The Brits love a statue. Visit any city or large town and you find a statue or two. They are usually located outside the Town Hall, in the market square and, commonly, in the parks. There are statues of kings, queens, assorted other Royals, long forgotten military figures, national and local dignitaries. Strangely, most were erected before the end of the 19th Century. It is as if sticking up a statue just slipped out of fashion.
The statue that remains most in my mind is the Duke of Wellington in Glasgow with a traffic cone placed on his head. Whenever it is removed it is quickly replaced so the authorities have given up protecting the dignity of the victor of Waterloo.
Most of the time statues are simply ignored – they just sit there providing a perch for the pigeons and a base for dogs to sniff around. Sometimes tourists will take a selfie probably with little clue as to the person they are posing with.
It now appears that while putting ropes around a statue and tearing it down in Baghdad is acceptable, doing it in Bristol is not.
Suddenly everybody is an expert on Edward Colson and phrases like “mob rule”, “law of the jungle” and “thuggery” are being thrown around. Whoever would have thought a couple of weeks ago that Edward Colson would knock a worldwide pandemic off the top of the news bulletins. If it hasn’t already, I expect Edward Colson’s statue to soon have its own Twitter account.
So, what are we to make of all this? Let’s start with Colson - born in 1636 and died in 1721 after sitting on the Board of the Royal African Company which transported more 100,000 slaves from West Africa to the Americas between 1672 and 1689; more than 20,000 died during the crossings. Colson made a fortune, much of which he invested in hospitals and schools – that much of his investment had come from a fortune garnered from the slave trade was largely ignored until relatively recent times.
By 18th Century standards, Colson would have been a regular guy but by today’s a criminal who should be behind bars, and that is the problem. Do you leave him standing as reminder of past inhumanity of man to men and women? Something to learn lessons from or do we remove and replace him with a more worthy figure by modern standards?
Never to miss an opportunity, some politicians have jumped on the law and order band wagon. Make no mistake pulling down a public monument is criminal damage and no doubt the perpetrators will have a day in court, fines to pay and/or time to serve. Some might argue getting into your car with a potential Coronavirus victim and a child and driving from London to Durham during a pandemic, when everybody else was expected to remain behind their front door under threat of legal sanction, was also unlawful but I am no expert of the finer points of UK law.
Sadly, our Prime Minister, who could not find it in himself to say something about George Floyd at PMQs last Wednesday until goaded into it by Keir Starmer, likewise kept quiet about the Black Lives Matter marches until the opportunity came to appeal to his voter base with a bit of dog whistle law and order stuff. He quickly trotted out phrases like “subverted by thuggery” followed by a chorus of Tory MPs joining in on social media, no doubt with the aim of painting those who disagreed with them as weak on keeping the peace. This all rather misses the point but when there is some political capital available to be gained, why not just go for it?
The disappearance of Colson into Bristol Docks is but a sideshow in relation to the issues raised by the Black Lives Matter campaign. Sadly, I fear the bolting police horse and the tumbling statue will become symbols of what Johnson describes as “thuggery” and little will be done to tackle the systemic issues that lie underneath the demonstrations. Already the report on the disproportionate effect of the Covid-19 epidemic on the BAME community has disappeared into the long grass – sorry, on to the desk of a junior minister.
Perhaps, however, a little good will come. We will sit up and take a bit more notice of the statues that are supposed to reflect the kind of country we wish to live in. Might it be a good idea for cities and towns to have local referendum every few years to get a view on the statues that local communities might like to keep, those that should go, and those who should be given such an honour for the first time? Perhaps temporary statues will become a thing with the great and good sharing plinths over the years. A bit of effective local engagement could emerge with all the benefits that would bring. One can but hope.
In the meantime, I defy anybody to get a rope around Lord Nelson in Trafalgar Square.
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