‘It’s really, really important we get this right’

Following the decision to remove Edward Colston’s dolphin emblem from the University of Bristol’s logo, some at the university say there is still more progress to be made.

Dr Richard Stone is a senior lecturer for the department of history at the university, specialising in the history and legacies of the Atlantic slave economy and Bristol, having widely researched the Wills and Fry families’ historical connections with slavery.

He believes that in keeping the logo’s sun and horse, and the names Wills and Fry, which remain on multiple campus buildings, the university continues to revere two of Bristol’s wealthiest beneficiaries of the transatlantic trade of enslaved people.

The Wills family made their fortune from tobacco while the Fry family earned their wealth from chocolate.

The retention of these family emblems and building names was justified by the vice chancellor, Evelyn Welch in November, as an acknowledgement of their donations, which made up about 89 per cent of inaugural funds, and 66 per cent of that given in the university’s first 50 years.

Dr Richard Stone is a lead researcher on the links between enslavement and the University of Bristol

Speaking to Bristol24/7, Stone said he found aspects of the university’s decision concerning.

“As a scholar, I have to go with my own historical analysis on this, but also in my other capacity in the university of caring for our students,” he said.

Dr Stone has been significantly involved in equality, diversity and inclusion work at the university.

For Stone, the modern-day implications of continuing to honour Wills and Fry, which the University’s ‘Building Renaming: Consultation and Engagement’ report was conducted to survey, is a major consideration.

3,670 students, staff, alumni and members of the public were surveyed in this report to gauge opinions on changing the names of buildings like the Wills Memorial Building, the university’s landmark building.

Of the respondents identifying as Black/African/Caribbean/Black British, 49.6 per cent reported feeling majorly or moderately impacted by the current names of the university buildings, along with similarly significant statistics from all other categorised ethnicity groups.

Stone said these statistics among the university, and Bristol’s Black residents, merit serious attention.

He pointed to the ‘Reparative Futures’ programme, a new tool for dealing with issues which impact the experience of Black and mixed ethnicity groups at the university.

This plaque on the side of the Fry building reveres Albert Fry not as a benefactor of the University of Bristol, but of its predecessor University College, revealing longer connections of the institution to enslavement

The decision to remove one problematic part of the university logo, namely Colston’s insignia, but retain Wills’ and Fry’s emblems is a “statement of continuing to honour” families whose wealth was deeply implicated in enslavement at the time of their donations to the University, said Stone.

“That risks creating the impression that this is a university that wants to celebrate these people.”

Stone’s research has revealed that both the Wills and Fry families knowingly bought goods that were produced by enslaved people, even after the abolition of slavery in Britain.

He emphasises the importance of judging people by the standards of their time, as many apologists of enslavement urge people to do.

He quoted abolitionist William Fox from the 1790s, who said “if we purchase the commodity, we participate in the crime”.

Stone disagrees with the vice chancellor’s justification that there is a “big difference between the connectivity of Wills and Fry and Colston with slavery”.

Instead he sees the family names as “equally culpable for [enslaved people] continuing to be enslaved,” knowingly profiting from goods which kept a “trade” in human beings viable.

Stone’s research, presented in the University of Bristol’s Legacies of Slavery Report, also contests arguments that the connections of the Wills and Fry families with enslavement ended far longer ago than they actually did.

“We need to be realistic that this is something that continued right up to the time the University was founded, and even beyond,” he said.

The Wills Memorial Building, the current Law School for the university, was built as a memorial to Henry Overton Wills, the university’s first chancellor

The University of Bristol’s first chancellor, Henry Overton Wills, was the cousin of the founder of Imperial Tobacco. As a successor of the family’s tobacco giant WD & HO Wills, he brought huge prosperity to the family.

Imperial Tobacco, served by members of the Wills family until as late as the 1960s, has been identified by the documentary Tobacco Slave as a company benefitting from the “permanent debt bondage” and “horrific health consequences” of tobacco farmers even now in present-day Malawi.

The Wills tobacco company bought tobacco farmed on slave plantations from their inception in 1786 until after US abolition of slavery in 1865.

Their more recent wealth, around the time of their £100,000 donation for the university’s establishment, was also implicated in practices akin to enslavement.

Even in the early 20th century, Fry’s chocolate was found to be trading with the Portuguese island of São Tomé, which kept forced labourers from Angola, according to Dr Stone, “enslaved in all but name”.

And just two years before the university received its charter in 1909, Joseph Storrs Fry justified buying cacao there despite “horrific” conditions, by arguing in 1907 that “the question is not how the servant is treated, but whether or not, he is a slave”.

Joseph, then the chairman of the JS Fry & Sons company, donated the third-largest contribution to the university’s inaugural funds: £10,500.

It is this truth-telling which Bristol’s historians, like Dr Stone, urge decision-makers to acknowledge, in their continuing reverence of these families for their financial contributions to the University of Bristol.

Stone believes the continued memorialisation of Fry and Wills in light of these emerging histories could run the risk of threatening the aims of the Reparative Futures programme, which is committed to “address racial injustice” and create a community which welcomes important groups of people ostracised by the university’s historical connections with enslavement.

Looking forward, Dr Stone said that “it’s a process that is never closed”.

He stands by vice chancellor Evelyn Welch’s belief that “just because the consultation is closed does not mean the debate comes to an end”, emphasising the importance of continuing research into creating meaningful debate around enslavement’s legacy.

All photos: Emily Brewster

Read next:

• University removing ‘offensive’ dolphin emblem from logo
• The Colston statue still standing in Bristol
• Cleo Lake on why Bristol needs a space to acknowledge slavery past

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