The St Pauls disturbance (1980) and the fall of the Colston statue (2020) are two examples of Black popular protest in Bristol.

 

 

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The below extracts summarise how both events relate to three key themes: law and order, race and activism. 

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Race

 

The conflict in St Pauls on April 2nd 1980 was the product of prolonged racial discrimination faced by Black Britons and minority-ethnic communities following their arrival in Britain in the mid-twentieth century. It was a continuum of events like the Notting Hill and Nottingham race riots (1958), the Bristol Bus Boycott (1963), the Mangrove nine conflict (1970) and the death of Blair Peach (1979).

 

The Black Lives Matter protest that occurred in Bristol on June 7th 2020 was also a response to issues surrounding race, provoked by the tragic death of George Floyd, and Colston’s statue was propelled into the epicentre of that debate. For many, the statue was associated with the traumatic history of transatlantic enslavement and was a constant reminder of the pain inflicted on African Americans through the institution of slavery.

 

 

 

Law and Order

 

Both events are also inextricably linked to the police. St Pauls (1980) was a direct clash between members of the district’s community and the police. Prior to the conflict, the St Pauls area had experienced years of overt discrimination, saturation policing of the Black community, over-policing, and police abuse. Tensions had finally erupted on the night of April 2nd 1980.

 

The Black Lives Matter protest, which provided the framework for the removal of Colston’s statue, was a direct response to George Floyd’s death in the hands of the Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin. Each event resulted in the arrest of several members of the public. The trial of the Colston 4 is still ongoing today.

 

 

 

Activism

 

Whilst both events were geographically bound to Bristol, they had national ramifications and can both be situated in global frameworks of Black activism. Several other major British cities also experienced a violent clash between the police and its civilians in the 1980s, including London, Liverpool, Birmingham, and Leeds. St Pauls is often viewed as a forerunner for this. It can also be considered in a global framework of Black resistance as Black Britons faced racial discrimination in a similar way to the struggles South African’s faced under the Apartheid regime as well as Black Americans in the civil rights movement.

 

The removal of Colston’s statue can also be situated within Black Lives Matter’s global anti-racism movement, which necessitated people to reflect on racial discrimination within society and show solidarity with the global anti-racism movement. It had profound national implications as other British cities began to reconsider their own urban landscape and monuments that glorify imperial figures.

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Please refer to specific blog posts for more information and in-depth analysis.