Tag Archives: Edward Colston

CARRY ON MERCHANT VENTURERS

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Merchant Venturers Annual Garden Party 2025

The Society of Merchant Venturers (SMV) have been running (or at least trying) to run Bristol since their ‘royal charter’ of 1551. Nearly 500 years of feathering their own fat nests.

This unelected, undemocratic ‘union’ of rich merchants and  businessmen, landowners, property speculators and their ilk concentrated on controlling the port, overseas trade, the corporation (now the City Council) and of course they made a fortune out of slavery.

In the 20th and 21st century they are renowned for masquerading as a ‘charity’, whilst their members have their ‘fingers in the pies’ of the Port of Bristol, public utilities like Wessex Water, huge business deals such as the ‘Arena’, the Church of England, both Universities, healthcare, the arts, schools and institutions such as the Beacon (ex-Colston Hall) that have swallowed up hundreds of millions of public funds. The power of the SMVs purse dominates these areas.

As a manager at the Old Vic theatre explained to us a few years ago “you musn’t have a go at the Merchant Ventuers, nothing happens unless they say so”.

An important part of this historic control has been manipulating the local media and politicians for their own interests. For example, in the 2000s the journalists at the Bristol Post knew they could not write pieces which were critical of SMV projects, from academy schools, funding the ‘Colston Hall’ to buying the Port of Bristol for a £1.

This was because Post editors like Mike Norton were well-known for being up the arse of the Venturers. It was common knowledge amongst Post journalists that Norton desperately wanted to be invited to be a member of the SMVs and he suppressed any stories that might piss them off as a result.

In one case he even threatened to sack a journalist for exposing members of the Venturers trust (the educational arm of the SMVs) for defamation. Despite his sychophantic loyalty to the SMVs, Norton never made it to be a member and retired a few years ago.

Five years ago, under huge pressure after the city rejected the SMVs slave-trading idol Edward Colston, the Venturers realised they had to modernise in order to survive. In their minds this meant allowing a few women and ‘ethnic monorities’ to join… shocker!

Of course, these people weren’t normal Bristolians but had to be millionaire business owners with good political ties, seeking status amongst the big business people in the city. One of their targets was corporate lawyer, Marti Burgess of the Burgess family empire, inner city ‘entertainment’ property owners who made millions running clubs like Lakota in Stokes Croft.

Burgess, a close aide of Marvin Rees during his Mayoral electoral campaign in 2016, realised how powerful the SMVs were when she was asked by Rees to map out the power structures in the city. She recalled “I did not know who the Merchant Venturers were until I surveyed the city. The SMVs had interests in so many sectors I told Rees that, after the Council, they were the most powerful organisation in Bristol”.

The unelected, undemocratic and exclusive SMVs appealed to Burgess and Rees, as a powerful body to join and collaborate with.

As elected Mayor, Rees went along with most of the SMV members’ needs, continuing to pour money into their iconic baby ‘the ex-Colston Beacon’, handing the arena site at Temple Meads to Bristol University and the airfield at Filton to Malaysian corporation YTL.

Rees seemed to think that if powerful businessmen from the SMVs were nice to him, then that meant they liked him. Worried close associates in the Labour Party pointed out they were only being nice because he was the elected Mayor and they were after contracts, not because they actually liked him!

Rees even refused to engage with the campaign to remove the slave-trader Colston from representing the city, sending the cops after the Colston 4 statue topplers and claiming that the protesters were “privileged” and the SMVs were the “genuine anti-racists in the city”.

Meanwhile, despite the anti-racist rhetoric of Marti Burgess, she joined the SMVs in 2020, claiming she was going to ‘change’ the organisation from within. Fuck all has happened of course and far from leaving the SMVs Burgess has stayed in there.

In 2024, with the blessing of the “anti-racist” SMV Rees was paid off with an honorary degree from their (Bristol) university, given a ‘job’ travelling round the world to climate conferences. Earlier this year made it into the House of Lords, as Lord Rees of Easton. Not bad for a failed Mayor who managed to get the post of elected-Mayor voted out of the city.

However, there was a spanner in the works when Rees was asked to declare his business interests as a Lord. As Private Eye pointed out, Rees’ own ‘personal services’ company was being paid by Ameresco Inc, the US multinational that signed a billion pound contract (yes! £1,000,000,000) with Bristol City Council under Rees’ watch in 2021. Smoking gun or what? At the Bristolian press centre we waited weeks for a news organisation in Bristol to follow up the Eye article.

