difficult, unpleasant and sometimes violent. I dont know if these protests will change things but previous civil disobedience has changed things for oppressed groups in the past, the stonewall riots for example and indeed the behaviour of the suffragettes was roundly condemned by many at the time.

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Today is the first full day since 1895 on which the effigy of a mass murderer does not cast its shadow over Bristol’s city centre. Those who lament the dawning of this day, and who are appalled by what happened on Sunday, need to ask themselves some difficult questions. Do they honestly believe that Bristol was a better place yesterday because the figure of a slave trader stood at its centre? Are they genuinely unable – even now – to understand why those descended from Colston’s victims have always regarded his statue as an outrage and for decades pleaded for its removal?

Obviously we all know what happened to Floyd was wrong but I am puzzled to read that the police officer is being charged with murder when the autopsy report stated he didn’t die of asphyxiation, but that he had a heart condition and was drunk at the time which caused his death.

I’m not condoning the policeman’s actions but Floyd was a big man and had served five years in prison for armed robbery so when the officers arrived to arrest him they would have known they were dealing with a potentially dangerous individual.

Those supporting anarchy almost certainly naive and know no better!

The official autopsy report has been released.

His official cause of death is listed as "cardiopulmonary arrest complicating law enforcement subdual, restrain, and neck compression", which in plain English means the knee pressing into his neck resulted in cardiac arrest.

We've all seen the video. Floyd was already handcuffed and was lying on his front. There is no mention that he was armed. In that position he would have been no danger to the arresting officer, who did not not need to kneel on his neck.

Whitewavemark2: And is the City of Bristol a better place today for the wanton act of vandalism yesterday. I doubt it!

I have never been to Bristol and one thing I have learnt is about the statue of Colston in the city centre. I am glad I am not from Bristol as I would have been outraged with a monstrosity like that in the town. Those in authority should have had it removed a long time ago.

I am not however agreeing about the damage done to Churchills statue. He was the P.M before I was born but it was with his leadership that we won the war. All those protesting have the legacy of Churchill and the brave servicemen and women who fought for this country to make it a better place for future generations. (not forgetting
that this country was helped with many from outside of the U.K. who also helped in the fight. Foreign nationals were also welcomed here later on to settle and make a life here. Making everything about race is uncalled for, yes some people are racist but the majority live side by side and do not have a problem with that.

I'm confused by the autopsy issue too.

I thought the same as Jennifer; apparently the family sought another autopsy which suggested asphyxiation as the cause of death on its own.

(I think I've already posted about this upthread somewhere).

Further

“ Now is not the time for those who for so long defended the indefensible to contort themselves into some new, supposedly moral stance, or play the victim. Their strategy of heel-dragging and obfuscation was predicated on one fundamental assumption: that what happened on Sunday would never happen. They were confident that black people and brown people who call Bristol their home would forever tolerate living under the shadow of a man who traded in human flesh, that the power to decide whether Colston stood or fell lay in their hands. They were wrong on every level. Whatever is said over the next few days, this was not an attack on history. This is history. It is one of those rare historic moments whose arrival means things can never go back to how they were.

It should have been decided upon ( the statue) by a referendum within the city long before this.
It will be brought up again from the river before long and rehoused somewhere else.This is only one small element of what has been going on in cities in the UK though, 35 police officers injured for a start.Fifteen thousand jostling protesters in Manchester alone, and untold thousands in London.Most using public transport to get there.In the middle of a pandemic.

Whitewavemark2 can I respectfully suggest that you start a separate thread on all the injustices that the British Empire is guilty of.

What are your thoughts on the spread of Covid-19 amongst the mass gatherings of the last few days with little and in most circumstances no social distancing? Which is the subject of the OP

EllanVannin Liverpool was a relative late comer to the slave trade. Slaves were already being traded by companies based in London and Bristol.

www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/slavery/pdf/britain-and-the-trade.pdf

It was good to see that the protests in Liverpool and Manchester were peaceful. I understand there were many other smaller protests around the country which were peaceful too. It's a shame they didn't make headline news.

lemongrove Apparently, there have been many discussions over the years about taking the statue down, but nothing happened. It can't be said that people didn't try to remove it by peaceful means. I don't know the details of council meetings in Bristol, but if they're like council meetings I've ever known, it can take an age for any decision to be made.

I expect the people involved in pulling it down will be punished. They didn't try to hide their identities.

It could become the most enduring symbol of these protests. If it does, it will be something positive. Maybe the council could commission a statue memorialising the slaves to replace the one pulled down. The original statue could be placed in a museum with a full explanation of Colston's role in the slave trade.

