BLM vs Edward Colston
When anti-racist activists toppled the statue of a slave trader, a culture war erupted in Britain. Who was to blame?
In November last year, a UK poll revealed that 55% of British adults believe that the BLM movement had exacerbated racial tensions.
How could an anti-racist movement paradoxically cause an increase in racial tensions? Why would there be such a significant backlash against an overwhelmingly peaceful movement? How was the narrative spun so quickly?
It was, quite curiously, catalysed by a statue.
Like many other Britons, I had no idea who Edward Colston was before his statue was dumped in Bristol Harbour. He wasn’t a famous historical figure that British schoolchildren learn about. He’s never been a common source of national pride like Winston Churchill. In fact, without the statue, no one except a handful of historians would even have uttered his name. 17th century merchants don’t tend to feature in casual conversation over a pint of lager and a packet of crisps.
In Bristol, however, the statue had been disliked by many in the local community since the 1990s when Colston’s association with the slave trade became more widely known. When local residents became aware that the merchant had been involved in the transportation of 84,000 slaves, the statue’s presence started to feel more than a little uncomfortable. The Victorians, who erected the statue 200 years after Colston’s lifetime, chose to value the merchant’s local philanthropy over all else; a different era with different ethics, supposedly.
When I was at school, my history class learned about prime minister Neville Chamberlain’s policy of appeasement in the 1930s. We were taught that Chamberlain was vilified for appeasing the rise of the Nazis. He was seen as a weak and ineffectual leader, an opinion which became the status quo during the immediate aftermath of WWII.
This school of thought was later challenged in 1961 by Conservative MP Iain Macleod in his biography of the former prime minister in what became known as the revisionist approach to Chamberlain historiography. As more historical documents were released, so-called revisionists began to describe Chamberlain as a sensible pacifist who bought the necessary time for Britain to gradually rearm and aptly prepare for inevitable conflict with the Third Reich.
But the debate was unfinished, as all historical debates are, and inevitably Chamberlain was re-evaluated again in the 1990s, this time by post-revisionists, who claimed that the former prime minister could have chosen a different, better path from the wealth of options available.
The lesson for us students was clear. History can be debated. History can be rejudged. History can be revised.
In light of new information and deeper insight into Edward Colston, his reputation, like Chamberlain’s, shifted dramatically over time. This led to Thangam Debbonaire, Labour MP for Bristol West, writing to Bristol City Council in 2018 to request the statue’s removal, presenting a petition with 11,000 signatures, not a bad count considering this was a local issue concerning a bronze block.
When this failed to get the statue replaced with someone, anyone, who hadn’t been involved in the enslavement of tens of thousands of innocent Africans, the objections became more creative. Artists began to attach symbols of slavery, such as a ball and chain, to the dreaded statue.
In July 2018, Bristol City Council finally decided to take action by drawing up a planning application for a new plaque to be added to the statue, which would highlight that Colston’s philanthropic activities were indeed funded by slavery. The proposed wording for the second plaque was:
As a high official of the Royal African Company from 1680 to 1692, Edward Colston played an active role in the enslavement of over 84,000 Africans (including 12,000 children) of whom over 19,000 died en route to the Caribbean and America. Colston also invested in the Spanish slave trade and in slave-produced sugar. As Tory MP for Bristol (1710–1713), he defended the city’s ‘right’ to trade in enslaved Africans. Bristolians who did not subscribe to his religious and political beliefs were not permitted to benefit from his charities.
Of course, telling the truth did not appeal to everyone. The Society of Merchant Venturers, an organisation Colston used to be a member of, took issue with the wording and a Bristol Conservative councillor described it as “revisionist” and “historically illiterate.”
Another new wording was proposed but this continued to cause further debate, and so, sadly, the statue remained without the new plaque that would have corrected the record. The people would have to live with it, even those who had ancestors who suffered the cruel injustices of slavery. For them, the statue’s continued presence was unpleasantly personal, but their voices would not be heard.
And then in the summer of 2020, George Floyd was brutally murdered and the BLM protests started. Emotions understandably swelled, and the statue had to go. A group of protestors forcibly removed Colston, dragging him through the street and tossing him in the river, a striking image considering that black slaves were thrown into the ocean to drown in the merchant’s era.
The reaction from the British right-wing press and some Conservative politicians was that this act amounted to thuggery enacted by a violent mob, “sheer vandalism” in the eyes of Home Secretary Priti Patel. Indeed, we see even now that the event is still used to spread fear of BLM, describing the events of last summer as “mayhem”, using this single incident as evidence of the widespread incitement of a so-called ‘cancel culture’ initiative.
What is the purpose of a statue? I’ve always seen the sculptures as a celebration of a historical figure, someone who did good things and deserves to be remembered for them. I don’t think it’s uncontroversial to say that we don’t put statues of arseholes up; that kind of stuff is for a museum.
Forgive me for invoking Godwin’s Law here, but the Nazi statues in Germany are, after all, in museums. If you walked down the street and saw a statue of Hitler and Goering frozen in a goose-stepping fascist frenzy, you’d likely do one of two things: empty your bowels then and there, or get a group of likeminded, decent folk to rip it down and toss it in The Spree.
The Germans have a typically short word to explain the struggle to overcome their past — Vergangenheitsbewältigung. We have no such word in the English language, and I am not surprised, because those who stop and question the empire and colonial history are often considered unpatriotic; they are accused of hating their own race and culture. It is noteworthy that I remember little discussion of the stark realities of the British Empire in history lessons in school; the curriculum was so focused on victory over the Nazis that it painted a very unbalanced moral perspective of this little island’s past.
So, it’s little wonder that some Brits might find it hard confronting the past because they never even did so at school. As a result, the modern Brit grows up thinking that their country is beyond reproach, somehow ‘special’. As white-supremacist colonialist Cecil Rhodes said, “You are an Englishman, and have subsequently drawn the greatest prize in the lottery of life.” Fortunately, his statue might be next on the list for removal, a testament to how successful the activists in Bristol were in encouraging positive and peaceful change to happen.
So, I ask, what fuels racism? Is it the society that is built on white privilege, or the people protesting against it?
For the 55%, I suppose it’s relatively easy to come to the false conclusion that racial tensions have exploded because of BLM and not the other forces at play here. People desire the simplification of complex issues, as proved by the election of Donald Trump, and Theresa May’s “Brexit means Brexit” mantra. The right-wing media wants to stifle the debate by encouraging this brand of oversimplification. They also adopt scaremongering tactics, making out that the destruction of Colston’s statue represents a widespread attack on free speech and culture.
Personally, I believe that repressing debate is unhealthy, and I am thankful that the BLM movement has allowed us to start having a serious conversation about who we want to be as a country, and where we want to go.
I am glad that we are looking at who we celebrate in our public spaces. In the formation of any decent human or society, confronting and challenging the past is a healthy experience. Ethics change, people change, societies change, and change is normally good, albeit challenging.
Looking forward, as inequality widens over time, exacerbated further by the impact of the pandemic, it is plainly observable that we have outdated systems perpetuated by outdated cultural tropes and symbology that centre around an antiquated white aristocracy. Our monarch still hands out Orders of the British Empire — the hallmarks of our dark past are still alive and well. They hold us back from discovering new symbols, new icons and new systems that would help us to pursue a brighter future, one that is committed to racial and social justice for all citizens, one in which black lives really do matter.
It is uncomfortable confronting our past because it also involves confronting our present, taking a good hard look in the mirror and questioning ourselves, our society and our culture.
That may not be easy, but it is necessary.
Originally published at https://woke-news.com on March 1, 2021.
