I really don’t know where to start with this, so forgive me if I am all over the place.
When I arrived in Bristol in 1995 there were possibly people still living who were born in the year the statue of Colston was erected. It isn’t an ancient monument; it’s a piece of late Victorian kitsch. It isn’t even really a statue of Edward Colston, because no-one knows what he looked like, or anything about him, apart from what can be gleaned from financial records. It is some artist’s impression of what a wise old rich dude ought to look like. It’s a piece of myth-making, nearly two hundred years after the event. It has much more in common with a statue of Robin Hood in Nottingham or Dick Turpin in York than with the statue of Thatcher in the House of Commons or the bust of Mandela outside the South Bank Center.
The statue was erected sixty years after the abolition of slavery in the British empire and thirty years after the American civil war. The inscription says that it was erected by public subscription, but it seems to have been substantively paid for by one individual. There is a masonic society in Bristol called the Merchant Venturers who regard, or regarded, Colston as a patron saint; it is very likely that the statue originally had more to do with that fraternity than with either philanthropy or slavery.
There is a music venue in Bristol called Colston Hall. It was put up in the 1950s. It is on the site of two previous halls, both of which were destroyed by fire, but the first hall dates only to 1867 and none of them were paid for by Edward Colston. It is not in question that he endowed alms houses and a boys' school in his lifetime and that other schools were built with his money and named after him after he died.
It is probably careless to refer to him as “a slaver” or indeed “a murderer” without further qualification. Unlike the hymn-writer John Newton he never personally worked on a slave ship. He was merely a senior executive of a company which traded in precious metals, dead elephants and black people.
When I arrived in Bristol I don’t think that many people knew or cared about Colston one way or the other. I am told that the girls' school named after him puts flowers round his statue on his birthday: lots of posh schools have funny traditions. The girls' school was founded in 1893 only two years before the statue was erected. The best thing about Colston’s Girls’ School is that it always puts all the apostrophes in the right places.
I am told that there exists such a thing as a Colston Bun, which seems to be a fruity yeast cake: I have literally never seen such a thing for sale and don’t think I haven’t looked.
However, throughout the 1990s the Bristol radical history group and others made it their business to research and publicise the historical Colston’s connection with the slave trade; and this has made the statue and the concert hall controversial. It may perfectly well be that a century ago when the statue to the “wisest and most virtuous” son of Bristol was put up, most people simply didn’t know how he made his money; but they certainly do now.
The statue of Colston is not, in itself, of the slightest importance. It could have sat there for another hundred years and the position of black people in the city would have been no worse; now it has been removed, the position of black people in the city is no better.
But it had become a symbol. That sometimes happens in the complicated cultural world we all inhabit. In my memory the flag of St George has been primarily associated with the crusaders, the Boy Scouts, neo-Nazis and the England football team. If you hang a swastika outside your door and say “oh, I thought it was an ancient Indian rune” no-one will take you very seriously.
In the last decade, the Colston name and the Colston statue have become a rallying point for a particularly nasty kind of regressive nativism. It is impossible to know whether the people who wrote to the Bristol Post and the Daily Mail and the Guardian in defence of the statue represented a position which was at all widespread or whether —as I am inclined to suspect— they were part of an orchestrated campaign by a relatively small number of right-wing activists. But it is certainly the case that they took a consistent line:
Colston is Bristol and Bristol is Colston; removing the statue is only the first move in a process that will, as surely as night follows day, lead to the demolition of buildings and the burning of books. Slavery was, at worst, a minor peccadillo with which small minded folk are trying to blemish an otherwise stainless character: what historical personage could you find without some tiny little skeleton in his closet? Sinister forces, generally referred to as the political correctness brigade were at work. Either no such thing as slavery ever existed; or, if it did, there was nothing wrong with it and the slaves didn’t really mind; or if they did, England was no more culpable than any other country; or if it was, it is unfair to single out Colston in particular for approbation.
Two arguments were rehearsed over and over again: they became a mantra for the statue cult and they have been wheeled out repeatedly in the last 48 hours. Of course slavery is wrong now, but it wasn’t wrong then; moral standards were different then; and you cannot judge the past by the standards of the present. We have to have statues lauding slave traders as wise and virtuous citizens because otherwise no-one will know that slavery was abhorrent. Removing a statue or renaming a pub is the equivalent to re-writing, airbrushing, or expunging the past. The Bristol radical history society and the various advocates for black and minority ethnic rights want the crimes committed against Africans by the British to be forgotten.
And over and over again an appalling, nativist, know-nothing narrative of inverted oppression was pressed. Colston is loved by those born and bred in Bristol. Born-and-bred in Bristol. True Bristolians. Born-and-bred Bristolians. It was repeated over and over, a dog whistle and a code word and a rallying cry. No-one who was not born-and-bred in Bristol should have a say about a statue or a concert hall. The people wanting to move the statue and rename the concert hall were not born-and-bred in Bristol. Not true Bristolians. Any act of renaming — or even the very modest suggestion of placing an interpretative plaque alongside the existing memorial explaining who the historical Colston was an how he made his money — was a sign of weakness. Pathetic snowflakes. Wounded fluffykins. Kowtowing and bending the knee and submitting to these incomers. These forces of political correctness. These SJWs. These liberal leftie commies. These people who were not True Bristolians.
Black people and white people. There is really no nicer way of putting it.
