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Don’t put them on a pedestal
Monuments to collective struggle can teach us more than idolising ‘the great and the good,’ says DAVID ROSENBERG
Cable Street mural

ON JUNE 7, slave trader Edward Colston’s statue in Bristol was daubed with paint, pulled to the ground, jumped on by joyful protesters, rolled along to the harbour and dumped in the River Avon. 

The events caused quite a splash. As Colston sunk ignominiously to the bottom, what rose to the surface was a long overdue national debate about statues that grace or rather disgrace our towns and cities, and reinforce a dominant history.

Here is someone writing on this issue five years ago with some comments that are very pertinent for this moment: it’s Billy Bragg, in his foreword to the first edition of my book Rebel Footprints, which I had conceived of as a memorialisation of past struggles, in order to allow them to live and breathe in the present.

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