Pro-Palestine protesters have called for a statue of David Lloyd George to be torn down because his government supported establishing a Jewish homeland in the Middle East, reports the Telegraph.
Cardiff’s Stop the War coalition is planning a march through the Welsh capital on Saturday to coincide with the 107th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration.
Arthur Balfour, then foreign secretary, set out intentions to form “a national home for the Jewish people” in a letter to Lord Walter Rothschild, which was published on November 2nd, 1917.
Protesters claim the declaration marked the beginning of “a century of British meddling in the lives of Palestinians”.
Campaigners will march from Churchill Way to the Lloyd George statue in Gorsedd Gardens, where they will rip up copies of the 67-word declaration.
Adam Johannes, from Cardiff Stop the War Coalition, said: “The Balfour Declaration was the first shot in a century of British meddling in the lives of Palestinians, and the carnage has only intensified.
Mr Johannes said: “We call on Cardiff council to urgently remove the Lloyd George statue, as an act of solidarity with the Palestinian people who suffered so much as a consequence of his actions, and replace it with a more suitable hero from history.”
Recommending potential replacement statues, he said: “How about a conscientious objector jailed for refusing to fight in the First World War or an Arab freedom fighter?”
The anti-war organiser urged protesters to challenge Lloyd George’s “imperialist legacy”, citing the “thousands of young men” that were killed in the trenches during the war.
Lloyd George played a pivotal role during the First World War, eventually becoming Prime Minister in 1916 and leading the country through much of the conflict’s later stages.
As part of the decision-making process that determined British strategy, he was highly critical of the Passchendaele offensive of 1917, one of the bloodiest and most infamous conflicts of the war which led to around 300,000 British casualties, and inflicted around 260,000 on the Germans. In his memoirs, he described it as a “senseless” tragedy that exemplified the worst aspects of trench warfare.
Cardiff’s Stop the War coalition claims it is not attempting to erase history, but rather stoke a public debate over who shapes the historical narrative.
In 2007, playwright Harold Pinter and former UN humanitarian coordinator for Iraq Denis Halliday protested against the erection of a Lloyd George statue in London’s Parliament Square alleging his legacy was one of being a warmonger, imperialist and racist.
It comes after reports that Lloyd George’s childhood home is to be “decolonised” with the help of funding from the Welsh government. The Liberal prime minister’s modest cottage in rural Wales has been converted into a museum, which has been swept into plans to remodel his homeland along lines advocated by the Black Lives Matter movement.
Amgueddfa Lloyd George Museum in Llanystumdwy, which describes itself as “dedicated to the life and times of David Lloyd George”, has been working with a “decolonisation consultant” to alter how history is presented and bring it into alignment with the propositions of radical identity politics.
According to the museums service for Plaid Cymru-run Gwynedd council, which operates the site, this project involved staff undergoing taxpayer funded “anti-racist” training.
Re:Collections, the decolonising consultancy service employed by Llanystumdwy museum, was paid for by grants from a broader programme by the Welsh government, which instructs public bodies, including libraries, galleries, museums and public artworks on how to ensure statues, plaques and paintings project the “right historic narrative”.
