Jacob Rees-Mogg thanks ‘woke brigade’ for helping remind Britons of ‘great heroes’ in our history

April Roach @aprilroach2821 January 2021

Jacob Rees-Mogg has thanked the “woke brigade” for doing the nation a service by reminding them of the country’s “great heroes”.

A series of Black Lives Matter protests in the summer of 2020 sparked a debate on the historical significance of statues and prompted Labour councils to pledge to review the “appropriateness” of monuments in their areas on public land and council property.

Some MPs have also been campaigning for a new law to protect war memorials from being desecrated and to make it easier to prosecute vandals.

Mr Rees-Mogg said in the Commons on Thursday that as a result of the campaigns, he believes people are now more aware of the statues they walk past and want to learn about them.

Responding to a request for a debate on protecting Britain’s history and heritage, Mr Rees-Mogg told the Commons: “In a funny way the woke brigade has done the nation of service because they’ve reminded people of the great heroes that we have.

“Lots of statues that people used to walk past and not really notice, they suddenly think: ‘Gosh, that’s Gordon of Khartoum, he’s an interesting figure, I want to know more about him and what he did to put down the slave trade in the Sudan’.

“I think this has helped remind people of our history and that it’s a history we can be enormously proud of.”

The Commons leader added: “That British people did great things in this country and across the globe, and we see that actually in the United States.

“The United States when it sought its freedom wanted to ensure that it had the freedoms that the people of the United Kingdom were entitled to at home.

“It was a most fantastic history that we should be proud of and celebrate in our statues and in our education.

“So we should be grateful that the wokery classes have had this effect on improving our understanding of our noble history.”

Mr Rees-Mogg’s comments were in response to a question from Tory MP Scott Benton who asked MPs to remember images of last summer of “monuments being dragged into rivers, and the statue of our greatest ever Prime Minister Winston Churchill being vandalised by hooligans”.

Mr Benton invited Mr Rees-Mogg to share his delight that the Government was introducing new legal safeguards to “avoid pandering to the whims of the woke left and censoring our proud history”.

The MP for Blackpool South called on the Commons leader to hold a debate on how the Government can further protect statues.  

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