The jury that acquitted four protesters who toppled the slave trader from his plinth was right. Their city is better off now
The decision by a jury in Bristol to acquit the “Colston Four” of criminal damage, following their role in the toppling of a statue of the slave trader Edward Colston in June 2020, is a welcome sign that Britain is changing. In the 17th century Colston was one of Britain’s wealthiest slave traders. It speaks volumes about what Bristol’s Victorian civic leaders valued when they decided to erect a monument to Colston in 1895, almost a century after the slave trade was abolished (decades before slavery itself). Just 12 years earlier, a second statue of William Wilberforce, who campaigned for slavery’s abolition, was erected in his home city of Hull. Yet in the south-western English port, whose wealth was built on the flesh trade, it was seen as fit to honour Colston with a monument, and a plaque describing him as “virtuous and wise”.
The prosecution should never have been brought, and perhaps would not have been had the home secretary, Priti Patel, and other ministers, been less vociferous in their condemnations of the protests, which culminated in Colston’s statue being dumped in the harbour. It is far from clear that this use of the state’s resources was in the public interest. Six other activists were dealt with via a “restorative justice” route, including voluntary work.
