I am delighted to hear of a change to the naming of Colston Hall, Bristol (Report, 27 April; Opinion, 28 April; and Letters, passim). For nine years from 1953 I attended the University of Bristol, having arrived from the West Indies where my family have lived since 1712. And, yes, they did own slaves.
In Bristol I bought The History of the Rise, Progress, and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave-Trade by the British Parliament by Thomas Clarkson, published 1808. This is the Clarkson who, in 1785, decided to dedicate his life’s work to abolition; who travelled 35,000 miles in this pursuit, recorded the names and fates of more than 20,000 seamen who sailed on slaving ships, interviewed hundreds from all the slave ports, obtained testimonies of the atrocities from seamen, mates, surgeons and captains who had sailed in the trade, visited the ships and recorded their dimensions and collected the irons used to constrain slaves in pairs, and amassed thousands of pages of evidence.
It was Clarkson who, in 1787, formed the committee of 12 worthy citizens devoted to abolishing the trade; all but three were members of the Society of Friends, he was not. It was he who persuaded Wilberforce (not on the committee) to put their evidence to parliament.
For Jane Ghosh (Letters, 29 April) to plead in mitigation Colston’s money given to build alms-houses, orphanages and schools is argument of the same moral framework as if a man raped a tourist and stole their money to pay for surgery to the face of his disfigured girlfriend. More pertinent would have been to apply these vast sums to the benefit of the towns and peoples of West Africa, and that would be small recompense. As suggested by Philip Colston Robins (Letters, 1 May) the creation of a Colston development fund to provide aid to the nations most affected by the slave trade would be an excellent start.
To rename the building Clarkson Hall, complete with explanatory plaque, would simultaneously promote the importance of the under-recognised Thomas Clarkson and diminish the over-extolled Edward Colston, while expanding historical awareness.
Louis Quesnel
Manchester
• Perhaps the answer to the conundrum of the buildings named after slave exploiters with other historic roles (Renamed and shamed, 29 April) is to keep the name but display a black plaque stating: “The person after whom this building was named made large profits from the organisation or exploitation of slavery.” Celebrity and infamy both given due credit.
Bryn Jones
Bath
• Alex Faulkner (Letters, 1 May) draws attention to Pero’s Bridge in Bristol. On a bleak stretch of Morecambe Bay south of Heysham, marked by a way-sign and a plaque, can be found another such memorial, Sambo’s grave. Sambo, whose single name regrettably became the archetype of the caricature African, was a cabin-boy who died on arrival at Sunderland Point (Lancaster’s port) in 1736, only to be banished to this lonely spot for burial as he wasn’t a Christian.
Much more could be done to commemorate the downtrodden of the past, but it would be folly to try to rewrite history by airbrushing out the oppressor class – and, after all, oppression has hardly gone away, it just manifests differently. We should learn, not forget.
Anthony Cheke
Oxford
• The reaction to the re-naming of Colston Hall misses the somewhat pragmatic points that Louise Mitchell of Bristol Music Trust can’t ignore: as a venue that relies on subsidy and fundraising, from Arts Council, local authorities, sponsors, trusts and foundations, the redeveloped building can’t have artists or audiences boycotting the venue. It has no choice but to be inclusive and encompassing for both public policy and income-earning reasons.
Having said that, it is the right thing to do, to look forward, and not back.
Roger Tomlinson
Coton, Cambridge
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