Edward Colston was a revered citizen of the English city of Bristol. He was a noted thilanthropist and when he died in 1721 the citizens gratefully contributed to a fund to erect a statue in his honour. His name is enshrined in much of the Bristol architecture including a private school, the city's concert hall, a towering office block and an assortment of suburban street names. The name plate at the base of that statue declares he was " a virtuous son of this city "
It says something of his changed status that this week a howling mob placed a rope around that statue and pulled if off its plinth. They dragged it through the streets to the waterfront and dumped it in the harbour. It was the way Colston amassed his fortune that brought a change of heart 125 years after his death.
Edward Colston was a slave trader and during his lifetime from 1636 to 1721 collecting slaves and selling them on the open market was a licensed English industry. Ship owners crewed their ships with cut throat crews and sent them to the coast of Africa. An armed party trekked inland until they encountered a native village. They surrounded it and their firearms prevailed against the crude weapons used by the villagers. They carefully examined their captives and rejected the old and infirm and children too young to survive the sea voyage. The men and women destined for the slave blocks were shackled, marched back to the coast and forced into the hold of their ship.
It was a cruel enslavement. The captives were chained together in appalling conditions with limited food and water, often for weeks that ran to months as the ship travelled to the cotton growing states of America or the sugar cane fields of the Caribbean. Their human waste was uncollected and a slave ship could be detected by the odour it emitted when it passed other traffic on the high seas. Usually many slaves died during the journey and the bodies were thrown overboard to be eaten by the following sharks.
At their destination they were put in holding pens to fatten them to get the best price when they were individually auctioned. Colston made a point of having his " brand " stamped into the chest of his captives with a red hot branding iron, the way rachers branded their cattle. The letters " RAC " stood for "Royal African Company " and this signified that he operated with an individual English license to collect slaves. The slaves travelling in his ships were branded for life.
We are now seeing a growing world wide trend where the relatives of former slaves now live in the countries that contributed to their misery. That statue to Colston is seen as an affront and together with the anti slavery zealots of today they are not prepared to let those statues stand without complaint. In the United States, statues relating to the Confederacy which sought to perpetuate slavery during the American civil war are being torn down.
All this is finding voice in the "Black lives matter " movement. In much of the world, having a skin that is not white condems that person to inferior status in jobs and housing and their relationship with the police. A black persons death is not treated as seriously nor investigated with the same zeal than if a white person had been involved.
It is becoming clear that those we depicted as national heros of yesteryear are being called upon to account for their actions in the light of the conditions that prevail today.
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