With the news that the ‘Bristol four’ have been declared not guilty (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-bristol-59727161), what do you think of a) the verdict, b) the precedent it sets, and c) where it leaves us morally?
Personally, I dislike statues; I find them somewhere between pompous and vainglorious, and the loss of this statue doesn’t bother me at all. However, should all Colston’s other contributions to Bristol now be sold, with the money going to charities that campaign against modern slavery?
Oxford university were debating whether to remove the Rhodes statue. Again, I don’t mind, but is it now incumbent on every recipient of a Rhodes Scholarship to pay the money back? Oxford were happy to take a donation from Max Mosley’s will.
These issues are nuanced, and I don’t claim to have any wise answers. I always welcome the variety of opinions on this site, so…what do you think?
If all trace of Colston and his like were to be entirely erased, leaving no trace, there would then be danger of the view becoming prevalent that the events/behaviours they epitomised never actually happened.
Apologies for the terrible composition of that sentence.
You can’t change history, no matter how disagreeable.
Learn from it, don’t eradicate it.
Seen a few gigs at The Colston Hall – probably renamed now, and the road it stands in.
Colston Hall is now named The Beacon. There was much discussion in Bristol about this but it’s a fact that there were many people In Bristol who felt they couldn’t use this publicly funded hall whilst it was named after a slave trader (who died long before the hall was built – it wasn’t built with his money). Absolutely no one is the worse for the name change which so far as I am aware was made after a careful and considered process.
That’s my understanding too. The old name will still be knocking around for ages though, as there are generations of Brizzle speakers who will still have it pegged in their heads as the Colston Hall.
I’m uneasy about the precedent this sets. I don’t have much more to add than that, I’m afraid. Ethical dilemmas make my head hurt.
Facts don’t stain the furniture. The living dead don’t get a holiday. Verbatim regurgitation’s against my principles.
Em… yeah. What he said.
I think that we don’t need statues of people to remember that that person did bad things. I’ve never seen a statue of Hitler and I’m pretty au fait with his terribleness.
On precedent setting, I’m fine with getting rid of statues of people that made money from slavery – that’s a precedent I can get behind.
Exactly, Lee!
I don’t remember people having qualms about the removal of Stalin’s or Saddam’s Statues.
Statue topplers, you say..?
(Redskins – Kick Over The Statues)
Tune!
The trial should never have been brought, but seeing as it was I’m glad the defendants held out for trail by jury and that the jury acquitted them, even though as I understand they didn’t contest the charges. At the very least it’s worth it to see all the right people exploding with indignation.
There are certainly mixed opinions about it here in Bristol.
Personally I think that ,- even though in purely legal terms, there may have been offences committed – one of the great benefits of the jury system is that it can see things in a more nuanced way.
One of the reasons that society (broadly) consents to the law is that it can be interpreted flexibly.
No-one wants to celebrate slavery.
It is, I think, very difficult to celebrate philanthropy without recognising where the money came from.
You can’t make history go away but you can choose how you think about it.
Top post.
The verdict? Well, I’m happy that a 12-strong jury came to this conclusion and I am not inclined to question their decision, when they have had the time and opportunity to consider the evidence before them.
The precedent? What precedent do we think it sets? It is certainly not going to set a precedent that anyone can take offence at any statue and topple it – the Home Secretary and current parliament are going to see to that. But that isn’t what happened here. This wasn’t some faddish flash in the pan. A wide range of voices had been campaigning for nigh on a century against the glorification of this slave trader ( = unashamed pedlar of death ), and forces of conservatism had resisted those voices. The statue was defended, leaving the slave trader, literally, ‘on a pedestal’. Authority had plenty of opportunity to correct this, but wouldn’t budge. Given this history, I was happy to see the toppling. It had massive symbolism, witnessed round the world. Good on ’em.
Where it leaves us morally? Sadly, and all too predictably, this will be yet another chapter in the culture wars. I am more bothered about the morality of those who are explicit that they would have preferred Colston to stay in place. What ‘kin planet are you on? And don’t give me that bullrubbish about people wanting to airbrush history. That is far from the intent of protesters, BLM or otherwise. The intent is that the names and individuals are very much remembered, but with a narrative that doesn’t glorify them. Morally, I am happy with that.
@thecheshirecat has said most of what I think about this and done so much better than I could. I would just add that I find it bizarre that anyone would assert that any statue or memorial that has been erected in the past has a divine right to exist in perpetuity. This is effectively the stance of the government with its ‘retain and explain’ policy. Our cities are littered with statues of 19th and 19th century men (they’re always men) some of whom are deserving, others less so. Time moves on, values change, and we shouldn’t be automatically saddled with decisions people made a century or more ago.
Sorry but I have a different view. Obviously we all want to abolish any vestiges of slavery but this was vandalism by a mob and I don’t see how it can be condoned in a civil society. Yes make your point and raise awareness of your point until a decision is reached. @thecheshirecat makes the point that this argument had raged for a century. Where? Not on any news forums I ever saw – it was hardly in the same league as the Elgin Marbles which were reported internationally. Elsewhere the issue of Hitler is raised as an argument – I am not sure I ever want to see a statue of Hitler but on the other hand I don’t agree that the German govt should erase memories of his reign by turning his bunker into a housing estate or Spandau prison into a shopping mall. There is an argument that these places should be preserved as a memory of previous horrors that new generations can learn from. Where does it stop? Do the Italians for example jnock down the Colosseum and all other remains of their barbaric reign. The Japanese have an impressive reminder of the horrors of Hiroshima with their peace museum. Eradicating reminders of our inglorious past is not the only course of action to take and to me this was nothing short of mob rule.
But the case went to trial Steve (though as I say above I don’t think it should and there’s where our point of difference is). A jury who weighed the case in front of them and acquitted. It wasn’t a unanimous verdict, and had you been empanelled you may have swayed the verdict, but it went through the proper channels and a verdict was reached.
