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THE decision on whether to rename streets that are named in honour of slave traders from Bristol’s history should be up to the people that live there, not Government ministers or council chiefs.
That’s the view of the chair of Bristol’s History Commission, which was set up by mayor Marvin Rees to examine the city’s troubled past following the toppling of the statue of Edward Colston last June.
Now, the chair of that commission Prof Tim Cole has hit back at the Government’s Communities Secretary Robert Jenrick, making it clear his intervention in the debate within Bristol on this issue was “unhelpful”.
Mr Jenrick announced a new policy to protect statues last month, and took the opportunity to take a swipe at what he described as “town hall militants” and “woke worthies” who “have street names in their sights”.
He didn’t mention Bristol by name, and a similar debate is happening in other cities, notably London.
But earlier this year, one local councillor in Bristol did support and submit a bid by the residents of two streets named after Edward Colston to have those names changed.
Residents of Colston Avenue and Colston Street pointed out that they had older, original medieval names, which had already been changed by Bristol’s ruling class in Victorian times as part of what became known as “the cult of Colston”.
Local councillor Kye Dudd said he backed the move to restore Colston Street and Colston Avenue’s original names, and would be putting the proposal to the History Commission to consider.
Now, in response to Mr Jenrick’s apparent attack on that process, Prof Cole, a Bristol University professor, said the Government minister’s intervention was unhelpful.
“It should be up to people who live on those streets to decide – it is an uber-local issue,” he said.
“If a bunch of people who live on Colston Avenue want to change the name of their street they should be empowered to do so.”
“These kinds of divisive phrases add to this sense of a culture war,” he told The Guardian. “We need a more thoughtful way to explore the past and think about the public realm. It is stoking fires that don’t need stoking.”
The “de-Colston-ification” of Bristol started long before the toppling of the slave trader’s statue last June.
In 2017, a school and then the city’s main concert hall, decided to drop his name, and that was followed through 2018 and 2019 by a pub and another school, which changed the name of all of its internal houses, including Colston’s.
After the June 2020 toppling, the slow process became a torrent, as more schools, tower blocks, pubs and buildings dropped the Colston name within a matter of weeks.
Residents of a number of streets in Bristol that are named after Edward Colston also took the renaming process into their own hands in those days after the statue came down, and at the time, the Mayor of Bristol said the city should decide how to deal with this issue itself, and not be rushed into kneejerk decisions, but consider it properly.
❝ It should be up to people who live on those streets to decide – it is an uber-local issue. If a bunch of people who live on Colston Avenue want to change the name of their street they should be empowered to do so Prof Tim Cole
He assembled a group of mainly academics and history professors, with a number of Labour councillors, to create the History Commission, but its make-up was criticised because it didn’t include many of the people who had been instrumental in researching and raising the issue of Edward Colston’s cultural grip on the city for so many years.
Another History Commission member Prof Madge Dresser said she feared the Government was trying to assert control over what happens in Bristol.
“It is a bid to control history and to bring these vital local decisions under the over-centralised and partisan grip of the Tory party,” she said.
“Its tone is hectoring and needlessly divisive. It seems supported by those elements in the party whose grasp of history is at best traditionalist and at worst stone-cold ignorant.”
The Guardian also reported that the History Commission had since turned down the offer of funding from the Society of Merchant Venturers, the organisation of business people that dates back to the 16th century and ran Bristol’s transatlantic slave trade for more than 100 years.
One history commissioner, South West TUC regional secretary Nigel Costley, said he was glad they turned the money down.
“They’ve tried to reform but they’re too steeped in the past,” he told The Guardian.
The issue of street names and buildings in Bristol being named after slave traders is not confined to Edward Colston.
In 2017, the Post revealed there were many more streets and buildings named in honour of other people from Bristol’s past who made their fortunes from the slave trade or from the forced labour of enslaved African people and white prisoners of war or bonded labour from the British Isles in plantations in the Caribbean and North America. Everything from parks and roads to council tower blocks are named after some who contributed more to Bristol’s dark legacy than Edward Colston did.
A spokesperson for the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government would not comment on the suggestion that the renaming of streets would be blocked.
“For hundreds of years, public statues and monuments have been erected across the country to celebrate individuals and great moments in British history,” they said.
“Any removal should require planning permission and local people be given the chance to be properly consulted – that’s why we are changing the law to protect historic monuments.”