Thursday, March 15. 2007Bristol and Slavery
I live near the city of Bristol here in the UK and recently there has been this spate of wanting to change the names of places because of links with slavery. It started with the rebuilding of the main shopping centre in the city centre. They wanted to rename it from Broadmeads to Merchants Quarter. Apparently people then complained that Merchants Quarter reminded people about the slave trade that Bristol was a major part of and so now it will be called Cabots Circus apparently.
Next they have turned on the Colston Hall which is a concert hall in Bristol. They say that because a large portion of Edward Colston's wealth was derived from the slave trade we should rename the building. I want to know what's next? They going to demand we rename Bristol it's self as it's name is synonymous with the slave trade? I mean I agree slavery was a bad thing and still is (yes it still goes on today). But what they are doing now is trying to eradicate the evidence of it as if that's going to make things better. It happened people, live with it. If we ignore history we are condemned to repeat it. Ok not likely to happen but you cannot just erase history. History is to be learnt from. All of it, not just the nice parts but the nasty evil parts as well. |