A PS, now I’ve made my coffee. You mention this as a wider issue in terms of discussion of the statue. As I understand it Colston has been at the centre of local culture wars for some time (Massive Attack always refused to play Colston Hall when it had that name). I’m also sure the day itself was seen as a welcome day out during lockdown for many. If I had overcome uneasiness about crowds in the early days of Covid and was in the area I would likely have been in the crowd myself and cheering when the statue hit the water (a more useful historical purpose than it had fulfilled for many years).
If a precedent was to be set it would be for the public destruction of statues, and that would have happened in the immediate aftermath. It’s possible that the verdict could embolden others, and punitive new laws have been written to discourage exactly that, but broader public discussion can only be a good thing.
This provides a neat timeline to that century of protest.
https://www.bristolpost.co.uk/news/bristol-news/how-bristol-challenged-colston-100-5496144
Imagine if that statue of Colston had been removed to a museum, fifty years ago, with suitable informed, researched interpretation. No argument about erasure of history; education of future generations kept intact. It does not require keeping these statues in pride of civic place, in order to maintain the memory of that history.
The ‘where does it stop?’ argument is, I’m afraid, just an argument to do nothing, which is exactly what had happened for 100 years.
Thanks for that. Lots of coverage there which we non-locals won’t have been aware of, and certainly I wasn’t.
The Hiroshima museum is not a great argument here, to be honest. I love Japan and it’s people but the big smudge on their post war history is a refusal to engage with their WWII behaviour and culpability. They are decades behind the Germans in accepting and coming to terms with ideas of guilt, responsibility and atonement. The atomic bombings specifically seem to be viewed as something that just happened, like a particularly bad earthquake or typhoon.
I’m generalising of course, and I’m sure you could find committed Japanese peace campaigners if you went looking, but they would be very much the exception.
Thoughts @napaj ?
Sorry I didn’t see this.
Pretty much everyone I know where I live is Japanese.
I live in Japan, after all, and have done for decades.
I’m really not well up on history (of all kinds) so don’t feel able to make deep comments on it.
“I love Japan and it’s people but the big smudge on their post war history is a refusal to engage with their WWII behaviour and culpability. ”
Who are ‘they’?
The government of the country, surely?
That’s taking you into the land of politics, and I don’t like that either.
There’s certainly some right wing politicians who I don’t like what they think, but there’s some of them in lots of countries I feel.
Sure, young Japanese don’t clearly learn about stuff. But that’s not their fault as an individual. Do Brits learn about all their ugly past?
What I do know is that society here is very much into a ‘peace’ful existence.
Most normal Japanese people will literally run away from even the smallest kind of confrontation if they possibly can.
People here like to get on with each other. They don’t fight and moan like big babies like in some other major societies I could mention.
Returning to Japan from the UK recently (at last I was able to), I almost let out a sigh of relief. It was like a pressure valve had been released. I could go on and on about that trip and my impressions of the UK, but perhaps best not.
So many things here are just…… pleasant. I really like that.
Not sure what else I can add to that.
🙂
Thanks for that. I’ve heard as much from my b-in-l.
England is an example of the fact that it’s probably better to know nothing about your history than to know very little and fill in the rest yourself (see the Mark Francois tendency). And so we are where we are, and that’s where we’re staying.
@Kid-Dynamite I went to Japan a few years back and found it to be the outwardly most peaceful of countries I have visited (maybe with exception of Bhutan). I suspect that is almost certainly as a result of the Atomic bombs. It certainly compared favourably with rural China which was menacing and India which was threatening to my teenage daughter. I agree that Germany is way more aware of and indeed ashamed of its past yet there is a big undercurrent of Nazi revivalism in parts of Germany that is truly scary.
I was lucky enough to find a job that allowed me to live and work in Tokyo for several years. You are right that it is a society where you very rarely ever have cause to feel nervous or threatened (apart from during an earthquake!) and the levels of petty and violent crime are almost laughably low to our eyes, but I do think this is more due to the Japanese having somehow evolved a social model that works for huge numbers of people crammed into not very much habitable land than it is because of the bombings.
It’s undeniable that Japanese society no longer supports the expansionist and militarist policies of the 1930s (the far right uyoku loonies notwithstanding) but there’s no national sense of reconciliation to their war record or any idea of atonement – Prime Ministers, for example, often pay respectful visits to the Yasukuni Shrine where Class A war criminals are enshrined to this day. I repeat that I love the place and have nothing but very fond memories of my time there, but I can also see that they’re not a good example of engaging with and learning from the past.
I’d say the same of Italy. During period before and during the second world war the majority of Italians (for a wide variety of reasons) sided with the fascists. Ask anyone of that generation now and you’ll get the impression that everyone sided with the anti-fascist resistance.
It’s the same with the great Blur vs Oasis clash of ’95.
But just try telling the kids you worked diligently behind the lines for the anti-Oasis resistance, cutting guitar strings and hiding Liam’s parka, and they won’t believe you.
I blew up the track that was carrying the freight train full of CD singles of Country Life to Woolworths in Todmorden. What thanks do I get?
Would you mind awfully not doing that please? I drive that line.
“huge numbers of people crammed into not very much habitable land ”
Just looking out over my large garden now at the mountains in the distance.
😉
Lots of big houses where I live.
Big huge cities is a different story of course, but Japan isn’t just them.
In a similar way to how the UK isn’t all like central London.
Sorry, Steve, but I think you are wrong on this.
I don’t agree that the German govt should erase memories of his reign by turning his bunker into a housing estate or Spandau prison into a shopping mall.
I knew that the bunker had been demolished (by the Soviets), but until I googled it this morning, I wasn’t aware that a housing estate had been built on top, and that a shopping mall was built where Spandau used to be.
Berlin has a very prominent and moving holocaust memorial near to the location of the bunker, which was removed to avoid there being a shrine for neo-Nazis to visit. Just because previous edifices are removed, does not mean that history is forgotten or rewritten.
Statuary and buildings are difficult not to have an opinion on – they have meaning and symbolism for the inhabitants of a place, affecting their lives, reflecting who has the power to decide how and when they should be erected and also removed.
