The zombie
walks again. The same threadbare straw man has been clumsily wheeled out and
the same mantra repeated. The same song from the same hymn book once again
fills the air. Yet the rhetorical stance taken by those opposed to the renaming
of Bristol’s Colston Hall is less a cogent argument and more a tacit accusation
– attack camouflaged as a form of defence.
The
argument goes like this. To seek to rename the concert hall, or to want to
topple the statue of Edward Colston that overlooks the docks from which
Bristol’s slave ships once sailed is – somehow – to seek to erase a part of the
city’s history. It is a contemptibly disingenuous position and Colston’s
defenders know it. Buildings are not named in order to help us remember our
history, they are named to honour rich and powerful men; and sometimes they are
men whom we should revile rather than honour.
The
identical strategy was deployed last year by those determined to ensure that
the squat little statue of Cecil Rhodes, affixed to Oxford’s Oriel College, was
not permitted to fall. Rhodes was saved, not by the force of argument, but by
the same commodity that encouraged his 19th-century defenders to tolerate his
crimes and turn blind eyes to his abuses – money. And money is what for
centuries has persuaded Bristol’s civic leaders to focus monomaniacally on the
undoubted philanthropy of Edward Colston. Those who want to rename Colston
Hall, like the students who want to topple Cecil Rhodes (not that I
agree completely with them or their tactics), are campaigners for a fuller,
more honest remembrance of history, not its erasure.
The true
erasure of Bristol’s critical role in slavery and the slave trade began
centuries ago, when slavery was intentionally re-imagined as a “respectable
trade”. In the 18th century, a nationwide propaganda campaign attempted to
methodically wipe out the truth and convince an increasingly morally queasy
nation that slavery was essentially benign. Slavery’s propagandists argued in
pamphlets and books that the hundreds of thousands of Africans who toiled on
Britain’s Caribbean plantations had better diets, better homes and more free time
than the poor of England. Africans, they suggested, actively preferred slavery
over freedom and were a people naturally suited to bondage and the whip.
No British
city is more wilfully blind to its history than Bristol. Having lived in
Liverpool and London, two cities whose connections to slavery run deep, I can
say that Bristol stands head and shoulders above the competition in its
capacity to obscure its past and obfuscate its history. For three centuries,
slavery has been hidden behind that wall of lies and denial, but the biggest
lie of all was given literal solidity when it was cast into bronze and affixed
to the pedestal upon which stands the statue of Edward Colston. The
unctuous dedication on the plaque describes Colston as “one of the most virtuous
and wise sons of the city”.
Those words
were written in 1895, by which time Edward Colston had been in his
grave for 174 years, and Bristol was perhaps two thirds of the way through her
long age of denial about the centrality of slavery and the slave trade to its
past and its wealth. Edward Colston was neither virtuous nor wise. Amoral and
avaricious, he was also – let us not forget – a killer. Thousands of Africans
died to generate the wealth he later lavished on his home city. The real
victims of forgetting are the men, women and children who were enslaved by
Colston, a deputy governor of the Royal African Company – the entity
that transported more Africans into slavery than any in British history.
The
current refurbishment of Colston Hall, due to be completed in 2020, is, of
course, the perfect opportunity and the right moment for the venue to be
renamed.
I
know black Bristolians who refuse to set foot in Colston Hall while it carries
the name of a slave trader and to their enormous credit, Massive Attack,
Bristol’s most innovative and successful band, have for years refused to play
there.
Those
opposed to renaming the hall need to consider exactly what it says about the
city each time we ask a black musician to perform under Colston’s name. What
message does that send out about us and our respect for others? Names matter,
gestures matter and uncomfortable histories do not simply go away. But there
are other pressing reasons why Bristol needs to take this step.
Bristol’s
record on racial equality is the worst of any major British city.
A report jointly written by Manchester’s Centre on Dynamics of
Ethnicity and the Runnymede Trust, concluded that the 16% of Bristol’s population
who are BAME – black, Asian and minority ethnic – are subject to what it calls
an “ethical penalty”. Non-white Bristolians gain fewer academic qualifications
in the city’s schools, they find fewer opportunities in the local job market
and suffer inequalities in health provision, compared to the city’s white
communities. Dr Nissa Finney, of the CDE, noted that the extent of Bristol’s
“ethnic inequalities is striking and it has not improved in the last 15 years”.
Colston is
an issue that has deeply divided Bristol, which is perhaps appropriate as
few cities are as divided as this one. Clifton, the Georgian quarter
overlooking the Avon Gorge, is almost a city in itself – a middle-class citadel
high on the hill, towering over the largely white, working class and
comparatively deprived areas of Bedminster, Ashton and Southville. To the east
is St Pauls – run down but being rapidly gentrified, it is the
long-established centre of the city’s West Indian population.
The
socioeconomic and racial zoning of Bristol is worthy of the Deep South, and
that geographic distance is the enabler of profound differences of perspective.
From the Georgian squares of Clifton, Edward Colston might seem like merely a
feature of the city’s rich heritage. From St Pauls, Bristol’s seemingly
undimmed determination to honour his memory and marginalise his crimes appears
insensitive, even callous.
We need to
be honouring our commitments to the life chances of the thousands of minority
children currently in Bristol schools, not a long dead purveyor of human flesh.
We
are better than this. I look forward to 2020 when, as part of a mixed-race,
multicultural Bristolian crowd, I hope to finally watch Massive
Attack perform in their home city – in the venue formerly known as Colston
Hall.
