Boris Johnson calls on Jeremy Corbyn to 'denounce' activists who protested against Churchill-themed cafe in London

'You will never make colonialism palatable,' say demonstrators

WinstonChurchill smoking a cigar in 1939 (AP)

Boris Johnson has called on Jeremy Corbyn to "denounce" the actions of nine activists who burst into a Winston Churchill-themed cafe and called the wartime Prime Minister "a racist".

The protesters targeted Blighty UK in Finsbury Park, North London, on Saturday in a bid to urge customers to boycott the cafe, which is said to serve drinks in Churchill mugs and is decorated with model Spitfires and Union Jacks.

In a video seen by The Independent, one of the protesters reads from a script in the middle of the cafe and says: "We cannot accept the unashamed colonial and gentrifying presence of this cafe."

The group then chants: "You will never make colonialism palatable."

Another member of the group asks for an apology from the owner of the cafe to the local community "for their poorly thought and insensitive branding", and makes a demand for the decor of the cafe to be changed.

As the group is leaving Blighty UK, a customer is heard shouting: "Churchill fought for our freedom."

To which the group responds: "Churchill was a racist."

When Churchill joined the British Army as an officer in the late 1800s, he took part in what he called "jolly little wars against barbarous peoples" and claimed to have personally shot three "savages" in Sudan.

He also defended British use of concentration camps in South Africa, which he claimed produced "the minimum of suffering". The death toll of these camps has since been estimated at 42,000 among Boers and black South Africans.

Churchill is also quoted as saying "Aryan stock is bound to triumph" during a speech at the University of Michigan in 1902.

And in 1937 he told the Palestine Royal Commission: "I do not admit... a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America or the black people of Australia.

"I do not admit that a wrong has been done to these people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race... has come in and taken their place."

Churchill is also known to have supported clearances in Kenya's highlands of the local Kikuyu people, who he called "brutish children".

During the suppression of the Mau Mau Uprising, under his post-war premiership, 11,000 Kenyans died and around 100,000 were forced into detention camps where brutal torture took place, with Barack Obama's grandfather believed to have been among them.

But defenders of the wartime Prime Minister insist his comments must be taken in the context of the time in which they were spoken, and that his success in fighting Nazi Germany should be his overriding legacy.

The Foreign Secretary took to Twitter on Monday afternoon to label the protest a "disgraceful attack on our finest ever wartime leader by [a] hard-left mob".

He said Mr Corbyn should "denounce the actions of these 'activists' immediately".

Blighty UK's owner Chris Evans, 47, said that he had invited "these people" in for coffee to discuss their concerns.

"Instead, they have come in and shouted at my customers," he told The Daily Mirror.

"I would much rather they came to debate in a civilised manner what it means to be British in modern Britain.

"As far as I am concerned, if you cannot celebrate Britain and great Britons you are just erasing history.

"And if you cannot celebrate Churchill, you cannot celebrate anyone."

Mr Evans had previously been forced to remove a giant mural of Churchill after it was repeatedly vandalised with graffiti labelling the former Prime Minister "scum" and a "warmonger".