Restore the Edward Colston statue

Britain, as an island, was particularly vulnerable to, not just invaders from the Continent, by the depredations of slave traders from Africa.

According to this BBC History website

In the first half of the 1600s, Barbary corsairs - pirates from the Barbary Coast of North Africa, authorised by their governments to attack the shipping of Christian countries - ranged all around Britain's shores. In their lanteen-rigged xebecs (a type of ship) and oared galleys, they grabbed ships and sailors, and sold the sailors into slavery. Admiralty records show that during this time the corsairs plundered British shipping pretty much at will, taking no fewer than 466 vessels between 1609 and 1616, and 27 more vessels from near Plymouth in 1625. As 18th-century historian Joseph Morgan put it, 'this I take to be the Time when those Corsairs were in their Zenith'.
Unfortunately, it was hardly the end of them, even then. Morgan also noted that he had a '...List, printed in London in 1682' of 160 British ships captured by Algerians between 1677 and 1680. Considering what the number of sailors who were taken with each ship was likely to have been, these examples translate into a probable 7,000 to 9,000 able-bodied British men and women taken into slavery in those years.
Not content with attacking ships and sailors, the corsairs also sometimes raided coastal settlements, generally running their craft onto unguarded beaches, and creeping up on villages in the dark to snatch their victims and retreat before the alarm could be sounded. Almost all the inhabitants of the village of Baltimore, in Ireland, were taken in this way in 1631, and other attacks were launched against coastal villages in Devon and Cornwall.

How did Britain make itself invulnerable to such attacks? Why did it become safer and safer to live in coastal areas? How was Britain able to defy Continental despots and Muslim Corsairs?

The answer is that the British Navy established its supremacy over the seven seas. This was no mean feat. Ships cost money. To pay for Naval protection Britain had to engage in oceanic commerce. This meant, inter alia, that it had to enter 'repugnancy markets'- e.g. the slave trade- so as to grow richer than its rivals, subdue them, and then suppress that horrible trade. This took two centuries.

Had the Navy remained in the hands of the King- as happened on the Continent- then Britain would have turned into an Absolutist Monarchy. The traditional laws and liberties of its people would have been undermined.

Because Britain chose to leave the profit from Oceanic trade in private hands, the country developed into a Liberal Democracy over the course of three centuries.

Edward Colston, who died in 1721, was a great philanthropist in Bristol who made some of his money through the slave trade. To be clear, he did not himself enslave or transport anybody. Rather, he invested in ships which bought slaves from African potentates and transported those slaves to mainly Spanish buyers in the New World. At the time, European monarchs sold some of their own people into slavery, notionally of a different sort, just as African potentates did. Since what Colston was doing made British people safer and because he devoted some of his wealth to good causes, he was honored, almost two centuries after his death with a Statue which has been illegally torn down. It should be restored.

It may be argued that the descendants of slaves may feel differently. But hereditary slavery did not exist in Britain precisely because the Navy preserved its freedom. Thus nobody is the descendant of one born into slavery in the United Kingdom, a parent or grandparent having been trafficked here from abroad, and thus can have no ground for grievance against merchants in these countries who profited at arms length from a repugnancy market which only the British Navy succeeded in stamping out a century later when it had established its hegemony over the seven seas. On the other hand, here may be descendants of slaves from outside the U.K whose parents or other ancestors chose voluntarily to emigrate to this country. But this means that this country was relatively freer and better than the place they left behind. If they were disappointed by anything they found here, they were free to move elsewhere. Of course, unless restrained by the law, they could alternatively chose to tyrannize over their neighbors or to run amok to relieve their sense of grievance.

David Olusoga, writes in the Guardian,

One reason why Colston fell is that in 2020 the people whose lives are still impacted by the racism that had been originally constructed by British slave traders were no longer willing to accept the standing insult that was his statue.

The problem here is that no racism was constructed by British slave traders. First there was Slavery- a venerable African institution- then there was the trans-Atlantic trade and then the was the slave trade featuring willing African sellers of African prisoners of war and willing Muslim and Christian buyers of those Africans. There was also some outright kidnapping of people living by the coast but English people too were in danger of this till the might of the Royal Navy prevailed.

It must be said that a great deal of criminal damage has been done by different sets of people with different sets of grievances. When I was a kid, 'colored' immigrants like me were the target. But this type of violence was counter-productive. The mass of the British people lost sympathy for the Racists. But this is perfectly reasonable. Running amok is not a good thing. It is not socially desirable. It is better to punish that sort of lawlessness rather than permit it to burgeon.

I think Britain must refuse to let stand the actions of a lawless mob which had worked itself up into a lather of hatred in a manner that exceeds the bounds of satire.