I don’t really buy the thin end of the wedge argument. Public space, particularly in cities, is dynamic, complex and should primarily work for those living in that individual place in the present time. What happens in one public space does not determine or dictate public policy in another.
What happens when the majority of those living in that individual place in the present time vote to retain a statue that a (sizeable) minority find unbelievably offensive?
It would be extremely comfortable to divorce the issue from precedent and attempt to look at it in comfortable isolation, but unfortunately that’s not how these things work. Precedent is precedent, regardless of whether others follow suit in point of practice.
Thanks for the response, the question and your thoughts. I’m not sure if they are connected, but I’ll treat them one by one.
Regarding the question, what happens when a majority vote to retain a statue that a minority find unbelievably offensive is that there is conflict, clearly – either expressed or unexpressed. The statue is a lightning rod for that conflict, isn’t it? The statue expresses something of pride for one group, of offence for the other – regarding something that happened in the past. The past cannot be changed, but how it is remembered can be. How that memory is expressed by public objects requires resolution of the conflict so that there is common consent from all.
Conflict resolution isn’t easy, isn’t pain free. but it does require open recognition of the views and values of all involved, the people living there then, not others living elsewhere.
Regarding your second paragraph, of course I like the sound of extreme comfort, particularly in isolation – it’s just after Christmas and returning to work is a rude shock – the kids are still off school. A bit of extreme, isolated comfort really wouldn’t go amiss. But I sense you don’t want to give me that.
Clearly every action that is in some way public sets a precedent that others can take a lead from, if they want. The Colston statue removal and baptism might well set a precedent – but what precedent? That depends on the interpretation of the act, doesn’t it? Was it an unruly mob, wanting to rewrite history/deny the past? Or was is the culmination of long debate and argument, ultimately leading nowhere fast, where people felt their voices were not being heard?
I’m a Quaker, and inherit a long tradition of law breaking/civil disobedience, so probably see things slightly differently to the majority here. The point of Quaker nonviolent direct action has always been taking responsibility/accepting the consequences for one’s actions in pursuit of a goal not possible under the existing conditions. Seen in that light, the precedent, such as it is, may not be the dangerous example some fear.
My skepticism about precedent is that I am not sure how many people consider decades or centuries-old artefacts like Hitler’s bunker or the Coliseum, etc when considering their actions about monuments/buildings in their own location.
Cheers, Sal. The Quaker commitment to bringing a debate to culmination by fucking shit up is duly noted.
LOL…
Swords to ploughshares by gentle, muffled hammering
Did you feel the same when the statue of Saddam Hussain was toppled? Did you think that was wrong?
And Hitler’s bunker is very different from a statue. I would imagine that a statue of Colston that clearly depcited his role repugnant in the slave trade would not have been toppled. The issue isn’t statues. The issue isn’t history. This issue is in glorifying people who did bad things. Similar to stripping people of knighthoods and honours when they turn out to be paedophiles or some such thing.
I genuinely don’t understand the reluctance to get rid of statues of people that are dispicable. It’s just an object.
Could not agree more.
Well said. 👍
The issue is how and via what process we decide who is despicable, and whether that’s a decision that can be made by a few hundred very passionate (and no doubt righteous) people in the street.
Fair point. But the even fewer councillors that have been deciding prior to this public demonstration is probably no better. This is difficult stuff and, sometimes, a bit of passion helps move intransigence. Which is a good thing. It shouldn’t be the norm and I don’t get a sense that it has become the norm.
That’s fine, so long as we’re prepared to allow others the same leeway to counter intransigence in similar fashion, potentially in ways we might find disagreeable.
@Leedsboy I think you miss my point – by all means get rid of statues if that is what the people want. Getting mob rule to rampage through a city to topple them without any regard for people who may possibly be in the way when they are toppled is not something that I would condone. Surprised anyone else would too.
But people wanted it rid of and it wasn’t done. How long are people supposed to put up with that? Imagine being black and having to walk past that statue everyday on your way to work.
Mob rule rampaging through a city is overstating it. It was a mob with a single objective. One that a lot of people agreed with. And it wouldn’t have happened if the council had a bit of empathy and decency about themselves. It is in a much better place now – it’s a shame it took a righteous mob to make that happen but I think its the right outcome – don’t you?
Our mobs are righteous and fun. Their mobs are cruel and tragic. The usual shenanigans.
…..”people”? A worryingly nebulous term. “People” want to end all vaccinations and Covid testing because they say the pandemic is a hoax perpetrated by Bill Gates. Judges who challenge the government are enemies of the “people”. And so on and so on and shooby dooby doo, theyyyyyyyyyyyyy are everyday people.
People are people, and they are also strange.
I meant everyday people. I’m sly like that.
Takes Every Kinda People
I certainly wouldn’t condone a rampaging mob who were putting lives at risk with their wanton destruction. But that wasn’t what happened here. Or anywhere else in the UK as far as I’m aware.
“I certainly wouldn’t condone a rampaging mob who were putting lives at risk with their wanton destruction.”
What if they were targeting an Ed Sheeran gig? What then?
Incidentally, I love how the word “wanton” can be used to convey both needless violence and sexual disinhibition. What a pair of horses to ride, so to speak. Also an essential element of any Chinese meal. The swiss army knife of words.
Steamed dumplings…. hurrrrr
Ed is the exception that proves the rule.
I’ve tried to form a view on this, but then I found out the defendants were called Rhian, Milo, Sage and Jake and a little bit of me wished they’d been locked up. That’s bad, isn’t it?
As for Where Does it End? it ends with another trial, another jury and another set of circumstances to be considered. There’s no precedent set here. Just don’t drop the statue on any passers-by, okay yah?
Fair.
‘Where does it end?’ is no argument at all other than for total stasis, and challenging the jury system based on a single verdict is throwing the baby out with the bathwater. I’m trying to think of the last time a jury decision to acquit attracted so much public attention, and the best I could do was the Clive Ponting trial almost 40 years ago. If some people find the verdict, which as Chiz points out is not a precedent as it is not the judge’s ruling but the decision reached by a unique jury in a unique case, eccentric or even perverse then that’s the price rarely paid for having the jury system.
