Even this was too much for one Conservative councillor, according to a 2018 report on Bristol Live:
Cllr Richard Eddy said someone taking the law into the own hands and ‘unilaterally removing’ the plaque, which recognises Colston’s involvement in the transatlantic slave trade, ‘might be justified’.
The website went on to quote him:
"This pathetic bid to mount a secondary revisionist plaque on Colston's Statue is historically-illiterate and a further stunt to try to reinvent Bristol's history.."If it goes through, it will be a further slap-in-the-face for true Bristolians and our city's history delivered by ignorant, left-wing incomers."
If this is how a leading Tory met such a reasonable suggestion, it's easy to understand why people decided to take the matter in to their own hands.
You can see Cllr Eddy and his golliwog mascot in the Bristol Live report.
6 comments:
Getting rid of the statue has been going on for years. Talk got nowhere. Eventually it was agreed to put a plaque on it. THAT TOOk 2 YEARS to be dealt with.Leading to the statue being dropped into the River. Talk is fine BUT THERE COMES A TIME WHEN ACTION IS NEEDED IF 'FOLLOWING THE RIGHT gets nowhere. PROCEDURE'Following the procedure is a way of avoiding action which just leads to the sort of action that happened.Yes talk, BUT MAKE A DEADLINE FOR CONCRETE ACTION.
Better education and honest conversations about our imperial past need to happen, not wanton destruction.
It is very depressing to see people in our party supporting a Communist-style 'cultural revolution' and the destruction of any historical objects that a small vocal minority find offensive. Throughout history extreme ideologies have sought to erase physical memories of past regimes. They usually fail and they always cause more social division and conflict.
We now have the clueless Lib Dem MP for Oxford now calling for the destruction of a statue of a fellow Liberal.
We need a bit more Hopkin Morris and Gladstone in the party and a bit less populist Corbynism
Seeing the statues of Soviet-era dictators toppled is one of my favourite political memories, Anonymous.
Anon: "It is very depressing to see people in our party supporting a Communist-style 'cultural revolution'...
Maoism has been so dead that its history is recorded in decades. We are looking to see how Lib Dems defend liberals in Hong Kong. I presume that other European countries look after their citizens.
With respect Jonathan, I do think there is a difference between toppling the statue of a tyrant responsible for the death of millions of people and toppling the statue of an elected leader who prevented native Africans losing the vote, established the leading progressive (now ANC) newspaper in South Africa, supported Home Rule, and was a prominent 'advanced' Liberal of his time.
The fact that a potential Liberal leaader can't seem to see the moral difference between the two is very indicative of the state of our parliamentary party.
I was drawing a parallel with Edward Colston, Anonymous, who is the subject of my post.
If you want to talk about someone else, I suggest you tell us who it is.
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