The UK’s ‘Statue Wars’: Can Human Rights Law Assist in their Resolution?

On 7th June 2020 Black Lives Matter protestors in Bristol toppled a statue, erected in 1895, of the seventeenth century slave trader—and philanthropist—Edward Colston (1636 - 1721).    They rolled it through the streets and dumped it in the city’s docks. Four of the protestors (the ‘Colston Four’) were subsequently acquitted of charges of criminal damage to the statue by a jury at Bristol Crown Court. [Opening paragraph]