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

My experience...

So why did they chuck that statue in the dock?

Cos he made his money from slavery and was involved in the murder 19,000 people, a good number of them personally ordered by him.

So WTF did they ever build a statue to him? I'd have chucked it in the cut years ago.
 
Seeker_UK said:
[reposted to reword]

My priority is staying safe. The idea that direct action of any kind is legitimate in certain circumstances opens the door for any group with any agenda to feel OK to go ahead and break this or burn that or some other such wheeze and that leads us to a world in which I feel even less safe in as a person with one or more characteristic that is going to put me in some group or other's firing line: white, middle class, fairly affluent, middle-aged, wishy-washy liberal centrist (and not a fan of Naim :)) just wanting to get to the end of his life as well as he can and to keep his partner safe.

So for those of you who are comfortable with direct action because you're on 'their' side, good for you. But, be under no illusion, one day, you won't be on the side of the majority and then you'll perhaps see why the events over the weekend trouble us / me.
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FWIW, if I feel safe it's not because I happen to agree with the cause but because I'm white, middle class, fairly affluent and middle aged (and male)! Honestly, we're the safest people on the planet. The chances of left wing violence doing either of us any harm are about zero. And the chances of right wing violence* doing us harm, while also low, are completely independent of any sanction that might be granted to the left. Fascists don't wait around for the left to set precedents before doing what they do!

*Street violence, I mean. The right wing people in government are actually trying to kill me, I think, along with everyone else.
 
John Hawkins | Admiral, Privateer, Slave Trader

While several other Englishman had already taken slaves from Africa by the mid-15th Century, John Hawkins effectively set the pattern that became known as the English slave trade triangle.

Early in his career, he led an expedition in which he violently captured 300 Africans in Sierra Leone and transported them to Spanish plantations in the Americas. There he traded them for pearls, hides, and sugar. His missions were so lucrative that Queen Elizabeth I sponsored his subsequent journeys and provided ships, supplies and guns. She also gave him a unique coat of arms bearing a bound slave.

With three major slavery expeditions in the 1560s, Hawkins prepared the path for the slave triangle between England, Africa and the New World. English goods were traded in West Africa, slaves were captured and trafficked on the notorious middle passage across the Atlantic, and cargo produced in the New World was transported back to England.

His four voyages to Sierra Leone between 1564 and 1569 took a total of 1200 Africans across the Atlantic to sell to the Spanish settlers in the Caribbean island of Hispaniola.

https://www.rmg.co.uk/discover/explore/sir-john-hawkins


 
Tony L said:
Not ‘cutting down’, just not glorifying or whitewashing. The truth is far more interesting than some distorted victors revisionism. Churchill and the rest of them should stand on their legacy. All of it. The last thing I’d want to see is any of them brushed from history, people need to know and understand the full picture. The beauty of Colston’s toppling is now more people know who he was and what he did than they’d ever have got from the distorted revisionist plaque in front of his statue. It took a while, but the truth eventually arrived.
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Couldn't agree more, Tony. There is a big "but" however , though, as you learn in your first year of history. Had I written that in 1944, I'd possibly have been called a Nazi sympathiser, and put quickly into prison. However, time has moved on, and now we can afford to recognise the man's greatness, and his weaknesses.

Truth tends to be arbitrary, and Churchill shows that clearly. Loved, hated, loved again and so on. Whatever philosophies he may have espoused and commented upon, the fact remain at a certain period of time he was the right man, in the right place. Yes, many others helped, aided, abetted and advised, not least of whom were the journalists, but that can't hide his dark side.

I say that now. Interpretaion in History moves on. In 50 years both you and I may be vilified for our beliefs.
 
102900927_1619284834906857_7171790741677371400_n.jpg
 
What a shame that people have nothing better to do than tokenist nonsense and gestures.

Has any, will any, of this destructive total garbage and grandstanding achieve anything?

People would throw a piece of metal into some water rather than actually try to do something constructive.

Pathetic.

Slave trade? How did it start? From a European perspective, we tapped into the long-existing W African slave trade that operated within Africa and the Middle East. A place where it STILL EXISTS to this very day.

Can anyone undo the past?

Can anyone disconnect the present from the past?

Get a life peeps. Please.
 
Ellis Genge the England rugby player -

"I've got a lot of black family in Bristol and we're all proud Bristolians but at the same time, we didn't want a big statue in the middle of a slave trader," he told BBC Radio 5 Live.

"I think it's warranted to pull the statue down after 10 years of asking."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/rugby-union/52978303
 
You miss the point, Vinny. No-one can undo the past. The point is that the interprétation of the past can and often is re-assessed.
 
peter bj said:
Now they are starting on the Cecil Rhodes statue at Oxford , a few days ago I expect most of the people there did not know who he was !
Statues have nothing to do with Black life matters , it id about social change not pieces of stone and metal
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There has been a long struggle to remove this junk, they are not just starting on it now, I hope they are successful now though.
 
Vinny said:
What a shame that people have nothing better to do than tokenist nonsense and gestures.

Has any, will any, of this destructive total garbage and grandstanding achieve anything?

People would throw a piece of metal into some water rather than actually try to do something constructive.

Pathetic.

Slave trade? How did it start? From a European perspective, we tapped into the long-existing W African slave trade that operated within Africa and the Middle East. A place where it STILL EXISTS to this very day.

Can anyone undo the past?

Can anyone disconnect the present from the past?

Get a life peeps. Please.
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(Clears throat)

LLLLLLLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL!
 
