Bristol and Slavery

Thursday, March 15. 2007

I live near the city of Bristol here in the UK and recently there has been this spate of wanting to change the names of places because of links with slavery. It started with the rebuilding of the main shopping centre in the city centre. They wanted to rename it from Broadmeads to Merchants Quarter. Apparently people then complained that Merchants Quarter reminded people about the slave trade that Bristol was a major part of and so now it will be called Cabots Circus apparently.
Next they have turned on the Colston Hall which is a concert hall in Bristol. They say that because a large portion of Edward Colston's wealth was derived from the slave trade we should rename the building.

I want to know what's next? They going to demand we rename Bristol it's self as it's name is synonymous with the slave trade?

I mean I agree slavery was a bad thing and still is (yes it still goes on today). But what they are doing now is trying to eradicate the evidence of it as if that's going to make things better. It happened people, live with it. If we ignore history we are condemned to repeat it. Ok not likely to happen but you cannot just erase history. History is to be learnt from. All of it, not just the nice parts but the nasty evil parts as well.

Posted by Stewart at 12:30 | Comments (2) | Trackbacks (0)

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Yea, I would say that renaming a concert hall because it was named after someone who was affiliated with slavery is going a bit far. I mean, if that's the case, they're going to have to rename every site in Europe named after royalty before 1948 when the UN finally adopted the UDHR, and every country/city/town/street/etc. named after the following people (for starters); Amerigo Vespucci, Christopher Columbus, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, Andrew Jackson, Martin Van Buren, Ulysses S. Grant, James II of England (New York was named after him), Charles II of England, King Louis XIV, and Henry Bennet (1st Earl of Arlington). As well as a wealth of other people I'm too arsed to think of at the moment. Those are just the most famous, and remember, those people had children who inherited their slave companies (and three of those were kings) so you can add all their children as famous people who most likely have places named after them.
So to sum it up, if we started going over EVERY SINGLE PERSON who was affiliated with slavery, and renamed every place/building/etc. then we would be losing a lot of history. Because although most of those people owned slaves, they also did some really great things worth remembering.
I'm not supporting slavery, hell I'm one of the few white people you'll find that can honestly say that has ancestors who were owned as slaves. But even I think it's stupid to try to whip out a persons entire legacy because they did something wrong. Don't whip the person out, just show people the truth.
I mean seriously, as bad as we are fucking up the environment, do you think it would be right (hundreds of years down the road) for people to completely erase our great achievers from the record books just because they might find out that person drove a hummer (you laugh now but give it a hundred years when the big travesty to humanity is the destruction of our air due to polution, and see how they view us).
I don't know, I guess people can't view things the way I do. I see way too much stupidity in the world :tut:

#1 Synfire on 2007-06-12 21:30 (Reply)

I am a Proud Bristolian as my Father, his Father and his Father before, I am 55 years old I served my country for 20 years including times of armed conflict, I came from a family that had fought in world wars and ended up with nothing other than a roof over there heads and the clothes on there backs, but we were and are a family, I built my own business and now employ 7 people. I have NOTHING to apologise for, and frankly take offence at the suggestion. Slavery although brutal distasteful and a god awful thing it is History and has its place there. My Father, and millions like him, died from Lung cancer over 20 years ago, I will not be asking for John Rolfe to be erased from history for commercialising tobacco.

#2 Raymondo on 2007-06-12 21:31 (Reply)

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