Tag Archives: Edward Colston

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

Colston statue J
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

Hoyle
“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.

W._G._Grace,_cricketer,_by_Herbert_Rose_Barraud
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

evelyn-welch-1024x509
“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.

COLSTON FOUR: DAY 6 – “PROFOUNDLY SHAMEFUL”

Slave ship

Rhianne Graham’s defence continued today with a character reference from her employer followed by Blinne Ni Ghralaigh, defending Rhianne, reading an agreed statement from Gloria Daniel. Gloria is a black Bristolian.

We think that the old white men zealously prosecuting and hearing this case in the alleged ‘public interest’ – an interest that remarkably coincides with the dying interests of a narrow wealthy white establishment – need to consider this statement very carefully. And then, maybe, they need to consider whether defending some shitty old monument to wealth, slavery, white power and the British establishment is really the best use they can make of their rather sad, empty, self-important little lives:

“My father was born in Barbados in 1934. He arrived in England in 1957 at the age of 23. He was recruited by London Transport in Bridgetown, Barbados. He was required to sign a one year contract with a penalty of £95 if he did not complete the full year.

My family name, Daniel, is my father’s name. It is a plantation name. My father carries this name as my grandfather’s grandfather was an enslaved person ‘owned’ by Thomas Daniel.
Thomas Daniel laid claim to my grandfather’s grandfather. He was the son and main heir of Thomas Daniel, the fifth largest sugar importer into Bristol before 1800. The younger Thomas Daniel became an elected member of Bristol Common Council in 1785 at the age of 23 and the Sheriff of Bristol between 1786 and 1787. In 1796 Thomas Daniel became an Alderman, a position he held for the next 30 years. In 1797 he became Mayor of Bristol. He had a role in the council for over 50 years in total.

Thomas Daniel was a member and Master of the Society of Merchant Venturers (SMV) and a founding member of Bristol’s West India Committee, which was specifically set up to petition parliament against the abolition of the slave trade. He was also a president at various times of the Colston Society, the Dolphin Society and the Anchor Society.

Because of his political influence in the city, Thomas Daniel earned himself the nickname of the ‘King of Bristol’. His business interests included sugar importing and sugar brokering, iron importing, banking and investing in Bedminster coal mines and the Bristol Copper Company. He was a leading investor in the Bristol Dock Company as the official representative of the SMV, becoming the warden of that organisation in 1805. He owned and part-owned approximately 25 ships which sailed between Bristol and Barbados.

Continuing in his role his father had carved out as a creditor, the firm of Thomas Daniel and Sons became dominant mortgage providers for planters in Barbados and the Windward Islands.

Like many of the mercantile elites in Bristol, he ensured the safeguarding of his West India interests through his presidency of various societies (including the Colston Society) among other roles to ensure his place in wider Bristol political society.

After the Act of Abolition in 1833 was passed, compensating slave owners for the loss of their ‘property’, Thomas Daniel and his brother made over 52 claims for 6,900 enslaved people and 27 of these claims were successful.

The successful claims were for approximately 4,424 people including my grandfather’s grandfather. His name was John Isaac and I understand that he was around five years old at the time. The claims may also have included his parents.

Thomas Daniel and his brother John received over £130,000 in compensation which was divided between them, with Thomas Daniel receiving compensation for a further 200 enslaved people that were personally ascribed to him. This made him one of the largest claimants of compensation money given to British slave owners, the third largest in the country.

There are several ways of working out inflation rates to compare what the figure equates to today – in terms of purchasing power the figure allotted to Thomas would amount to over £7 million today – however the real figure of compensation to get one’s head around is that the total amount of the “bail out” to slave owners of £20 million constituted approximately 40 per cent of the GDP at that time.

It is too traumatising for me to think of the individual sum that was configured for John Isaac and each and every other enslaved human being. However, it is important to understand the “apprenticeship” scheme that accompanied the compensation which meant that formerly enslaved people who had been given their so-called freedom were then required to continue to work for free for a further four to six years (depending on the class of worker) before being entirely free. Anyone under the age of eight was emancipated immediately but John Isaac’s parents, if they were still alive, would have remained enslaved under the apprenticeship scheme.

Professor Hilary Beckles, Vice Chancellor of the University of the West Indies, describes Barbados as the most ruthlessly colonised country with it taking, at one point, on average seven years from transportation to the colony for enslaved people to be worked to death.

