|
Topic Originator: ipswichpar
Date: Sat 8 Jan 10:36
I`m confused.....is it OK to break stuff and put others at risk if you don`t like it?
Seems like a very strange decision.
|
|
|
|
Topic Originator: jake89
Date: Sat 8 Jan 10:45
There are ways and means of doing things. I understand how the statue could be considered offensive, but that doesn`t give a right to tear it down without permission.
Can I head down to England and destroy the Oliver Cromwell statue? Can people from Pittsburgh come to Dunfermline and topple the Andrew Carnegie statue?
The key thing is surely to understand the reason these statues and street names were picked in the first place?
|
|
|
|
Topic Originator: Wotsit
Date: Sat 8 Jan 14:41
Can I head down to England and destroy the Oliver Cromwell statue?
Well done, you just used the same argument as Jacob Rees Mogg.
The reason why both you and he are wrong in this case is that there is no argument that Colson did significant harm and should not be celebrated. That isn`t a controversy like with Cromwell or Carnegie.
The statue in question had been a massive bone of contention in Bristol (an extremely diverse city) for at least 40 years with everyone accepting that Coulson was a terrible person but with a minority claiming that "heritage" was a good enough reason to celebrate slave traders.
It`s also worth noting that it was a jury who acquitted them, after having heard the full context of why they did what they did. We don`t often mention it, but juries are entitled to nullify charges by deciding that whilst the accused technically broke the law, they do not feel that a conviction would be appropriate. I`d love to have been a fly on the wall in that jury room tbh, that sort of common sense is rare!
The enemy travels by private jet, not by dinghy.
|
|
|
|
Topic Originator: jake89
Date: Sat 8 Jan 15:55
So you`re in favour of allowing people to just tear down things they find offensive?
If it`s been problematic in Bristol for so long then why not lobby the local authority to remove it? Destroying it in the fashion they did simply encourages racists.
|
|
|
|
Topic Originator: Stoo
Date: Mon 10 Jan 08:28
Its my understanding, as limited as it is, that there was years and years of lobbying and petitioning to have it removed which fell on deaf ears.
"For years, members of Bristol`s black community, historians and campaigners had been lobbying for the statue to be removed, but the truth is it was seen as something of a long-term goal. It was a listed monument, and campaigners focused their efforts on other things."
Instead it seems he was openly celebrated. Even in schools.
https://www.bristolpost.co.uk/news/bristol-news/how-city-failed-remove-edward-4211771
There is levels to this and some ****s need to be chucked in the sea.
Post Edited (Mon 10 Jan 08:36)
|
|
|
|
Topic Originator: jake89
Date: Mon 10 Jan 17:46
I wasn`t aware of that, stoo.
This sounds to me that whilst one group was rightly lobbying for its removal, another group presumably was objecting.
Whilst I agree with its removal, I don`t agree with HOW it was done.
|
|
|
|
Topic Originator: Luxembourg Par
Date: Mon 10 Jan 18:02
Can I rightly assume that all you ‘anti-slaver’ protesters will be pulling down Cleopatra’s Needle shortly?
And then on to Egypt to pull down the pyramids as they were clearly erected using slave labour?
|
|
|
|
Topic Originator: Stoo
Date: Mon 10 Jan 20:32
"Can I rightly assume that all you ‘anti-slaver’ protesters will be pulling down Cleopatra’s Needle shortly?
And then on to Egypt to pull down the pyramids as they were clearly erected using slave labour?"
Yes, mate, absolutely. Heading there in the spring if covid restrictions allow.
Ooooh, I like that. Anti-Slaver...I mean I slaver a lot but definitely anti-slavery. I think its just bloody awful.
Post Edited (Mon 10 Jan 20:32)
|
|
|
|
Topic Originator: jake89
Date: Mon 10 Jan 20:40
Pyramids etc aren`t a great example. They`re not specifically celebrating someone involved in the slave trade (they are to some degree but not specifically. Additionally, no-one really know how they were built.
To me the key thing is acting properly. What appears to have happened with Colston was there was a suggestion to remove his statue but it didn`t gather much traction. Local authorities won`t take action from a few hundred people out of hundreds of thousands of residents. The proper approach would have been to promote the desire to remove it rather than go ahead and do it themselves. It could have gone in a museum to highlight that Colston had significant involvement in Bristol but wasn`t a very nice man.
Just my view, but all the destruction has achieved is firing up the racists.
|
|
|
|
Topic Originator: Stoo
Date: Mon 10 Jan 20:51
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-bristol-57350650
It is in a museum, so mission accomplished there, and I think it looks better with the graffiti. Very poignant.
I also don`t think firing up/exposing racists is a bad thing.
I accept its potentially a bad precedent to set but in this instance, nothing bad seems to have come from what happened.
|
|
|
|
Topic Originator: Tad Allagash
Date: Mon 10 Jan 22:55
A better example might be to destroy a smartphone in a protest against the child slave labour used to mine the cobalt in its batteries.
Of course you would need another smartphone to film it and post it on social media, otherwise you wouldn’t get the credit as a social justice hero.
|
|
|
|
Topic Originator: red-star-par
Date: Mon 10 Jan 23:33
Quote:
Tad Allagash, Mon 10 Jan 22:55
A better example might be to destroy a smartphone in a protest against the child slave labour used to mine the cobalt in its batteries.
Of course you would need another smartphone to film it and post it on social media, otherwise you wouldn’t get the credit as a social justice hero.
Quite a good example that one. When you think about it, there is probably not many people who don`t own technology or clothes that`s not been made using child slave labour. Maybe folk should be out burning down Primark to protest. We are all partly to blame for slavery. No one here is innocent.
Personally, I like a good statue, and there isn`t enough of them, so I would have preferred it was moved to a museum and perhaps had some signage to explain the full story behind how he made his money.
The British Government paid out vast sums of money to the slave owners when slavery was abolished, so much in fact, that the debt for all that money paid out wasn`t paid off until 2015, so it`s very likely that most of us have paid money to those slave owners and their descendents. You could say, they swapped their slaves in order to make slaves of the UK tax payer.
Maybe what people should be doing is investigating who made money out of all this. In reality it is the proceeds of crime, and it could be doing with being redistributed.
There is a reason that Royalty and The Establishment amassed so much money, it was through brutality, murder, slavery, theft, opium, protection rackets, going back thousands of years. That fact that we allow them to exist is shameful
|
|
|
|
Topic Originator: veteraneastender
Date: Fri 14 Jan 12:15
Dollar Academy was originally funded by a slave trader who donated to its being established.
The legacy of the slave trade is all around.
|
|
|
|
Topic Originator: Wotsit
Date: Fri 14 Jan 13:24
The enemy travels by private jet, not by dinghy.
|
|
|
|
Topic Originator: veteraneastender
Date: Sun 16 Jan 14:45
Many think that the Confederate States (1861-65) were the last in the Americas to have slavery - whereas it wasn’t abolished in Brazil until 1881.
|
|
|
|
|