News / Edward Colston
Cleo Lake: ‘If I was mayor, Colston’s statue would have been long gone’
A former Bristol lord mayor has said that she “stood up and cheered” at home when seeing pictures of the Colston statue toppled.
One of Cleo Lake’s first acts as lord mayor was to remove the painting of Edward Colston that had hung in the lord mayor’s parlour at City Hall for decades. “I refused to maintain the status quo,” she said.
The Green Party councillor, who like Bristol’s elected mayor Marvin Rees is half-Jamaican, said that if she had been mayor the statue “would have been long gone by now into a museum”.
is needed now More than ever
Writing in Metro, the former Colston’s Girls School pupil said that when she was younger, Colston “was presented as if he was the saint of Bristol”.
She said: “Standing there in our school uniforms, there was no mention of the people captured in West Africa, branded with the initials RAC (Royal African Company), before being shackled and driven aboard ships to America and the Caribbean.
“No mention of the people thrown overboard or the human cost that enabled Colston’s riches to be used across Bristol.”
Lake said that when she raised the question of removing Colston’s statue with the headteacher, she felt she was “ridiculed, put in my place and silenced” – with this microaggression having “a profound effect” on her.
Lake later became a member of the Countering Colston group, advocated for the opening of a museum dedicated to remembering Bristol’s infamous slavery past and is currently helping to build an assembly for African Caribbean heritage youth.
Two letters make all the difference to the plaque underneath where Colston’s statue once stood – photo by Martin Booth
Lake and her Countering Colston colleagues had campaigned for the statue’s removal for years without success, with Lake saying that they were “fobbed off and ignored”.
She said: “It’s been a painful battle to get it removed or indeed get a dedicated museum ‘Abolition Shed’ agreed, which has at times created some tension between mayor Marvin Rees and me – which is a shame as we have so much in common.
“We went to the same primary school, our mothers live streets apart and we’re both half-Jamaican.
“I don’t know what constraints he has faced in not taking action, but I know that if I was in the driving seat, the statue would have been long gone by now into a museum.
“Ultimately, to see it no longer on its plinth filled me with relief. Educating everyone about this country’s dark past is so important.”
Colston’s empty plinth still has some placards around it from Sunday’s Black Lives Matter march – photo by Martin Booth
Lake urged city institutions across the world to remove their statues and symbols that glorify slavery, white supremacy and oppression.
She added: “It is time for those with institutional power to heed these calls if indeed they truly do mean what they say and believe that black lives matter.
“And beyond the toppling of statues that are now falling like dominoes, I sincerely hope that this is an opportunity, just like the classic protest slogan shouts, for black and white to unite and fight back.
“To topple systematic and structural racism, which is underpinned by capitalism in crisis that works for the minority one per cent with the wealth.
“We owe this, not just to the memory of all those who have so cruelly and unjustly lost their lives in the past, but also for the generations to come who deserve to live in a fair and equitable society.”
Main photo by Martin Booth
Read more: Colston’s statue lifted out of the docks
Our top newsletters emailed directly to you
