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Edward Colston: a man for who black lives didn’t matter at all
PETER FROST is delighted that Colston’s statue no longer stands in Bristol
A portrait of Edward Colston from 1722 (left) and (right) protesters from a Black Lives Matter demonstration in Bristol dump his statue in the harbour

IF BLACK lives really do matter then Edward Colston, a man who sold 84,000 young black children, women and men into slavery and also murdered another 18,000 men, women and children doing it doesn’t deserve to have a statue commemorating his evil life and trade in the city of Bristol.

I was delighted not just to see his statue pulled down but also thrown in the harbour that engineer William Jessop built for Bristol in 1802 using the money the slave trade had brought to the city. They threw the statue into the harbour by Pero’s Bridge — the only place in Bristol named after a slave.

If anybody wasn’t sure of the demolition team’s motives they had only to take note of the fact they pressed their knees on the neck of the statue rather as Minneapolis police did killing George Floyd.

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