The acquittal of the four defendants for their role in the toppling of Edward Colston in Bristol has created an interesting debate and in some, more right-wing quarters, fury.  In an interview following the verdict Boris Johnson stated we cannot seek to “retrospectively change our history“

But what history is he talking about, the one where this country was heavily involved in slavery or some other history around Empire and ‘jolly hockey sticks and all that sort of thing’?  

History tells us that this country’s empire, like all empires significantly benefited from its conquests to the detriment of those conquered.  Although if you watch the Monty Python film The Life of Brian, the right of the political spectrum might find some comfort in the sketch that starts with ‘What have the Romans ever done for us’?  This country’s history is complex more so because it is a shared history with its own inhabits and those of other countries across most of the world.  A history of slaves and slave traders.  A history of rich and powerful and poor and powerless. A history of remapping of countries, redefining of borders, of the creation of unrest, uncertainty and chaos.  A history of theft, asset stripping, taking advantage and disempowerment. As well as a history of standing up to would be oppressors.  It is a complex history but not one that is somehow rewritten or removed by the toppling of a statue of a slave trader.

The tearing down of the statue is history. It is a fact that this country’s so called great and good of the time were tarnished by a despicable trade in human misery.  The legacy of that lives on to this day. Great and good then, not so now, in fact they never were, were they? It may be questionable whether the circumstances of the removal of the statue were right, hence the charges of criminal damage. It might be questionable whether the verdict given by the jury was right, but surely this isn’t about changing history, it is about making it.

There are suggestions that the verdict may be referred to a higher authority, perhaps the Supreme Court.  It appears right that there was a case to answer, and it seems right that the jury were allowed to deliver the verdict they did. There is nothing perverse in this, nothing to challenge, due process has taken place and the people have spoken. The removal of the statue was not criminal damage and therefore was lawful.

If a statue is an affront to the people of a locality, then they should be able to have it removed. If is such an affront to common decency, then the only people guilty of an offence are those that failed to remove it in the first place.  Of course, it is more complex than that and perhaps the bigger question is why this didn’t happen sooner?

It would seem fitting to replace the statue with something else. Something perhaps that shows that slowly people of this country are waking up to the country’s past, well at least some of them. A statue that commemorates a new beginning, that acknowledges the country’s true past and points the way to a far more humane future for all.  No Mr Johnson, we shouldn’t try to rewrite or obliterate history, we just need to change the way it written and stop ignoring the truth.