On Wednesday 15th July statue of a Black Lives Matter protester which replaced that of the slave trader Edward Colston in Bristol was removed by the council.
According to Marvin Rees, the mayor of Bristol, the statue symbolises a black woman making the black power salute as the “work and decision of a London-based artist” who did not have the permission or support of the people of the city. The sculpture, it is believed, will be held at the city’s museum for the artist to collect or donate to the collection.
In the meantime, the mayor has launched a commission to help Bristol residents decide what should replace Colston’s statue, which was thrown into the harbour by protesters on June 7.
“Anything put on the plinth outside of the process we’ve put in place will have to be removed. The people of Bristol will decide its future,” he said in a statement to The Times.
Marc Quinn had not secured permission from the local authorities to erect the statue and acknowledged that it would not be a “permanent solution” for the plinth.
The damaged and graffitied Colston statue is to be placed in a Bristol museum along with the Black Lives Matter placards left at the scene on the day it was toppled. But there are fears that new figure could stoke tensions in the city. A petition is calling for a statue of Paul Stephenson, a Bristol civil rights activist, to be erected has received more than 10,000 signatures.
Mr Stephenson, a social worker, led the 1963 boycott of the Bristol Omnibus Company, protesting against its refusal to employ black or Asian drivers or conductors. The campaigns led by Mr Stephenson, now 83, were instrumental in paving the way for the first Race Relations Act, in 1965. His family have made it known that he is not keen on the idea of a statue, so the petition has been changed to call for Edward Colston to be replaced with “a black individual”. That petition has more than 75,000 signatures.
