Woke Met Police put Cenotaph on secret list of ‘contentious statues’

WOKE police have put the Cenotaph on a secret list of “contentious statues”.

The Whitehall memorial to Britain’s war dead has been classified as problematic by the Metropolitan Police.

And Sir Winston Churchill’s statue and Nelson’s Column are also included.

The Met drew up a list of contentious landmarks, including dozens of Westminster memorials in London.

Those to Indian independence leader Mahatma Gandhi and Earl Mountbatten, who was murdered by the IRA in 1979, are also on the secret Scotland Yard document.

It has been forced to publish the list under Freedom of Information laws.

Notes explaining their decisions claim naval hero Nelson “spent a large part of his career in the Caribbean and developed an affinity with the slave owner”.

And it claims World War Two victor Churchill was accused of “murdering over three million Indians” — a debunked statistic.

They also repeat disputed claims that Earl Mountbatten “oversaw the partition of several provinces which led to the deaths of nearly two ­million people and the displacement of nearly 20 million” in India.

Curiously, the reasons for including the Cenotaph have been left blank but it has been attacked by protesters in recent years.

Former Cabinet minister Simon Clark said: “There is a particularly bitter irony in thinking there is anything ‘contentious’ about the Cenotaph and our paying lasting respect to all those whose sacrifice means we live in freedom.”

The list’s existence has emerged in a report by the Policy Exchange think-tank which accuses police of all but abandoning Westminster to protesters and anarchist criminals.

Its report, Tarnished Jewel: The Decline Of The Streets Around Parliament, says violent crime has risen two and a half times faster near Parliament than in London as a whole.

It adds: “The rise in offences coincided with the relaxation of rules on protest.”