How Bristol’s Merchant Venturers sabotaged efforts to update the Colston statue
The statue of Bristol slave trader Edward Colston was toppled by Black Lives Matters protesters on 7th June who deposited it in Bristol Harbour.
It was a Grade 11 listed statue but it wasn’t disdain for that kind of history that drove the protesters but a disgust that attempts to reflect Colston’s actual history with a new plaque for the statue had failed.
The failure was at least in part due to the efforts of Francis Greenacre who acts as a sort of historian for the Society of Merchant Venturers.
Founded in 1552 the SMV benefited financially from the activities of slavers like Colston and while in 2020 they appear to acknowledge something like that, they evidently try and block criticism of him.
The statue of Colston was erected in 1895 (he died in 1721) as a sort of cult effort to find a figurehead for imperial Bristol.
Bristol Radical History Group have excellent background on this:
https://www.brh.org.uk/site/articles/myths-within-myths/
In recent times there have been attempts to put the Colston statue into a more modern context with a new plaque. The details of the efforts made is here:
https://www.brh.org.uk/site/articles/the-edward-colston-corrective-plaque/
Ultimately the new plaque didn’t happen and Francis Greenacre seems to have been central to stopping it according to the Bristol News:
https://www.bristolpost.co.uk/news/bristol-news/row-breaks-out-merchant-venturer-1925896
The Merchant Venturers Website describes Greenacre thus:
Francis Greenacre
Member since 1995
Francis was Curator, Fine Art, at Bristol Museum and Art Gallery from 1969 to 1997. He is an art historian, fine art consultant and valuer, lecturer and the author of several publications.
He was a member of the Arts Council Exhibitions Committee, the South Bank Art Advisory Group, the British Empire and Commonwealth Museum Trust and the Clifton Suspension Bridge Trust. He is a former chairman of Clifton and Hotwells Improvement Society, and a former president of the Canynges Society and of St Stephen’s Ringers.
Greenacre who has co-authored a book on the Public Sculptures of Bristol is undoubtedly qualified to assess the excellence of Colston’s statue. Clearly he has a view on Colston but it is no more relevant than my view, as a labour historian, on the quality of the statue.
Why Greenacre and the SMV were allowed to sabotage legitimate attempts to place Colston’s statue in a modern context I’m not sure but it did not end well.
The Mayor of Bristol has now committed, the statue having been retrieved from the harbour, to a wide consultation on what should now happen to it. That is the democratic thing to do. No doubt the SMV will have a view but not a veto on a decision.
Leave a Reply