Punishments for the Colston statue crew? £100 fine and a history quiz!
SIX protesters who toppled a statue of a slave trader will avoid the courts – and instead be asked to complete a history quiz.
The group accepted a ‘conditional caution’ after damaging the statue of edward Colston in Bristol amid Black Lives Matter protests.
But police have also insisted the vandals complete a questionnaire, giving them a very public chance to justify their actions.
Questions will be posed by a special history commission established by the city council to re-evaluate the port’s past in the wake of protests.
And far from being part of an education programme aimed at discouraging criminal damage, the six will be invited to explain why they toppled the Colston statue and rolled it in to the harbour. The We Are Bristol history Commission, chaired by Bristol University history professor Tim Cole, will record the group’s self-justifications as part of a record of the ‘story of the protest’. The demonstrators have also agreed to pay a fine of £100, which will be given to an ethnic minority mental health charity, and to complete just two hours of community work.
A spokesman for Bristol City Council said last night: ‘Upon a request from the police, the chair of the history Commission agreed that the views of those involved in the removal of the Colston statue would help tell one part of the story of the protest.
‘The Commission will gather many views as part of its research into the city’s rich and varied history.’
Avon and Somerset police said the group of six – five unnamed men aged 18, 20, 29, 33 and 47, and another individual – would be asked by historians to set out their reasons for their actions, as well as their ‘concerns and thoughts going forward’.
Although the offence will be recorded on police criminal records, the six avoid prosecution in the courts.
A spokesman for Avon and Somerset Police said senior officers had decided the caution conditions were ‘appropriate given that the statue was damaged during a Black Lives Matter demonstration’.
All conditions are to be satisfied within six months. It comes amid increasing moves to free space in courts by allowing the police to issue their own conditional cautions.
however, allowing offenders’ justifications to be set down in history appears to be a first.
Black Lives Matter protests spread from America after the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis in May. In the extraordinary scenes in Bristol two weeks later, activists focused on the long- controversial statue of Colston.
The former MP had made a fortune from the shipping of 80,000 slaves from Africa to America in the 17th century. Avon and Somerset police ended a formal investigation of criminal damage in mid-September after receiving an official complaint from Bristol City Council.
After issuing images of those involved in an incident widely filmed, photographed and publicised in newspapers, television and the internet, police identified ten of 18 possible suspects.
While six of the identified culprits have now accepted cautions, the files of four more are still being considered by the Crown Prosecution Service. They could yet face justice in court, and more severe punishment.
‘Tell the story of the protest’