Martin Upchurch Archive | ETOL Main Page
Letters, Socialist Worker, No. 2787, 11 January 2022.
Copyright © Socialist Worker.
Copied with thanks from the Socialist Worker Website.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
Between 1698 and 1807 a total of 2,114 ships set sail from Bristol to Africa and then to America and the Caribbean, carrying over half a million slaves.
The slave trade enriched the Bristol merchants.
They gathered together in cult-like clubs such as the Society of Merchant Venturers, while the ordinary people of Bristol toiled in brass and tobacco factories to make their riches possible.
The city reeks of the legacy, divided between the rich of the area of Clifton and the poor in the outlying areas.
p class="note">Edward Colston was a leading slave trader in the city, and his hands were soaked in the blood of the trade.He died in 1721 but 170 years later the city’s merchants wished to “honour” him by raising public subscriptions to erect a statue of him.
For years groups such as “Countering Colston” campaigned to have the statue removed.
To its shame, Bristol city council consistently avoided the subject and has done little to recognise the crimes of slavery in the city.
Nothing changed until a ten thousand-strong Black Lives Matter protest took place in the city in June 2020 and tore down Colston’s statue.
The story reverberated around the world and inspired a reckoning with Britain’s colonial and slave trading past.
In this context the charges brought by the Crown Prosecution Service of ‘criminal damage’ against the Colston four were indeed absurd. It is a credit to the defence team that their case was built on an anti-racist basis by outlining the horror of slavery.
The fact that the statue remained so long was correctly portrayed by the defence as an insult to the people multi-cultural Bristol.
Colston, in fact, was the real criminal.As the Colston 4 emerged from the court a great cheer went up from the supporters gathered outside. Anti-racists everywhere can take inspiration once more from events in the city.
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