A panel of randomly-selected Bristolians could be summoned to serve on citizens’ juries to hear about the issues around the city’s contested history. The juries would come to a verdict about issues like whether streets named in honour of people who made their fortunes from the transatlantic slave trade should be renamed.
That’s the latest idea from the city’s ‘We Are Bristol’ History Commission, as a way of bringing together people from across Bristol. The initial recommendations from the history commission over what to do with the toppled statue of 18th century slave trader Edward Colston and its now-empty plinth were passed this week by the city council’s cabinet, which also heard ideas from the commission’s members about potential next steps in their remit to consider and evaluate the city’s story and look at any contested or contentious parts.
The cabinet backed the commission’s recommendations that the statue be kept in a museum. It now looks likely the statue will end up being put on display as part of a wider exhibition to tell people more about Bristol’s role in the transatlantic slave trade, as well as the moves by the city’s elite from Victorian times, through the 20th century and up to the present day, to airbrush that slave trade history and commemorate the men who made their fortunes from it.
Read more: For Britain postpone demo against Black Lives Matter at Colston plinth
In a big survey of more than 13,000 people, around 80 per cent of people from Bristol told the commission that they wanted to see the statue in a museum for education purposes. The question of what happens to the empty plinth is now under consideration by council chiefs, with a recommendation that it be left empty for long periods of time, but at other times be the setting for temporary art works.
A recommendation that a second plaque explaining the empty plinth, the history of the statue and what happened to it was also passed by council chiefs. But the We Are Bristol History Commission member Dr Jo Burch-Brown said the commission was also coming up with ideas to go further than just the initial question of what should happen to the Colston statue and the plinth.
When it was set up by the Mayor of Bristol Marvin Rees, in the aftermath of the toppling of the statue in June 2020, it was given the task of looking at the wider history of Bristol and how it is told, as well as the issues of contested history, like the commemoration of Edward Colston. In a presentation of the report on the Colston statue to the council cabinet, and in a panel presentation through the M-Shed on Wednesday, Dr Burch-Brown said the commission had ideas about what should follow in the longer term.
She said citizen juries were one idea which could bring the city together and come to conclusions about some of the more difficult questions.
Read more: Forget Colston, here's five Bristol landmarks named after other slave trade businessmen
“In the same way you put together a jury for a criminal trial, you could call people to serve on a citizen jury to look at some of these questions. They could hear arguments on one side and the other, from people with different views, and this would mean you could get voices from different parts of the city coming together to talk these questions through and deliberate on them,” she explained.
One of the issues of Bristol’s contested histories surrounds all the roads that are named in honour of Edward Colston and other people from the city’s history that made their fortunes from the slave trade. Already, residents in Colston Avenue and Colston Street, just a few yards from where the statue was, have petitioned the city council’s cabinet to ask to have their street names changed back to the medieval names they had been for centuries, before the Victorian city leaders renamed them after Edward Colston.
And following the acquittal of the Colston 4, Colston Road in Easton was ‘renamed’ unofficially for the second time in the last couple of years. Dr Burch-Brown said while the make up of the citizens’ juries would be completely random, they would make sure that all different age groups were represented equally.
She said this was important because there was a real difference in the way younger and older Bristolians thought about the toppling of the statue of Edward Colston. She said older people were much more likely to feel negatively towards the toppling of the statue, while younger people were much more likely to feel positively towards that act in June 2020.
She said the results of the survey undertaken last year at the Colston statue exhibition in the M-Shed showed no real difference in attitudes towards the statue’s toppling from richer or poorer areas of Bristol, different ethnic backgrounds or between men and women, but age was the only marked factor which threw up very different attitudes. “There’s a real need in the city for opportunities for young and older people to come together and share experiences - not argue or debate but talk to each other and share how they feel and come to understandings of each other’s positions,” she said.
“The key thing that the council have been keen for is that the conversation doesn’t stop, that this is a starting point to talk about these things more. When we look at these kinds of things, they always become polarised, but I really don’t think they have to be.
“The citizens’ juries is a process I’ve thought most about, but we haven’t made a formal recommendations as yet about this. It’s an idea.
“The question of street names are very symbolic and what we do with them matters. Having a citizens’ jury to hear representatives from both sides of the argument, they make a recommendation and the people living on that street have the ultimate vote, but do so on the basis of having heard what the people across the city think about it,” she added.
Want our best stories with fewer ads and alerts when the biggest news stories drop? Download our app on iPhone or Android