@Gatz I find the case neither eccentric or perverse – plain and simple I just don’t agree with destroying property either public or private.
@Kid-Dynamite mentions below that the statue was recovered to a local museum which I wasn’t aware of but which feels like a fitting epitaph to the story.
We have numerous statues in Birmingham – as far as I know none of them have any connections to the slave trade but plenty to the Industrial revolution which if you drill it down could also by statues to slave labour/cruelty to the working man.
It’s probably never ending and the argument could be that slaves brought to this country were given a much better life. I don’t know enough about the history of slavery in this country at that time to fully understand how it came to an end and who was responsible for leading us out of the darkness.
In the USA we know the importance of the Civil Rights marches and MLK – here we have less historical knowledge of our struggles – more so with the Suffragettes than slavery.
The vast majority of Colston’s slaves weren’t brought to this country; they were transported elsewhere.
Whatever one’s feelings on the removal of the statue, it’s not really plausible to argue that any of Colston’s slaves would have been given a much better life. If such a thing happened, it would certainly have been in spite of Colston’s own best efforts.
Only a very tiny proportion of slaves were ever brought here to the UK, and then only as a means for slave-owners to brag “This is my slave. I OWN him/her.”
They had no say whatsoever in what was done with them as they were not considered the same as people. Slaves were property, like a horse or a mule or a working dog is someone’s property. Bought or bred to work for their master and subject entirely to the will or whim of that master.
Animals now have more rights than human slaves have ever had.
Yep; that was (and indeed is) slavery.
“Is” is right. Slavery is going strong, quite possibly on a street near you.
@Bingo-Little clearly in the Western World it did happen albeit over many years because slave trade was abolished and the former slaves and their descendants began to live a better life. Yes there is a big room for much further improvement but I really do not see that vandalism masquerading as righteous indignation is the way to achieve that goal. Pissing off the people that you are trying to enlighten isn’t a very good game plan in any environment. I think your well made arguments tend to agree with this assertion. I wish there was a better way to see improvements in race equality but to my mind this plays into the hands of the nutters.
You’re tempted to wish them locked up because their parents were/are knobs? Good grief, what sort of a monster are you?
I’d hazard a guess that Rhian, Milo, Sage and Jake all think that any parent who would bestow their offspring with laughable names like Keith, Trevor, Paul or Bryan should have been locked up long ago.
They should definitely be locked up if that’s what they think.
Harrumph.
It reminded me of David Gilmour’s son Charles swinging from the Cenotaph with his haircut and his designer boots a few years ago. So what you’re saying there is that Call Me David is a knob.
(Incidentally, the contrast between the two photos of Charlie the glorious Lafayette protestor and Charlie the contrite bespectacled student being marched into court by his parents is a thing to behold.)
Regardless of Smith or Smythe, Ralph is Ralph, ok? IT IS NOT RAIF! That is galloping cultural appropriation of the highest degree, darling. I hope your Prosecco comes out your nostrils, with added follow through.
Indeed, you are correct Sir, I do consider Call Me David to be somewhat knobular. Though it has little to do with his choice of appellation for his offspring.
I imagine him smirking at poor Angry Rog:
“You see that woman over there, with the piss-stained skirt, the shoes with holes in them and the Socialist Worker placard?”
“Why yes, Dave, I do see that woman.”
“That’s your Mum, that is.”
Did anyone else sing that “You see that woman…” to the tune of Streets of London? – that’ll be Raif Mctell.
The statue of Colston was an affront and I’m glad it’s gone (speaking as a long term Bristol resident).
A large part of the handwringing over the removal seems to be about concerns that history is being eradicated, but very few of these people seem to have taken the time to find out that, once it had been recovered, the statue was put on display in a prominent local museum just a few hundred yards from its original location, along with placards from the protests, a history of the slave trade and plenty of biographical information on Mr Colston. Hardly an erasure, just a resetting of context.
“recovered and placed in a local museum”
Yup, I’m one of those that didn’t know that, and blows my “expunged history” argument out of the water.
History, no matter how disagreeable remains.
(Note to self: do more research)
The argument that history is being eradicated clearly doesn’t hold water. There are probably more people in this country aware of Edward Colston and his personal back story right now than at any other time.
History is being elucidated.
Totally accept and agree with that.
My objection was never anything to do with history of slavery or anything else – it was an objection to vandalism.
However it seems that more people are okay with vandalism than I thought and judging by the state of the country also littering and drunken thuggery.
Explains a lot of things.
Steve, I agree with you and I think you’ve put it well. I have the same in-built objection to vandalism.
We’ll see how far that gets me when the state breaks down and we descend into a Mad Max world, but for the moment I’m all for law and order I think. (Waves a small flag and smiles sheepishly).
Depends on the Law and the Order, I think.
Currently, in Russia, Vladimir Putin’s government have Laws that act to supress any mention of the abuses that were perpetrated under Stalin etc. This is part of their imposed Order. A sanitised glorious and unblemished Russia.
I would not like to see a similarly-sanitised England, where the misdeeds of Our Empire are bagged up and buried to be forgotten.
I don’t really understand how anyone can look at this issue and think it’s entirely simple.
On the one hand, the statue was clearly offensive, and the optimal course of action was always its removal.
On the other, however you wish to spin it, it was torn down by a mob, seemingly against the most recently recorded wishes of the local community, per the 2014 vote on the subject (albeit I’m sure there’s a decent chance those margins might have reversed on a fresh vote).
You can only really fail to feel some unease at this turn of events if you’re either; (a) completely secure with the idea that it’s OK for any group of sufficiently enraged citizens to decide at any given moment what gets torn down and what stays up (and if that’s the case, I’d suggest you’re a nutter); (b) of the “I don’t need to care about it, because in this instance I agree with them, so I’ll make an exception” stripe; or (c) committed to not thinking too hard about the issue (let’s call this the “It upsets all the right people” approach).
Should a group of a couple of hundred people be permitted to tear down statues and despoil any landmark they consider offensive? I’d say self evidently not, and I find it hard to believe that any thinking person would defend such an idea.
