Colston Statue empty plinth plaque approved by councillors amid row over wording

The wording for a new plaque on the empty Colston Statue plinth has finally been agreed by Bristol city councillors after six years of debate. But changes to the original proposal, which removed a reference to the 17th-century slave trader having been celebrated as a city benefactor when the monument was first put up, were fiercely criticised by a Tory councillor who branded the omission “utterly historical revision that is worthy of the Nazis”.

The development control committee voted by 7-1 in favour of the revised wording, with Cllr Richard Eddy (Conservative, Bishopsworth) voting against. Members approved planning permission last February on condition that the proposed sentences were changed amid concerns the plaque “downplayed and glossed over” Edward Colston’s role in the slave trade.

The statue was toppled and rolled into the harbour by Black Lives Matter protesters four years ago. It is now on permanent display at M Shed museum as part of an exhibition about protest in Bristol.

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Cllr Eddy told the committee on Wednesday, November 20: “In my view and in the view of most Bristolians I’ve spoken to, the events of June 7, 2020, are a stain and shameful on Bristol’s long past. We saw a mob of criminals and hooligans vandalise a protected monument, which we as the local planning authority should have been protecting.

“We also then saw the then-mayor of the city [Marvin Rees] encourage and excuse these actions. The actions of this council were pitiful.

“The actions of the alleged enforcers of the law, Avon & Somerset Police, were pathetic and next to useless.” He said the committee had to decide whether the proposed words were appropriate and accurate.

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“They are manifestly not,” Cllr Eddy said. “Deleting the reference to Edward Colston, one of Bristol’s greatest sons, being a benefactor is outrageous – an utterly historical revision that is worthy of the Nazis.

“The fact is whether we like it or not, and whatever the source of his income and wealth, I doubt anyone will still benefit as many Bristolians in 400 years as Edward Colston, in education, healthcare and housing. I therefore find that ugly omission utterly shameful.

“I suspect I will be a lone voice but an honest Bristolian voice and it needs to be said. I must also add, and certainly I’m not in the business of encouraging lawlessness, but in my heart I would find it very difficult to criticise anyone who took it upon themselves to remove this plaque or to change it.”

Cllr Guy Poultney (Green, Cotham) told the meeting: “I had thought this would be relatively uncontroversial but here we go. Under the leadership of Edward Colston, the Royal African Company was responsible for the forced transportation of 84,000 slaves, almost 20,000 of whom died.

“That was where his fortune came from. The idea that we would have a plaque in the city referring to him as being celebrated and as a benefactor of the city cannot be presented in isolation, those voices cannot be erased from history.

“The idea that this was not a problem until a few upstarts started getting lairy about it a few years ago is not a narrative that can be allowed to take root. There were people who objected at the time, they simply weren’t listened to because they weren’t considered people.”

He thanked Bristol Legacy Foundation and planning officers for amending the wording “slightly but very meaningfully”. Cllr Poultney said the plaque now did not reflect one side of the debate and instead provided a fuller version of that history.

Cllr Caroline Gooch (Lib Dem, Westbury-on-Trym & Henleaze) said: “This committee arguing over the wording is not really our place. It should have been a city conversation.

“I’ll be voting it through but the council dropped the ball in not getting that contextualisation plaque up beforehand, which had been asked for for years, and the events happened very much as a consequence of that lack of action.” Cllr Fabian Breckels (Labour, St George Troopers Hill) said his only issue was that the original wording was drawn up by people from Black heritage on Bristol Legacy Foundation but now a “predominantly white committee decides it’s going to tweak it”.

He said: “I’m slightly uncomfortable about that. But the issue is, yes, Colston was seen as a benefactor but it was dirty money, it was blood money because 20,000 died.

“History can be uncomfortable when you start to realise that cities including ours got rich on the back of enslavement of people. If we’ve now got agreed words, we need to put this to bed, we need to get this plaque up to explain what happened.”

Cllr Paula O’Rourke (Green, Clifton) said: “When Cllr Eddy spoke about this being a revisionist interpretation of history, he was saying that with very negative connotations but there can be positive connotations to that too. It is revisionist but history is iterative and it changes and people adapt, and this is the 21st-century version of what people want to be on that statue, so I’m very happy to support this.

“It’s not whitewashing history because historians, history books and people who tell the whole story will tell the story about how there was a plaque saying he was a benefactor and then that was taken down.” The committee approved a minor change to the wording, proposed by ex-English teacher Cllr O’Rourke, to say it was rolled into “Bristol Harbour” instead of “the harbour” by 2-0 votes with six abstentions, before the main vote on her amended proposal which was 7-1 in favour.

The plaque will say: “On 13 November 1895, a statue of Edward Colston (1636 - 1721) was unveiled here. In the late twentieth and early twenty-first century, the celebration of Colston was increasingly challenged given his prominent role in the enslavement of African people.

“On 7 June 2020, the statue was pulled down during Black Lives Matter protests and rolled into Bristol Harbour. Following consultation with the city in 2021, the statue entered the collections of Bristol City Council ’s museums.”

The deleted sentence was: “On 13 November 1895, a statue of Edward Colston (1636 - 1721) was unveiled here, celebrating him as a city benefactor.” Back in 2018, the council agreed a new plaque should be placed on the Colston Statue, which then still stood on the plinth, to detail his role in the slave trade.

The original one from 1895 did not mention the slave trade but described Colston as “one of the most virtuous and wise sons of the city”.