From Bristol to Boston to Hong Kong, the Statues of Colonizers and Racists Must Fall

Carlos Martinez

On 7 June, during an anti-racist rally in Bristol (part of the global wave of protests in the aftermath of the police murder of George Floyd), a group of protestors ripped a statue of notorious slave trader Edward Colston from its plinth and rolled it into Bristol Harbour. This act, although widely condemned by establishment politicians (Home Secretary Priti Patel for example describing it as “sheer vandalism”), was justly celebrated by anti-racists and anti-colonialists worldwide. A prominent member of the Royal African Company, Colston is estimated to have been involved in the enslavement of at least 84,000 Africans, nearly a quarter of whom died on the journey between West Africa and the Americas. People in Bristol – particularly its black community – have long campaigned for the statue to be removed, and have endured nothing but endless prevarication from the local authorities.

Colston’s upending was quickly followed by similar actions around the world. In Boston, Christopher Columbus was decapitated. In Richmond, Virginia, Jefferson Davis was toppled. (Davis was president of the Confederate States from 1861 to 1865 and a pro-slavery activist). The long-running campaign to remove Oxford University’s statue of the white supremacist and imperialist Cecil Rhodes has gathered fresh momentum. In Antwerp, Belgium, the statue of King Leopold II has had to be pre-emptively removed, while in Brussels, protestors climbed on a statue of Leopold and defiantly flew a giant flag of the Democratic Republic of Congo, which country suffered so terribly under Leopold’s brutal colonial rule.

Slavery and colonialism created the foundations of modern capitalism

This struggle around statues is immensely important. In Britain, statues of people like Edward Colston and Cecil Rhodes provide an uncomfortable reminder of just how much of Britain’s ‘greatness’ is built on a foundation of slavery, colonialism, plunder and genocide. The industrial revolution, which propelled Britain to domination in the early 19th century, started with the development of the steam engine. This scientific development was funded to no small degree with profits from the slave trade. Many of Britain’s cities blossomed as a result of “the turning of Africa into a warren for the commercial hunting of black-skins”, as Karl Marx so memorably put it.

For those of us that live in countries that have benefited from colonialism, it’s crucial that we assess and understand this history. The primary beneficiary of colonialism and the slave trade was of course the capitalist class. However, ordinary people also benefited to some extent. Indeed the ruling classes sought to justify colonialism on the basis that the profits resulting from it could be used to improve conditions for the working class and thereby maintain social stability. It was none other than Cecil Rhodes who said: “The Empire is a bread and butter question. If you want to avoid a civil war you must become imperialists.” Only by facing up to these uncomfortable facts can we hope to forge a path towards a united, non-racist and non-imperialist future.

The link between racism and imperialism

The tearing down of statues in the context of a global protest against white supremacy also reminds us just how closely linked racism and imperialism are. Columbus, Leopold, Rhodes, Colston and their ilk were racists and imperialists, and as representatives of a relentlessly expanding European capitalism couldn’t realistically be otherwise. Racism served as a justification for slavery and empire: “all men are created equal”, but that doesn’t apply to subhuman species. As capital spread into Africa, Asia and the Americas, so did a globalised racial hierarchy that continues to assert itself today on the streets of Minneapolis and elsewhere.

Just as racism in the colonial era served to prevent the working class in the imperialist countries from taking up the interests of the masses in the oppressed countries, racism in the modern era serves to divide the white working class in the imperialist countries from the masses of the developing world, and furthermore from minority communities originating in the developing world. The constant theme of racism is therefore its role in undermining solidarity between oppressed peoples.

So there is an inextricable link between racism and imperialism. Both are manifestations of national oppression, carried out by the ruling classes of the major colonialist countries (initially Britain, Spain, Italy, Portugal, Holland, Belgium and Germany, and later the US and Japan) as a means of perpetuating capitalism. This link between racism and imperialism is paralleled by the equally inextricable link between anti-racism and anti-imperialism. One cannot meaningfully oppose one manifestation of national oppression without opposing all manifestations of national oppression. To oppose racist policing is also to oppose the legacy of slavery represented by the likes of Edward Colston and Cecil Rhodes. It also means opposing imperialist wars, such as have been carried out against Syria, Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan and Yugoslavia. It also means opposing imperialist destabilisation and coercion, such as is currently being carried out against Venezuela, Zimbabwe, Iran, Cuba, Syria, DPR Korea, Nicaragua and other countries. It also means opposing attempts to reassert US global hegemony, currently gathering steam in the form of a New Cold War against China.

