The story behind the toppling of Colston’s statue

On Sunday in Bristol protestors toppled a statue of Edward Colston and threw it into the harbour. For many this will be the first they have heard about Colston, but in Bristol he is ubiquitous. He has long been held up as a role-model and symbol of civic pride due to his charitable donations with many locations in the city named after him and memorial services held in his honour. However, increasingly Colston has become a controversial figure with people asking if a man who made his money through the slave trade should be so honoured.

As a board member, and then deputy governor, of the Royal African Company, Colston helped organise the enslavement and transportation of 84,000 Africans, including about 12,000 aged ten or under. It is believed that 19,000 died in the passage from Africa to the Americas alone. Yet his philanthropic donations saw a statue to him erected in 1895, long after his death in 1721, commemorating him as “one of the most virtuous and wise sons” of the city.

Given the horrifying source of his wealth it seems fairly clear that Colston’s ability to purchase a good name via charity is a moral whitewash. As far back as 1920, the Reverend H. J. Wilkins argued in his biography of Colston that the slave trader should not be so honoured given the origins of his wealth.

But it is only over the last decade that the controversy has gained traction within the city. In 2013, George Ferguson, Bristol’s first elected mayor, called celebrations of Colston “perverse” and refused to participate. A year later, the activist group Countering Colston was founded with the aim of challenging the public honour given to the prolific slaver.

The Colston memorial had influential defenders. They included Conservative councillors and the Society of Merchant Venturers, which controls a variety of philanthropic bodies across the city that use Colston as an emblem.

Despite this the anti-Colston campaign was fairly successful. In 2017 St Stephen’s Cathedral refused to host a memorial service for Colston for the first time in nearly 300 years. The same year the prominent music venue Colston Hall announced plans to rename itself following refurbishment, which should be completed this year, prompting other venues to follow suit. Various other institutions have fallen into line. One such is Colston Primary School, which held a three-month consultation with its students during which it brought in experts to discuss the question. The process was transparent, deliberative, and well-received.

Yet the statue remained in place. The protests continued, some of which were hauntingly symbolic, such as the laying at its feet 100 human figures imitating the layout in which slaves were chained in the ships Colston financed. An unofficial plaque commemorating Bristol’s central role in the slave trade was also attached to the statue’s base in 2017, where it remained for 2 months before being removed by the council.

In 2018, the council decided that a new official plaque was in order, although the decision-making process was opaque.

The new plaque was apparently settled on because the city’s planning department let it be known, unofficially, that they were not prepared to remove the statue or undertake any major works.

However, what the plaque should say quickly became the subject of a skirmish. An original version emphasising Colston’s role in the slave trade, and that he had limited his philanthropy to Anglicans, was rejected. But the new text, put together with the help of the Merchant Venturers, watered things down and emphasised his philanthropy. This too was rejected in early 2019 by the new Mayor, Marvin Rees.

Since then the issue has been under discussion with little sign of anything happening until last Sunday. There are plans to fish the statue out of the water but not to restore it. Instead, there are suggestions it should be put in a museum to reflect Bristol’s history.

Polls suggest that people are broadly supportive of this approach. But they are also troubled by the violence surrounding the toppling of the statue. Only 13% of Britons say it was removed in the right way, according to YouGov.

Many might prefer the example of New Orleans which, in 2017, removed its statues to figures who supported the Confederacy during the Civil War. This followed a long process culminating in a speech by the mayor explaining the decision. Dr Joanna Burch-Brown, a lecturer at the University of Bristol with ties to Countering Colston, sees this as a good example of how these tricky issues can be dealt with. However, she does not reject the forcible removal of the statue, holding that it is “a trap to imagine there is one right answer”.