My photo from just pre-lockdown. Sorry about the lamp post. It shall be toppled into Avon Gorge asap
Some years ago, I covered the industrial tribunal case of a young man who complained of unfair dismissal after being sacked from his position at a job centre in Bristol because he deliberately sent black applicants for interview by employers he suspected of being racist.
I remember only a few details of the proceedings but, very vividly, the response of a few readers of The Daily Telegraph, then my employer. I made a point of stating in my reports that the job centre clerk was white, since this seemed entirely relevant.
Photographic reproduction at the Telegraph was some way short of perfection at the time. I received several letters, some of the green ink, exclusively upper case variety, accusing me of trying to hoodwink readers by presenting the applicant as white when he, so evidently, was a person of colour.
The odious racism of some fellow Britons as demonstrated by that reaction to a minor civil case (the outcome of which is among details lost from memory) occurred to me as I followed events following the death of George Floyd at the hands, or rather one knee, of a police officer in Minneapolis. Much of the world knows that those events included protesters toppling the statue of a Bristol slave merchant, Sir Edward Colston, into the harbour.
I have a love-hate relationship with Bristol and share its black mayor's lack of regret at the loss of this commemoration of a man who made a proportion of his fortune from human misery.
Bristol was my home for seven years. The younger of my daughters was born there; both started school there.
It is a magnificent city, from the elegant town houses of Clifton to the vibrant city centre and waterfront, and it boasts Isambard Brunel's outstanding suspension bridge, one of my favourite spots in the whole of the UK or, for that matter, the world.
But would the city be quite so magnificent but for the prosperity brought to it by such a shameful source of trade? I doubt it.
Image: Simon Cobb / CC0
Colston was also a philanthropist (probably not the product of a guilty conscience) and bestowed much of public benefit on Bristol. Wikipedia records him using his wealth "to support and endow schools, hospitals, almshouses and churches ... his name commemorated in several Bristol landmarks, streets, schools". He created the recipe for sweet "Colston bun" which, from its description, I am glad never to have tasted.
The Colston concert hall, where I remember seeing pantomimes as well as Lindisfarne and Steeleye Span, decided long ago to acquire a new name once reopened after renovation. The Colston statue had been a source of controversy for decades. One of the Colston schools, however, flatly refused to rename itself after deciding it had nothing to gain from doing so.
It is, or should be, impossible to enjoy a beautiful city fully until all vestiges of past connections with rotten practices have been properly atoned for and, where feasible, removed.
I stand with the mayor, Marvin Rees, in hailing as "historical poetry" the ignominious end of a squalid tribute to an unworthy man.
Recent Comments