Will the acquittal end the controversy? Three men and a woman who had participated in the spectacular unbolting of the statue of the slave trader Edward Colston in the United Kingdom during a demonstration of the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020 were released on Wednesday by the British justice.
On June 7, 2020, this statue, which had been controversial for years in Bristol, in the west of England, was toppled by the crowd and then thrown into the waters of the Avon, the river that runs through the city, during protests caused by the death in late May of George Floyd, a black American killed by a white policeman in the United States.
A case heavy with symbols
Prosecuted for degradation, the four defendants, aged 22 to 33, had admitted their participation in the facts but had contested the criminal nature of their acts, pleading not guilty in this case heavy with symbols. The popular jury won their case. The decision was greeted with cries of joy from relatives of the defendants, after just over two weeks of hearings in Bristol.
On leaving the room, the defendant Rhian Graham thanked all those who had demonstrated “in the name of equality” on the day of the debacle. “One thing we do know is Colston doesn’t represent us,” she said, saying she was “thrilled” after the decision.
Banksy to the rescue
The four defendants appeared wearing a T-shirt designed by street artist Banksy, originally from the city, to support them. The damage had been assessed in total at 4,000 pounds sterling (nearly 4,700 euros).
“The truth is that the defendants should never have been prosecuted,” responded Raj Chada, lawyer for one of them, Jake Skuse, deeming “shameful” that the municipality “did not remove the statue of the slaver Edward Colston who hurt the people of Bristol so much, and just as ashamed that they subsequently supported the prosecution ”.
For Blinne Ni Ghralaigh, lawyer for the accused Rhian Graham, this decision demonstrates the importance of popular jurors, who “represent the collective sense of justice of the population”.
Here, “they concluded that a conviction for the removal of this statue – which glorified a slave trader involved in the slavery of more than 84,000 black men, women and children, as a” most righteous and wise man “- would not be proportionate,” she added.
On Twitter, the movement “save our statues” blasted a decision which “not only gives a green light to political vandalism, but also legitimizes the identity politics of division that it has helped to fuel”.
The British Edward Colston had enriched himself in the slave trade. He is said to have sold 100,000 West African slaves in the Caribbean and the Americas between 1672 and 1689, before using his fortune to finance the development of Bristol, which has long earned him a reputation as a philanthropist.
Introspection around the country’s colonial past
In the United Kingdom, the shock wave of the Black Lives Matter movement in spring 2020 provoked an introspection around the country’s colonial past and its representation in the public space.
A monument paying homage to Winston Churchill had been tagged with the inscription “racist”, which had provoked strong reactions. Several leading British organizations, such as the Bank of England or Lloyds, which insured slave ships, have apologized.
After initially deciding to remove two statues, the City of London finally decided to maintain them by contextualizing them.
In Bristol, two schools and a performance hall which bore Colston’s name were renamed. As for the statue, it had been recovered by the local authorities. A year after her unbolt, she had been at the center of a temporary exhibition dedicated to the birth of the Black Lives Matter movement in the United Kingdom.