Colston 4 not guilty!
As a child, from the age of about 8 I over indulged in chocolate and became overweight. The end result was name calling, being the last to be chosen in team sports and low self-esteem. When I was in, I think, my second year at Grammar school (still overweight) we went on a school trip to the Rhineland, to a lovely little place called Boppard, near Koblenz. As was the habit then, prefects came along to “look after” the younger boys. One of them decided it would be a laugh to come into the room I was sharing with two others and throw a cake at us. My instant reaction was to pick it up and throw it back, missing him sadly but making a bit of a mess down the stairwell. For that I got the cane.
I have long since forgiven the teacher concerned. He had the reputation of the school in mind, possibly even the image of the English abroad (O K probably not). It was simply the way back then. BUT!
All my life I have had a sense of fairness, of right and wrong, of putting things right.
It left me with an indelible sense of justice and injustice.
I knew that I had not really done anything that bad. I was the “victim” of an attack. Foolhardy maybe for retaliating, but it was in the heat of the moment. I should have been exonerated, not punished. Indeed I had always been “a good boy”, brought up not to swear, to fight, to steal (not even scrumping I recall). The sort of boy who was called to the headmaster’s office not to be punished but to explain “what really happened”, because I could be trusted.
All my life I have therefore had a sense of fairness, of right and wrong, of the need to put things right.
There are ways of doing things in a decent society, and ways of not doing things.
And so to Bristol.
It does somewhat beggar belief that an act that was filmed by many witnesses and confessed to in court can effectively be deemed not to have happened!
Now I am not arguing for one minute that the removal of the statue of Colston wasn’t long overdue, as was the renaming of buildings he funded. Bristol Council should have dealt with this decades ago. I can also almost excuse the people who tore it down as being carried along in the heat of the moment (Hmmm, half an hour or more I would hazard – time to check one’s conscience?). However to find them not guilty is a travesty of justice.
We have all done things, perhaps as children, that with hindsight we know were wrong. Should we have been punished? No, probably not. But should we be told that we did nothing wrong? Absolutely NO. In this case by so doing we not only turn these four into some kind of justice freedom fighters but open a very dangerous door to vandals everywhere.
What the judge appears to be saying is that if you believe in something passionately enough, or you just get a bit carried away, then you are justified in doing whatever you choose. It really doesn’t take a law degree to see the flaws in that argument!
There are ways of doing things in a decent society, and ways of not doing things. This was mob rule.
What would I have done you ask? I’d have found them guilty as charged, but then have seriously considered what was an appropriate punishment given the context and the numbers of other people cheering them on! I might even have used the opportunity to draw attention to the greater evils that were being protested. But to overlook criminal damage, no. That would be like justifying setting fire to car lots in Cleveland or looting in Portland. No. Simply no.
We keep coming back to the issue of how we deal with history and how we view ourselves as a result. Are we controlled by our past or liberated from it? Am I particularly bad just because I was born white? Am I forever a victim because I was born black? And for “black” you can substitute Jewish, Moslem, Hispanic, Irish, working class, etc. etc.
Meanwhile over the pond a very different approach . . . . . .