You can see why those on the right are so angry about all this. And why they hate protest so much. And even why they are so desperate to characterise those ordinary people with wholly legitimate, and completely justified concerns as ‘left-wing extremists’, ‘thugs’ and ‘criminals’.

People only protest when they are really angry: it takes a lot to tip people over to going onto the streets.

When they do in significant numbers it is almost invariably because what concerns them really matters.

In this case, it is absolutely fundamental to the wellbeing of large parts of our society.

But the status quo is happy as things are. Life has suited them very well. And what protest does is seriously disrupt the trajectory of what they think to be their normality, which they would rather take for granted. And which the protestors want to seriously disrupt. Of course the right will fight back.

Richard Murphy, ‘If toppling Edward Colston was the price to pay for bringing forward change that should have happened years and even decades ago, then a bit of damage to some old brass was worth it’