What statues should fall in Hong Kong?

Which brings us to the contentious issue of the protests in Hong Kong, a source of much confusion in the West. As Ajit Singh and Danny Haiphong have recently noted, some of the protest leaders in Hong Kong have attempted to associate themselves with Black Lives Matter, claiming a common cause against oppression and police brutality in spite of their close ties to some of the most reactionary and racist elements in US politics. Student activist Joshua Wong has gone so far as to accuse basketball star LeBron James of hypocrisy over his active support for anti-racist protests in the US and his lack of support for anti-government protests in Hong Kong.

The anti-racist protests taking place around the world in response to the gruesome murder of George Floyd are protests against national oppression, as discussed above. The attacks on the statues of racists, slave-traders, colonisers and imperialists are deeply connected to this movement. If black lives matter, the adulation of colonial oppressors must end.

So are the anti-government protests in Hong Kong also directed at racism and imperialism? If they are, wouldn’t we expect the protestors to be toppling the statues of Queen Victoria, King George VI and Thomas Jackson? After all Hong Kong is practically the quintessential example of colonialism. Incorporated into China since 214 BCE, it was seized by Britain in 1842 following the First Opium War, converted into a colony, and used as a base from which to direct British commercial operations, the most important of which was pushing opium onto the Chinese people. In 155 years of colonial rule, there were 28 British governors, with not a single one elected by Chinese people; Hong Kong was run essentially as an apartheid colony in which white people led a highly privileged existence.

Hong Kong was only returned to Chinese control in 1997, and thus a great deal of its colonial legacy remains. And yet the Hong Kong protestors don’t attack this legacy; in fact they are nostalgic for the days of British rule – waving union jacks and singing God Save the Queen – and they work closely with imperialist anti-China hawks like Tom Cotton, Marco Rubio and Mike Pompeo (all of whom, incidentally, are violently opposed to Black Lives Matter).

The only action Joshua Wong and his group have taken in relation to statues was to cover the Golden Bauhinia statue in black cloth ahead of President Xi Jinping’s visit to the city in 2017. The Golden Bauhinia statue was built in 1997 to celebrate the handover of Hong Kong and the establishment of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. So it turns out the Hong Kong protestors attack anti-colonial symbols, not colonial symbols. This amply demonstrates the fundamental difference between the global anti-racist protests and the Hong Kong ‘pro-democracy’ protests.

Toppling the statues of colonialists and white supremacists is a matter of global resistance against oppression. From Bristol to Boston to Hong Kong, the statues of colonisers and racists must fall.

(Carlos Martinez is an activist, writer and musician based in London.)

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Tear Down the Racist Statues, End Racist Debt and Pay for Equalizing Reparations

Vijay Prashad

The statues are coming down. The most recent avalanche began in the United States after the murder of George Floyd at the hands of police and the uprising it occasioned. In Philadelphia, the city removed a statue of former police commissioner Frank Rizzo; the mayor agreed with the protesters who called for its immediate removal, saying that the “statue is a deplorable monument to racism, bigotry, and police brutality for members of the Black community, the LGBTQ community, and many others.”

Across the U.S. South, protesters took aim at Confederate statues. The target was often Confederate generals—General Robert E. Lee in Montgomery, Alabama, and General Williams Carter Wickham in Richmond, Virginia. In some cases—such as in Mobile, Alabama—the city authorities removed the statues themselves. In others—such as in Alexandria, Virginia—the statue’s owners (the United Daughters of the Confederacy) finally removed them after long campaigns of public pressure.

On Sunday, June 7, the momentum shifted across the Atlantic Ocean to Bristol, England, which was one of the key cities of the transatlantic system of slavery. Here, protesters removed the statue of Edward Colston and threw it into the River Avon…. On that same day, a protester went to the statue of Winston Churchill in Westminster, London, and painted “was a racist” under the former prime minister’s name. The slogan was removed shortly thereafter. In Brussels, Belgium, protesters wrote “shame” on the statue of Leopold II, the butcher of the Congo.

