‘Absolutely ridiculous!’ Mark Drakeford blasted over plans to ‘cancel’ Winston Churchill
Mark Drakeford has come under fire over new woke plans
GB NEWS / PA
The Labour administration in Wales are under fire over their plans to “cancel” Winston Churchill by renaming roads and buildings honouring the British war hero.
An "anti-racist Wales action plan", published by Welsh First Minister Mark Drakeford, is pledging a “review” of public spaces, with plans to “decolonise” them.
The plan has raised the possibility of changing address such as Caerphilly’’s Churchill Park and Nelson Street in Chepstow.
An “audit of commemoration” identified 204 “persons of interest”, 57 monuments, 93 public buildings and 442 street names with “red-amber-green colour-coding”.
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Churchill has 15 commemorations in place, while Horatio Nelson has 31, another public figure that could be set for erasure.
The woke tirade by Welsh Labour has come under fire from Welsh Conservative spokesperson Tom Giffard MS, who dubbed the move “absolutely ridiculous” on GB News.
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“I think this is ridiculous. You look at some of the names on this list and these are some of the people who have made Britain what it is today”, he said.
“They defeated fascism and won world wars. The fact we live in a free society and are able to have these debates is thanks to people Winston Churchill.
“For the Welsh Government to revise history in this way and cancel one of our greatest heroes is an absolutely ridiculous decision.”
GB News presenter Patrick Christys asked whether the Labour-led Government would be better served focusing on the NHS, which he branded “knackered” in a scathing assessment of their leadership in Wales.
Winston Churchill led Britain to victory in World War Two
PAGiffard said: “The reason we’re discussing this is more the fact what we’re not discussing.
“We’re not discussing the fact that on the most important issues, whether it be the economy, education or healthcare, Wales is at the bottom of those league tables in terms of productivity.
“This is a distraction technique from the Welsh Government who really want to distract from that poor record.
“Instead we’re having these debates about Winston Churchill and racism, judging people from the past by the standards of today.”
In a scathing assessment of the World War leader, the audit claims Churchill was “widely hated in South Wales mining communities for his actions as Home Secretary during the Tonypandy riots”.
It adds he “expressed a belief in the superiority of the Anglo-Saxon race and was opposed to dismantling the British Empire, taking a romanticised view of its achievements”.
The plan states: “The terms of reference for this project separate the audit stage from issues arising, which might form the basis for a second stage. The present document seeks to capture information, not provide a set of answers.”
Labour-led authorities have pulled off similar anti-history stunts in the past, with London Mayor Sadiq Khan setting up a Commission for Diversity in the Public Realm in 2020 to make sure “landmarks suitable reflect London’s achievements and diversity”.
That same year, Parliament Square’s Churchill statue was defaced, with Black Lives Matters protesters adding the word “racist”.