To feel emotional at the slave trader statue

[Millicent10]

being pulled down earlier.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-52954305

This says so much and the symbolism of throwing it in the river is such a suitable ending. Reminds everyone what happened to so many slaves.

I understand people had democratically tried to get it removed for years to no avail.

I don't know Bristol well so wouldn't want to judge how people feel. I'm not a lover of statues so couldn't get worked up about one going. I am more ambiguous about the name of the school. I also went to a school named after the 19th century philanthropist who built it, he was a very different character and as far as I know nothing shameful about him, but when it merged with another school I felt very sad about the name change. The name meant something to me that was nothing to do with the man, although as I said he seemed to be a good man and nothing shameful about him. I wonder how old pupils at the school with the name change feel about it.

Sorry, bit off topic.

@Rosebel the slave trade ended in the 1800s however the effects are still felt to this very day. But of course your post shows no empathy to the people it affected so you're clearly not bothered as long as all is well with you and yours! How incredible unsympathetic and selfish of you.
This.

Lots of bad people did good things. Jimmy Saville - should we have a statue for him?

@thedancingbear spot on!

I don’t see what the donation of “his” fortune has to do with anything. It was a fortune built on the labour of thousands of enslaved Africans. The statue wasn’t erected until long after the abolition of slavery when people should already have known better. Stick it in a museum. Statues are not politically neutral and we should review regularly who we memorialise with public statues.

My initial reaction to this was rate it was wrong.

But after a discussion on FB I realised people have been asking for its removal for 30 years, and that it was really offensive for many residents of Bristol and a reminder of a terrible time in our society.

So really can’t blame them tbh - although generally I disagree with any type of violent protest.

@1forsorrow
So out of 70 councillors in Bristol city, fewer than 10% are BAME (inc. the Mayor) so that makes it all ok and proves that democracy works?

No, it bloody doesn’t!

For years and years the people of Bristol have complained (through the democratic process) about all the nods throughout the City to various slave traders naming buildings and roads after them, erecting statues etc.. Apart from minor lip service to a few name changes very little has actually been changed.

Don’t forget the money donated by these families was to benefit the economically poor whites, not to support the BAME communities.

Democracy only works if you’re white, middle class and male!

Petition to get it moved, fine.

Great shout, Tianalia. How about all the black people get together and nicely ask the police to stop murdering them?

Doesn't work, does it?

Also, he is responsible for adults and children being branded like cattle.

No matter the philanthropy, if it is built on the dehumanising of others it is as hollow as the statue.

No one wanted the Jimmy Saville memorials still up.

Yes! As the presumably middle class white males who pulled the statue down showed.

They got their democracy!

Good! About time this disgusting symbolism of slavery was taken down and even better that it was by BLM protestors 👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽

Disgusting behaviour - vandalising and defacing public property. There is NO excuse for it.

@MilkTrayLimeBarrel do you feel the same about Hilter and Sadam Hussain statues being pulled down by the people?

For those that don't know...the statue had a plaque, quite a big one, listing all Colston's good deeds done for the people of the city. Recently it was decided (after much lobbying, petitioning and the fact that Bristol now has a black mayor), that another plaque detailing Colston's involvement in the city's slave trade should be added. All well and good, yet the 2nd plaque was so small it was almost unreadable.
For years the people of the city had wanted the statue removed, but it was always denied by those who wanted to sweep the city's past under the carpet. I went to school 10 miles from Bristol and all we were taught about was Isambard Brunell and all he did, with a passing reference to how Colston had given money to the city's poor. At no time ever during my school years was Colston's slave connections ever mentioned.
There is a BBC2 program documenting the history of a house in Bristol, that was built by a slave merchant. Bristol does not need statues to represent it's past there are plenty of buildings that can do that. The gloryfication of a man who regarded human beings as no more than cattle to be sold at markets is nothing to be proud of.

@GrandAltogetherSo I was replying to Oh yes let's have a democratic process to remove it...only those people in position are shock horror white people hmm that's why its stayed there Isn't the mayor in a position to do something about it? I didn't say it was all OK and democracy works but it isn't true to say the people in power are all white.

Statues of dictators pulled down by the people he extorted, kept downtrodden at the very moment of independence and white men pulling down the statute to a long dead man for something that no longer exists and was perpetrated on someone else...

... yeah! I get the analogy! Works really well!

How silencing is that for black people to walk past every day for 125 years

Only if they let it silence them.

As for jimmy saville, what he did was illegal when he was doing it. What colston did wasn't, though it should have been.

Great shout, Tianalia. How about all the black people get together and nicely ask the police to stop murdering them?

You think this is going to help black people? It's not. It's going to make things worse. And the impact won't be on all the white people participating in that. It will be on black people.

I wish they'd move all controversial statues and put them in museums- why have them displayed in public to rub their awful history in people's faces?
Goes for Nelson and Churchill too- don't get rid of them per se, but move them to museums. People need to know the history behind every figure and what role they played. Stop revering them.

As a Bristolian, I'm glad to see the back of this - celebrating a slave trader in a forward looking multicultural city is all levels of wrong. There have been petitions to remove this statue for years - latest one here -you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/remove-the-edward-colston-statue-from-bristol-city-centre - and none of them have succeeded.

Next step to get Colston Hall renamed - as was promised three years ago.

This isn't airbrushing history. It's saying that what the city used to be is no longer what it is. If it is dredged out of the floating harbour, then they should put it in the M Shed or city museum, but with some context around who he was.

In Iceland they have a monument dedicated to civil disobedience
Out of interest, do they have one to the slaves taken to Algeria ?

We are not Fucking America with their "Mister Mandela, as an African-American yourself...."

BAME stands for Black and Minority Ethnic. Black in a British context is Afro-Carribbean Black, not to be confused with Carribbean East Indian like VS Naipaul.

The black population of Bristol have a long history. They've been there at least two hundred years. They pre-date Windrush, and they are black, not people of fucking color and other such American Bollocks.

And what I said was they knew full well about the long history of racist policing in Bristol and so would be wary of tearing statues down because they knew they would be dealt with more harshly than white middle-class lefties.

That's such a fucking insulting comparison to make

Little white demagogues are not the same as a populace rising against a dictator, acting at the moment of independence!

Ffs!

I am led to understand that the council had been lobbied for years to have this statue removed. So the democratic process failed. In the moment, the mob toppled the statue. Throwing the statue in the river was symbolic. I do not agree with the vandalism but I can understand the protesters' frustration.

Tianalia, I think you may have overlooked the sarcasm in my post.