So much for the statues.

Debt

History has not been written by the likes of the protesters who brought the statues down; it is the men depicted in the statues who have had that power. That’s our tragedy.

All crises within the United States disproportionately strike African Americans: the financial crisis from more than a decade ago illustrates this, but so does the coronavirus pandemic and the coronavirus recession. Everyone suffers, but African Americans seem to suffer more. Debt rates are higher among African Americans, while income loss in a time of crisis is borne more deeply in the African American community.

To remove a statue is important because the existence of the statue is a standing rebuke to the humanity of the people who must walk past it every day. But more is needed: what the men depicted in these statues succeeded in establishing in the world must also be removed.

The removal of Colston’s statue is significant. Behind it, however, lingers an atrocious reality.

In 1833, when the British parliament passed the Slavery Abolition Act, it promised “compensation” not to the human beings freed from this brutal system, but to their “owners.” From 1835 to 2015, the British exchequer paid the “owners” and their descendants £17 trillion. This is an extraordinary amount of money. The precedent for this came from the French. When Haiti won its independence from France, the French sent their warships in 1825 to demand that the new republic pay compensation for the loss of slavery. Between 1825 to 1947, Haiti paid France $21 billion for the emancipation of the Haitian people.

Meanwhile, countries like Haiti and Jamaica had to borrow money from governments and banks in Europe to finance their survival. That borrowing escalated over the last several decades as these countries faced enormous challenges, including natural disasters and coups promoted by the United States of America. The desolation of the finances of these countries continues.

Today, a reasonable estimate of the external debt of the developing countries—many of them former slave plantations—sits at $11 trillion, with debt servicing due this year of $3.9 trillion. Attempts to postpone or cancel the debt have been futile as U.S. and European governments and banks have been lukewarm to the ideas on the table. They want their money. This money, however, should not be sucked out of the formerly colonized countries; we need to use those resources toward the dire needs of our societies.

It is one thing to knock down a statue; it is another to cut down the debt.

In The Wretched of the Earth, Frantz Fanon wrote, “Colonialism and imperialism have not settled their debt to us once they have withdrawn from our territories. The wealth of the imperialist nations is also our wealth. Europe is literally the creation of the Third World.”

Bring down the statues, surely. But more than that: cancel the debt and provide reparations to the formerly colonized for the centuries of theft and brutality.

(Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian, editor and journalist. This article is an extract. The full article is available on People’s Dispatch website.) 

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What I Learnt at the ‘Rhodes Must Fall’ Protest in Oxford

Nayanika Mathur

Oxford: I won’t deny feeling a twinge of trepidation at the prospect of being part of a crowd of people in England at this moment in time. Not just because of fears of a second wave or the more generalised worry about proximity with humans that COVID-19 has induced in many of us, but also because I felt – after almost 3 months of sudden and severe quarantining – that I have lost the social skills and emotional energy to deal with large political gatherings.

I knew, however, that I just could not not go for the combined #RhodesMustFall Oxford and #BlackLivesMatter protest that was held on the evening of June 9 in Oxford. It would be impracticable for me to remain cloistered at home as, a couple of miles away, my students, colleagues and friends took to the street.

I told myself not to worry about crowds and the potential COVID-19 petri dish. This is Oxford, after all. Even when our teachers’ union calls a strike for grave reasons such as our vanishing pensions and rapidly deteriorating working conditions, only a handful of people turn up at the picket line. Furthermore, most of our students are away from Oxford, quarantining in their homes or will be busy with the examinations. Since the imposition of the lockdown in late March, Oxford has been eerily empty. At most, I told myself, there will be 100-150 of us at the protest.

I couldn’t have been more wrong.

The first sign that this was going to be a much bigger event than I had anticipated was the sight of a helicopter hovering over Oxford. I could see as I biked over that it was flying above High Street – the very heart of Oxford – where Cecil Rhodes, considered an architect of apartheid and founder of Rhodesia, continues to perch above the entrance door of Oriel College. As I got into town I was stunned to see riot police and patrols atop horses everywhere with several vans filled with back-up force arranged under the Bridge of Sighs.

