Erased from memory

Edward Colston was a Seventeenth-Century Bristol-born English merchant, philanthropist, and Member of Parliament. He supported and endowed schools, almshouses, hospitals and churches in Bristol, London and elsewhere, and his name is commemorated in several Bristol landmarks, streets, three schools and the Colston bun. But he was also a slave trader, where he made a lot of his fortune.

So yesterday, during a Black Lives Matter protest in central Bristol, four protestors removed and vandalised the statue.

The protestors first covered the statue with a plastic sheet, before tying ropes around the neck and pulling it down onto the ground face down. They then proceeded to hit the statue with skateboard, spit on the statue and spray it with silver paint.