Your say / Black Lives Matter
‘What should be the legacy of Sunday’s protests?’
It is estimated that Edward Colston was responsible for the deaths of 30,000 people. People who died in slave raids and in the holds of his slave ships.
When slaves died on board his ships, Colston tried to claim from his insurance company for compensation for them as lost cargo.
So when people claim that it was mob rule and mob violence that tore down his statue on Sunday, then all power to the mob.
is needed now More than ever
And how can one even be violent towards a statue made out of bronze?
Colston donated to churches and hospitals in Bristol. He founded two almshouses and a school. But a significant proportion of his wealth came directly or indirectly from the slave trade
All power to the mob who toppled this memorial to a man with the blood of thousands of men, women and children on his hands.
All power to the mob who did what politicians could have done decades ago but were too scared to do.
How could a seemingly progressive city like Bristol still have a monument in our midst that glorified a man who traded in human beings?
Well, it doesn’t any longer – with Colston’s statue currently underwater next to Pero’s Bridge, fittingly named after a freed slave.
The statue of Edward Colston was thrown into the docks close to Pero’s Bridge – photo by Martin Booth
So what next? As the people who spoke so eloquently from the plinth where the statue had stood for 125 years, said in the minutes after it was toppled: this must only be the beginning.
Colston’s statue was a symbol of repression in a city which as recently as 2017 was reported to be among the worst places for racial equality in the UK.
It was only in the year before that report was published that Merchants’ Hall in Clifton, the headquarters of the influential Merchant Venturers, removed Colston’s fingernails and hair from display.
The slave trader himself now may have been removed from display, but I do not think that he should remain at the bottom of the docks.
Instead, let’s put him in a corner of the M Shed, close to some of the placards from Sunday now positioned in a circle around the empty plinth. The statue can be displayed so we can remember his philanthropy but also his horrific legacy.
And on the plinth on which he once stood, let’s put a series of different sculptures from Bristol artists responding to the legacy of slavery in the city.
The statue may be gone – for now – but what Colston and his fellow slave traders did must never be forgotten.
Main photo by Martin Booth
Read more: Police looking to identify people who pulled down Colston’s statue
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