A commission of historians and other academics is being set up by the city council to shape the future of Bristol following the removal of Edward Colston's statue.
It will help decide whether controversial prominent figures, including those associated with the slave trade, should be removed from the names of streets and buildings and who should appear on monuments.
The group will include experts from the University of Bristol and UWE and gather a wide range of views from the public in the wake of Sunday’s Black Lives Matter protest, where Edward Colston’s statue was pulled down and tipped into the River Avon, sparked both celebration and anger.
Meanwhile, talks are taking place with divers to retrieve the statue, which will be placed in a city museum along with placards from the demonstration, although the costs and timescale have yet to be determined.
Mayor Marvin Rees announced the new commission at a fortnightly media briefing today (Wednesday, June 10), at which he also defended his decision not to have used executive powers previously to order the monument’s removal.
He said the academics would research and share “Bristol’s true history” to help the city better understand its story and how its future should look.
The members of the commission have not yet been decided on.
“This is a huge moment, whether you support the statue being torn down and thrown into the harbour, whether it fills you with concern or uncertainty or whether you oppose it and believe it’s a horrific thing to do,” Mr Rees said.
“Our challenge now is to hold those different experiences of Bristol together – those who are celebrating, those in fear or those in anger by it – that we make sure we are a city that can try to find some common ground.
“That doesn’t mean we get everyone to the same view, it means we create a city in which people have the ability to live with differences.
“Either way we need to find a way forward.
“We are pulling together a group of historians drawing on the intellectual firepower of our two universities to review Bristol’s history.
“This is not political or emotional, it’s about good history and good academics to look at Bristol, our monuments, our (place) names and how we understand, communicate and celebrate our history.
“How the city then begins to grapple with that is the next stage on.”
He said the commission would help people understand the key events that have shaped Bristol and “how we have become who we are today”.
“The weekend’s events compel us to launch that piece of work,” Mr Rees said.
“It is about equipping the city with city events, city themes, our self-awareness, to make sure we have informed conversations about using public spaces.
“Then off the back of that we can hopefully decide as a city what we want to do with that space.”
Mr Rees, Europe’s first directly elected black mayor, said he had not ordered the statue’s removal previously because his administration had other priorities in tackling inequality.
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“I cannot condone criminal damage but I would never say the statue was anything but an affront to me. I have no sense of loss,” Bristol’s mayor said.
“I wish it had come down years ago.
“My commitment has been on inequality within Bristol and affordable homes, feeding programmes, children’s mental health, tackling childhood poverty, period poverty.
“Taking this statue down was not top of our priorities.
“It was those real substantial issues that underlie society that have left black communities and all poor communities disproportionately vulnerable to the consequences of Covid-19.
“Real issues of substance in the city are not solved by me taking the statue down.
“To enter into the debate and the contest over the statute would have been an all-consuming political act.
“You can anticipate the amount of political heat there would have been if I had entered into taking that statue down, heat that would have taken our energies away from tackling issues of substance.”
