Tag Archives: Edward Colston

Statement of Support for the Toppling of the Colston Statue, and for the Four Colston Defendants

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By Alternative Bristol

This Statement has been released by GladColstonsGone (FB page + on Instagram @gladcolstonsgone). They are “a coalition united by our belief that the toppling of the Colston Statue has benefitted the City of Bristol. We want to continue conversations it has galvanised around race, racism and justice, historical and present, in Bristol.“ They’ve also made it clear they believe the charges against the Colston4 Defendants should be dropped. We at AltBristol agree with that! Beneath the Statement is their Press Release today.

Statement of Support for the Toppling of the Colston Statue & for the Four Colston Defendants
The statue of Edward Colston was toppled in Bristol during a Black Lives Matter protest on June 7th 2020. This protest was one of many globally and nationally, in direct response to the brutal murder of a black man, George Floyd, by Minneapolis police. The Bristol protest was attended by thousands of people. Hundreds can clearly be seen on camera to have been involved in various activities that led to this object being pushed into the harbour. Despite this, authorities have decided to single out four people who are now charged with criminal damage. They await trial in December 2021.

We, the undersigned, support the anti-racist aims of the protests throughout the summer 2020. We abhor the legacies of institutional and structural racism arising from European colonisation and the trafficking, enslavement and transportation of African men, women and children into plantation slavery in the Caribbean and Americas.

We believe that raising the statue of the slave-trader Colston in 1895, some 60 years after the Emancipation Act, and repeatedly ignoring expressions of concerns by citizens, campaigners, and artists, has been deeply damaging to Bristol’s Black community and to our common humanity.

We believe the statue has stood as a monument to the disingenuous way power is wielded, impacting those of African descent adversely and disproportionately in policing, health, housing, education outcomes, job opportunities and life chances.

In contrast, we note the absence in our city centre of any memorials, monuments or plaques that restore to African peoples’ ancestors their dignity and humanity, or that honours the many nameless Africans and indigenous people exploited and murdered by Bristol merchants and ruling elites.

We recognise that this statue has been a point of division for many years and welcome the fact that it no longer stands in our city centre. We do not believe the trial against four people is in the best interests of our city and urge that charges be dropped.

We call for some permanent recognition in our civic spaces of the historical reality of this period, and the creation of a permanent memorial and centre of memory, resistance and renewal to begin a process of understanding, healing, reflection and education.

GladColstonsGone – 7 June 2021

Note: We invite individuals, groups, institutions and campaigns to sign-up in support of this Statement. To support this statement:
– add your or your organisation’s name in a comment to the pinned post of the GladColstonsGone FB page.
– message us via FB or @gladcolstonsgone on Instagram
– email us at gladcolstonsgone1@gmail.com and we’ll add you. Download the Statement as a pdf here: Statement-GladColstonsGone

Now for the Press Release that came with the Statement:

Colston Statement – Press Release 7th June 2021

From GladColstonsGone

On the first anniversary of the toppling of the Colston statue, we are Glad Colston’s Gone from his pedestal.

We recognise that this statue has been a point of division for many years and welcome the fact that it no longer stands in our city centre.

We believe that raising the statue of the slave-trader Colston in 1895, some 60 years after the Emancipation Act, and repeatedly ignoring expressions of concerns by citizens, campaigners, and artists, has been deeply damaging to Bristol’s Black community and to our common humanity.

The Countering Colston Campaign says: “If local government and city institutions had cared about systematic racial inequalities in the past, Bristol wouldn’t be where and what it is today. Drop the Colston statue damage charges, let’s attend to the real damages of inequalities and racial injustices in our midst.”


We do not believe the trial against four people is in the best interests of our city and urge that charges be dropped.

Sam Elliot from Bristol Defendant Solidarity – legal support says: “The charges are divisive and vindictive. We cannot have a ‘conversation’ or ‘consultation’ whilst some of the architects of that consultation have been involved with the criminal justice system in persecuting protesters involved in the toppling of Colston.”

We support the anti-racist aims of the protests throughout the summer 2020. We abhor the legacies of institutional and structural racism arising from European colonisation and the trafficking, enslavement and transportation of African men, women and children into plantation slavery in the Caribbean and Americas.

We invite individuals, groups, institutions & campaigns to sign up in support of our Statement – see attached/or below.

