Thread by @edwardhenry1

#Colston4 there’s been much criticism of the verdict in this case. Frankly the verdict was unsurprising, even if against the weight of the evidence. Why? Because the harrowing impact of the expert evidence given by the historian David Olusoga provided cogent ammo to the defence

In this respect, a full measure of respect should be accorded to HHJ Peter Blair QC, The Recorder of Bristol. I don’t know him but he must be a wise & humane tribunal - perfect for the #Colston4

The Recorder of Bristol recognised that this wasn’t an ordinary criminal damage trial. The City was torn in two, & so the trial was about far more than the fate of the #Colston4. It would have symbolic importance - even catharsis.

The judge, in a perfectly unappealable decision, could have excluded David Olusoga’s evidence. That he did not reveals courage, good sense, & a wider appreciation of what this trial meant to Bristol.

I’m currently rereading “Chocolate on Trial” by Lowell J Satre on the slavery that existed in São Tomé at the end of 19th & beginning of 20th century.

It still has the capacity to make you shudder. The slaves were marched over 1000 miles from Angola through the ‘Hungry Country’ to the sea.

It was ‘Hungry’ because the land was barren, and uninhabited - not by choice but by slavery. Imagine a thousand mile trek, in shackles, through ghost village after deserted village, because those poor souls had been abducted before.

When Henry Nevinson was deputed to report on this atrocity he supped full of horrors. Bleached bones, thousands of them, were strewn on either side of the track. The redundant shackles left by the slavers in the thorn bushes and trees to be collected on the return journey.

Nevinson during his expedition came across a lifeless man and sought to rouse him. In horror, he displaced the upper part of the unfortunate man’s skull, as he died from an axe blow to the back of the head.

The unimaginable cruelty practised upon these innocent men & women remains horrifying, although well over a century has passed. Their children were born into slavery, the property of the slavers, & none ever returned home again.

Returning to the #Colston4 Colston’s pursuit of profit by expropriating ‘savages’ & leveraging his vast wealth to enslave thousands more, was an enterprise drenched in blood. His historic endowments cannot expiate that pitiless heritage, but rather perpetuate it.

In a City built on the profits of slavery, with one of the oldest & most proud Black communities in Britain, that statue was, to put it most neutrally, an anachronism. Its baleful continued presence was grossly offensive to many right thinking people.

I’m not expressing any views on the actions of the #Colston4. The verdict of the jury should bring this sad, divisive, & controversial subject to a close. Bristol can now move on because a jury made a decision on its behalf.

This trial cannot be divorced from the fact that #Colston was an infamous slaver. In a rare misstep, my good friend William Hughes QC is reported to have told the jury that Colston’s profession was completely irrelevant - as was reported in @guardian

A bold statement, but not one likely to persuade a jury who, like the trial judge, saw this case in its historic, indeed symbolic context.