After the statue of enslaver Edward Colston was toppled in Bristol in June 2020 and dumped into the city harbour, ripples spread across the UK. In the following six months there was an unprecedented public reckoning with the legacies of slavery in Britain – most visibly in the removal or alteration of almost 70 tributes to enslavers and colonialists, including 39 names on streets, buildings and schools, as well as 30 statues, plaques and other memorials.
It was a moment that altered how our public spaces engage with history. The Welsh government commissioned an audit of public monuments and across the country 130 Labour-led councils, including in the cities of London, Manchester and Birmingham, announced similar reviews. Suddenly, there was a national discussion about how to understand and contextualise these monuments: would they be better displayed in museums? Should they have new plaques added? Or be removed altogether? In all of these places, questions were raised about how communities should reckon with the past.
