Anti-racists are fighting the status quo, and the results speak for themselves

I hope with all my heart that Madeleine McCann is safe and happy. And yet, despite this, I cannot explain how saddened I was to see her face staring up at me from the front pages of the British press in my local newsagents a few of days ago. In the midst of generation-defining protest and a wave of fury, I find it unbelievable that the media go to such extents to maintain the status quo; change is dangerous, particularly when people have stopped asking nicely for it.

There is hope however, and it comes from the bottom of a dock in Bristol. Edward Colston lies in a watery grave; not the real man, sadly – he died in comfort, adored in his hometown. It’s safe to say the attitudes of Bristolians now are less cordial. In an act of genuine courage (Labour take note) they ripped this tyrant’s vanity project from its pedestal and put it in the place it always deserved to be: the bottom of the harbour his slave ships once traversed. As right-minded people celebrate and tinpot authoritarians go on the attack – aided, of course, by the Leader of the Opposition and his Head Boy impersonation – this is only the tip of an insipid iceberg. 

The Britain we know and see today is built off the backs of slaves, supported by a system run by devils who used their money to whitewash their legacies. Colston’s fate is a lesson to us; you can buy all the water in the world and yet, in the eyes of good people, the blood of slaves will never be washed from the hands of their masters, and no number of buildings or statues can change that. Far more fitting they meet the same watery end as many of their captives. 

Luckily, it seems most people agree – at least in part. Sadly, the famously moderate Englander appears not to have a penchant for lobbing scrap metal into harbours nationwide, but they do agree that the commemorative objects must go; thankfully, they are already going. Where civility has failed before, protest is succeeding – protest works. It’s not pleasant, it’s not comfortable and (most of the time) it’s not enjoyable, but it does force change. This kind of agitation is the way, in the face of a dismissive media and a hostile collective of politicians. The lawbreakers broke ground where the lawmakers failed, and we’re in their debt for that. Not only do we have a news story, we have proper anti-racist change, and it was the Bristolian youth what did it.