Near the Radcliffe Camera, I walked past an elderly white woman on a bike who was talking to four police persons standing there. She was spitting in anger at the “irresponsible and stupid” protest against Oxford’s “legacy”. I rolled my eyes thinking, “Here we go.”

As I arrived at a passage that leads to High Street, where the protest was already underway, I saw it was filled with people taking a knee for 8 minutes and 46 seconds in honour of George Floyd. There was also the most Oxbridge protest poster ever. Demanding more black rowers on Oxbridge boating teams wasn’t exactly the radical politics I was hoping to see on display.

The first thing I learned about protests in the time of the coronavirus is how hard it is to spot friends/comrades due to masking and social distancing. You have to guess that the person you are cheerily waving at – from a safe two-metre distance – is, in fact, the person you think they are and that they will also recognise you despite your protective gear.

The second thing I learnt is that one should never underestimate what makes people come together to protest. Over the past winter in Delhi, I never failed to be amazed by how many people defied Section 144 and despite lack of public transportation and with the very real possibility of being arrested or facing police action, took to the streets to protest the trinity of CAA-NPR-NRC. We laughed with disdain at those who claimed the anti-CAA protestors were being paid to turn up for the demonstrations. For the question of what motivates human quests for justice and equality cannot ever be understood in crassly instrumental or pecuniary terms. It is only those who are themselves unmoved by such deeply cherished causes or ideals who would underestimate the visceral anger unleashed by acts of racism or communalism.

I wasn’t particularly concerned about police brutality in the privileged and keenly-observed heart of Oxford, but I was almost certain the pandemic would keep whatever of the university is still in residence at home. Besides the pandemic, there is also the shibboleth of ‘free speech’ and debate that so many in Oxford bring up as reasons to keep Rhodes where he is.

These are tiresome, staid and repetitive discussions one has to still have despite the superbly nuanced writings on the statue and Rhodes Must Fall movement by, amongst others, Tadiwa Madenga, Rahul Rao, Nakul Krishna and Amia Srinivasan. The original statement of the student-led Rhodes Must Fall Oxford petition from 2015 possesses a compelling clarity. Also listen in to the speeches that were delivered at the protest that make powerful connections with, for instance, Simukai Chigudu, one of only seven black professors in Oxford powerfully explaining (from 1 hour 23 minutes) why we are all so “tired of colonial iconography”.

Imagine my surprise then when I saw the swelling crowds on High Street. There were literally thousands of people who had occupied it and were also flooding the alleyways leading up to this main road in town. Never before have I seen such a sight in Oxford and I wonder if I ever will in my lifetime again.

The third thing I learnt is that it is totally possible to socially distance at protests or demonstrations without losing that invaluable and somewhat intangible sense of political togetherness. We were, more or less, careful to give one another space and weren’t crowding, but yet it so felt like we were together. It reminded me faintly of being jammed into that small space at Jantar Mantar for the CAA-NRC protests after we had been dislodged from other spaces in Delhi. Or sitting on Shaheen Bagh’s gaddas with the warmth of hundreds of bodies around keeping the December-January chill somewhat at bay. But unlike Shaheen Bagh or Jantar Mantar, where we were packed like sardines, there was ample spacing here. Interestingly, this social distancing was not being imposed or monitored but was something we automatically adopted – perhaps months of isolation and the omnipresent fear of the coronavirus has changed, at least for the time being, how we come to occupy public space.

The speeches were taking place right under the Rhodes statue at Oriel college. Due to social distancing and the incredibly huge turnout, as well as the annoying helicopter that was making a real racket, we couldn’t hear them very well. This is where I learnt the great benefit of having internet coverage during a protest. I opened the Facebook link on which the speeches were being live-streamed or checked Twitter for more updates.

Why will Rhodes fall?