The statue's original meaning may very well have been “my businessmen's’ fraternity is bigger than your businessmen's’ fraternity.” But it had become the conceptual site of an ideological struggle. Leaving the statue in place says “Bristol still belongs to Born and Bred Bristolians”. Removing it means “Born and Bred Bristolians are No Longer the Boss of Their Own City.”
What the Black Lives Matter March did on Sunday was a powerful and, I am tempted in a strictly literal sense to say, magical, piece of political conceptual art.
I never believed that the Bristol City Council would vote to remove the statue. I probably expected the interpretative sign to eventually go up; possibly even there would be some second artwork, say a statue of a slave; to contextualize the first. Probably I thought that it would carry on being the subject of controversy and interventions over the next twenty years. I have seen Colston’s face painted white; traffic cones put on his head; chains put round his ankles; fake blue plaques added to the plinth; and on one memorable occasion an installation of model slave ships and black bodies surrounding the memorial.
I sometimes dared to hope that some anarchist or radical might vandalize the statue beyond repair; that we would wake up one morning and find that someone had removed the statue and absconded with it.
If that had happened, we could have said that someone had taken the law into their own hands, that after decades of politely and democratically asking the council to please remove the statue; some individual had cut through the red tape and removed it themselves. The point of the event would have been that someone didn’t think the statue should be there, and that now it wasn’t there any more. We would have had a more or less civilised discussion about whether we agreed with them or not and even if we did agree with them whether this was the best way to have gone about it. It would have gone on for months.
But that’s not what happened.
What happened yesterday, had, in a sense, nothing to do with the statue: certainly nothing to do with the discourse about whether it should be removed (because slavery is abhorrent) or left standing (because history). What happened was that a largely peaceful and well-behaved mob took control of the narrative. They changed what the statue is about. For ever. They imbued Colston with a significance and meaning and symbolism which he never had in the hundred years when he was just standing there, leaning on his walking stick, being shat on by pigeons.
Yesterday, the status quo was a kitsch statue that some people thought it would be better to remove.
Today, the status quo is a statue is lying at the bottom of the river, and the plinth is empty.
It is unthinkable that anyone would now dredge the statue up and replace it on the plinth. It is almost equally unthinkable that the statue could even be displayed as a museum piece. Not because of what you may think about the imaginary, Victorian Colston; and certainly not because of what you may think about the historical seventeenth century Colston. The statue isn’t about Colston or slavery or buns or posh schools or philanthropy any more.
The empty plinth is now its own symbol. And the new symbol means “Bristol embraces the Black Lives Matter” movement.
Taking the statue down, officially, or unofficially, would have meant “We are on balance uncomfortable with Bristol’s history as a slave port”.
But putting it back up now would mean “Bristol says a hearty Fuck You to black lives mattering.”
There will be some people who will want to say that. But they will at least have to be up front about that being what they want to say.
When the idea of placing an interpretive plaque alongside the statue was first mooted, a Conservative Councilor said that he would not be able to find it in his heart to condemn anyone who came and tore it down. This is the same man who placed a gollywog on his work desk because…for some reason.
History can’t be erased: but you can always write a new chapter. Black people in Bristol are in exactly the same position on Monday morning as they were on Saturday night. Tearing down a statue is only a symbolic gesture. But at least people are gesturing in the right direction.
7 comments:
You're right: the last week (and especially the last day) has completely refocussed what the statue means. If you'd asked me last week I would probably have said something like "The statue's being there tells us something about Bristol's history, both ancient and modern, and while a case can be made to taking it down, on balance I think there is something to be said in allowing it continue to speak, especially if what it speaks is a nuanced message facilitated by interpretive materials".
But now it's down, all I can think is "good riddance". There is something very cathartic about the video of it coming down, and going into the dock. Not just emotionally, but as establishing a new and better normal.
The historian in me feels that there is a valid question about how we judge the moral compass of people from previous generations: as Neil Gaiman put it in 'The Graveyard Book', 'Mr and Mrs Owens were not bad people, but they lived two hundred years before anyone suggested that hitting children was wrong'. I am also not naive enough to think that three hundred years ago, I would be campaigning against the slave trade or boycotting West Indian sugar: even two hundred years ago I might have respected the views of my liberal friends, but suggested that we abolish slavery after we have beaten Napoleon. However, a hundred years ago I would not have been subscribing to put up a statue to him, or suggesting thirty years ago that every country behind the Iron Curtain should preserve it's states of Lenin and Stalin as public monuments. I reserve judgement on whether any gathering of ten thousand people should be allowed to demolish public artwork of their choice, or how I would feel about some of the states around Parliament Square coming down.
The smart play now would be for Bristol council to make the empty plinth itself a monument.
Having no connection with Bristol, I don't think it's appropriate for me to weigh in on the specific matter of the statue; but I do find concerning the general tendency of police forces nowadays to simply stand back and allow protest groups to commit criminal damage, or obstruct people trying to go about their legitimate business; as was seen in the eco-loons' protests last year and this year, and has been seen again this week in many places including but not limited to Bristol.
Sorry, I meant last year and the year before.
Please do not feed the trolls.
A really good piece, well written Andrew.
This is the kind of thing that will happen, has to happen, when the authorities very obviously don't do the right thing in good time. Hopefully similar monuments, street names and so on will be removed and changed, not to obliterate the memory of the people they commemorated, but to put them in their proper place. In Colston's case, somewhere in a Bristol museum; in the case of Thomas Picton (say), something to do with the Army and/or the Napoleonic Wars, not as if he were central to modern Welsh culture.
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