Colston’s Toppling Five Years On

Five years ago, Black Lives Matter protestors toppled the statue of slave trader, Tory MP and city benefactor Edward Colston (1636 – 1721) in my home city of Bristol. On a Sunday afternoon in June 2020, anti-racism activists pulled Colston’s bronze statue from its plinth, rolled it nearly half a mile through the city, and pushed it into the harbour. This event was part of a wider global moment – the series of BLM protests following the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, and the Covid-19 pandemic.

Before June 2020, the statue had become a lightning-rod for Britain’s so-called ‘culture wars’ over its colonial legacies. Bristol City Council’s inaction in the run-up to the statue’s Toppling has since become a cautionary tale for local authorities and curators negotiating controversial monuments. But the focus of my research has been how the response of the Council, its History Commission and museum curators over the last five years also serves as a positive example for other regions grappling with reconciliation and divided communities.

Following the Toppling, Bristol’s Council set out on a path of collaboration – seeking to engage with as many Bristolians as possible, particularly previously marginalised communities. To that end, the newly formed ‘We Are Bristol’ History Commission launched the What Next? Survey in 2021 alongside a free temporary exhibition of the Colston Statue at a public museum, Bristol’s M-Shed, in an attempt to hear locals’ views on the future of the statue.

The survey’s findings informed the approach of curators to the statue’s permanent inclusion in Bristol’s M-Shed Museum’s collections. Since March 2024, the statue has been displayed, lying horizontally and still covered in graffiti, in a permanent exhibition on the power of protest. Historic England then updated its listing of the statue to note its permanent place in the M-Shed museum. As the public body responsible for protecting England’s historic environment, this move suggests that curators intend on preserving the statue in this form: a snapshot of protest, racial injustice and Bristol’s history of enslavement.

The exhibition that the Colston Statue has been placed in charts the history of protest and demonstration in the city, from riots over the Corn Laws in the nineteenth century and the 1963 Bristol Bus Boycott, to Kill the Bill Protests in 2021. By doing so, the statue is contextualised within a much longer history of dissent in Bristol – suggesting that the Toppling was not an anomaly, but rather a continuation of a longer narrative of debate and demonstration.

Every curatorial decision behind the inclusion of the Colston Statue in the M-Shed is laden with meaning, from its placement within the museum itself to its presentation to visitors. These are intended to shift the narrative of the statue from one celebrating a ‘great man’ to an emblem of Bristolian protest against racial injustice. Bristolians seemingly backed and indeed motivated this decision: the What Next? Survey showed eight out of ten respondents wanted the slave trader’s statue in a museum. Furthermore, nearly two thirds felt ‘very positive’ about its Toppling.

In this way, avoiding the further celebration of the Colston Statue reflects the more ambivalent opinions of Bristol’s Afro-Caribbean survey respondents. Just over half of Black African, Afro-Caribbean and Black British respondents were in favour of its relocation to a museum. One respondent wrote, ‘as a Black person I personally wouldn’t want to come and visit the museum’ if the Colston Statue was displayed ‘as if he is being praised for what he did and his racism’.

Tim Cole, a member of the History Commission, acknowledged this ambivalence as part of a wider explanation behind the rationale of the statue’s temporary display in the M-Shed in 2021. This would suggest that not only were curators attentive to the opinions of Bristol’s Afro-Caribbean community, but they used them to shape the statue’s permanent display.

The Council took steps to ensure the Colston Statue would in no way be ‘glorified’ within the museum. It is placed in a ‘quiet corner’ of the Protest gallery, shielded from immediate view when entering. The placement also allows people to avoid the statue, guided by a trigger warning near the entrance. When I first visited, I was struck by how hard it was to find  – despite setting out with the express intent to look at the new display, I got waylaid by the rest of the Protest exhibit. One weary guide later confided to me that they had spent much of the time since the display’s opening directing somewhat disorientated visitors towards it.

The former slave trader’s statue is by no means the Protest gallery’s centrepiece – visitors walk through most of the gallery before finding the statue. They must therefore first be exposed to Bristol’s history of radicalism and political agitation before viewing its most controversial statue.

The statue is displayed horizontally, the same as its temporary display in 2021, subverting its originally intended purpose of glorifying Edward Colston as a literally and metaphorically ‘upstanding’ pillar of Bristolian identity. Rather than towering over visitors imperiously, he lies beneath them as a figure to be closely examined. The statue is visually much the same as it was immediately after its Toppling – in a prone position, covered in graffiti. Bristolians also supported this decision: more than 80% of respondents preferred the statue to be displayed lying down and with graffiti left on. Conserving the graffiti emphasises that the primary educational and social value of the statue now comes directly from the 2020 protests. The graffiti is not a temporary blemish on a piece of celebratory art, it is an intrinsic part of the statue’s history and relevance.

The statue is also surrounded by placards waved by anti-racism protestors. Following a decision by the Mayor, over 500 placards were collected from the site around the plinth the day after the protest and taken for conservation. They were photographed and catalogued, with a selection added to the M-Shed’s permanent archives. Any stains to the placards, such as from eggs thrown at the statue or footprints, were also conserved as equally important parts of the story of the Colston Statue. Some of those near the statue read ‘BRISTOL HAS A LOT TO ANSWER FOR’, ‘JUSTICE FOR GEORGE FLOYD’ and ‘THE UK IS NOT INNOCENT BLM’. These also serve to locate the Toppling within a wider national and international conversation around police brutality, institutional racism and colonial legacies.

Curators wanted the new display to be a space for dialogue and reconciliation through the inclusion of collaborative elements. Visitors are given the ability to shape the Colston display through the use of four timeline boards charting the historical context of the statue’s Toppling. Throughout the entire process after the statue’s Toppling, the History Commission and M-Shed curators have prioritised giving Bristolians a voice over the future of the statue, recognising perhaps that refusing to do this before 2020 was a factor behind its Toppling. The four timelines chart four distinct narratives: ‘Racism and Resistance’, ‘The Colston Statue’, ‘British and International Politics’, and ‘Popular and Counter Culture’, contextualising Edward Colston and his statue within wider local and national trends.

Some key events have already been filled in by curators, including Colston’s birth in 1636 and the erection of his statue in 1895, the rest of the space is left blank for visitors to fill. A nearby desk invites them to add to the timeline themselves, stating that ‘working together, we create a rich story’. The direct involvement of visitors is therefore crucial to the continued relevance of the Colston display, and allows it to grow and evolve along with the city. It is also symbolic of a new way of viewing the city’s past – that it is shared by all Bristolians, that there are multiple and conflicting ways of writing it, and that marginalised communities who have long been excluded from curatorship should be given space to offer their perspectives.

The inclusion of the Colston Statue within the Protest gallery in the M-Shed marked a successful resolution to what was a divisive time in Bristol’s history. Other cities may well have regarded the events leading up to the statue’s Toppling as a cautionary tale, but they should also heed the example set by Bristol City Council and the M-Shed’s curators in navigating its aftermath. The new display not only follows the wishes of the majority of respondents to the What Next? Survey, but it also ensures that successive generations of Bristolians can continue to interact with the city’s history of involvement in the Transatlantic Slave Trade, the way its identity has shifted over the last four centuries, and the role that protest and political agitation have played in shaping it as a modern city.