Notes for editors, readers & others:
1. The statue of Edward Colston was erected in 1895 by a tiny clique of wealthy Bristol businessmen. It was toppled during a Black Lives Matter protest in Bristol on 7 June 2020 attended by over 10,000 people. Many were involved in pulling the statue down. But just six people were issued Conditional Cautions by A&S Police in the summer of 2020, whilst just four people were charged with criminal damage by the CPS in December 2020.
2. Bristol Council provided a statement to A&S Police in late June 2020 that facilitated the start of the Police’s investigation.
3. For GladColstonsGone please see – https://www.facebook.com/gladcolstonsgone/
4. For Countering Colston Campaign please see – https://counteringcolston.wordpress.com/
5. For Bristol Defendant Solidarity please see – https://twitter.com/bristoldefenda1
6. For a range of historical research & articles related to Edward Colston please see – https://www.brh.org.uk/site/project/edward-colston/
7. #GladColstonsGone! Bristol Topplers’ Defence Fund! Please see – https://gofund.me/e49428cb

Solidarity with the Colston Statue Defendants!
(Feature image by AltBristol)

MYSTERY OF THE MISSING PLAQUE

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Plaque

We are happy to confirm as correct rumours circulating that the Colston corrective plaque created in 2018 was actually CAST and READY TO HANG. The finalised plaque, a work of censorship and fake history by the Merchant Venturers ‘historian’ Francis “The Overseer” Greenacre that was forced on the local historians and school children invited to create the wording on the plaque, was cast by Wards Signs of Barton Hill in 2019. However, it seems to have DISAPPEARED.

What’s happened to this intriguing and valuable historical artefact that casts the MERCHANT VENTURERS and their pro-Colston racist elite friends and supporters around the city in a less than favourable light? The answer lies with Myers-Insole Local Learning Community Interest Company who were generously FUNDED BY THE COUNCIL to manage the creation of the plaque. Alongside his wife, Peter ‘Arse’ Insole, the city’s Principal Historic Environment Officer, is a director of Myers Insole, which is a very cosy arrangement between a council officer and public money isn’t it?

So is Arsehole planning on keeping this valuable piece of public property and important historical artefact as part of his PENSION PLAN? If not, perhaps he could urgently hand over our significant historical artefact he has no business with to the city’s museum service? What a potentially great display item it would make sitting alongside the original wording for the plaque that the Venturers sabotaged. 

And what a story it would tell about the city’s wealthy elitists in the early 21st Century.

REES BOARDS THE COLSTON BANDWAGON …

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… After years of kicking the can down the road

Colston docks

Since Colston came off his pedestal and went for a swim on June 7th social media, TV and the press have been dominated by politicians, journalists and so-called ‘community spokespeople’ gushing with praise for the statue coming down.

The Mayor’s Office even banged on in a press statement that the Reverend Rees had an audience of 10 million around the world, from Bangladesh to Tokyo after Colston’s ‘burial at sea’. However, while seizing this new opportunity for pontificating, Rees conveniently failed to give a toss about the people who had put him on the world stage. That was the 17 or so demonstrators who had been identified under Home Secretary, Priti Patel’s orders to “get these people” – the statue topplers.

So as Rees was boring the masses in Bangladesh, Avon & Somerset Police were being forced to line up charges of criminal damage that could put the protestors away for up to 10 years. And what did Rees do? Intervene at the Council for the good of the city and agree not to press charges, allowing the cops to give two fingers to Patel?  Like fuck he did … Far better to bathe in the glare of global publicity and forget about those who put him there.

Campaigners who have fought for many years for the Colston statue to be removed and to get a permanent memorial to the victims of slavery in the City have been astounded by the two-faced hypocrisy of these turncoats. Rees told Points West:

“When I first came in, myself and a number of black people in the creative sector said that the best thing to do is to keep that [Colston] debate away from me.”

So Mr Civil Rights’s major contribution to the struggle to get the Merchant Venturers pet slave trader off our streets and schools was not just to do nothing but to actively discourage others from getting involved.

When calls came to change the name of the Colston Hall in 2017 Rees was silent, refusing to make his position clear until he was caught like a rabbit in the headlights at the end of a TV programme. Martin Luther King, who Rees idolises, must be turning in his grave.

In 2019 after the Merchant Venturers had spent months sanitising the wording on a plaque for the statue that was meant to correct the history of Colston, Rees only intervened to avoid becoming a laughing stock. Finally using some of his executive power to block the Venturer’s sanitised plaque before heading to the hills faster than Dominic Cummings in a top of the range Land Rover, leaving the project in limbo for over a year.