The only place it appeared was on a local blogger’s website and the blogger’s husband happened to be a leading reporter in the Bristol media organisation Bristol 24/7, but still there was silence.

Who is on the board of 24/7? Yes, you guessed it SMV member and close associate of Rees, Marti Burgess. It would be no surprise to us that Burgess suppressed this massive story. 

As a result of the yawning silence over this smoking gun, The Bristolian broke the story on the streets of Bristol by publishing the ‘Robber Baron’ issue . 48 hours later the cat was out of the bag when the Bristol Post ran the story, and then surprise, surprise even the fawning Rees propaganda arm the Bristol Cable were forced to say something. This is nothing new to us at The Bristolian as we often have to lead the way with ‘difficult’ stories like this. To this day 24/7 have left it unreported.

They say nothing changes, everything stays the same…..in the newly ‘diverse’, ‘modern’ Bristol we have the same old power structures, political corruption, businesses leeching off public money and of course members of the SMVs like Burgess controlling our access to news to protect their business interests and their dodgy ‘high and mighty’ mates.

The Committee for Public Safety

THE DEVIL RIDES OUT

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Devil Dan: quite partial to a bit of chattel slavery

Farewell, then, “Devil” Dan Tyndall, vicar of St Mary Redcliffe.

A sort of occultist in Christian drag, Devil Dan sold his sorry posh arse to the Merchant Venturers and the cult of Colston. Delivering mad sermons on demand in Bristol’s churches  celebrating a slave trader and mass murderer.  Until 2020 when the Church of England finally ordered a halt to the madness.

Devil Dan leaves behind a message listing his notable ‘wins’ in Bristol. Number one is, er, “a strapline and four key themes that really describe who SMR is”!

So much for spiritual wellbeing, the teachings of Christ and help for the poor. Corporate messaging is what mattered to Dan!

Good riddance.

LEGACY? ISSUE 71 ON THE STREETS NOW!

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It’s all hands on deck for long-suffering Bristol City Council museum staff.

Under direct orders from the Reverend Rees and his office, they’re racing to get their Edward Colston statue exhibit complete and on display as part of an exhibition on ‘protest’ at the M Shed by a deadline of 16 March.

In the absence of much else to brag about, the Reverend seems to have decided the Colston Statue will be a key part of his effort to have some kind of legacy.

This is something of a u-turn for Rees. He began his ruinous reign distancing himself from anything to do with Colston on the advice of “creative industries advisors”. He therefore didn’t even bother getting a poxy corrective plaque on the statue prior to its fall and even enthusiastically supported the prosecution of the Colston Four ‘privileged activist’ statue topplers.

Now the desperate soon-to-be ex-mayor is trying to claim the toppled statue as his own!

PULLING OUR LEGACY

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Colston statue with ‘PRICK’ written in large blue letters

The final stretch of a dull and useless mayoralty, finds the Reverend looking at ‘legacy’ beyond the ugly tall buildings and failing public services he’s created.

How about Edward Colston? The slave trader his creative industries ‘advisers’ urged him not to waste ‘political capital’ on when he came into office in 2016?

Rees has now rustled up £250k to pay a fancy London agency to design a long term Colston display for the city’s museum. Presumably because his museum staff won’t come up with anything referential enough for a self-important mayor?

The ego is landing …

ANGEL OF DEATH FUNERAL WATCH

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“The Venturers gave me this one for being a good racist”

Who was this leading the service at Westminster Abbey for the Queen’s funeral? Step forward Dr David “Overseer” Hoyle, Dean of Westminster Abbey and formerly Dean of Bristol Cathedral.

A man who unapologetically organised ceremonies for schoolchildren celebrating Edward Colston at Bristol Cathedral until 2017. Hoyle even declined to stop doing this when he met with activists from Counter Colston in 2016, flanked by the, then, Merchant Venturer John “Ignoble” Savage who styled himself a ‘Canon’ of Bristol Cathedral. 

Hoyle and his Merchant Venturer friends’ excuse for continuing to run weird occult ceremonies celebrating one of the architects of the slave trade in a christian cathedral was that they were not ‘celebrating’ Colston. Even though Colston Girls’ School who attended Hoyles’ ceremonies every year always described Hoyles’ sicko event as ‘a celebration’.

