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Edward Colston: Bristol slave trader statue 'was an affront'

Aligning the Labour Party with the party of racism rather than with the protesters against racism is ‘brains’?

Looks more like cowardice to me

Where is the labour party aligning itself with racism?.
 
The democratic process for doing this doesn't exist. So either we construct one, or just pull them down. They're only 3rd rate statues of awful people, so if there are excesses, I mean, who cares?

Please define what makes a person "awful" - it might make deciding which statues stay up and which come down a lot easier.
 
...the 'hokie cokie' which is and anti-Catholic nursery rhyme which I've even sung myself as a child and I'm Catholic.

Yep. That's what it's all about. :)

Apparently, it might be anti-catholic. A Catholic priest decided that because Rangers fans singing it, it was clearly anti-catholic and then reverse engineered the facts to fit. Either "Hokey Cokey" is a possible corruption of "hocus pocus" which is possibly an intentional ridicule of "hoc est enim corpus meum" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hokey_cokey).


Your Penny Lane example may also be false: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penny_Lane,_Liverpool

This highlights my concern, we may *think* we know the facts surrounding something but we could be getting it badly wrong and acting on duff gen.
 
Colston left £74,000 to Bristol when he died that money, slave money, is still benefiting people in Bristol to this day, that money, whatever is left of it should be handed to the families of the people who were bought and sold by this bstard.

I think that using his financial legacy to start to deal with the hurt and other problems his deeds (and those of other slavers) have caused down the years is a far more constructive way than chucking a 150-year old lump of bronze into the Avon however good it makes you feel.
 
I think that using his financial legacy to start to deal with the hurt and other problems his deeds (and those of other slavers) have caused down the years is a far more constructive way than chucking a 150-year old lump of bronze into the Avon however good it makes you feel.
It’s not like protesters were presented with a choice. They’re still not, in fact, and it’s much more likely that there’ll be some reparation because of what they’ve done.

The choice is always between vague, abstract, hypothetical “having a serious discussion about this” and action. Until action is taken, and then lots of possibilities open up.
 
Where to draw the line, Colston was an amateur.
In 1876-78 Disraeli oversaw 5.5 million deaths in the Indian Great Famine
 
To attack Colston's statue seems somehow childish and unrealistic. If there were a calm, official decision to take it down, to underline official condemnation, today, of what was perfectly legitimate 300 years ago, it might be more reasonable and give credit to the local politicians for taking a moral stance. But a moral stance on what, exactly? Colston was not just a slave trader. He did lots of other things, most of them very good. He only had, like many other Bristol merchants of his day, an interest in a company that invested in the slave trade.
But this is to not only miss the point, it runs contrary to the point. The statue has been a bone of contention for decades. There has already been a calm official decision to do as you suggest, highlighted; a decision to address it, either by taking it down or by adding a new plaque stating the true nature of his business interests. That decision has been stonewalled for years, possibly also decades.

So this action is not, as is being argued, the mob objecting to something it doesn't like, it is the people taking the matter into their own hands only after their concerns have been ignored and stonewalled for many, many years.

It should serve as an object lesson to those doing the stonewalling, and the media shouldn't let them get away with spinning it as mob rule, as you have inadvertently done here.
 
I think that using his financial legacy to start to deal with the hurt and other problems his deeds (and those of other slavers) have caused down the years is a far more constructive way than chucking a 150-year old lump of bronze into the Avon however good it makes you feel.

Ok, so recover it, melt it into a cube with an inscription that says “this statue was formerly glorifying a slave trader and was funded by a council so ingrained in racism that it no longer recognises it. It now marks a point where we can move forward as a society.”

... and then put it back.
 
There has already been a calm official decision to address it, either by taking it down or by adding a new plaque stating the true nature of his business interests. That decision has been stonewalled for years, possibly also decades.

And let us not overlook the fact the Tory councillor trolled people with a gollywog for a mascot (see Martin’s link upthread). A far-right racist very actively trying to inflame the situation. This is the sort of shit decent people are up against.
 
i.e they have no ties with Rome. The fact that their beliefs have some overlap with Catholicism is neither here not there. He's simply not a Catholic Priest

Fair enough. I still stand by my point; it's had at least a hundred or more years as a harmless children's song until someone (Rangers fans or Anglican Priest) decided it was anti-Catholic and then somehow was proven by being connected to a story of dubious provenance that it was invented by Puritans.
 
It’s not like protesters were presented with a choice. They’re still not, in fact.

Perhaps they could play the long game and get elected to Bristol Council and get the changes made that way. I appreciate it's not as quick or immediately satisfying as assembling a mob and toppling a lump of metal into a body of water but it can also lead to change.

And has the plus it gets a new generation and new way of thinking into running Bristol.
 
You seem to be confusing the respective roles of museums and art galleries.
there's Art in museums and historical artefacts in Art Galleries. Both serve a double purpose, delivering information and aesthetic pleasure IMO. I think my general point was clear?
 
Art and artefact provenance needs to be clarified and returned to their rightful owners. A lot of stuff ppl look at in museums and artifactual inheritances to this day is stolen property and needs to be returned to the people it was stolen from, assuming we have not colonised them into oblivion, of course.
 
Perhaps they could play the long game and get elected to Bristol Council and get the changes made that way. I appreciate it's not as quick or immediately satisfying as assembling a mob and toppling a lump of metal into a body of water but it can also lead to change.

And has the plus it gets a new generation and new way of thinking into running Bristol.
Seriously, they've tried that for 30 years, with zero to show for it. Local power structures are immensely difficult to change, and that is demonstrably - 30 years! - what would be required to accomplish this one basic act of decency and respect. Now everyone's talking about British history and structural racism, and black people in Bristol don't have to put up with this living symbol of the contempt in which they're held.

It wasn't a mob, and as long as people insist on seeing things in those terms everything, including acceptance of the situation, is going to be preferable to what is at worst a minor act of vandalism.
 
i.e they have no ties with Rome. The fact that their beliefs have some overlap with Catholicism is neither here not there. He's simply not a Catholic Priest

They don’t believe in transubstantiaton (bread being turned into flesh) however they do believe in the virgin birth and our lady.
 
Fair enough. I still stand by my point; it's had at least a hundred or more years as a harmless children's song until someone (Rangers fans or Anglican Priest) decided it was anti-Catholic and then somehow was proven by being connected to a story of dubious provenance that it was invented by Puritans.

you just have to listen to the lyrics and it’s obvious it’s a parody of the catholic mass.
 


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