Should the four Ruperts in question here have been convicted?
It’s hard to get too worked up about the fact they’ve been let off. There’s no real precedent being set, and their punishment would probably have sent a far more negative message than this outcome.
Ideally, given that they very clearly committed criminal damage under any sensible reading of the law, I’d probably have rather they either hadn’t been prosecuted at all, or that we’d seen a guilty verdict with the judge exercising exceptional leniency in sentencing, although I understand why the jury didn’t want to chance the latter.
I really do think this is one of those things where you need to be able to balance more than one thought in your head; too often now we see ostensibly sensible people attempting to defend actions which are apparently OK for their tribe, but not for the opposite one. Can you defend the toppling of Colston without also defending (to give but one example), the semi regular attacks on the bust of Marx in Highgate cemetery? I’m not entirely sure, unless you’re willing to rule on who gets to determine what’s offensive.
I certainly don’t think the people who are expressing unease over the removal of the statue or yesterday’s judgement should just be waved away. A small minority of them will no doubt be racist nutters who miss the days of slavery, but the vast majority will hold views they’ve arrived at fair and square and to which they’re entitled, even where we might disagree with them.
This is simply one of those issues where it’s only really easy if you elect to look at it from one angle only, and where any attempt to take in the whole leaves you subject to all sorts of difficult moral quandaries that don’t make for good Twitter.
As an aside, I’m currently reading Benjamin Labatut’s absolutely wonderful “When We Cease To Understand The World”, which opens with a properly fascinating chapter on Fritz Haber, some of which I will recount here, and which I think says something interesting about legacy.
Haber was the architect of the German gas program in World War 1. He devised the chlorine gas that was used to flood the trenches and send thousands of men to a properly hideous death.
After he returned from the first use of the gas in the field (at Ypres) his wife, Clara Immerwahr, the first woman to receive a doctorate in chemistry at a German university, accused him of perverting science to monstrous ends. Two days later, at a party to celebrate Haber’s return from the front, Clara walked to the bottom of the garden, took off her shoes and fatally shot herself in the chest with her husband’s service revolver.
In 1918, Fritz Haber won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry, not for his experiments with poison gas, but for becoming the first person to obtain nitrogen – the main nutrient for plant grown – directly from the air. His discovery overnight addressed the global scarcity of fertilizer, ameliorated a good degree of starvation, avoided what would otherwise have been a catastrophic post-war famine and paved the way for the demographic explosion that took the human population of the planet from 1.6 to 7 billion in less than a century. To this day, more than half the world’s population depends on foodstuffs fertilized thanks to Haber’s invention.
Haber followed up his success by working on new methods of pesticide at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physical Chemistry and Electrochemistry, where, in the 1930s, he devised a new fumigant so potent and destructive that it was dubbed “Cyclone”, or – in German – “Zyklon”. Haber didn’t live to see a version of his creation applied to human beings in the gas chambers; he died in Switzerland in 1934. As far as I’m aware, he has no statue to commemorate him, or to be torn down.
I read all of the above shortly before I stumbled on this thread, and the two became slightly intermingled in my head. How does one judge the life of a person like Fritz Haber? How does one weigh the good and bad? How can/should we celebrate the profoundly important achievements of an individual, while also paying proper respect to whatever evil they may have perpetrated?
Fritz Haber is about as extreme an example as I think I’ve ever come across of the duality of legacy. I certainly don’t propose that Edward Colston falls into a similar bucket, but we will no doubt in future see similar debates about other statues where the position may be more complicated. History is so rarely neat and tidy, after all.
I would also really recommend the Labatut book; based on the first half, it appears to be quite brilliant.
chiz lists their names above – not a Rupert amongst them.
A classic example of The Duality of Ruperts.
Ruperts 4
Colston 0
The great lost Housemartins album.
Very well played.
Yeah, I agree with Bingo.
(Note to self for future moral debate threads: wait until Bingo comments and then just agree, because he will articulate my thoughts better than I can!)
I think you’ve captured the uneasiness I feel. I would hate to be thought of as “defending” Colston and all these people who have managed to keep his statue on a pedestal all this time… but equally I can’t deny my first thought when this all happened was uneasiness at the mob rule aspect.
“seemingly against the most recently recorded wishes of the local community, per the 2014 vote on the subject (albeit I’m sure there’s a decent chance those margins might have reversed on a fresh vote).’
Not sure what this 2014 vote was? I can’t find anything about it after a (very quick) google and as I wasn’t asked to vote at the time, I presume it was a council matter, which leads us onto another shady aspect of Bristol’s history – The (ta-dah!) Society Of Merchant Venturers. They are a centuries old (Colston was a member himself) association of the great and good of Bristol (please assume air quotes around the ‘great’ and the ‘good’ there), who have their fingers in all sorts of pies round here, from schools to public land to the city council. They’re a bit like the Freemasons, only without the openness and commitment to fair play, and they have a bizarre hagiographic attitude to Colston (they had his fingernails and hair on display in their headquarters up until 2015, and had an annual Colston parade). They’re touched on in the article that cheshirecat linked above, and until events overtook them in 2020 they have consistently stymied any attempt by the city to reckon with Colston and the local slave trade.
In short, unless that 2014 vote was a public referendum that I missed thanks to spending every available hour playing Skyrim, I’d be cautious about viewing it as an honest representation of feelings in the city. Indeed, the wiki page for the statue mentions a 2014 poll in the local paper where 56% of respondents wanted the statue gone (again, probably not an accurate assessment of every Bristolian’s feelings, but another data point).
Fair point on the vote not being a formal referendum.
It was indeed the vote organised by a local newspaper you refer to above, although I think you have the results the wrong way round; 56% wanted the statue retained. As you rightly say, potentially not an accurate assessment of local feeling prior to 2020, but the best we have.
The broader point is that there does not appear to have been, at the point of action, any evidence of a local consensus for removal of the statue, let alone by mob.
I did indeed did get my stay and my go mixed up. I’d never have cut it in The Clash.
