‘It’s one of those moments where the world gets reframed. And in the reframing you realise something around the solidity of a story and how actually that solidity of a story suddenly disappears. It is no longer as solid as you think it is, something that can be deconstructed in a second. A new narrative just literally happens before your eyes.’
Activist on the toppling of the Colston statue in Bristol (anonymous)
On 7 June 2020, 10,000 people took part in a protest in Bristol in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement following the death of George Floyd at the hands of police on 25 May 2020 in Minneapolis. Police officers had placed Floyd in a chokehold, which ultimately led to the Black American man’s death. In the depths of the first pandemic lockdown, Floyd’s exclamation ‘I can’t breathe’ echoed around the world via the media. The incident was yet another example of the ongoing severity of police violence. In the USA, but also in Europe, it is a phenomenon with a long, albeit differentiated, historical continuity closely and systemically linked to slavery, racism, white supremacy, and capitalism.
The 2020 BLM movement that sprang up as a result therefore also included the toppling of monuments as a means of protest. These stood as manifestations of past (and present) systems of violence that occupied prominent places in the discourses surrounding the protest movement and were directly linked to the movement’s other demands for human rights. Statues of officers or figures from the Confederacy came down in the USA in the immediate aftermath of Floyd’s death, followed by the toppling of monuments in other places around the world. It was within context that four activists – the ‘Colston Four’ – toppled the Edward Colston statue in the Bristol city centre, where it was subsequently thrown into the nearby harbour.
Known as Bristol’s leading philanthropist in his time, Colston made his fortune in the 17th and 18th centuries as a merchant involved in the transatlantic slave trade, among other things. His activities thus coincided with the period of the so-called ‘first’ British Empire, characterised by Britain’s colonial expansion in the Caribbean and on the North American coast, which included the violent practice of the transatlantic slave trade. In the 1720s, Bristol was also involved in it as an important harbour. The erection of the Colston statue in 1895 vividly illustrates the role that the culture of public monuments played in the nation-building processes of the 19th century: they served to embody political values and ideas about identity and were intended to promote a positive, national self-image. It is therefore not surprising that the Colston statue failed to address Colston’s involvement in the transatlantic slave trade, while the accompanying memorial plaque also lacked any mention of his links to British imperialism and colonialism.
This is, in view of the diversity of society in the 21st century, not only difficult to comprehend, but can no longer be justified. It is true that in many contexts in recent decades there has been a change in practices and processes in the design of newly erected memorials and monuments. However, discourses surrounding “old” monuments and their worthiness of protection are proving to be extraordinarily persistent.
Many conservatives view the removal of monuments as risking erasing history. In doing so, they overlook the fact that history is always constructed and shaped via narration and representational culture – there is thus no such thing as a ‘neutral’ or ‘delimited’ urban space from a remembrance policy perspective. The toppling of a statue will not erase the entire history of British imperialism and colonialism (or other historical contexts), nor remembrance of them. Their continuities extend too far into the present; Colston remains a presence in Bristol’s cityscape as a namesake beyond the toppled statue. Likewise, our societies continue to be permeated by police violence, racial profiling, and persistent racism.
It is therefore important to recognise that, when activists resort to toppling monuments, the act was usually preceded by years of demands: demands politically blockaded via a structural silencing of the communities making them. In the case of the Colston statue, community actors have attempted to amend the plaque’s text since the 1990s. Although the intent in this case was clearly not to ‘erase’ memory, but rather to restructure public historical discourses critically in relation to the imperial and colonial past, this endeavour failed. There are many other such examples. It is also useful to contextualise and relate the ‘militant’ character of monument toppling, as it is often portrayed in public debates, to the long-term structural violence experienced by those affected. This concept of violence also played a role in the court case against the ‘Colston Four’ in 2022, who were accused of ‘criminal damage to property’ and ultimately acquitted.
The toppling of the Colston statue in Bristol and other removals of monuments as part of the BLM protests in 2020 created a brief moment of renewed attention in Germany and Europe to discourses on abolitionist futures, collective memory, and on dealing with those societies’ own histories of violence. Remembrance of this day offers an opportunity to build on that movement to develop new perspectives and remembrance policy strategies.
