Plinth

Everyone in the UK is no doubt familiar with the toppling of the Edward Colston statue by protestors in June and the dumping of it in Bristol Harbour. I saw the empty plinth and realised they’d rolled the statue a fair way to reach the water. Such is the anger created that despite calls to address and contextualise for modern audiences the role that Colston played in the Atlantic slave trade, the authorities paid relatively little attention. Drastic action was rightfully taken.

There is lots of criticism levelled at this statue toppling for the financial cost. Yes there will be a financial cost to acts of defiance like this. If the dominant group, by which in ‘western’ nations I mean white people, are going to be up in arms about all of the redressal acts and costs, then they should have thought about that before they enslaved and systematically oppressed other races based on the colour of their skin. There are countless actions small and big needed to atone for the past and amend the systems that continue to unfairly treat people of colour. It requires a monumental shift in thinking. If the Colston statue incident has precipitated sky-high levels of indignation, the indignant are going to have to strap themselves in for the ride as the anti-racism movement will hopefully only build from here. It would be sensible for the indignant to get on board with the key message of overturning racism, rather than fuss over an empty plinth that used to host the statue of a man deeply embedded in the slave trade.

I took a ‘grab and go’ breakfast from the hotel buffet (a brown paper bag with a tub of bran flakes, a strawberry yogurt and buttery croissant) and went out to enjoy the sun in Bristol. As I was lugging a few bags and wanted to go easy on the ankle, I mainly lounged in Queen Square, from where it was an easy dart to the station. Temple Meads station must be one of the UK’s loveliest.

There’s a big statue of William III on horseback in the middle of Queen Square. Whether it was down to more of Bristol’s lively statue activism or just some drunk passersby scaling the statue on Saturday night, all through Sunday a traffic cone adorned William’s statue, providing a dash of colour and bringing new meaning to the word ‘conehead’.