Given it was a local paper, it’s quite possible it’s a poll with a very low sample size, and that the respondents would have been a somewhat self-selecting group. Nonetheless, that 56% figure remains rather depressing.
1100 votes according to this https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/bristol-torn-apart-over-statue-of-edward-colston-but-is-this-a-figure-of-shame-or-a-necessary-monument-to-the-history-of-slavery-9555333.html
The entire readership of a local paper these days.
And easy to sway by whichever social media campaign persuaded people to vote for or against.
It’s true – that 44% could have been even lower, but for the hand of Facebook.
pffft, there hasn’t been a local paper worth using to wrap your chips for decades now. The Evening Post used to be a useful rag, but that went the way of many local rags – clickbait, cheap small ads and angry-from-Bedminster letters pages. No ‘survey’ or ‘poll’ or ‘referendum’ run by a local paper in Bristol has had any validity at all for yonks! They make the Daily Heil look like the Grauniad.
You’re better off out – when they did cut it, it was crap.
I don’t think the local community were ever asked. The quandry is always the classic “one man’s terrorist is another mans freedom fighter” line. I once had a conversation with a South Afirican (who lived in the UK) who would not accept that Nelson Mandela had been anything other than a terrorist. Ever. Yet I suspect most of us would feel Mandela’s actions were that of a freedom fighter.
If a person knew about Colston and still wanted his statue to take pride of place in Bristol (without any historical context), then I would suspect their reasons go beyond looking after a bit of art. Where it is now is actually where it should have been put years ago. It took a ‘mob’ to get to that solution. Eventually.
Tate and Lyle must be shitting bricks.
I think they will need to review security for the Wills Building, which is a bit too big to pull down with ropes.
Shouldn’t that be shitting cubes?
There’s one to to properly enrage the Mail Online’s comment section. What’s an immense fortune built entirely in the Barbados slave fields to do with anything when those charming, oh-so-English, traditional green tins of golden syrup are in danger?
Whilst we’re at it, where are all the Scandinavian, French, Spanish, Portugese, Irish, Arab etc topplers, eh?!?! Damn poor show, if you ask me! Once again Britannia leads the way. Pip pip, comrades!
@Rob_C
Suggest you leave us Irish out of it.
We were – as we invariably are – waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyy ahead of the curve (54 years in this case) when it came to toppling statues
https://www.irishcentral.com/roots/history/blowing-up-nelsons-pillar-nelsons-head
I’m of fellow Irish blood, @Jaygee. I was referring to them old plunderers of the Welsh/British coast. They didn’t bargain on St Pat, but that of course would be an ecumenical matter. I do love the fact that the Old Gods slumber in waking dreams in the wild Thin Places such as the Healy Pass, amongst the mist, mountain goats and concrete Jesuses.
@Rob_C
Do you remember the kerfuffle that erupted about the moving statues of the BVM in – I think Cork – during the mid-1980s?
For me, it was the moment that Ireland stopped being the whimsically surreal Flann O’Brien of my youth and started to become the horrendous Celtic Tiger the likes of Charlie Haughey ushered in in the 80s. All summed up by one enterprising local’s rebranding of his Roddy Doyle style chipper van’s greasy burgers as being “Vorgin Bergers”
RTE did a very enjoyable documentary on it a few years back. Have it on DVD somewhere if you’d like to see it
I wasn’t aware of it at the time, but subsequently, yes. The show’s not over even now that The Fat Holy Mother’s got her dancing shoes on and the Celtic Tiger is a hearth rug.
Are they Wombats?
On the syrup tins? There’s a dead lion and some bees, but zero wombats as far I remember.
Landfill Indie ahoy – there are only three Wombats: Matthew, Tord and Dan.
{yes, I did look this up on Wikipedia}
A reference to the cuboid nature of wombat poo perchance.
Correct! Give yourself a shiny!
Can I just roll one in glitter?
Whatever floats your boat. “Give yourself a shiny” was from a toddler’s quiz show with puppets when my kids were young. The correct answer was rewarded with something shiny, a piece of cardboard covered in Bacofoil IIRC.
“I got you a block of some good shit. Literally”
Going by the photo, wombat poo does indeed seem to be remarkably similar to yer average block of hash. I wonder if Australian dealers are tempted to try the obvious switch? Surely not.
A fabulous conversation as usual on a potentially volatile subject. Too huge to unravel satisfactorily but once again The Afterword gives me the ammo to make up my own mind. I think in the end a point was made, no one got hurt (if they had, different story), they’ve probably been given the fright of their lives and any custodial sentence would have achieved little. How we live with our empirical past is something we’re all still coming to terms with. I suspect this sort of action won’t be necessary again. I would hope that any link to slavery is moved to a museum to allow a conversation to be had without it appearing celebratory…
Public order isues aside, I hope said statue did not cause any undue damage to any aquatic harbour dwellers. It’s good to see the Re-wilding Campaign take off, and it’s not going to seriously upset our farming and agrarian abilities, no matter how much the jodpur set and badger gassing shagnasties huff and puff. A cynical ploy from Cocktavius re. his green cred and current amor? Probably, but so what. I’m with the beavers, newts and sacrificial bogmen.
A report in the Bristol Shopper and Advertiser freesheet (available at some local Spa outlets, in the metal bin by the exit doors) indicated that a common sprat had received a glancing blow to the dorsal fin from the Colston statue as it entered the water, but had sustained no lasting damage. Earlier reports that a bottom dwelling crayfish had been fatally crushed as the statue settled on the harbour bed were later dismissed by “mere conjecture” by the RSPCA.
‘Conjecture’ my sacred arse. Bloody communists.
Wrong target.
I’d be surprised if this doesn’t increase the vote for MPs who, with the help of the tabloid media, will talk of “tradition,” “rewriting history,” “trying to take our culture away,” “Blitz spirit” and the like.
Want a target? Follow the money, today – not the statue of a guy who died in 1721.
How did Johnson get a job in the same industry (journalism) in which he had just been sacked?
Good luck – sort of – to them, but those who are being told they are “on the wrong side of history” will be voting in two years time to make sure it stays that way.