Olusugo himself may be descended from slave traders on both the Nigerian and the British side of his parentage. But neither had been the victim of the slave trade. Why is this historian getting so worked up by some merchant who died three hundred years ago who never set foot in Africa?

This is the explanation he offers-

Why was Colston such a potent target? Because this generation of young black people and their allies are the beneficiaries and inheritors of more than half a century of scholarship and research into slavery, the slave trade and the role of black people in Britain’s history. They know their enemies when they see them.

Which black person has a better standard of living or a more prestigious occupation as the result of this bogus scholarship? None at all. A white may gain by 'virtue signalling', but if you iz bleck like wot I iz then to get ahead I've got to show mastery of some STEM subject. By contrast, I might just as well say 'me hear tom tom. Ju Ju man do bad Voodoo. Me smash!' as quote Olusugo to explain why I'm running amok rather than making money.

Another piece of the jigsaw is that the people who are being asked to forget Colston’s crimes

Very true. I recall visiting Bristol in 1983. All sorts of people were constantly coming up to me saying 'please forget Colston' crimes. Don't be an awkward sod.'

were also being asked to ignore their own disadvantage, which in 2020 has been brought into sharp focus by a global pandemic that is impacting their communities more severely than any others.

Just yesterday, when I was taking a dump, a White person entered my flat and asked me to ignore my disadvantage. Shit like this goes down all the time! Why? It's coz of Colston's statue and Rhodes's statue and Churchill's statue. Ju Ju Man do bad Voodoo. Me smash!

In 2017, the Centre on Dynamics of Ethnicity at my own university, the University of Manchester, published research that showed that black people living in Bristol paid what the authors of the report called an “ethnic penalty” – a catalogue of disadvantage that limits their life chances.

Statue of Colston is bad ju ju. It has actuarially measurable effects. On the other hand, it is certainly possible that some ethnicities have worse mortality in some climes. But that's why our ancestors did a lot of migrating. If Bristol is a shitty place- at least in your experience- get the fuck out of it. Go somewhere else. Mobility improves life-chances, provided you don't think smashing statues can improve your life.

Dr Nissa Finney from the centre lamented then that in Bristol the “extent of ethnic inequalities is striking and it has not improved in the last 15 years”.

Another way of saying this is the qualities displayed by certain ethnicities have not improved relative to other cohorts.  Since Dr. Finney is white she may gain by virtue signalling on this point but it is not in the interest of BAME people to draw attention to this. By contrast, it is in our self-interest to say - 'have you been to Bristol? No? Let me tell you black peeps like me are doing so well there coz there are a lot of opportunities for the smart.'

The connections between persistent racial inequality today and the racial systems that were first put in place by men such as Colston, who pioneered

This guy is a Historian. He knows Colston was born a hundred years after Hawkins pioneered English participation in that loathsome trade. But then he also may know that some of his Nigerian ancestors were doing the selling.

and then profited from the slave trade and slavery, are perhaps more clearly demarcated in 2020 then they ever have been.

Nonsense! Corbyn lost big time because he was a bit too 'woke'. Trump will win in November because of the Floyd riots. Dude, watch 'Undercover Brother II' which shows how wokeness is the new crack which 'the Man' is using to destroy the ghetto and reinstitute White homophobic, misogynistic, Supremacy!

Back in the 18th and 19th centuries, the elite that ran Bristol decided that Colston’s philanthropy was to be for ever remembered, but that his role in the Atlantic slave trade was to be for ever forgotten. 

Very foolishly, back in 2007, Bristol decided to commemorate 'Abolition 200'- i.e. the bicentennial of the British Abolition of the Slave Trade. But meddling with history is mischievous because historians are as stupid as shit.

 They used the infrastructure of veneration and disinformation they had constructed to control history, and to append his name to a concert hall and scatter it across the streetscape of their city. What was toppled on Sunday was not just a statue, but also the historical myopia and wilful amnesia that had enabled Colston’s protectors and defenders to turn a man who had done monstrous things into a secular saint.

What is toppled by reading this shite is any vestige of respect one might have for 'woke' Academics. It may be that Bristol will be given over to the hooligans. But, by restoring the Edward Colston statue, Bristol puts the world on notice that in buccaneering post Brexit Britain, Bristol is determined to regain its place in Oceanic Commerce. The fact is, it is an attractive place to live and work. I don't suppose people who look like me would be particularly welcome. But that doesn't mean investing there won't pay off. That's all that matters. Either one can invest one's time and money studying history with this cretin, or one can do something useful for oneself and, if you are charitably inclined, other people around you. If like Colston, you are truthful, hardworking and charitable, History may remember you favorably. But no one has achieved renown merely by playing the race card and telling stupid lies about some long dead philanthropist.