In 2016, Oriel College refused to remove Rhodes’ statue. The official reason given was that it “was a reminder of the complexity of history and of the legacies of colonialism.” There was widespread speculation that the statue wasn’t torn down due to some wealthy donors who threatened to stop funding if the statue was removed. It is rumoured that the gifts and bequests that were under threat of being withdrawn amounted to the tune of £100 million.

Four years on, the situation is different for several reasons. The first is the wider political environment in the UK. The Black Lives Matter movement is pushing this country, at long last, to confront its own past of slavery, violence and Empire. The toppling of the slave trader Edward Colston in Bristol has been followed by the removal of another slave trader, Robert Milligan, in London. In Belgium, Leopold’s statue was removed in Antwerp.

Even a few months ago, the discussion we are currently having on the politics of public memorialisation practices would not have been possible. This quick turnaround is a reminder of the fluidity of global politics as well as deep interconnections between what happens in, say, Minneapolis and Oxford. To those who are watching the seeming drowning of the anti-CAA-NRC struggle in India with dismay, the resurrection of the Rhodes Must Fall movement in Oxford is a message of hope.

Other reasons why I think Rhodes will certainly fall are more local to Oxford. No doubt the dark forces that prevented Cecil from, as a poster said at the protest, “going for a swim” in 2016, will try the same tricks again. This time, however, the governing body of Oriel college, which acts as its trustees, is going to be under unprecedented pressure. After a rather uncharacteristic explosion by the Oxford faculty against the university’s policies on pensions two years ago, the vice chancellor had hastily retreated on a decision she had made by citing the “depth of feeling” that was on display. Well, the depth of feeling against Cecil Rhodes and Oriel College was overwhelming on the evening of June 9. It was palpable in the air; in the chants of “take it down-take it down-take it down” and “de-de-de-decolonise” that resounded through the centre of Oxford with over a thousand voices chiming in synchrony.

The new petition on the removal of the statue has garnered over 150,000 signatures and counting. A blistering and brilliant open letter written by an organisation called Common Ground Oxford outlines the reasons why Oxford remains systemically racist and what the university must urgently do to remedy this. This, too, has also been endorsed by innumerable people and organisations associated with Oxford. Critically, the Oxford city council has publicly written to Oriel to “make Oxford a truly anti-racist city” and stop glorifying white supremacists like Cecil Rhodes.

Perhaps the most striking thing for me at the June 9 protest was noting who all was present. It was not just the sheer numbers, but also the types of Oxford dons and students who were signifying their support to the removal of Rhodes through their physical presence and sloganeering. And that too, I repeat, in the face of a pandemic that has left us collectively exhausted and not a little terrified. There is a wide coalition building here – consisting of a motley bunch of academics, student bodies and local movements/organisations in Oxfordshire – who are all saying that it is time for Rhodes to be removed from the town. An environment is developing – globally, nationally and locally – that will make it exceedingly difficult for the university and Oriel college to not give in.

Once again, this aspect of the gathering in Oxford reminded me of the power of the CAA-NRC protests in Delhi. It wasn’t just the usual suspects of left-liberal students, activists, academics that I was encountering at the protests. As the poster theme “Things are so bad that even X is here” went, there was an unusual sociological and ideological combination of individuals and groups in the anti-CAA protests, which is what gave it teeth.

Another striking aspect of the Oxford protest, which bodes well for its success was the connections it was making – in the slogans, posters, chatter, as much as in the speeches. There was a true intersectionality in causes – from George Floyd’s killing and Black Lives Matter to Kashmir and Palestine. The most striking thing for me as a teacher was how strong the call was to decolonise the university, reform the curriculum, question and challenge whiteness, and properly learn about Britain’s Imperial past and systemically racist present. This is why the Rhodes Must Fall movement is so powerful and essential – it isn’t really about a statue as much as it is about how we produce and disseminate knowledge and what sort of a University, at its very ethical and pedagogical core, Oxford can become.

As a poster noted, “All Rhodes lead to the river.”. There is no doubt in my mind that all roads for Cecil do lead – if he is lucky – to a museum. No amount of riot police positioned in, around, and atop Oriel college can protect him from the forces that are gathering for his imminent dislodgement.
(Nayanika Mathur is an associate professor in the Anthropology of South Asia and fellow of Wolfson College at the University of Oxford.)