It's all very good to see all the protests and the banners about black lives matter but surely all lives matter and by concentrating on one particular colour are we saying the rest do not matter.

Over the years all races have been exploited and enslaved and empires of old were built on slavery, we would not have our wonderful old buildings if not for slave or near slave labour which is still being used in some countries today.

To see the vandalism of the statues and buildings is absolutely shameful and if they represent a period in history that is to some distasteful then go through the democratic system to get them removed.

The British so called entrepreneurs that capitalised on the existing slave markets of Africa by today’s standards would be criminals as are today’s slavers, but they were not the ones enslaving the Africans it was the Africans enslaving their own subjects and selling them to the Europeans for a profit so let’s have some demos against the African countries and not just ours after all it was the British that accepting how awful the slave trade was drove to eradicate it.

So let’s hear it again - all lives matter.

PHILIP WRIGHT
Bridport