3nanny6 I understand where you're coming from with Churchill. There is no doubt he was the right man at the right time.

However, people need to be aware that he was no angel. It's debatable if he would ever have been as revered as he is, if there hadn't been a war. Up to that point he had had a very checkered political history.

There is no doubt that Churchill held racist views and was responsible for many deaths in India. He was a prolific writer and put his own views in print. In some ways he was like Cromwell, who was the hero of the anti-Royalists, but not if you were Catholic or lived in Ireland.

Rather than worshipping Churchill as some kind of demi-god who saved Britain from the Nazis, it would be good if people did some research into real history and had a more balanced view.

jennifereccles That was a preliminary report. It did not say he was drunk. It used the inexcusable term 'potential intoxication'. Then the family brought in their own pathologist who made a statement which you can see on YouTube. He said that the other two officers contribued to the death because sitting on his chest and ankles retricted his blood supply.
Then there was the full report from the medical examiner.

Growstuff ; thank-you for your comments and yes Churchill
was the right man at the right time.
I am not looking on Churchill and getting into a huge political fight but whatever views he had then he had them, however he did with the help of many others save this country from Hitler, a Nazi and murderer and who knows what all our ancestors lives would have been if he carried on.

I view the U.K. as my home and country and never had anything drummed into me as a child. My ancestors came here from Ireland and indeed were Catholics. I have had stories told in our family about relatives coming into London in the forties and seeing signs in accommodation
saying No Irish, No Blacks No Dogs . My relatives had to make the best of things and they did. I have siblings and many cousins we class ourselves as British although on our big reunions we play all our Irish Music and never should we forget our Irish Heritage. I could be bitter and hateful to the British but I am not I am British and I know enough about my Irish ancestry and enough about my British history.

gg13 do you mean to pick on me when other people on this thread are doing the same as me, or is it an error and you actually meant to include other people? Only I feel picked on!

Churchill was a white supremist and mass murderer ask any Indian ,irishman and alot of Welsh and Scots what they think of him .My GP's hated him with a vengeance ,he in turn hated Indians ,calling them vile names and rejoicing when famine killed masses of Bengali's /
History ...English history in particular is whitewashed to make him palatable

Gg can I respectfully ask that you dont tell people on a thread what they can post where.

You base your judgement of a city you have never visited on a vandalised bronzed statue 3nanny6. My ancestors came from Bristol they were seamen. Others worked in the Dock Yard building sailing ships and as anchor makers. I suggest as an education a ships log may be illuminating to a generation who have never known the reality of hardship – the hardship these men lived with and died from. Read the poetry of John Masefield “Sea Fever” one of the most beautiful on his poetic voyage through his life at sea – and feel the emotion. Bristol has an amazing history that in these last few days the naive have spent their spleen, with a narrow peripheral view, on the colour of a person’s skin and a bronze statue.

During isolation, I discovered a family 1920's copy of Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe who died at the age of 51 in 1731. And never having read it discovered a world none could possibly imagine today. But would there be anarchy to prove a point in his somewhat sordid description of man’s cruelty to man. His quote: "Nature has left this tincture in the blood, that all men would be tyrants if they could.". And as history has proved it to be so.

Come on WWMK2 you did start the whole Britain has got nothing to be proud of posts on this thread.

I will continue to ask you and others who have posted but haven’t answered the OP what is your opinion regarding the protests over the last few days increasing the spread of Covid-19

Galaxy I appreciate that threads meander but it would be nice to have an opinion on the OP before meandering.

Oh so it’s me with all the influence!!! ???? I don’t think so. I am one amongst everybody else. I don’t think that I ever used that phrase either, that is merely your interpretation.

And you obviously haven’t read my reply to that question. If you look carefully you will find it.

In cases like this it's wise not to use pathologists who are in cahoots with the police. Always use an independent one.
Think of what happened to Ian Tomlinson who also had medical problems but was deliberately bashed and fell in the process. This was the G-20 protest in 2009.

The pathologist either didn't know his job or he was working a flanker.

The US cop in this case has been charged with murder and bail has been set at $1.25 million.

growstuff I agree that it should have been decided long before now, and I know how slowly bureaucratic things move.
I don’t think however, that one statue being removed in the UK by the crowds does anything much for the black cause overall.Certainly not enough to warrant passing on Covid-19
To many people over the next few weeks.
I wish somebody would say what they want to happen ( that’s at all realistic) to change as a result of all the protests.
Black people living in a white country will always be at a disadvantage, so all we can do as a society is to have race and equality laws....which we do.We are not the US ( thank goodness).