Much debate has been had on the streets, through petitions, among heritage professionals, in the media and even in Parliament about Britain’s so-called ‘contested heritage’ assets since the Black Lives Matter protests of summer 2020. Such assets include statues, memorials, monuments, and for the purposes of this dissertation names of buildings, organisations and roads. Many commentators claimed such assets were greatly threatened with removal by ‘mobs’ and that custodians of assets where being pressured politically by groups advocating for such removal. No data has been gathered on the extent of assets involved in the topic or to what degree they were threatened, or how many were subject to changes as a result of activists. This dissertation attempts to gather that data. Multiple sources were used to construct a database of incidents which occurred from the beginning of June 2020 to the 15th of October 2021. Key findings from the database include: only two assets were removed by protestors, one of which was the Colston statue in Bristol, the other a sculpture removed ‘for its own safety’; two were removed or damaged by unknown individuals, one in retaliation for Colston’s toppling; most assets removed by their custodians were removed in June and July 2020; most incidents relate to assets which were the responsibility of local authorities; a majority of incidents involved pressure only (e.g. a petition to remove a statue) with no result; and 24% of assets where there was pressure to remove them were removed, likewise 33% of names where there was pressure to change them were changed.
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