Labour split over whether it was 'completely wrong' to topple slaver Edward Colston statue

Labour’s Dawn Butler disagreed with Sir Keir Starmer today after he said Bristol protesters were “completely wrong” to topple a slave trader statue.

The MP for Brent Central broke ranks with the Labour leader in the row over the statue of Edward Colston which was pulled down by Black Lives Matter protesters on Sunday and thrown in the harbour.

Sir Keir said it was “completely wrong” for protesters to topple the statue but added it should have been taken down a “long, long time ago”.

However, Ms Butler told ITV’s Peston: "He did say that the activists were completely wrong, and I disagree, I don't think the activists were completely wrong.

“I think the activists in Bristol have been fighting for many years, probably over a decade to get the statue removed, and to get the statue put into a museum, and that didn't happen.

“And essentially they made it happen, and so I don't think that they were completely wrong."

Ms Butler, the former shadow women and equalities minister, has had to go to the police after being threatened with a torrent of violent and racist abuse for defending Black Lives Matter protests.

She was asked why Sir Keir was wrong and added: "At the end of the day it's absolutely right and correct that we review the statues that glorify slavers, that glorify people who encaptured 100,000 people and enslaved them.

“People who raped women and children, people who murdered them by throwing them overboard. It's absolutely right that that is reviewed and those statues are removed."

The Colston statue has now been retrieved from the water and will be moved to a secure location before becoming a museum exhibit, the council said.

It comes as a fresh debate surfaced over a statue of the founder of the scout movement Robert Baden-Powell on Poole Quay.

Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole council has said it will be removed today and placed in storage after concerns were raised about the man’s Nazi sympathies.

The Lib Dem leader of the council Vikki Slade said she recognised some of his actions were “less worthy of commemoration” and that the statue would be removed "for now" to “create time for views to be aired”.

However the Tory MP for Bournemouth East Tobias Ellwood said: “Simply expunging past connections from sight won’t correct wrongs or help us better learn from our past.”

Mr Ellwood, a former scout, added: “Let us all understand and learn from the whole story – not try and erase it.”