No-one who has seen that awful piece of film from Minneapolis can have turned away unaffected. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing when I saw it the first time, and I have not been able to stomach a repeat viewing. It is truly horrible – small wonder then, that in this age of instant recording and lightning-fast broadcast of images, unrest followed. What started as a ‘routine’ arrest outside a food store has rapidly become a world-wide movement for change, essentially uncoordinated, whose theme is racism both contemporary and historical. Even Salisbury has been deeply affected – protesters in the streets and requests for schools to review the content of the curriculum to ensure that due weight is given to the role that slavery and discrimination have played in the history of this country. I have received several letters from alumni asking this same thing, and I would be very surprised if there were not similar feelings amongst current BWS students, irrespective of age. Quite right too.
Race relations is complex in every country, and especially so in the UK. Slavery was an intrinsic part of the economic powerhouse that drove the growth of the British Empire and the industrial revolution. As a result the impacts and legacy of the Slave Trade are woven into the fabric of every aspect of British life if you look hard enough. The recent series of BBC2 programmes ‘A House Through Time’ by David Olusoga gave a very good case study, showing how wealth generated by trade in human life was an intrinsic part of Bristol’s economy. It is impossible to then extract the effects of this history from the rest of the fabric of a city, and toppling a statue will not do that either; whilst I understand the feelings that resulted in Edward Colston’s one way trip to the River Avon, a more fitting place for his effigy would be a museum. What is more important is to learn about what happened and so be aware of what matters most – making sure that things are different in the future. There are other, better ways of commemorating the legacy of slavery for example along the Fosse Quay in Nantes, or the International Slavery Museum at the Albert Dock. Both are memorials that also educate visitors from across the generations too.
Much of the racial inequality that persists in Britain today stems from the discrimination suffered by the immigrant families from the Commonwealth when they arrived after WW2. Once stratification is present in society it is very difficult to tackle and barriers preventing social mobility are persistent and pretty impermeable. It is not difficult to see the impact of those barriers today, whether it is in education, employment, income, housing conditions or access to justice. Living in Salisbury means that some of our boys may not see the evidence for inequality first hand, but there is a compelling need for schools to ensure that we teach about the effects of discrimination. It is only by learning about what discrimination in modern Britain looks and feels like that we can be conscious of how society might change for the better.
SDS
