Bristol’s anti-racism struggle: a local and global history

I recently read an article by Saima Nasar, a historian at the University of Bristol, whereby she argues the fall of the Colston statue reveals ‘both a local and a global history of Bristol’s anti-racist struggles.’ [See reference no.1] It got me thinking about the interplay between ‘local’ and ‘global’ frameworks, and how interconnected they can be. In this entry I want to explore how both events, the St Pauls disturbance (1980) and the fall of the Colston statue (2020), are examples of local Black resistance that can be situated in global frameworks of anti-racism activism.

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The fall of the Colston statue was part of a global anti-racism campaign in the wake of George Floyd’s death. George Floyd was a 46-year-old African American man who was killed by Minneapolis police on May 25th, 2020. The impact of his death was worldwide: it instigated a wave of global protests whereby demonstrators united to challenge institutional racism, police brutality and support the ongoing struggle for racial justice across the world. Black Lives Matter (BLM) was responsible for organising many of these protests that occurred in the summer months. BLM is an international activist movement founded in 2013 by three Black female activists: Alicia Garza, Patrisse Khan-Cullors, and Opal Tometi. [ref no.2] With a mission to ‘eradicate white supremacy and build local power to intervene in violence inflicted on Black communities by the state and vigilantes’, BLM is dedicated to fighting racism. [ref no.3]

Photo: Jake Loaders. June 7th 2020, Bristol.

On June 7th 2020, a BLM protest occurred in Bristol. It was on this day that demonstrators toppled the statue of Edward Colston and threw it into Bristol’s floating harbour. Whilst the protest was a part of a wider framework, a global anti-racism movement in the wake of George Floyd’s murder, it also resonated with Bristol’s own struggles surrounding race. [ref no.4] The Colston statue was central to the debate. As discussed in the blogs ‘Colston, his statue and dual legacy’ and 'Bristol's history of transatlantic enslavement', the statue is extremely problematic and has negatively impinged the identity of Bristol’s Black community. The statue had been a point of contention for decades as historians and activists had made numerous attempts to have it removed through petitions and debates, as well as proposing the re-contextualisation of the statue’s plaque in 2018. The removal of Colston’s statue was an act of Black activism indicative of Bristol’s own struggles for racial justice, as well as part of a global anti-racism movement in the wake of George Floyd’ death.

In a similar way, the St Pauls disturbance (1980) can also be situated in a global framework of anti-racism and Black resistance. In the late 1970s and 1980s, there was a strengthened sense of Black consciousness in response to the marginalisation, discrimination and criminalisation of Britain’s Black youths. According to the historian Elizabeth Williams, it was a consciousness informed by Pan-Africanism, the US Civil Rights Movement and particularly, the anti-apartheid struggle of South Africans. [ref no.5] Black Britons strongly identified with the discrimination that African’s faced under apartheid and drew parallels with the Black youth fighting against white authority in South Africa. [ref no.6]

What exactly was ‘apartheid’? ‘Apartheid’ was the name coined to the segregationist policies upheld in South Africa against non-white citizens between 1948 and 1994. It was implemented following the victory of the National Party (Herenigde Nasionale Party) in 1948.

The Anti-Apartheid Movement (AAM) was a British organisation established in 1959 by Trevor Huddleston. It became key to the global anti-apartheid movement and had strong support from the Committee of African Organisations (CAO), ‘an amalgam of African and West Indian anticolonial groups interested in political independence for all colonial territories as well as in championing the cause of African rights in South Africa.’ [ref no.7] The cause fought by the AAM resonated with the plight of Black Britons and their resistance to domestic racism and injustice. The image below is a badge created in 1984 for an Anti-Apartheid Movement demonstration in London. The South African Prime Minister, Pieter Willem Botha, was due to have a meeting with the British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. According to the AAM archives, at least 50,000 attended the march, demonstrating the scale and support for the movement. [ref no.8]

© The Trustees of the British Museum.

The discrimination imposed on Africans under apartheid mirrored the struggles faced by residents in St Pauls who had faced decades of racial discrimination, marginalisation and racist policing. In an interview to TV Eye following the St Pauls disturbance in 1980, a female resident claimed:

Resident: “The biggest problem in St Pauls is the youngsters – the police aggression with the coloured youth.”

Interviewer: “Police aggression?”

Resident: “Yes, they have pushed us too far, it has always been the police.” [ref no.9]

In St Pauls, the Black community were reacting to years of racist policing: racially determined ‘stop and search’, brutality and over policing in the area. Whilst the fall of the Colston statue (2020) and the St Pauls disturbance (1980) were local acts of Black resistance, confined to Bristol, they can both be linked to wider historical frameworks of global anti-racism activism. Taking a global perspective enriches our understanding of each respective event and illuminates that they have deep historic roots of racial injustice.

Some questions to think about:

• How could Bristol ever achieve racial equality if the presence of a slave trader in the cityscape was to persist?

• How important do you think the ‘global’ narratives are to the 'local' respective events?

Feedback always welcome! Comment what you think below, or head over to the padlet to share your ideas.

For a list of the relevant works included in this post, please look here under the title, ‘Bristol’s anti-racism struggles: a local and global history.’