The Welsh Government has also targeted Winston Churchill as somebody perhaps who is problematic—the man who fought against racism and fascism in the form of Nazism and whose great speeches in 1940 and afterwards inspired the nation to ultimate success and the destruction of Nazism. Lord Nelson, also. He's in the firing line, even though he had no meaningful links with slavery and paralysed French and Spanish naval dominance at Trafalgar. These three historical figures alone changed the landscape of Britain and, without their victories in the Napoleonic wars or the second world war, Britain would have fallen to European militarised dictatorial powers.

Welsh Labour, in my view—and it's not just Welsh Labour, but they are the Government, of course—is creating visible problems in today's society with their audit of these statues. It's no wonder that, in a recent survey, 55 per cent of UK adults believe that Black Lives Matter have increased racial tensions, and 44 per cent of ethnic minorities also believe that Black Lives Matter have raised racial tensions. And this feeds into the wider cancel culture that is taking over western society, as Brendan O'Neill, the editor of Spiked magazine, which I used to subscribe to, when it was called Living Marxism, describes as, 'The woke elites have launched a neo-Maoist war on the past.' We've seen the ultimate expression of that, of course, in Cambodia, where they turned the clock back to year zero, and the killing fields were the consequence. Well, of course, I'm not comparing the ambitions of those who want to remove general Picton with Pol Pot in Cambodia, but, nevertheless, I think it's a significant point that needs to be considered.

There is a toxic culture that has been brought on by the Black Lives Matter syndrome, if I can put it like that, which has meant that people can't express their views anymore safely online. They risk their jobs simply for taking pride in or standing up for their heritage. I can give you one example. There was a man who flew 'White Lives Matter' as a banner above Burnley football club. He lost his job as a result. Manx Radio took Stu Peters off the air after he questioned white privilege. I've had people write to me who have been threatened with disciplinary action at work for sharing content online, from mainstream political parties, on the subject of Black Lives Matter protests when war memorials have been vandalised.

This entire statue, streets and building names review that the Welsh Government is currently embarking on is completely down to Black Lives Matter. They acknowledged that in the announcement of the audit. This is an inherently Marxist body, which wishes to destroy our very way of life, which is why they're attacking our history and heritage. Their explicit aims are, and I quote, from their website, 'to dismantle capitalism', 'to 'defund the police',  'abolish prisons', and 'get rid of borders'. Is this what the Welsh Government really believes in? Well, anybody with an understanding of history must realise it's totally inappropriate to hold people of the past to the standards of today. We had a minute's silence in this place for George Floyd. When I asked that, shortly afterwards, there should be a commemoration for the three people who were murdered in a public park in Reading by an Islamic extremist, who was convicted only a couple of weeks ago for those murders, answer came there none, certainly not an affirmative one.

Well, I think this is an unfortunate way in which to proceed. But an essential knowledge of Britain's past, I think, is being replaced by politically correct topics in some of our educational institutions, and some of the most important influential historical events are ignored or downplayed—things like the English civil war, the industrial revolution, horrors of the Soviet Union et cetera. If children aren't taught about their history, they can't be fully conversant with it, and consequentially future generations risk being even more detached from their ancestors and, ultimately, their country as a whole. 

A great French philosopher and writer, Alexis de Tocqueville, once said that 

'as the past has ceased to throw its light upon the future, the mind of man wanders in obscurity'. 

And I think the removal of statues conveys a stark message that Britain's historical figures who shaped Britain into the country that it is today should be forgotten. And never let it be forgotten that we were the first country to abolish the slave trade itself, at a time when slavery was commonplace around the world. African tribes enslaved each other. The Ottomans enslaved occupied territories, and so on. We should be proud that we were the first country to outlaw the slave trade. In 1808, we established the West Africa Squadron to patrol the seas to eliminate any remnants of the slave trade. We captured 1,600 slave ships and freed 150,000 African slaves. Well, why shouldn't they be commemorated? Instead of tearing down statues, we should be erecting more of them to other heroes, who don't have appropriate commemoration.

So, I call upon the Government to abandon its campaign to take down these essential parts of our heritage. But the public, of course, are not buying the narrative. In the case of the Carmarthen obelisk, the culture committee this week received evidence about the consultation that Carmarthenshire County Council had engaged in and the public are overwhelmingly against removing the obelisk, two to one. And among three separate age groups, in which they've been grouped—16 to 24, 25 to 54 and 55 plus—consistently across the generations, the majority against removing the obelisk is the same.