Sleeping with the Fishes

It might not be ideal weather for a swim, but neither was it ideal for a statue of Edward Colston, Tory MP, philanthropist, and dealer in slaves, to have stood in Bristol these last 125 years. And now his copper bottomed facsimile reposes on the bed of the Avon following a Sunday outing with Black Lives Matter protestors, the decades-long debate about the status of the statue is settled. The reaction, as you might expect, has been mixed and we've seen three broad responses emerge within "the discourse."

There are those who celebrated the statue's demise - the argument we'll call for the purpose of this post, the right one. Just as the American south is littered with Confederate generals, many a plinth on these islands supports a questionable encumbrance. A slaver here, a pirate there, invaders, occupiers, butchers, the whole gamut of 18th and 19th century conquistadores from Britain's imperial past. Their misdeeds bracketed and their person commemorated by likenesses of granite and cast iron, their continued and unremarked presence in officially sanctified and maintained spaces denotes a society ill at ease with what its forebears have done, and so either likes to pretend it never happened or concentrate on the two World Wars (and one world cup). Even Britain's atrocities since the war, such as Partition, the war in Malaya, the Mau Mau rebellion in Kenya, and its "police actions" in the late 20th and early 21st centuries barely register as things we should learn from, let alone atone for. Always happy to demand contrition from Germans, and affecting astonishment that Japan adopts a studied amnesia when it comes to its occupation of and crimes committed in Korea and China, the British state, its leading parties, its mass media and press, the entire establishment refuses to consider the global trail of dead as far flung as its empire once was.

The George Floyd/Black Lives Matter solidarity protests here in the UK would not have tapped a deep well of resentment and exploded if we didn't have similar problems. The British police are not as overtly violent and racist as American cops, but people of colour are likelier to be stopped, searched, roughed up, and banged up. Black people are twice as likely to die in custody than whites. This is compounded by a division of labour that is heavily racialised, with black people - women especially - disproportionately located in the lowest paid, precarious, and in these Covid times, dangerous occupations. And despite the official ideologies of anti-racism, anti-black racism in particular is not taken seriously. Under the carpet it goes, along with blood flecked sweepings of imperial history.

It's time racism in this country was treated as a social and a political problem, a structural feature of capitalist societies, albeit in our case with particularly British characteristics. The unceremonious trashing and dumping of Colston's statue might change the terms of the debate as other statues and historical legacies come under pressure. However, there are people, powerful people, who'd prefer racism to remain a moral issue for, well, very political reasons. The Home Secretary Priti Patel is one such person. As a politician from an Indian background, her overtly right wing takes on issues - like threatening the Irish Republic with food shortages, tough on refugees, egregious chumming with right wing Israeli politicians - are attempts to endear herself to the Tory grassroots, a good chunk of whom very grudgingly accept BAME MPs and ministers. Showing more concern for a rusting statue of a centuries-dead slaver ("utterly disgraceful!" she wittered on Sky News) than any victim of racism, her careerist instinct is to be seen being tough on anti-racism. This is more than her getting accepted and easing a path to future higher office, trying to make the Colston dunking a criminal matter avoids having to address the substantive issue. And for good reason: any reckoning with police racism and imperial history means lifting the lid on Tory racism. Remember, as recently as, well, December's election the Tories promised a crackdown targeting travellers. As the wheels come off the clown car and difficulties mount, an insurgent street movement targeting imperial heroes is an unnecessary distraction, and a potentially damaging one for Tories who might be drawn to the empire's defence.

There's another establishment response too, and once seen pushed by assorted Blairy types and paragons of centrist virtue. Rob Marchant Of Labour Uncut, for instance, whinges about "mob rule" and "vandalism", and mentions democracy. This is pretty much the response you can expect from Labour's front bench, if they venture into these waters at all. A wide ranging and thorough discussion of racism and imperialism doesn't suit the present leadership, because party history is up to its neck in it. We like to hear about Clem Attlee, the crusading reformer. We never hear about Clem Attlee, the overseer of Partition, father of the bomb and colonial anti-insurgency, and the man who soaked our African possessions to pay for Britain's post-war recovery. And, well, Black Lives Matter shines an unwelcome spotlight on current party practices. The racism uncovered by the leaked report, the systematic failure to take complaints seriously, the repeated targeting of black MPs by the right of the party, the factional preoccupation with only one form of racism, offering arguments about process and the proper way of doing things avoids having to reckon with what BLM and solidarity movements are saying.

Black Lives Matter has a mass following in Britain not simply because racism exists and we're sick of it, but because the establishment in its Tory and Labour guises are complicit. The Tories are happy to whip it up for electoral purposes, and Labour are much happier pandering and addressing "real concerns" than challenging racism, whether it's on the doorstep, in the press, or comes out the mouths of their right wing opponents. This time, however, something has changed. BLM and the solidarity protests will die down in due course like all movements do, but the issues raised are not going away. The days of depoliticising racism as a personal failing are done: its relationship to politics and power are clear for all to see.