Tony L said:
Of course, this society is hopelessly damaged, the UK is a remarkably ugly and ignorant place. The people that scare me are the white fascists like Britain First, UKIP, EDL etc. These are the people who may end up throwing rocks through my window, and have certainly done so in the area where I live in previously. I would far prefer to deal with these people now, not let them grow even stronger. We should let the civil rights protests flush them out. Turning a blind-eye to fascism is never a good long-term option.
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Do you think I am not scared by the right-wing thugs? I'm exactly the sought of person they hate because, despite some (wilfully) misrepresenting my posts, I have nothing in common with them and what they stand for. They will twist recent events to their ends; they will justify their thuggery along the lines of it's OK for BLM and so it's OK for them.
 
droodzilla said:
Like I say, I do sympathise for a couple of reasons. Firstly, I don't like rowdy behaviour and disorder; it frightens me and there's always the concern that it might turn into something more physical (I'm quite a coward when it comes to physical threats). Secondly, my partner suffers from anxiety which, at its worst, can be quite "contagious", to the extent that even I, a supremely laid-back being, experience some of it myself.

But the toppling of the statue doesn't trigger any of those feelings in me and I doubt I'd have felt threatened if I'd been there at the time. Something as familiar as walking through town as the pubs are closing always feels far more risky to me - all those drunk, unpredictable people give me the heebie-jeebies.
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Thanks for taking the time to reply. What happened at the weekend as a single act doesn't bother me. What bothers me is the path it *could* lead us down (see post above in response to Tony L) and, despite Seanm's reassurances, whilst I have the characteristics that make me a lot safer than many others, I don't feel they protect me. When it all goes tits-up, I fear I am not strong enough to survive what's coming and although I may think I'm an OK guy who doesn't wish ill on others, I'm sure someone will wish it on me.
 
gavreid said:
Ellis Genge the England rugby player -

"I've got a lot of black family in Bristol and we're all proud Bristolians but at the same time, we didn't want a big statue in the middle of a slave trader," he told BBC Radio 5 Live.

"I think it's warranted to pull the statue down after 10 years of asking."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/rugby-union/52978303
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And another black Bristolian on R4 said it meant nothing to her, even though she would normally walk past the statue most days.

God save us all, including from the proselytising of tokenists.
 
avole said:
Couldn't agree more, Tony. There is a big "but" however , though, as you learn in your first year of history. Had I written that in 1944, I'd possibly have been called a Nazi sympathiser, and put quickly into prison. However, time has moved on, and now we can afford to recognise the man's greatness, and his weaknesses.

Truth tends to be arbitrary, and Churchill shows that clearly. Loved, hated, loved again and so on. Whatever philosophies he may have espoused and commented upon, the fact remain at a certain period of time he was the right man, in the right place. Yes, many others helped, aided, abetted and advised, not least of whom were the journalists, but that can't hide his dark side.

I say that now. Interpretaion in History moves on. In 50 years both you and I may be vilified for our beliefs.
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Churchill is hated through the generations in the Thorn household. My grandfather took part in his Gallipoli adventure.
Added to that is that my wife's grandparents were Yorkshire miners, and the hate keeps trickling down.
 
Banksy has come up with a beautiful idea to put the statue back, sort of ..

“What should we do with the empty plinth in the middle of Bristol?

"Here's an idea that caters for both those who miss the Colston statue and those who don't.

"We drag him out the water, put him back on the plinth, tie cable round his neck and commission some life size bronze statues of protesters in the act of pulling him down.

"Everyone happy. A famous day commemorated."


https://news.sky.com/story/banksy-r...tue-toppled-by-protesters-in-bristol-12003505
 
twotone said:
Francis Drake

He began his career as a slave trader.
Drake went to sea as a young man, but his first major expeditions came in the 1560s, when he joined a cousin named John Hawkins on some of Britain’s earliest slave trading voyages to West Africa. The pair usually procured their human cargo by attacking native villages or attacking Portuguese slave ships. They would then transport the slaves to the Spanish Caribbean and sell them off to local plantations—an action that was illegal under Spanish law. During one of these slaving expeditions in 1568, a flotilla of Spanish ships ambushed Drake and Hawkins at the Mexican port of San Juan de Ulúa, destroying four of their vessels and killing or capturing many of their crew. Drake escaped unharmed, but the defeat left him with a seething hatred for Spain and its king, Philip II.

https://www.history.com/news/10-things-you-may-not-know-about-francis-drake
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~500 years ago.

tuga said:
Good ol'Cecil has been talk of the town for a while now...

This article is more than 4 years old
Cecil Rhodes statue row: Chris Patten tells students to embrace freedom of thought
Oxford University chancellor tells students Nelson Mandela endorsed the Rhodes scholarships

https://www.theguardian.com/educati...-tells-students-to-embrace-freedom-of-thought

Remember that you are an Englishman, and have consequently won first prize in the lottery of life. Cecil Rhodes
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~150 years ago.

FireMoon said:
My experience...

So why did they chuck that statue in the dock?

Cos he made his money from slavery and was involved in the murder 19,000 people, a good number of them personally ordered by him.

So WTF did they ever build a statue to him? I'd have chucked it in the cut years ago.
Click to expand...
I've no idea, it was different times. We have a statue to Thatcher, the worst PM in living memory but it received support.

Bottom line is, we have a history and it is what it is. You can't erase it and we shouldn't try to erase it. It's true we don't need statues to these folks but destroying them is not on. Put them in a museum.
 
Francis Drake also had very little to do with the eventual defeat of the Armada, he buggered off trying to capture a Galleon for booty in the middle of the fight.
 
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