“Statue Wars: One Summer in Bristol”

Although not totally worthless, this nearly hour long documentary is an excellent example of the BBC’s left wing bias and propaganda.

In 1895, a statue of Edward Colston was erected in Bristol. Colston was Member of Parliament for Bristol from 1710 to 1713, but more significantly he had been a member of the Royal African Company from 1680 to 1692. Set up in 1660 as the Company of Royal Adventurers Trading into Africa, this commercial undertaking traded principally in slaves. Colston never went to Africa himself, and odious as slavery may appear to all right thinking people now, his membership of the company was no more disreputable then than that of a shareholder in a publicly traded arms manufacturer today. Whatever Colston’s sins, he more than made up for them with his philanthropy, which extended to founding almshouses in Bristol, and the funding of many other projects.

Nevertheless, he has long been a target of the loony left in Britain, including the Socialist Workers Party – devout followers of the mass murderer Leon Trotsky. According to this documentary, after the murder of George Floyd, a storm of anti-racist protest swept across America and the world. In Bristol, this led to a statue of “a slave trader” being torn down, and the world’s media descending on Bristol. Which begs the question, why didn’t the police descend on the crowd and prevent them from tearing the statue down in the first place? After all, aren’t the British police “institutionally racist” as the left, race agitators, and large tranches of the mainstream media keep reminding us?

Although Derek Chauvin was convicted of the murder of George Floyd, a dispassionate examination of the evidence supports nothing worse than a manslaughter conviction. Floyd was in the police van ready to be transported when he complained repeatedly about claustrophobia and asked/begged to be removed from the vehicle. Most police officers would have ignored him or said “Tough”, but not Chauvin, who complied. Then he undid this act of common decency with one of crass stupidity, kneeling on Floyd’s neck for nearly nine minutes, grinning as he did so. Chauvin didn’t take the stand at his trial, but if he  had, he could have explained his actions better than his lawyer, and pointed out that while Floyd complained repeatedly that he couldn’t breathe, not once did he ask Chauvin to get off his neck.

Chauvin would have been convicted regardless, if only because of the massive intimidation faced by the jury, but leaving all that aside, the death of George Floyd, tragic though it was, had absolutely nothing to do with race, or police brutality. Real incidents of police brutality, up to and including murder, can be found in abundance on YouTube. American police officers, black, white, and Hispanic can be seen abusing, beating, even shooting citizens of all races, including women and on occasion the young with little or no provocation. African police officers can be seen abusing people, and perhaps most odious of all in this climate, police officers in Victoria, Australia can be seen abusing women. None of this matters to anti-racist clowns or their friends in the media, all that matters is George Floyd was black, Chauvin is white, and the statues must come down. Statues and monuments to white men of a bygone age, the people who for the most part created this world.

The current Mayor of Bristol is black, or rather half-black, his offspring less so.  Marvin Rees clearly approved of this particular act of vandalism; he also says he believes in white privilege. On the other hand, he said cooperating with the police investigation into the felling of the statue was the correct thing to do because it was an act of criminal damage, adding politicians don’t decide what is a crime, and what to investigate.  He also realises the white working class are victims rather than oppressors. It goes without saying that not all blacks are happy with the way he sees things.

A young, obviously working class white man sees this act of vandalism very differently from the cheering crowds. He can’t understand the concept of white privilege,  probably because unlike Peggy Macintosh he isn’t a tenured professor from one of the wealthiest families in the country, and unlike Robin DiAngelo he isn’t paid $15,000 for a 90 minute Zoom lecture.

Rees receives abusive letters and interprets this as the world failing to move on. The memorial of an African slave is desecrated in response to the felling of the statue, but this is racially motivated, he says.

A young black musician (so-called) who is clearly totally ignorant, blames Donald Trump for galvanising “racist America”.

One young woman wants not only an apology from Bristol but reparations. Again, reparations for what, dragging Africans out of the Stone Age? Last December, writing for Socialist Worker, Sophie Squire reported Anger as Bristol activists who tore down slaver Colston’s statue are charged claiming “The removal of the statue gave the Black Lives Matter movement a boost. ” That was before it was revealed that one of the founders of this odious and misnamed movement was acquiring property almost as quickly as her useful idiots were destroying it. Squire quoted an American so-called activist who said: “Edward Colston stood for nothing but evil…It’s clear we can’t put trust in a system that will incriminate people for taking down racist statues.”

Now statues are racist?

Statue Wars: One Summer in Bristol is currently on BBC iplayer. Watch it by all means, but don’t be taken in by its false narratives.