‘An entry point to history discussion’

MARVIN Rees rejected the accusation that his quote and the exhibition as a whole was ‘propaganda’ for his view of the event and the context around it.

“No, I didn’t design this,” he said. “I asked for it to be done, I pulled the History Commission together and I asked our culture team to work on it, and made a commitment to getting it done, but I did not design this. I didn’t choose which placards went up, I didn’t choose who gave the quotes that are on the wall. I didn’t say what the timeline should be,” he added.

“We know we needed to display the statue and what we did want was to treat the statue with respect, but not have it lying in state like it was on the plinth again. That’s the level of my input. This is a product of our History Commission, our culture team, working with around 12,000 people’s opinions from across Bristol, and some from beyond, and coming up with a considered, intelligent way of making space for people to engage with Bristol’s history. In many ways, what we said at the beginning was that Colston was a starting point, but it cannot be the destination. So this is an entry way in, but it’s not my propaganda,” he added.

Mr Rees said he didn’t know why the Colston 4 weren’t asked to contribute to the exhibition. “I don’t know. We pulled together people who were credible,” he said.

“We wanted to take the discussion around what we do with the statue out of the world of lobbying and activism and Twitter, and pull together professional historians – that’s what we did,” he added.

“So that actually what resulted was not who had the loudest voice or who got on Twitter, but it was actually considered, intellectual discussion and a consultation with the city that again was through intellectual, intelligent, rational discussion. That was really important to making sure that we held the city together and remember, we’ve got 42 square miles, we all have to live in that 42 square miles.

“One of the points I made at the time was even if you don’t get what you want, we need you to know that you’ve been respected, you’ve been heard, you’ve been considered, and your views have been treated with respect – it just so happens that the city has made a different decision. I think people can live with that, and I think that’s what we’ve managed to do as a city as we’ve come through.”