News / Colston 4
Asher Craig: ‘The verdict was the verdict’
Bristol’s deputy mayor has said that “the verdict was the verdict” when asked whether the not guilty result in the Colston 4 trial was the right conclusion.
Asher Craig said that the statue of Edward Colston “should have been removed a very long time ago. But everything happens. Everything happens for a reason.”
Craig said that when the current Labour administration came into power in 2016, removing the statue “wasn’t top of our agenda” but she had helped establish a group to look at issues including memorialisation, and would have preferred “everything to be done through a democratic process”.
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“The verdict was the verdict,” Craig said on BBC Politics West. “I am pleased that the statute comes down (sic) but it does very little to change inequality and racism here in the city.”
Craig’s answer was similar to an answer that mayor Marvin Rees gave in a council meeting in 2021 when he said that “the airport is the airport”.
Speaking on Politics West in front of a promotional poster for Statue Wars, the documentary that he appeared in which filmed the aftermath of the statue’s toppling, Rees said that the Colston 4 trial result “was not something that’s of high importance to me”.
“My business in Bristol is about driving the economy forwards and making sure that we’re tackling the structural drivers of inequality, be they race or class based.
“What happened to those four individuals doesn’t have any material impact on that.”
Former lord mayor Cleo Lake, also appearing on Politics West with Craig, has previously written that the statue of Colston “would have been long gone by now into a museum” if she had been mayor.
Lake, who was called as a witness for the defence in the Colston 4 trial, also spoke in the post-trial press conference, saying that she has “always supported the so-called Colston 4 and the toppling”.
The former Green Party councillor removed a painting of Colston from the lord mayor’s parlour in City Hall soon after taking up the ceremonial role.
Lake was project coordinator of the Legacy Steering Group, set up by Craig, which is publishing a report called Project Truth on Tuesday.
The report responds to feedback from African heritage communities on how Bristol’s involvement in the transatlantic slave trade – also now known as the transatlantic trafficking and enslavement of Afrikans – should be recognised.
Main photo: Labour Party
Read more: Breakfast With Bristol24/7: Asher Craig
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