Understanding Colston is vital to understanding Bristol’s history
LETTER writer Anna Rogers (Colston means nothing, Post letters, November 23) says Colston means nothing to most of Bristol’s population and wants us to move on from the Colston statue debate and “maybe put it in a museum as an exhibit about the slave trade”.
Perhaps Anna is unaware that Colston was possibly Bristol’s greatest benefactor, who could also feature in a museum exhibit about the funding and ongoing support of schools, hospitals, churches and social care in the city, from almost three centuries before the welfare state?
I can sympathise with newbies to Bristol and those who have little interest in its history wanting this saga to end, especially in these challenging times.
However, for Bristolians steeped in its fascinating history, both good and bad, Colston is an important part of that history, a history under threat from a growing culture war and ‘cancel’ culture.
Some want to ‘decolonise’ Bristol and their first target is Colston. On the other hand, some individuals still proclaim Colston a hero.
Yet, in 2018 the council aimed at a middle way, avoiding these extremes, with a plan to add a second plaque to the statue to explain Coston’s involvement in the slave trade and to publicly acknowledge the human cost associated with some of his philanthropy (we have known that some of his money came from slave trading since 1920!).
I was one of the members of the public involved in this project of the ‘retain and explain’ approach recently supported by the boss of Historic England and the Culture Minister.
But, even after wording for the plaque was agreed and it had been cast, the Mayor intervened in March 2019 calling for a rewording, and then nothing happened up to the unlawful toppling 15 months later. The Mayor now wants the damaged statue displayed, surrounded by the toppler’s placards, in a museum.
Perhaps the History Commission can insist on the real history to accompany this ‘tear down and dumb down’ approach travesty? Julian Hill Knowle