Taking down statues of people who traded slaves or fought to own slaves punctures a one-sided false picture of history which was constructed for motives of bias.

In Britain that false picture included the convenient side of empire and forgot the oppressive side. In the US, it romanticized the defeated Confederacy and its slave-based plantations.

People now seek to take down other statues in Britain.

Columbus and King Leopold carried out enormous oppression, and that was a large part of what they did in their lives. I support changing or removing monuments to them.