Just the man to run the Queen’s funeral then.

EVERYTHING SOLID (MELTS INTO AIR)

It’s older than the Colston statue, founded by a Bristol ‘hero’, steeped in history, loved by fans and an icon of the city.

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He ain’t happy

When the owners changed its name this spring, we expected hundreds of angry letters to the Bristol Post, furious radio phone-ins, angry debates on TV and Tory MPs and councillors threatening to boycott it. Instead there was silence … Not a fucking murmur.

To us, it is The County Ground, founded by cricket legend and Bristolian, W. G. Grace and home of Gloucester County Cricket Club since 1889. In March this year club members were informed, without warning, in an email that:

Gloucestershire’s home venue, the Bristol County Ground, has been renamed as the Seat Unique Stadium with immediate effect.No consultation with the fans; no debate; no thought of the history; just ‘fuck you’ it’s done. And what a shit name. The only plus is that it’s not named after some Arab dictatorship or Russian oligarch.

The last few years have been filled with bullshit as Colston lovers tried to defend the celebration and memorialisation of the slave trader in the city. They claimed ‘history was being erased’ by changing the name of the ex-Colston Hall. Why, when the County Ground is a far more popular, profitable and valid and not named after a slave-trader is there silence?

This stinks of hypocrisy. The owners of Gloucester County Cricket Club and slave-traders like Colston share the same values, they did it for the money.

NEW UNI BOSS IS SNOOTY RACIST

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“Horrendous racist snob”

Can we be among the first to welcome horrifying racist snob Evelyn “Rockerfeller” Welch MBE to Bristol as the new Vice-Chancellor of the city’s wealthiest education corporate, the University of Bristol? Harvard educated US citizen, Evelyn’s down home credentials include being “a scholar of the Renaissance and Early Modern Period” and Provost and Senior Vice President at King’s College London.

The rest of the press has wet its pants with excitement because Evelyn is the mother of Florence Welch. She’s singer with posh band Florence and the Machine whose bland wailing is heavily promoted on rotation by the corporate music biz and is exactly the kind of posh shite for wankers that punk rock was created to destroy.

What the press isn’t telling you, however, is that Evelyn has run into a spot of bother at Kings College over a statue there of a slaver. Thomas Guy had links with the Spanish slave trade in the 17th century, which earned him £400 million in today’s money and his statue takes pride of place at the university. Seventy-five per cent of the student body told Evelyn as the mastermind of the university’s ‘People & Culture’ strategy and head of Equality, Diversity & Inclusion to get rid, which she hasn’t done. 

Instead Evelyn demonstrated the kind of empathy only a Harvard education can provide.  She announced, while on a panel of self-regarding snobs talking about ‘Statues and the Public Space’ at a ‘History Matters’ conference in London, that if students didn’t like the statue they should just “walk around it”! What a shame Evelyn wasn’t in Bristol two years ago to tell Black Lives Matter protestors that they should just walk around the city’s statue of Edward Colston.

Why is our city’s establishment importing yet more elitist racist dross into our city to replace the racist dross we already had?

THE TURDS OF TURD HALL

Turds of turd hall

All white! What a lovely picture of THE SOCIETY OF MERCHANT VENTURERS sat on their racist arses sporting self-awarded medals at Venturers Hall, Clifton. But what’s the problem with this private membership club for evil old farts with lots of money? Well, over the last few years, the venturers or their members have:

  • Prevented a corrective plaque going on the statue of their hero, Edward Colston, explaining his role in the slave trade, his religious chauvanism, his political party affiliation and how many children he murdered for money.
  • Venturer’s Trust chair Anthony Browne mysteriously quit in 2019 soon after potentially defaming anti-racist Colston campaigners.
  • Used their unelected role on the council’s Downs Committee to unlawfully allow Bristol Zoo to use the Downs as a car park. Then used a large undisclosed six figure sum of council taxpayers money to unsuccessfully defend their actions in court.
  • Provided a character reference for Alistair “Pervy” Perry in 2016, at the trial of this former Colston Girls School Headteacher, where he was convicted of indecently assaulting a girl
    from his church group in Weston-super-Mare.
  • Until 2016, arranged sick celebrations for children at their schools of Edward Colston’s life. Hosted by the Bishop of Bristol at the city’s cathedral.
  • Public sector looter, First Bus boss, Trevor “Grubby” Smallwood, received an Honorary Doctorate from UWE for “entrepreneurial and charity work”. In 2009 Smallwood had to
    pay £2.7m in Corporation Tax after attempting to dodge the tax via a trust fund he temporarily based in Mauritius. Coincidentally in 2014, UWE vice Chancellor Steve “The Chiropodist” West, became a member of the Society of Merchant Venturers.
  • Appointed Gillian “The Sewage Queen” Camm, a former Director of Wessex Water, as their “Master” last year. Returning to our turd metaphor, Ms Camm earned some of her wealth by tipping shit in our rivers.

