Colston’s real replacement must be a rebuke to cancel culture
Overnight, Black Lives Matter elves erected a statue on the plinth vacated by Edward Colston when his likeness took an early bath in Bristol Harbour last month. The new incumbent, entitled “A Surge of Power”, depicts BLM protester Jen Reid engaged in a black power salute. “It’s something the people of Bristol appreciate seeing,” Reid declared of the depiction of herself, hours after the substitution. Even we anti-iconoclasts must admire the chutzpah.
Yet the statue is a serious piece of work, created by Marc Quinn, who sculpted Alison Lapper Pregnant, which occupied Trafalgar Square’s fourth plinth in the noughties. Aesthetically, it’s a winner, in my (layman’s) opinion. But it cannot stay where it is. This would demonstrate the authorities’ craven abdication of decision-making to unelected activists. Its erection, without a shred of debate, is consistent with BLM’S Marxist roots.
Bristol city councillors insist that residents should decide on Colston’s replacement. My first choice would be to restore the slaver/philanthropist to his plinth, ideally in a ceremonial procession flanked by local dignitaries, purely to send out a robust condemnation of vandalism. Less divisive Bristolian candidates are the gorgeous Cary Grant or the recently cancelled John Cleese – preferably in full Fawlty Towers goose-step mode. But a public consultation could also yield a joke winner, designed to wind up the judges (“Plinthy Mcplinthface”?)
As the offspring of a Bristolian father, and therefore deserving of at least half a vote (identity politics is everywhere now), I have a modest proposal. A statue in homage to the city’s most famous living daughter, JK Rowling; ideally, a substantial artefact with artistic heft, not a piece of Harry Potter kitsch involving centaurs and wands. It should reflect her status as creator of a significant cultural export, a canon which inspired millions of otherwise book-phobic youngsters to become enthusiastic readers and sparked a renaissance in British filmmaking.
The statue would also provide the perfect rebuke to a loathsome contemporary trend. For readers fortunate enough to have missed the latest broadsides in this internecine war, Rowling, despite her decades of support for progressive causes, has been summarily “cancelled” by the Left and denounced as a bigot for refusing to bend to trans orthodoxy over biological sex. As one of a vanishingly rare breed prepared to speak out, celebrating her would sound a powerful rallying cry for free expression and intellectual courage.
The city urgently needs this wake-up call. Bristol University recently abandoned young academic Raquel Rosario Sanchez to a vicious two-year bullying campaign. Since chairing an event for the organisation Woman’s Place on proposed changes to the Gender Recognition Act, Sanchez has been hounded by trans activists, even forced to hire her own private security guards to guarantee her safety on campus. Shamefully, this lofty Russell Group institution failed to protect her or discipline those responsible.
Honouring Rowling would underscore three unfashionable truths: that biological sex is no mere social construct, that mob tactics are entirely unacceptable and that free speech should remain an inalienable right on campus – and everywhere else. But I won’t hold my breath.