Dear Edward Colston — Bye Bye and Good Riddance
It’s a very strange thing when something happens in your city that sends ripples around the world. When I saw the statue of slave trader Edward Colston that was in Bristol centre had been pulled down and chucked in the river Avon I understood its importance to the city, but it never occurred to me how it would be seen as important to the wider movement.
It’s especially strange to see people with no understanding of the context of the statue or it’s placement in the city comment on it, usually comments like “it’s violence, they should’ve been stopped, it should have been done through proper channels”.
There have been attempts for decades to remove or at least re-contextualise the statue, and it had been decided to install a new plaque referencing his slave trade (to replace the one that described him as “the most virtuous and wisest child of the city”), though there were issues trying to establish the best wording and this had been shelved. It says a lot that our MP Thangham Debbonaire’s only response on Twitter so far has been to retweet people talking about how she was calling for it to be removed several years ago.
I also really appreciated our Mayor Martin Rees’ refusal to reduce the situation to binary good/bad in his Channel 4 interview with Krishnan Guru-Murthy. Obviously as the Mayor he can’t condone illegal acts, but at the same time as a black man who grew up in Bristol he understands better than most how much of an insult the statue’s presence was. The city has a large Afro-Carribean community which came here as part of the Windrush generation, as well as a large community of refugees, particularly from Somalia. They contribute so much to the city, and it was an insult to all of them that a man who made over 80 000 African people into slaves was honoured in such a way.
The statue has been divisive for years, not only dividing people in their opinions of what should be done about it but between the people who could have been descendants of the people he turned into property and those who aren’t. The statue isn’t all there is to honour Colston though, as well as lots of places being named after him (including Colston Hall, which pledged to change its name several years ago and has said it will be announcing its new name this autumn), many places including Colston girl’s school celebrated his “philanthropy” in yearly events in his honour without any mention of how he made the massive amounts of money he so generously gave away.
Those saying it’s removal is erasing history should just look at how much more awareness the statue’s removal has brought to the history of both the city and the slave trade than the statue ever did where it was.
There has been a lot of criticism against the police for letting it happen, and in particular Superintendent Andy Bennet’s interview explaining their thinking behind not intervening in the removal of the statue. People have said that the police are weak, that they’re not in control of the people and that if this is allowed then we’ll descend into anarchy and violence.
But in the interview Bennet quite rightly says that if they had tried to stop it that would have led to more damage — I’m sure they vividly remember the Stokes Croft Riots of 2011, which happened as a response to over aggressive policing on a busy street on Easter Friday. It seems inevitable that if they had tried to stop people there would have been a repeat of this, possibly lasting several days, with much more property destruction and physical violence. As it was though, after removing the statue the protestors sat in the park and listened to some speakers.
He does say that they didn’t have enough police to stop the statue being toppled, but this was clearly a premeditated decision as they must have known the statue would be a target and could have protected it if they had wanted to. They also made the decision to police the protest lightly, obviously realising that an aggressive police presence would exacerbate the protestors and increase the likelihood of violence. I’m not saying Bristol police are the good ones (ACAB after all), but in this situation they certainly responded how I’d like others to, with a focus on reducing harm rather than standing by the letter of the law at all costs.
Also just imagine if the pictures going around the world were of a group of police protecting a statue of a slave trader from people protesting police brutality against black people. How much rioting would that have triggered across the country? And don’t forget that Bristol has built its reputation as a cool, hip city (plus most of its tourism) on criminal damage in the form of Street art
I was very glad to see that the council have collected the signs that were left at the plinth and have taken them to the Bristol people’s history museum the M-Shed for prosperity. As an art historian I feel it’s important to preserve the visual culture that comes from important historical moments like this. There’s also been talk of fishing Colston out of the river and putting it in their display about the slave trade (ideally on the ground as it fell so those of us who couldn’t be at the protest can have a good stomp).
There’s also talk about what to do with the now empty plinth. Personally I think a good future for it would be to have a few years of rotating work by black artists then put a permanent statue or memorial there, possibly a statue of Paul Stevenson who led the Bristol bus boycott, a campaign that brought employment and housing protections to black people in the UK.
This has obviously been a hugely symbolic moment for both the black lives matter movement and the city of Bristol, but symbols only have meaning in how they’re used. My hope is that the energy from this can be harnessed to create real change in the lives of black and other POC both in the city and across the country.
Click here to learn more about Bristol’s black history and Click here to donate to Bristol BLM