Welsh-Back-Association-and-Bristol-Radical-History-Group-have-a-plan-for-an-Abolition-Shed-empty-dock-buildings-on
Bullies? Abolition Shed campaigners

Meanwhile Rees’s second in command Asher Craig’s hardly covered herself in glory in dealing with persistent calls by campaigners for a permanent memorial to remember the victims of the trans-atlantic slave trade. Bristol lags far behind other ports like Liverpool and Nantes in France that were involved in the ‘vile trade’ and have made major efforts to both memorialise the victims and tell the history – warts and all.

One historian from Bristol University stated in a meeting with Asher Craig in March 2019 “that Bristol’s reputation abroad, when referring to the city’s response to its slaving past, was very bad”. He also said that Bristol shouldn’t limit its ambitions regarding a slavery museum, “the city should think big and be better than Liverpool”.  

Bristol City Council have missed opportunities to right this embarrassing wrong many times. In 1996 around the Festival of the Sea, in 1999 when the Respectable Trade exhibition was launched,  in 2007 with the bicentennial of the abolition of the slave trade and again in 2015 when the Colston protests began.

In 2017 campaigners from three groups and local residents proposed the Abolition Shed project, which wanted to convert two council-owned warehouses on Welsh Back into a memorial for the victims of the African slave-trade with a visitor centre to tell the history. When they approached Asher Craig to get support from Bristol City Council she basically told them to clear off and get some private funding.

Despite this slap in the face campaigners continued the fight to halt the council’s proposed development of the warehouses into more restaurants and bars and to finally do something. This persistence and enthusiasm by unpaid Bristolians who gave a fuck about the memorial, the history and the city’s reputation was clearly starting to annoy Rees and Craig.

Pizza Express May18_38-1920x900
That Rees/Craig proposed slave trade memorial

In August 2019 Marvin angrily demanded to know “who the campaigners were” and in response to their proposals cited a record in office of being amazing, without, of course, any concrete commitment to a memorial and museum. Asher was even more furious claiming“the City was now taking this seriously” and accusing the campaigners of being “bullies”. One local historian from the Counter-Colston group commented:

“Despite the fact that it is just not true, for Asher to characterise people as ‘bullies’ who have, without ‘funding’ and political power given lots of time and energy over several years to try to get something done after decades of failure, is disgraceful.”

Needless to say the Abolition Shed project was strangled at birth by Rees, Craig and the Council as they voted to turn the warehouses into pizza restaurants whilst wasting a million quid on moving a barge to appease the developers. Another missed opportunity in Bristol’s tradition of failure.

Asher’s only response to persistent demands for a memorial was to set up a ‘roundtable’, which descended into the usual talking shop while those who wanted to get a concrete commitment from the Council were seen as ‘troublemakers’.

It is also no surprise that Marvin’s response to Colston’s statue coming down was to propose a ‘history commission’. Looking into the “true history of the city”, which sounds like another opportunity for free-loading academics to fail to do anything.

So here we are, kicking the can down the road again….

HOW BRISTOL WORKS

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smallwood

Meet Merchant Venturer Trevor Smallwood, a very wealthy man indeed. Like a number of Venturers, Smallwood obtained the majority of his wealth courtesy of Thatcherite privatisation policies and ended his career as chairman of First Group, who count Bristol’s buses among a portfolio of public transport service mediocrities run for shareholder benefit. Smallwood, from a fairly ordinary background, has used his wealth to climb the social ladder and has been the Deputy Lord Lieutenant of Somerset and the Master of the Society of Merchant Venturers, the top job at the racist cult.

2009: Smallwood finally loses in the Court of Appeal and is forced to pay £2.7m in Corporation Tax to the Inland Revenue after attempting to dodge the tax via a Trust Fund – of which he was a beneficiary – that had been temporarily based in Mauritius. The tax was due on a £6m sale of shares in First Group held by the trust that were sold in 2001. His tax advisors at the Bristol office of big four accountants Price Waterhouse Cooper had encouraged Smallwood’s trust to sell these shares only after its governance had been transferred to Mauritius in a transparent attempt for the share sale to come under the jurisdiction of Mauritian tax law rather than British. A tax dodge that publicly and spectacularly failed.

