Three men and a woman who had participated in the spectacular debunking 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 acquitted 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 years 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 those close to them, after just over two weeks of hearings in Bristol.
As she left the room, the accused, 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 “delighted” with the decision.
Banksy to the rescue
The four defendants appeared wearing a t-shirt designed by the city’s street artist Banksy to support them. The damage had been assessed in total at 4,000 pounds sterling (almost 6,900 Canadian dollars).
“The truth is that the defendants should never have been prosecuted”, affirmed Raj Chada, lawyer for the defendant Jake Skuse, deeming “shameful” that the municipality “did not remove the statue of the slaver Edward Colston , which so shocked the people of Bristol, and just as shameful that she subsequently supported the prosecution ”.
For Blinne Ní Ghrálaigh, lawyer for 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 forced labor of more than 84,000 black men, women and children as a” most righteous and wisest man “- would not be proportionate,” she added.
On Twitter, the movement “Save our statues” blasted a decision which “not only gives the green light to political vandalism, but also legitimizes the identity politics of division that it has helped to fuel”.
The Briton 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
In the United Kingdom, the shock wave born from the Black Lives Matter movement in spring 2020 provoked an introspection on 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, London finally chose to leave them in place, but to contextualize them.
In Bristol, two schools and an auditorium that 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.