#edwardcolston

The sad demise of a controversial statue

After ten years of living in Bristol, the destruction of the Edward Colston statue has definitely had the most profound impact on me.

You see, Bristol crops up rather often in Stephen Pinker’s The better angels of our nature because for a long time now, it has statistically been the safest City in Europe and in his evidence and argument it would therefore be reasonable to conclude that it is one of the most civilised. Yet to witness the angry, leaderless mob shouting, cheering, whooping as they tore down the long-standing statue of Edward Colston in the city centre one might be forgiven for thinking otherwise.

The images of the statue coming down reminded me a little of the toppling of Saddam Hussein’s statue in Iraq. It was a symbol that the people had conquered the very man who, by fascist dictatorial rule and chemical weapons tests on his own people, had conquered them.

So it seems a little odd that this statue, about 200 years old and depicting a man from the 1600s has been toppled in 2020. If there needed to be a revolution of this sort, it already happened in 1833 with the abolition of slavery in the UK. or perhaps in 1965, with the introduction of the race relations act to the UK, which achieved equality, in the eyes of the law, between all races. The equivalent acts happened in the USA in 1865 and 1964 respectively. 

But even judging Edward Colston by today’s standards, what makes this man any different from the Zuckerbegs and Bezos’ in this world? Very wealthy and in no small part down to paying over-worked employees minimum wage or close to. Colston was still responsible for bringing commerce to the country, founding a school and acting as an MP for the area under a Conservative government, leaving large sums to charities in his will. Just as Zuckerberg, Bezos and others dip into their pockets for philanthropic gestures and endeavours.

Another point that immediately came to mind is just how these rioters have tried to whitewash Bristol in the name of judging the people of the past on the morals and laws of today, practicing zero empathy in the process, something one would have assumed to be integral to their purported cause.

If they only stopped to think for a moment, to have a discussion with somebody who disagreed, there are so many things they might have realised; The comparison with modern day tech giants which is a real problem that exists today and is much more worthy and deserving of our attention, remains unresolved and we can define clear goals to work towards involving these issues, something the statue made me think. And it’s a thought that may not be had again, because the reminder, the provoker of dialect (something which is sorely needed during the current age) may no longer be there for others to learn from.

They might have realised that they would be denying future generations a right to knowledge, instead making them ignorant of their city’s History and even architecture. They might have realised that the petition they started, as a democratic act and right, would have achieved their results, at the very least, it would have given us an idea of the views of the 500,000 inhabitants of this city.

If they paused for a moment and stopped to see other people’s opinions, they would realise that such prominent figures as Morgan Freeman and Lil Wayne were opposed to the protests full stop.

If they stopped to think, they might remember the outcomes of the peaceful protests orchestrated by Ghandi, Mandela and most obviously, Martin Luther King. They had a clear grievance, clear evidence and a clear goal. They were non-violent, they succeeded.

At the risk of more statues being pulled down, I would like to point out that the first name mentioned was a racist, the second was responsible for the creation of the AMC’s armed wing and thus much violence, resulting in a lengthy prison sentence and the final name on the list was an abuser of women.

They might have realised that a better celebration of the city’s ethos of diversity and equality might better be represented by the erection of a contrasting figure nearby, like the Paul Stephenson plaque, Pero’s bridge, or the statue of poet Alfred Fagon. This was successfully achieved in America by The Satanic Temple when they had a satanic statue, representing equality and diversity of belief erected by one of the ten commandments, representing the fact the city was in fact multicultural and did not consider itself exclusively Christian. They did so with yet another peaceful and legal act.

There are so many things that made this act indisputably wrong; The disregard of public opinion. The disregard for the law, both in the context of damaging property and breaking lockdown rules to an irresponsible degree. The opportunism of using events in another country to perpetrate crimes in the name of a cause that is specific to that country, in one of the safest and most tolerant cities in Europe, if not the world, within a country that is probably the most diverse and least racist in Europe, for their own ideals. You can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs, but to paraphrase Orwell “where’s the omelette?”

At the very least, hopefully this has drawn more people’s attention to the figure of Edward Colston and they will have the opportunity to learn something new about the city of Bristol and its history. Unfortunately, they will also have to learn about the total ignorance of certain people over 400 years on. Unless Marvin Rees’ value of democracy is greater than his seemingly emotion-driven bias on the matter, I doubt he is going to open up this issue to Bristol’s inhabitants. Instead deciding, like the protesters-come-rioters, he knows what’s best. Unfortunately we won’t be able to have the nuanced discussion it so clearly deserved, with so many people feeling strongly either way.