2014: UWE Bristol awarded an Honorary Degree of Doctor of Business Administration to Trevor Smallwood OBE DL in recognition of his, er, “entrepreneurial and charity work”. Tax dodging, apparently, being no bar to gaining the highest honour from one of our city’s universities.

steve-west

So does it come as any surprise that, also, in 2014 UWE Bristol’s Vice Chancellor, over-promoted podiatrist Prof Steve West, became a member of the Society of Merchant Venturers? But what on earth for? Why would a leader of an allegedly progressive institution wish to join a racist organisation best known among the majority of progressives in the city for openly lying to generations of children for sanctifying and sanitising their hero, the slave trader Edward Colston?

What’s in this bizarre arrangement for West exactly? What’s in it for the public he’s supposed to serve? And how much longer are UWE staff and students going to tolerate their boss hanging out with racists and tax dodgers? His position as both a Venturer and head of a higher education institution that aspires to be anti-racist is surely untenable? Or, like tax dodging, is being a member of a racist cult a cause for public celebration and honours when you’re part of Bristol’s self-styled elite?

“Do as we say. Not as we do.”

PONCEY EURO ELITIST APPOINTED TO STEAL LOCAL PEOPLE’S WORK

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PONCEY EURO ELITIST APPOINTED TO STEAL LOCAL PEOPLE'S WORK

After years of members of the public working hard at grassroots organisations like COUNTER COLSTON and the BRISTOL RADICAL HISTORY GROUP, the thieving old white men who run the University of Bristol have finally woke(n) up and appointed a PROFESSOR OF THE HISTORY OF SLAVERY. They will “examine Bristol’s connection to the transatlantic slave trade”. Work that has already, largely, BEEN DONE by our city’s grassroots historians anyway.

The university old boys have hired Sorbonne-educated hack, Olivette Otele, with a press fanfare that has somehow eluded less prestigious local historians tackling the same subject without THE ELITE EDUCATION, the ‘DIVERSE’ BACKGROUND and a PROFESSIONAL PR DEPARTMENT talking them up.

Anyway, won’t it be interesting to see whether Olivette, who lists “memorialisation of the past” as an interest, publicly demands the IMMEDIATE REMOVAL of Colston’s statue from the Centre?  Or will she piss arse about ‘NUANCING‘ in the elite-style, making CRAP EXCUSES and rambling on about ‘corrective plaques’ and the like?

Watch this space.

PLAQUE ATTACKED

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PLAQUE ATTACKED

Efforts to add a so-called ‘corrective plaque’ to Edward Colston’s statue on the Centre have descended into farce thanks to INTERFERENCE from our local bat shit crazy rich mans’ club, the SOCIETY OF MERCHANT VENTURERS, desperate to defend the reputation of their slave trading hero.

The idea behind a corrective plaque was to stop the constant – and often entertaining – VANDALISM of the statue by members of the public. Over the years we’ve woken up to find the statue yarn bombed, with its face painted white, with graffiti scrawled across it and with various corrective plaques superglued to it, usually LISTING COLSTON CAREER HIGHLIGHTS the current plaque misses out.

To address this, last year, the council hired historian Dr Madge Dresser to work with young people to produce a second plaque for the statue. Plenty of ideas came back highlighting Colston’s role in the SLAVE TRADE as well as aspects of his political, religious, charitable and business life that are OVERLOOKED on the existing plaque from the Victorian era.

Dr Dresser delivered her ideas to Peter “Arse” Insole, an architectural officer at the council and then the trouble started. The Venturers immediately employed AMATEUR HISTORIAN Francis Greenacre to LOBBY Insole on their behalf and an unknown number of private meetings between Insole and Greenacre with neither notes nor minutes retained have taken place.

Now, we’re reliably informed, the following information will definitely not appear on any new plaque: any reference to Colston being a TORY; any mention of the SOCIETY OF MERCHANT VENTURERS; the number of children TRANSPORTED by Colston’s ships; the number of children who DIED on Colston’s ships; any mention of Colston’s religious and political BIGOTRY; any mention of Colston’s involvement in the SPANISH SLAVE TRADE and any mention of his INSIDER TRADING in South Seas Company.

Never mind, we’ll all just have to go back to vandalising the Venturer’s reactionary monstrosity instead.

BISHOP OR PAWN?

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Faull

A big warm BRISTOLIAN welcome to Vivienne “Basterd” Faull, former Dean of York Cathedral, who has been appointed BISHOP OF BRISTOL. This will be a big deal for local diversity enthusiasts who will point out that Vivienne is the first woman appointed to the role and will then demand that us plebs wet our pants with vibrant joy at this latest exciting victory for equality.

