Bristol City Council has confirmed that it was responsible for the removal of an unofficial plaque commemorating the location on Bristol's Harbourside where the statue of slave trader Edward Colston was tossed into the water. The plaque, which originally appeared on the first anniversary of the June 2020 toppling of the statue, was put in place overnight by an anonymous group that has been referred to as 'The Guerrilla Historians'.
This week there was fresh debate on social media after a Twitter user questioned where the plaque had gone. In response, a spokesperson for Bristol City Council has since said: "A plaque installed without permission near Pero’s Bridge was removed in September 2022 and placed in the collection at M Shed for safe storage. The Museums Service are currently going through the acquisition process to include the plaque as part of the city’s collection.”
John Packer, the artist who created the plaque depicting the statue falling, said that it was a "relief" to finally know what had become of the work. He told Bristol Live: "It's a relief to know that it's not been just vandalised. That's a good thing.
Read More: Black Boy Lane in Tottenham renamed - why Bristol's Blackboy Hill hasn't been
"It's a bit disappointing that the council removed it because they should really be on side. Although from their point of view, they'll say there was no due process to have it put in place. And, of course, if there was an attempt, well, it would never have happened.
"One could argue that it will kind of be seen by more people in a more obvious way if it's on display. Obviously, I have a very strong preference that it's on display somewhere rather than in a vault."
Speaking of the spot near Pero's Bridge, named after the enslaved eighteenth-century man Pero Jones, where the plaque was originally mounted, Mr Packer said: "It would be good to have another one there, to do a really nice one and a bit bigger, and more properly installed because it was a sort of guerrilla kind of thing.
"It will be good if part of Bristol City Council's public art budget was put towards that. That'd be rather nice."
The plaque features an extract from the poem Hollow, written by Bristol's City Poet Laureate at the time, Vanessa Kisuule, about the statue and what happened to it, along with an image of the statue being pulled from the plinth at The Centre.
Mr Packer, who witnessed the statue's downfall, said that with the image on the plaque, he wanted to convey a sense of the spirit on the day, which he described as "celebration and indignation".
He said: "I think the narrative that some people have in their minds is that the crowd was really angry, but it really wasn't. It was incredible. It was like an optimism."
Engraved on its surface were the words: "At this spot, during worldwide anti-racism protests, a statue celebrating the 17th-century slave trader Edward Colston was thrown into the harbour by the people of Bristol. Various campaigns to have the statue removed through official channels had been frustrated”.
At the time when the plaque first appeared, a statement from The Guerrilla Historians said: "The toppling of Colston’s statue was a pivotal moment in a global popular uprising, and the enormous symbolic and historical significance of this event reverberated around the world.
"We all want a fuller, richer understanding of British history - more history, not less - and we hope this plaque can make a small contribution to that shared goal."
The statue of Edward Colston was displayed at M Shed from June 2021 to January 2022 and is now in the museum's collection store. A survey formulated by the We Are Bristol History Commission asked the public to share their views about the statue's future, collected 14,000 responses, with 74 per cent saying they wanted the statue displayed in a museum lying down on its side.
Read More:
- Colston statue - the 83 minutes from plinth to harbour
- What questions were the Colston statue trial jury asked?
- The curious tale of Banksy, the Mayor of Bristol, the Colston 4 and a signed t-shirt
- Banksy's signed Colston 4 t-shirt sells for £12,000 at auction
Fundraiser accused of fraud after Colston protest faces trial
