Douglas Murray Douglas Murray

What the response to London’s young graffiti cleaners reveals

Photo by Justin Setterfield/Getty Images

Further Black Lives Matter protests took place yesterday in the UK, in response to the death of a man at the hands of a Minnesota cop a fortnight ago. So far the tally from the London protest includes not only the now traditional mass-breaking of the government’s Covid guidelines, the graffiti-ing of the Cenotaph, the statues of Sir Winston Churchill and Abraham Lincoln, but also the injuring of 27 police officers in what the BBC nevertheless persists in calling ‘largely peaceful anti-racism protests’.

Which brings to mind something important that has been too little discussed in the days since the last London protests, four days ago. That is the video – which made the rounds online and then onto some news websites – of a suggestive standoff.

After a recent protest in Washington DC a video went around online from there of three women, who happened to be white, trying to scrub graffiti off the Lafayette Building. The video that did the rounds showed these women being berated by a passing motorist. ‘Why do you want that to come off?’ demanded the woman in the car. ‘Because this is a federal building’ said one of the women. ‘So you don’t care about black lives then?’ said the woman doing the interrogating. ‘That’s not at all what we’re saying’ one of the white women says. ‘We certainly do care about black lives.’ ‘Not enough to leave up a message’ shoots back the woman in the car, adding the removal of graffiti to the ever-lengthening list of racist acts.

The London video was in some ways even more suggestive. It featured a number of young British people cleaning the graffiti off one of the monuments in Whitehall with their own hands.

Already a subscriber? Log in

Keep reading with a free trial

Subscribe and get your first month of online and app access for free. After that it’s just £1 a week.

There’s no commitment, you can cancel any time.

Or

Unlock more articles

REGISTER

Douglas Murray
Written by
Douglas Murray
Douglas Murray is associate editor of The Spectator and author of The War on the West: How to Prevail in the Age of Unreason, among other books.

Topics in this article

Comments

Don't miss out

Join the conversation with other Spectator readers. Subscribe to leave a comment.

Already a subscriber? Log in