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Showing posts with label Statue destruction. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Statue destruction. Show all posts
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| By James Bloodworth |
Whenever people ask, I say I’m from Bristol. No one’s heard of where I’m really from (Burnham on Sea – just down the road). Besides, Bristol has always felt so much cooler. My tired old, windswept, provincial coastal town is rather embarrassing by comparison.
Until now. While the tearing down of the Colston statue may have superficially burnished the city’s hip, progressive credentials, it also illuminated the city’s dark side: a history of brutal imperial exploitation, worker rebellion and rampant inequality that never went away.
The city, in 1889, just before the statue was erected, had been described as “a seething centre of revolt”. Britain was in its imperial pomp, but the servants’ quarters were in revolt. The subversive creed of socialism was gaining ground among the West Country’s working class. Respectable Victorian society sought to counter that spirit of rebellion by promoting philanthropists and the paternalistic values of ‘great men’ – men like Edward Colston, who now finds himself sitting in the bottom of the marina while a new generation of rebels cheer.
Continue reading @ UnHerd .
From the Bristol Post A senior Tory city councillor in Bristol has described slave trader Edward Colston as a 'hero', and the toppling of his statue as 'frenzied thug violence'.Cllr Richard Eddy said he has received more mail in the past 24 hours over this one issue than he has over anything else in his 28 years as a councillor in Bristol - and it was a 'stream of outraged responses'.
The politician, who has served as the Conservative leader on Bristol City Council and is still the local councillor for Bishopsworth in the south of the city, said he was 'horrified and appalled' by the scenes in the city centre on Sunday afternoon, in which a group of people pulled down the statue and then it was rolled to the Floating Harbour and tipped over the edge.
... In 2001, he resigned as deputy leader of the Conservative group at City Hall after he began to use a golliwog doll as a mascot, and then got into hot water soon after that when he said the council should hire 'more attractive lesbians'.
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| Image @ Bristol Post |
Continue reading @ the Bristol Post.
A tenement, a dirty street
Walked and worn by shoe less feet…..
The days of Pearly Spencer
The race is almost run
– written and performed 1967 by David McWilliams from Ballymena, hi!
Boris Johnson, having a ‘few rotten apples’ in the Minneapolis Police Dept to thank for saving his politically plagued skin over the Dominic Cummings debacle, returned the favour by critically rounding on those in the UK protesting the death of George Floyd and not Anthony Grainger with references to COVID-19 and physical distancing - just as he did with Cummings! Priti Patel, not to be left out of the contrariety, followed in hot adulation of Boris by repeating his words in her tweet, originality being something Priti doesn’t suffer lightly.
Those who resorted to physical protestation when they dumped a statue of altruistic slave trader Edward Colston into the Bristol harbour were especially focused on as thugs and described by some, Peter Mandelson in particular, a man who’s very presence oozes living proof of moral and ethical etiquette, as mob rule.
Even Sir Keir Starmer, rounded on them and decried that their behaviour was wrong and that Colston’s statue should have been removed years ago after much discussion with tea and cake and possibly stored in a museum for historical reasons ... a man who after that remark is now destined to never enter 10 Downing Street!
Perhaps a ‘museum of historical cunts’ would be more suitable where those current cunts, mainly Bristol’s Society of Merchant Venturers, who previously and continuously supported its existence could go and worship him.
Actually destroying it and telling the historical truth of the man was never discussed ... a bit like Cromwell, Cecil Rhodes, Bomber Harris, Churchill or even Thatcher’s statue at Westminster and who all in their own individual way qualify for the museum of historical cunts. Just ask those on the receiving end of their actions!
Colston, a slave trader and Tory Member of Parliament, and no doubt an acquaintance of Oliver Cromwell, who used his fortune to justify his actions with philanthropic acts towards the good citizens of Bristol, just as all immoral and unethical murdering bastards do when seeking approval of their actions by the mob, now lies at the bottom of what constitutes part of the Bristol Channel.
Just as it has been estimated that up to 20,000 of his unwilling ‘shackled passengers’ on his transatlantic ships lie at the bottom of the Atlantic ocean due to food shortages or disease on board. Men women and children were shamefully dumped overboard to accommodate the survival of the rest of the cargo and guarantee profit. A moral compass that Britain retained throughout its history.
Slavery throughout the colonies was decreed immoral and unethical which apparently it wasn’t until then and abolished under the Abolishing of Slavery Act in 1833, even though trade in slavery was abolished in 1807. The descendants of those slaves now living in Britain were dutifully informed in 2015 by HRM Treasury that they had been paying of a debt in modern terms equivalent to £308 billion for the compensation to slave owners from the loss of earnings from their ancestors being declared free men and women ... they helped pay for it!
And in modern times the same duplicitous establishment attitude prevails with the Tory government policy of furlough. In 2008 the British government directly paid of the banking sectors debt to the tune of £137 billion. This time though the Tories came up with furlough. A pretentious government policy of kindness and consideration given to us by government to help us though this pandemic.
A policy that actually allows the government to ensure bank repayments are made while falsely endearing themselves to the people. 80% of wages, of which most of it goes on mortgages, car HP payments and credit card bills and thus staving off a run on the banks due to lack of payments – all routes of debt lead to the banks irrespective of the debt. Like the ancestors of the slaves, we’ve been duped.
And so:
Ring-a-ring o' roses,
A pocket full of posies,
A-tishoo! A-tishoo!
We all fall down…..
Some claim that the above nursery rhyme is in reference to the plague. But what specific pathogen it references has led to much debate on whether it is Bubonic or Black in nature. Bubonic being carried by the fleas of rats that jumped species to humans or Black (the Great Pestilence) that as yet is not fully understood but who’s wide disbursement and rapid spread is now widely believed to be down to something else rather than the usual suspects – rats.
Others believe it just a nonsense rhyme much like the daily briefing given by Conservative ministers on Covid-19 … although one is historical fact while the other is fiction.
Ring-a-ring o' roses, - normally references the red blotches on the skin…..government ministerial redners
A pocket full of posies, - normally references the sweet smelling flowers carried to ward of the plague….PPE or lack of it
A-tishoo! A-tishoo! – normally references the symptoms of the disease….Covid-19
We all fall down…..normally references those that succumb to its virulence, unfortunately the exception being Dominic Cummings!
But I will leave you with this,
Let us rejoice at the irony of Edward Coulston’s statue as it lies at the bottom of the dock in Bristol - just as many of his passengers ended their days in a watery grave.
And George Floyd, in my day a man who would have been classed as a ‘hood’ and who at some point in his criminal career would probably have been kneecapped, whose image is now painted on the walls on the Falls road and hailed by those who would have physically punished him as a symbol of resistance.
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