On 7th June 2020 Bristolians took to the streets to protest for the #BlackLivesMatter cause, to show solidarity for George Floyd’s death and in support of anti-racism reform. During this protest, a statue of Edward Colston was torn down and thrown into the harbour. 

Edward Colston was a prominent slave trader who was responsible for the shipping of 84,000 kidnapped African men, women and children, approximately 19,000 of which died on the journey. He then invested a lot of his wealth into Bristol, resulting in a concert hall, street names and schools built in his name. 

Bristolians have actively shown that we no longer want to honour such a man, with petitions over the years calling for the renaming of buildings and the removal of this statue. The council hasn’t acted on these petitions, some of which have thousands of signatures. 

While the method used to remove this statue may not have been the right way to go about this, it was long overdue and the council hadn’t listened before. This petition is to show solidarity with the protestors who took responsibility for this action, where the council failed to. It is also to request that anyone who is identified as responsible is not harshly prosecuted as I can assure that a lot of Bristolians are in whole hearted support of what took place today.