When Black Lives Matter protesters in Bristol tore down the statue of a slave trader in summer 2020, it sparked public debate about how the UK handles and presents the darker parts of its history. In response to this, numerous museums and heritage bodies have taken a look at their collections’ links to slavery and empire and the best way to handle them. Unhappy about the way some have called for removal of contentious items, names and monuments, particularly statues, the government has announced a new “retain and explain” policy. This aims to protect controversial monuments and artefacts from removal, instead asking for more information to be provided about them. As culture secretary Oliver Dowden put it, the policy is an attempt to “defend our culture and history from the noisy minority of activists constantly trying to do Britain down”.