When Kate Moore, a 21-year-old student, saw the bitterness of the division in her home of Ashbourne over the disappearance of a bust of a black man’s head, she decided to come up with a compromise.
Over the last week, the mystery over the whereabouts of the head, which Moore viewed as indisputably racist, has lifted this small Derbyshire town to national prominence. Before that it was best known as the home of Royal Shrovetide, an eccentric, beloved and very English game of “medieval football” played through the streets each year.
Everyone could get behind that, Moore thought. So she mocked up a suggested alternative for the spot where the head had been – an emblem commemorating the importance of Shrovetide to the town – and posted it on Facebook.
The response, as brutal as it was swift, suggested Ashbourne was some way from healing or compromise. “Stick your wank idea up your arse,” one post said. “Whoever you are I hope you suffer the wrath and cold shoulder you and your snowflake ill informed muppets deserve … Get fucked,” said another. “The Blacks Head,” said a third, using the bust’s nickname. “What’s next??? Black Coffee Black Tea Black Grapes Black Liquorice… ffs it’s batshit crazy!!!”
“I was pretty upset,” Moore said. “They said, ‘you’re not from here’. But I am.”
Three weeks after the death of George Floyd, and five days after a controversial Bristol statue of the slavetrader Edward Colston was toppled, the intensity of the mood that has gripped Ashbourne is far from unique. And with grown men in shorts and woggles defending a statue of Robert Baden-Powell, and the prime minister himself intervening, it has taken on the unmistakable flavour of a culture war.
The Derbyshire Dales’ incarnation of this national crisis began seven days ago, when another student from Ashbourne published a petition: “Remove the racist caricature of a black man’s head from the Green Man sign.” The crude wooden caricature, which sits on an archway resembling a gallows in the centre of town, is a recognisable version of a classically demeaning image of a black man. The petition’s author – who has since stayed out of view after a torrent of abuse and threats – wanted her town to be part of the international movement. “We in Ashbourne can do our bit to fight back against this kind of vile racism,” she wrote.
After the momentous events in Bristol on Sunday, and with the number of signatories calling for the head’s removal reaching 30,000, the district council – which turned out to be the owner – decided it had to act. Plans were made to take it down on Tuesday morning.
They never came to pass. As local Facebook groups lit up and a counter-petition gained thousands of signatures of its own, a protest was swiftly organised and more than 100 people showed up on Monday night. A man in a hood climbed a ladder and hung a sign over the head that said “SAVE ME”. A local councillor, Stuart Lees, spoke to outline a plan to protect the head. “Somebody is going to come along and it’ll disappear,” he said. ”If we take it down now as a town, we know where it is.”
Everyone clapped. Two men, a Polish resident identified only as Raffa and another local, Duncan Renshaw, climbed up and – after some complications – brought it down to whoops and applause. “You’re not hanging him, are you?” one woman asked, to laughter. “We should have worn white hoods for this,” someone replied. After some celebratory photographs, the object was put in the back of a white van, and driven away.
Where did it go? Lips were sealed. “It’s in a secret location,” said Thomas Donnelly, a Conservative councillor. “It’s in a prominent Ashburnian person’s garage,” said Renshaw, one of the two men who removed it. The council itself refused all requests for comment, but issued a statement asserting that it would regain possession of the object on Tuesday.
There were rumours, though. Most people seemed to think a councillor had it. On Tuesday, Lees answered the phone to the Guardian but declined to comment. Asked if he had the head, he said “Hello? Hello?” then made a crackling noise to suggest poor reception, laughed, and hung up.
When Moore and her friends – fellow students Eva Gorman and Lucy Hill – heard that the head had come down, they first thought it was a victory. They are part of a 30-strong group backing the original petition that has been discussing the issue online. “Then we figured out what was actually happening,” Moore said.
The three young women are a little stunned that their call for change has caused such consternation. “Maybe it’s a longer way off than I thought it was before this,” said Gorman. The close-knit nature of the town makes the disagreement especially hard, she said, remembering the cold stares she recieved the previous day when walking down the street.
“We’re not enjoying being in a confrontational situation with people we’ve known all our lives,” said Hill. “But that doesn’t mean we’re going to be quiet.”
Annie Smail, another student who wants the head removed, says the consequences have been profound. “Neighbours have fallen out, people are having arguments of the kind where you can’t be friends any more,” she said.
When Smail and others have tried to defend their position on Facebook, she said, they have been silenced. One resident who objected to the comment that “if the blacks don’t like it they can leave our country” in one popular group was immediately removed by the administrator. Meanwhile, Facebook received multiple complaints about a post saying the bust should be replaced with “a replica of George Floyd’s head”, but concluded it was not in violation of its guidelines.
In the 2011 census, 98.5% of Ashbourne’s population of 8,377 was white, and there were only 12 black people. While a trickle of newcomers has since slightly changed the town’s ethnic profile, the few minority residents are conspicuously absent from the discussion.
One person from a minority background, who asked not to be named, remembered the liberal use of racial slurs at school, and the daily humiliation when the teacher struggled with their name at registration. “Even now, when they say my name at the GP’s, people look at me,” they said. “I left school a while ago, and it’s still embedded in me. All the white people of Ashbourne telling us this sign isn’t offensive … it’s just horrific. How can someone who’s never experienced it say what you feel?”
To those on the other side of the debate, such sentiments do not detract from the cultural significance of the object itself. Outside his house, 70-year-old Martin Spencer, a town councillor and retired electrical engineer, said he had been told not to make any comment to the press, but added: “45,000 people signing a petition – there’s nowhere near that many live here. So I think it’s irrelevant. Wouldn’t matter to me if it was 100,000.”
Minorities do have a harder time, he conceded, considering the question of privilege. “I worked in Derby for years, there were some foreign guys, and one said they used to share driving licences. They’re giving themselves a bad name, some of them. Foreign people, they do tend to break the law – and I think of Lee Rigby.”
He said the bust’s detractors “should understand the full reasoning behind it. It’s a grade 2 listed item. I know some of the people who took it down, some of them very closely. They care a great deal about the heritage of Ashbourne.” Is one of them Lees, the councillor? “I’m a very good friend of his and he won’t tell you,” Spencer laughed.
On Wednesday afternoon, the council shifted its position from saying that “we expect to have possession of the head” to “we are aware of the location of the head”. Requests for additional comment were refused.
By Thursday, there had been no update. At Lees’ house at around 4pm, a woman who answered the door said the councillor was out. The head was not visible.
Later on, Renshaw – the man who took the head down in the first place – answered the phone and shed more light on the circumstances. “We didn’t want it to get ripped down by a bunch of idiots. So, basically, we asked that the council put it in a safe place, and it’s gone in a controlled environment room which has to be signed in or out of.”
Lees, it emerged, really had been out – at a carefully choreographed meeting to arrange the head’s handover. “Stuart [Lees] wanted a witness, so we both took it, Stuart’s signed on our behalf, and there are three signatures,” said Renshaw. “It was locked in a garage. If you’d gone in for hours you wouldn’t have found it.” Lees declined to comment.
On Thursday evening, the council said at a meeting that the head had been recovered, and that no decision on its future would be made until a public consultation could take place. It also announced an inquiry.
Clare Gamble, a Labour councillor, said the week’s events had “turned the Derbyshire Dales into a national disgrace”.
Those who want the head returned continue to view that as absurd, and believe the row is likely to blow over. But their opponents insist that such an outcome will never happen. “We’re not going to stop fighting for this small piece of justice,” said Gorman.