I think the concerns Steve and others voice around vandalism and mob rule are fair enough, and I would also accept that it is much easier to be sanguine about this one, given the target, than I might be had it been, for example, the pulling down of a statue of Churchill, as some would lead us to believe was a risk. But I do think context is relevant. This happened in the wake of George Floyd; and as others have said, the Colston issue was one which had been rumbling on for years with a general level of dissatisfaction at the way in which the authorities were dealing with it. And in this context, taking these four people to court doesn’t feel like the right way to have dealt with it.
It clearly does set a legal precedent, but the conditions here were very specific so I really don’t think it is a charter for anyone to deface any memorial they feel like. It is also worth noting that for all the cries from the right that this would lead to a rash of such incidents there have been precisely none since (so far as I know – happy to stand corrected), and just a handful of institutions making their own decisions to remove, or contextualise, specfic troubling artefacts in their ownership.
I think it’s worth distinguishing between four things;
(i) output – the statue was removed, which I’m sure most of us are happy with, if we overlook how it was done.
(ii) cultural precedent – would this lead to a rash of copycat vandalism? Thus far, it seems not, although it’s nigh on certain that the Churchill statue would have come down, had the police not protected it.
(iii) legal precedent – would the incident and subsequent judgement lead to a scenario where the courts allow some form of mob justice. Personally, not overly worried about this; I think the courts are clever and robust enough to navigate such issues.
(iv) moral precedent – a personal matter, but can you really wholeheartedly condone the statue being pulled down in such a manner without accepting that you’d do likewise in a similar scenario for a statue of someone you do not personally find offensive. Not convinced you can just duck this one because it’s the tricky bit, although I think a lot of people have attempted to do so. Attempting to argue that it’s Ok this time because it’s the right target is, I’m afraid, hypocrisy. The debate is in the means, not the ends.
It seems to me that the main issue for debate is point (iv), and arguments can also be made on points (i) and (ii) (although I’m not personally all that persuaded by them).
Perhaps someone could suggest a number of years of official prevarication that it should be considered acceptable to have to put up with when the powers that be ignore, obfuscate and otherwise dodge around ongoing, honest, legal campaigns to remove statuary featuring murderous racist bastards from prominent display in the centre of urban areas?
It seems to me that the main issue in this case is that all peaceful, non-vandalous if you like, methods to get the bloody thing taken down and put somewhere less obviously contentious were ignored for year after year after year.
The ‘authorities’ – precisely those with responsibility for discouraging vandalistic behaviour – made it much more likely that this would eventually play out as it did.
I’ve lived in or around Bristol since 1978 and it has ALWAYS been a bone of contention during my time in this place that that particular statue should be allowed to remain where it was, right in the middle of town where everybody who saw it was exhorted to celebrate the man depicted as someone the citizens of Bristol considered to be “one of the most virtuous and wise sons of their city”. That certainly wasn’t how most of my friends thought of him, then or now.
I think what you’re proposing here is an interesting distinction to make; that maybe we can accept direct action after many years of concerted campaigning.
I remain unconvinced, however, even with the addition of that well made point, that many of those who consider this event to have been an open/shut “good thing” would feel similarly if the fact pattern were exactly the same but the statue had been of someone of whom they did not personally disapprove.
And therein lies the moral dilemma.
Can I just say that I have not contributed to this thread, I am really enjoying reading the posts/ comments.
So much thought, so much articulacy, so little hot air.
The afterword at its best.
If only we could demonstrate the same levels of decency, politeness and articulation when debating the output of Abba or Ed Sheeran, eh?
Give me Abba over Steely Dan anyday. I’d rather Mick Hucknall staple my eyelids to my knees and use me as his manlove wheelbarrow in his demonic vineyards in caverns deep under the Dordorgne.
Cosmic pakoras alert!
Is Manlove Wheelbarrow the first irresistible TMFTL of the new year?
I was thinking the same thing about Cosmic Pakoras.
He had me at Demonic Vineyards.
He’s a veritable Allen Ginsberg, that Rob C.
ABBA over Steely Dan? Sounds like a naked lunch menu item.
@arthur-cowslip
We can’t because that is so much more important.
In my ideal world, I’d like to have seen a guilty verdict to recognise the fact that it is indeed criminal damage, and an extremely lenient sentence, to recognise the fact that Colston was a baddie, and having his statue in a museum rather than in a prominent position is an ideal solution all-round.
Next up, the Sir Alex Ferguson statue.
Lol. I would have been up for tearing down the statue to that great tyrant until this season, when his insistence that Utd first buy, then continually play, the pensionable Ronaldo has seen the club go right off the rails.
I like my justice served poetic.
Agree completely with everything else you’ve said.
Great advice from the ‘father figure’. Bet Ronaldo is made up!
I read the following tweet yesterday:
Cristiano Ronaldo has just tested positive for being the best football player in the WORLD!
Which drew the response:
Thankfully not showing any symptoms.
My faith in the world was restored.
Someone forwarded that to me! The entire situation is very very very very funny; hubris meets nemesis.
Topplers, tipplers, tuppers, tappers….and finger poppin’ daddies.
I found this a useful read:
https://thesecretbarrister.com/2022/01/06/do-the-verdicts-in-the-trial-of-the-colston-4-signal-something-wrong-with-our-jury-system-10-things-you-should-know/
Very good read.
That’s an excellent article, very lucid and balanced (as a piece from a barrister should be). Two things leap out. One is the the case didn’t concern ‘the mob’, which seems to be the main concern of some, but the very specific charges relating to 4 people (though acting jointly) to the Colston statue. The other is that as some of us have insisted and others argued against, that a jury verdict does not set any kind of precedent.
Looking across the above, I don’t think a single person has argued that the jury verdict sets a legal precedent.
It has been suggested in the OP by Hamlet, by Arthur Cowslip, by you (in two posts – 06/01/2022 at 12:43 and 06/01/2022 at 13:19) and by Blue Boy, and that’s just by searching for the word ‘precedent’ without inferring it from other wording, and only including those who were concerned by the implications . ‘Argued’ may have been too strong and word, and ‘raised the concern’ might have been better, but that’s why I’m not a lawyer.
