Protest

The Colston statue - why throw it in the harbour? Colston was a slaver - we no longer have slavery. Is Colston honoured by the statue? Most people don't even know who he was, except that his name appears on a number of streets or buildings, but yes.

The vast majority of stately homes here in the Southwest were built on the proceeds of slavery. Indeed, most of London was paid for by plundering India and fortunes exist to this day that were founded on slavery. Should all these monuments to Empire be demolished?

90% of African slaves were traded to Europeans by Africans themselves, because slavery was endemic in Africa. They were supplied from African communities, tribes and kingdoms, including the Alladah and Ouidah, which were later taken over by the Dahomey kingdom.

Caesar enslaved 500,000 Gauls during his expeditions against them. Should all statues of Caesar be taken down? Shouldn't any reminder of Ancient Rome be demolished, as the entire economy of the Roman Empire was based on slavery? There again, Roman slavery didn't produce a racism based on ethnicity - almost anyone living in the Roman Empire could become a Roman citizen with rights. Your skin colour did not bar you from the professions.

I can't help feeling though that history should not be whitewashed, nor can you judge people of yesterday by the values of today. Just 60 or 70 years ago, virtually everyone in the UK was racist or xenophobic (No Dogs, Blacks or Irish). Progress has been made without the demolition of statues, albeit slowly.

However, if you know the history of the statue, which few do, you are apt to reconsider. The statue was erected in 1895 to commemorate Colston's philanthropy. During Colston's involvement with the Royal African Company in the late 1600s, it's estimated that the company transported around 84,000 African men, women and children on journeys to the Caribbean and the rest of the Americas as slaves. You can understand the anger of the local black population when there's a statue of a slaver who treated your ancestors worse than people treat animals.

That said, the manner of the taking down of Colston's statue did nothing to get me to side with them. People lying down, peacefully and socially distanced affected me far more. I could see myself joining such people, but not those engaged in destruction - that kind of activity is self-defeating and is simply a channel for the alleviation of anger, not change.

Do I feel guilty about the white involvement in the slave trade? Not in the least - my family on both sides was of solid, yeoman farming stock and therefore could not possibly have been involved in it, unless in some extremely oblique manner. Am I concerned about its effects - certainly.

Demonstrations always run the risk of a small minority acting in criminal ways. They can also be subverted by those on the other side of the argument in the manner of an agent provocateur. A peaceful demonstration is a strong barrier to such subversion. In the battle for hearts and minds, venting one's anger in a destructive manner rarely achieves much. Peaceful protests have achieved far more than violent ones.

Has the destruction of Colston's statue achieved anything? Among many black people it will have made them feel better; among non-racist whites, it probably made them feel somewhat uneasy; among racists, it has probably reinforced their racism. Making yourself feel better through venting your anger doesn't necessarily contribute to change. The Abolitionists didn't achieve their aims by rioting and destruction, nor did the Indians in Gandhi's India.

In the photo above, it's striking that that vast majority of the rolling the statue to the harbour are white. That's not to say white people can't be outraged by racism, but it does lend credence to the rent-a-mob, professional protester theory beloved of the far right and plays into their hands. Masks also create the perfect environment for them to operate within.

Then there's the fact that all lives matter, and the lack of social distancing exhibited by many of the protesters shows that, perhaps, no lives matter to them, given their action could in all likelihood result in a 2nd C-19 spike, putting even more NHS lives (which incidentally comprise a high number of  ethnic minorities) at risk. Ironically, more black and Asian people are killed, proportionately, by the virus than white people - that kind of makes a bit of a mockery of the purpose behind the protest. 

Here's a novel idea - leave such statues in place, but modify them somehow with additions that highlight their involvement with slavery, as a reminder of man's inhumanity to man - like draping the statue in manacles and chains. Perhaps erect a statue of a slave next to them (even the death camps of the Nazis were retained as memorials). The only problem with that suggestion is that the even the democratic process of simply having Colston's plaque changed to acknowledge his key involvement in the slave trade has come to naught on the intervention of a Tory councillor, Richard Eddy, and the vetoing of a proposed plaque by Mervyn Rees, the Labour Mayor (himself of white British and Caribbean heritage), about the wording. No wonder the local black population is a tad irate.

The PM's spokesman (code for Cummings) said Mr Johnson "absolutely understands the strength of feeling" but if people wanted the statue removed, there are "democratic routes" which can be followed. Unfortunately, democratic routes had been exhausted. On top of that, Mervyn Rees has said he has a finite budget (actually a £60m deficit) and removing a statue is low on the list of priorities when the drug and homelessness problems are huge.

Simply removing the statue achieves little lasting effect. It makes the anti-racists of today feel vindicated, but what about people of the future? Will it teach them anything? Erase every vestige of Bristol's involvement in the slave trade and pretty soon no-one will realise it ever was involved, except anecdotally.

As for putting it in a museum; half the exhibits in museums never see the light of day.It would have to be a museum dedicated to Bristol's role in the slave trade for it to have any impact, but who would pay for that with all the competition for public funds?

At the end of the day, any decision on how Bristol's role in the slave trade should be portrayed is best made by descendants of those who were sold into slavery, but it shouldn't be whitewashed out of our conscience, or at least not until such time as racism no longer exists. That is the time when people can finally move on.

If you can't see racism at work in the UK then you either need to open your eyes, or you're defending the indefensible. It hasn't gone away - it has merely been suppressed. The actions of some with power are giving it licence once more. I doubt the thoughts of anyone who maintains, in the face of ann evidence to the contrary, that Britain is one of the most welcoming countries in the world.