British tax-payers including the British African/Caribbean diaspora who were invited to work in post war Britain, also contributed to repaying the interest on the government loan (raised by the Rothschild Syndicate) obtained to pay the compensation through their taxes until 2015, This means that my father, his brothers, his children including me, and his children’s children, including my own nephews and nieces, would have contributed towards the compensation for the ‘freedom’ of his great-grandfather, my great, great grandfather.

When I heard that the statue of the slave trader Edward Colston had been toppled I felt a huge wave of relief. The world had witnessed the public execution of George Floyd and we had finally arrived at a place in history where people would no longer tolerate the continuing dehumanisation of black people.

I am aware that George Floyd’s great, great grandfather was an enslaved man, like my own. He or his forebears would have been transported to America on a slave ship, such as those occupied by the Royal African Company under Edward Colston. In the words of Malcolm X, referring to the unassuming rock said to mark the point of arrival of European settlers in what we now know to be America, ‘we did not land on Plymouth Rock, the rock was landed on us’.

The ancestors of George Floyd did not choose to go to America, they were taken there by force and their descendants have lived with the racist legacy of that trade.

The fact that the statue of a slave trader had remained up for so long, and without contextualisation, was in my view profoundly shameful. I am aware the Colston Society was disbanded after the statue came down. I do not believe that would have happened otherwise.

The statue being felled and dragged through the streets of Bristol to a watery grave centred the global conversation on the birthing role Britain played in the transatlantic slave trade. It has not only removed a statue that caused a huge amount of hurt to the community, it has also served to educate people about the role and about Colston himself.”

The trial will continue tomorrow if The Bristol Recorder and the Crown Prosecutor are shameless enough to turn up and continue with this morally repugnant fiasco masquerading as justice.

COLSTON FOUR: DAY FIVE – “THE ONLY PEOPLE DEFENDING THAT STATUE WAS A SMALL GROUP OF THE WEALTHY ELITE”

Plaque
The plaque the Venturers banned

The Colston Four trial resumed today after a three day weekend. No doubt allowing The Recorder of Bristol Judge ‘Ded’ and Crown Prosecutor Sir William Scrotesack QC some rest and recuperation before continuing, this week, to waste our time and money prosecuting decent people for doing what their beloved establishment, which rewards them so well, was too racist, reactionary, weak and ineffectual to do themselves.

The day started with defence brief, Blinne Ni Ghralaigh, calling her client, defendant Rhianne Graham, to give evidence. After providing some background about how she ended up in Bristol, Rhianne told the jury she had found it strange there was a statue of a slave trader in the middle of the city.

She explained to the jury she was inspired by suffragette Rosa May Billinghurst, who committed criminal damage in the name of a cause. Before saying she saw nothing admirable in a murderer glorified in Bristol as a philanthropist. 

The jury was also told how a newly-worded ‘corrective’ plaque was created for the statue but never put up after the Merchant Venturers interfered in the process and ‘dumbed it down’. They objected to the fact that the plaque mentioned children dying on Colston’s ships and correctly stated that Colston was a Tory.

“Democracy had well and truly broken down around that statue,” Rhianne told the jury and that, for over 100 years, people had asked for the statue to be removed only to be ignored. “Somebody should have been listening,” she said.

Rhianne finished her evidence to the defence by agreeing she took a length of rope to the Black Lives Matter Protest to provide it to the people of Bristol should they wish to pull the statue down, which, it appears, they did.

Under cross-examination from Scrotesack QC, Rhianne repeated  she took 30 metres of climbing rope with her to the BLM protest to provide it to people should they want to remove the statue and agreed she did not have permission to bring the statue down.

She also told Scrotesack QC that she didn’t see the toppling as violent, any more than bringing down the Berlin Wall was violent and that “the only people defending that statue was a small group of the wealthy elite who had an interest in defending Colston.”

Following Rhianne, former Lord Mayor of Bristol, Cleo Lake, gave evidence and told the jury she felt “a great sense of relief” and “overjoyed” when the statue was toppled. She also told the court prosecuting the defendants was “embarrassing”.

Finally, Massive Attack entered the fray today with a thread on Twitter about establishment denial and inertia in Bristol over Colston and the disturbing role of the Merchant Venturers in the city: