UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson indicated that he would not ‘take the knee’ a common act carried out in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter Movement by demonstrators during the national anthem.
The symbolic gesture was popularized in 2016 when National Football League star Colin Kaepernick dropped to one knee as the U.S. national anthem was playing before games to protest racism and violence by the police. This has become more common in the aftermath of global protests triggered by George Floyd ‘s murder.
Johnson, a close friend of Trump said some police officers felt coerced into taking the knee because their colleagues had done so during recent BLM protests, and that he believed the police should not take the knee as it is not safe for their colleagues.
Johnson says people should not be ‘bullied’ in doing something ‘they don’t necessarily want to,’ adding that he ‘doesn’t believe in gestures.’
Johnson also added that he believes rather than people dwelling on knee-taking, people should think about how more black students joined top universities and how more black people join the MET police during his tenure as London Mayor.
During a phone-in on Leading Conversations Britain (LCB) on Friday, Johnson said : ‘I believe in substance, I believe in doing things’. ‘Not in gestures’
“People shouldn’t be bullied into doing things they don’t necessarily want to’.
‘I would rather see a story of championing success and talking about the opportunities we can open’, the PM said.
“There are injustices we need to rectify but i don’t want people to be bullied into doing things they don’t want to do’.
The PM also said he was ‘going to put his hands up’ to the fact there are no black senior ministers and accepted his government ‘needed to make progress on this’.
Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab came under fire last month for saying he would not take the knee in support of BLM and attributing the origin of the gesture to Game of Thrones.