But how diverse is Ms Faull? Educated at exclusive THE QUEEN’S SCHOOL, Chester, an all-girls independent day school, she then went on to further study at the exclusive ST HILDA’S COLLEGE, Oxford. So there’s a good chance that Ms Faull is even more of a snooty elitist than her tosspot predecessor, Edward Colston cheerleader, Mike “THE MERCENARY” Hill.

Hill, at least, managed to attend a state grammar school before poncing off to Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge to become an ESTABLISHMENT LACKEY and mouthpiece for the wealthiest men in Bristol. Who will ever forget his noisy public support for slave trader Edward Colston from the pulpit of Bristol Cathedral?

Attention will now, no doubt, turn to Ms Faull’s attitude to Colston and his wealthy supporters club, the SOCIETY OF MERCHANT VENTURERS here in Bristol. Like her predecessor, will she front PRIVATE services generously funded by the Venturers at our local cathedral to celebrate Colston for schoolchildren?

Or will she opt for a different and more inclusive approach in her effort at moral leadership in the city? Don’t hold your breath.

COLSTON BALLS

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More problems for the reactionary old farts on the governing board of COLSTON GIRLS SCHOOL emerge. Having decided last year to maintain the “toxic” Colston brand for the school, claiming “Colston’s Girls’ School is directly descended from Colston’s Hospital, a school which opened in 1710 for ‘100 poor boys'”, new research suggests this is a load of OLD BOLLOCKS.

A paper by the Bristol Radical History Group finds that a girls school for Bristol was in fact strongly RESISTED by wealthy Colston cultists, the Merchant Venturers, in the late 19th Century. Until a girls’ school was forced upon them by a Liberal central government threatening to REMOVE their charitable endowments and use the money to set up the school themselves.

The main man behind setting up Colston Girls School, therefore, wasn’t the reactionary mass murderer Colston and his Merchant fan club but a liberal education reformer, JOSHUA FITCH. Demands are now being made that idiot school governors ditch their fake history founding myth immediately and acknowledge the truth.

Watch this space …

COLSTON DAY CANCELLATION SHOCKER

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A pleasant surprise for protestors who took themselves to St Stephen’s Church on the Centre yesterday for COLSTON DAY. This is the day when the city’s sad old white men with too much money and no functioning conscience pursue their CULT OF COLSTON by donning fancy dress and parading through Bristol before attending a church to hear sermon from a hired vicar heaping praise and warm words on mass murderer Edward Colston.

Alas, when protestors arrived to confront the cult of Colston directly yesterday, no one was there! Finally someone from the church came out and explained that St Stephen’s wants “NOTHING MORE TO DO WITH COLSTON“. A little later the church administrator appeared and confirmed that “the ceremony was CANCELLED, not postponed”!

A brief glance at St Stephen’s Church Annual Report 2016 explains a little more. Under the heading ‘Colston Day’ on page 5 it tells us last year’s Colston Day and the accompanying protest “had led to a QUESTIONING over what our involvement should be in future years given the feelings in the city as a whole about the historical slavery issue and Edward Colston’s part in it.”

It’s clear that the Diocese of Bristol is now CRACKING APART over celebrating slave trader Colston. They have SUPPRESSED any reference to Colston at the Girls School Commemoration at the Cathedral; got rid of the Colston symbols (Buns, Crysthanamum broaches) and it looks like St Mary Redcliffe’s Colston event is changing too. Now they have BOOTED the Society of Merchant Venturers and its satellite charities out of St Stephens Church on Colston Day! Victory is in sight …

However, the Society of Merchant Venturers aren’t going down without a fight. An organisation called ‘Embracing Our History’ (sic) has emerged. Basically a FRONT for the Venturers, they are personally inviting selected members of the ‘black community’ onto their ‘Embracing Our History’ forum. Will this patronising, paternalist, racist nonsense from the Venturers be enough to maintain their influence and keep their DAMAGED ICON afloat in the city?

Let’s hope not.  The Colston flagship is dead in the water. We say switch to ramming speed … Let’s send her to the bottom, not help the Venturers patch up their leaking rust bucket.

DEMAND EQUALITY! COLSTON STATUE MUST NOW BE REMOVED

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Not offensive, not censored:

Edward Colston: right wing mass murderer

Offensive, censored:

Walter Ayles: left wing pacifist


Call Mark Parsons at Bristol Waste on 07584581243 or email Mark.Parsons@Bristolwastecompany.co.uk and demand that Colston’s statue is removed. We want equality!