Is it time for this gang of self-serving amoral tossers to take Colston’s advice – “Go and do thou likewise” – and drown in the docks?

COLSTON FOUR: DAY 8 – “How dare the council turn up as a witness for the prosecution in this trial.”

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Yesterday was spent with prosecution and defence summing up. Here are a few highlights.

Sir William Scrotesack QC for the prosecution:

‘The council process to deal with the statue moved glacially.’

‘You may be frustrated that you haven’t heard from Marvin Rees or the Society of Merchant Venturers. Concentrate on the evidence you have heard. That is what you try this case on.’

‘It is not a public inquiry, not about politics. It’s not about emotion but cold hard facts and, fundamentally, the rule of law.’

‘Conviction would be wholly proportionate.’

Scrotesack QC also went to great pains to explain that neither he nor the court were in any way racist. Indeed not, he’s merely a public schoolboy who knows on which side his bread is buttered and earns a fantastic living working for the racist institutions of the state.

Tom Wainwright, defending Milo Ponsford:

‘[The Colston Four] showed the world the people of Bristol are willing to stand up for what they believe in’

‘Their actions created history. History is destroyed by not telling the truth. What, if anything, really has the city lost?’

‘What value did the statue have before June 7, 2020? What historical or educational value did it have?’

‘Describing Colston as a virtuous man is a lie.’

Liam Walker, defending Sage Willoughby:

‘Sage Willoughby and each of these defendants were on the right side of history and, I submit, the right side of the law.

Veneration of him [Colston] was an act of abuse and celebrated the achievements of a racist mass murderer.”  

‘His actions cannot be categorised as a violent act’

‘[The statue] was itself an offence. Over more than 30 years nothing was done.’

‘The erection of the statue was an attempt to erase history. History cannot be erased but history can be confronted.’

Blinne Ni Ghralaigh defending Rhian Graham:

‘Rhian acted in response to what she saw as a crime of the statue being on display and the abject failure of the council’s duty to remove the statue.’

‘Democracy had broken down around that statue. Cleo Lake said it “was embarrassing that these defendants are in the box.”’

‘This is not bristol: we will not dress up a devil in angels robes.’

‘[The statue was an] obscene glorification’

Raj Chada, defending Jake Skuse:

 ‘The Council should be on trial. They could have acted. They had a very long time to sort this out.’

How dare the council turn up as a witness for the prosecution in this trial.’

‘Jake Skuse showed ‘unvarnished honesty’ in admitting to the jury it was his idea to roll the statue to the harbourside.’

‘Jake Skuse in his own inimitable style said ‘fuck off’ to the statue.’

Today the judge will attempt a summing up of the issues for jury before they retire to consider a verdict.

COLSTON FOUR: DAY 7 – “A FINAL FUCK OFF TO THE SLAVER”

COUNCIL WORKERS BACK HOMELESS NOT THE BOSSES

The final defendant Jake Skuse gave evidence today. He’s on trial for helping, along with many others, to roll the Colston statue down to the docks and throwing it in. And he wasn’t in the mood to play that establishment parlour game called British justice as played with straightfaces by generations of public schoolboys.

Among the gems Jake told the court under cross examination from Scrotescak QC’s team were that his thoughts when the statue came down were “get this racist fucker away from here so he can’t be put back up” and that throwing Colston in the docks was “a final fuck off to the slaver”.

He also openly admitted he deliberately helped remove the statue so that our idiot council couldn’t put it back up again.

Jake’s evidence closed the case for the defence and the rest of the day was taken up with more secret legal discussions between judge, prosecution and defence.before The Recorder of Bristol His Honour Judge “Ded” Peter Blair QC adjourned the trial until 4 January.