The desecration of the memorial to Scipio Africanus at St Mary’s churchyard, Henbury is, without question, the saddest thing I have seen in our city for a very long time. Scipio Africanus, who died 300 years ago at the age of 18, was born into slavery and ended his life as servant to Charles Howard, the 7th Earl of Suffolk. A threatening message was left next to this disgraceful act of vandalism, threatening that “things will really heat up” if Edward Colston’s statue is not restored to its wrongful place (my words) on a plinth in the centre of Bristol. In other words, this was tit for tat.
One thing we know for sure is that this was not a coincidence. It was not a random attack and almost certainly not a spontaneous one either. Someone, or some people, felt that the best way to react to the removal of the statue of a man who made his fortune directly from slavery would be to desecrate the memorial of a slave. What on earth goes through someone’s mind when they want to do something like that? It changes nothing, it unites no one, it offers no path to a brighter future, it provides no answers the problems of racism and inequality. It makes things worse.
Can’t we just stop this now? All of us. Now. Yes, we need to have an adult debate about individual monuments and statues, to understand their history and the context. And yes, we need to remove statues, like that of Edward Colston, placing them preferably in museums. More than that, we need to understand certain nuances.
For instance, Winston Churchill was no saint. His horrible history never endeared him to the people of Bengal or those in Tonypandy. And he held what we now consider to be unpleasant racist views. Yet he was the leader Britain needed in our darkest hour in World War Two. For that, Churchill will be forever revered. We cannot change that history, both bad and good, and nor should we try to. By all means have a debate about his statue, but let’s have it in context.
We do not need to have people so say ‘protecting statues’, as groups of largely middle aged drink sodden men suggested they were doing up and down the country last weekend. Although, we could have done with someone guarding PC Keith Palmer’s memorial last Saturday as one of the far right decided to piss next to it. None of the others, except perhaps Mandela and Gandhis, were at any risk.
The half-witted goon who desecrated Scipio Africanus’s memorial didn’t think black lives mattered but I suppose he doesn’t really think about very much of anything if that’s the best he can do with his time. We can do better than that, much better. However, incidents like this don’t give much cause for optimism.