Yes, those are all the places in the thread where the word “precedent” is used, but you need to actually read the posts to determine whether someone is arguing there is an actual risk of legal precedent, as opposed to other forms of precedent.
For example, you might note that, across the thread, while making precisely zero arguments that a legal precedent will be created by this decision, I have also said the following: “It’s hard to get too worked up about the fact they’ve been let off. There’s no real precedent being set,”
You might also note the fairly long post from me above, on specifically this subject: https://theafterword.co.uk/statue-topplers-cleared-of-criminal-damage/comment-page-1/#comment-516872 in which I distinguish between the various forms of precedent under discussion and conclude there is no argument for legal precedent here.
The only person who has suggested there’s legal precedent being established is Blue Boy, but I don’t think you’re arguing with him, as he goes on to say that the facts of the case are so specific as to essentially obviate any such precedent.
From my reading of this discussion, it’s been about moral and cultural, not legal, precedent (e,g. if we condone this, what else are we required to condone). The tendency to confuse the three is precisely why I wrote the post I’m citing above.
Correct – to be clear, I have no legal qualifications and can’t comment in that regard. With hindsight I shoudn’t have used the word ‘legal’; I did, so Gatz is right to pick me up on it. The point I wanted to make (again from a layman’s perspective) was that this case might be used by others in defence of similar activity – but that it seems to me that there are very specfic circumstances here which presumably influenced the jury’s decision and wouldn’t necessarily apply anywhere else. The Secret Barrister article is indeed excellent on this point.
What does, however, represent a genuine threat to the rule of law is when elected politicians, having not heard the evidence nor bothered to understand the relevant legal principles, attempt to undermine the verdicts of independent juries when the outcome of a criminal case does not meet with their approval. That is a very dark road indeed.
Word. And we’re stuck with this culture-wars bullshit now, so there’ll be more to come. Seeing as how it’s made the USA such a happy and peaceful place.
Let’s all just thank our deity of choice that people were allowed out after [insert current curfew deadline] and allowed to congregate in order to protest.
The bill heading towards debate in the HoL in a couple of weeks will make actions prompting this entire discussion illegal at the whim of whoever we’ve elected.
OK, as you were. Nothing to see here.
https://t.co/eytwyLeyWs
Indeed. Hardly fits in with the ‘security, prosperity and respect’ theme does it? Why the F*** they are not making an allmighty humungous fuss about this stealthy creeping authoritarianism I don’t know. Perhaps someone closer to the political machine can tell me. If resisting this kind of thing isn’t partly what the Labour Party are for, what is?
Indeed. You can tell we’re fucked when we have to fall back on Rees-Smug defending the principle of trial by jury. MP’s like Tom Hunt seem to think guilt is established before the trial – “If you’ve broken the law and committed criminal damage you should be punished. If the jury is a barrier to ensuring they are punished then that needs to be addressed.”
Apparently Suella Braveman is considering referring the case to the Court of Appeal so that she can have them understand what the correct verdict should have been, and will have to be in the future.
My point was that the very protest which toppled the statue might well be deemed illegal in future as we head smoothly towards a police state.
I’m sorry, that should have read “towards the sunlit uplands”
I’m a bit old school when it comes to statues. The Greek and Roman ones are OK but since then I think standards have slipped a bit. Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth are a bit Vision On.
….no wonder they never got them sent back.
Personally, the only statues I truly care about are giant mechanical statues of Sylvester Stallone, with motorised waving arms.
The day the mob come for my 8 foot Lincoln Hawk is the day I go full vigilante.
I’ve just unplugged the Christmas lights on my 14-foot replica of Sly as Verlaine, the surly libertarian poet sidekick, in the historical biopic Rimbaud II.
Bet that’ll make you lonesome when it goes.
It’s next to the giant statue of Stallone as a cheesemaker who avenges the death of his friend, Apollo Curd, in an unsanctioned cheese-off with the Russian killer.
It’s from a film called Rochefort.
The Director’s Cut, or did someone else slice it?
“standing ovation”
*topples ovation*
Is it a dolphin in a bathtub?
Is there a Cuddly Toy in it?
The statue of Rimbaud got torn down.
I SAID THE STATUE….
oh never mind.
There’s something very evocative about classical statues in the moonlit garden of a silent country manor. The same with faint soft laughter on a late summer afternoon breeze through a set of french windows.
If you’re referring to statues of Sylvester Stallone in the moonlit garden of a silent country manor, and the faint soft laughter of Sylvester Stallone on a late summer breeze through a set of french windows then I could not agree more and I’m glad someone finally said it.
I was thinking more of Nic Cage, dear heart, but I can go with Sly if Nic’s not available.
Anyone for tennis? Wouldn’t that be nice.
(speaking of racism….)
One hour, 37 minutes and 30 seconds in…..
https://youtu.be/-0P4yNjMUvA
Creepier than a creeping thing from planet Creep. You can keep your statues thanks!
Weeping angels? <- Dr Who stuff that was pretty effective
Dappled sunlight under the bower. Matron’s delicate swanlike fingers caressing an orange segment. The sound of carp upon willow followed by delight filled screams. Ah the joys of Sunday fish cricket upon Nether Snurtle village green.
Right so, Chapter II. We were saying that there’s no legal precent set here but it might encourage other activists to take a chisel to statues that offend them. And lo…yesterday someone tried to chop down the Eric Gill statue outside Broadcasting House. It’s not of him, it’s by him. Gill was a monster, although that wasn’t known until long after his death, and no one’s going to defend him. There’s a precedent for obliterating the art of paedophiles, which is why we can’t listen to Rock’n’Roll Part II any more.
To be fair, it’s a statue of an old man and a naked child, which is sort of… icky in this context, but not out of line with hundreds of years of sculpture. But this feels a bit different to Colston, though. There’s his font, for a start. Do we pulp all the books that use it?
Take a Stanley knife to that Modigliani, while you’re at it…