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Colston 4 Acquitted: Is Something Wrong with Our Jury System? - WB 7th Jan 2022
97 Plays2 years ago
Welcome to Watching Brief. As the name implies, each week Marc (Mr Soup) & Andy Brockman of the Pipeline (Where history is tomorrow's news) cast an eye over news stories, topical media and entertainment and discuss and debate what they find.
#archaeologynews #thepipeline #archaeosoup
Support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/archaeosoup
***
0:00 Introduction
1:36 A Brief History
9:29 Protest, Trial, Aquittal
18:32 An Archaeological Perspective
24:44 A Legal Precedent?
35:17 Final Comments
***
Link of the Week:
Secret Barrister Commentary:
***
Links:
A Knee on His Neck: George Floyd’s America:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/national/george-floyd-america/policing/
Edward Colston Statue Toppling and Colston Timeline of Events:
https://www.bristolpost.co.uk/news/bristol-news/edward-colston-statue-toppling-timeline-6444863
Bristol’s Slavery ‘Cancer’ was ‘Surgically Removed’ by Colston Four, Says Historian David Olusoga:
The Secret Barrister: Do the Verdicts in the Trial of the Colston 4 Signal Something Wrong with Our Jury System? 10 Things You Should Know:
Discussing the Toppling of Edward Colston Statue in Bristol - Live Stream:
Outrage as 'Space Archaeologist' Sarah Parcak Advises How to Topple Statues!? - WB June 2020
Muppets of the Month: Thugs 'Defend' Statues from No One & Fight the Police! - WB June 2020
Statue Wars, UNCHARTED: Golden Abyss, Age of Samurai: Media Picks - WB 2nd July 2021
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Podcast Overview
00:00:01
Speaker
You're listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network.
00:00:05
Speaker
Welcome to Soupcast, coming to you from Archaeosoup Towers. By popular demand, we're taking selected videos from the Archaeosoup back catalogue and bringing them to you as convenient podcasts. As the name implies, with Archaeosoup you get a bit of everything thrown into the pot. Archaeology, discussion, humour and debate. You can find out more at archaeosoup.com. So
Weekly Welcome and Current Events
00:00:29
Speaker
sit back, relax and enjoy our hearty helping of Archaeosoup.
00:00:50
Speaker
And welcome back to Watching Brief for the week of the 3rd of January 2022. I am joined as ever by my co-host, Mr Andy Brockman, who is hopefully feeling refreshed following a festive season. How's everything at House Brockman?
00:01:12
Speaker
We've got the Red Cross on the door and we're expecting a bit from the doctor with that really fetching sort of birdie mask. We're a plague house. Oh dear, oh dear. You've got the Rona, have you, in the house?
00:01:28
Speaker
Rona is visiting, yes. Rona is currently visiting our daughter and her boyfriend. And fortunately, in all seriousness, fortunately, they're not too bad at the moment and we wish everyone well. And under the circumstances, Happy New Year to you and our viewer.
00:01:50
Speaker
Indeed, yes. Happy as can be, I suppose. Yeah, Happy New Year, folks. It's good to be back. We didn't manage a Christmas New Year livestream. We may well do something towards the end of January as like a bit of fun, but like... We could do it for Burns Night or Chinese New Year. Oh, there you go. There you go. Yeah, some neeps and tatties. That should be good. Absolutely. A wee bit of haggis as well.
00:02:19
Speaker
Anyway, what's been happening this week? What are we going to discuss? I don't think there's anything really major in the news this week, is there? No, there's absolutely no major news from a heritage point of view whatsoever. It's been so, so quite... Of course, we're actually kidding you, dear viewer, because there's actually a pretty major story which we're going to be discussing. Oh, would that be the major story where our Prime Minister has
00:02:44
Speaker
has got a headline in today's Daily Mail. Vandals can't change our history. It might be the same one where the Attorney General is the government minister who's basically in charge of the law, is probably about to get a lesson in the law from the
00:03:09
Speaker
from the judiciary if she carries on the way she's going, but anyway we'll come to that later. Okay, okay, well let us begin at the beginning shall we?
Edward Colston: History and Controversy
00:03:18
Speaker
Once upon a time folks there was a statue in Bristol and what happened to that statue, Andy?
00:03:25
Speaker
But the statue, as our regular viewer will probably know, was to a man called Sir Edward Colston. Sir Edward Colston was one of the great and good of Bristol in the 17th into the 18th century. He came from a local family of prominent merchants and was involved in an organisation called the Society of Merchant Venturers, which still exists and has been an influence on the city of Bristol.
00:03:54
Speaker
for a long time now it's a sort of an organization which has a great deal of influence or has had a great deal of influence on the way the city has been run and its public face. Colston is most famous now because he was
00:04:13
Speaker
not just associated with society, but actually ventures, but also something called the Royal Africa Company, and eventually rising to be a very senior officer of the Royal African Company. Now, the Royal African Company basically traded in enslaved African men, women and children. It transported enslaved people from Africa to primarily British possessions in the Caribbean.
00:04:38
Speaker
to work on the sugar plantations and it's estimated that hundreds of thousands of people were stolen from their homes and then transported during the time that Colston was actually involved with the company. I mean people were their product. People were their product and Colston made a lot of money at it.
00:05:08
Speaker
out of it, as did Bristol as a city. Now, Coulson didn't have any heirs, and he had a vast fortune. And so a lot, he made the decision, as a lot of the great and the good did at that time, that he would put money into good works.
00:05:30
Speaker
good works at least as far as white people were concerned back in Bristol and he endowed a school which still exists and over the years after his death in
00:05:47
Speaker
in 1721. His name became attached to many other aspects of city life in Bristol. He was commemorated in a concert hall, names of roads, names of other schools. There was a stained glass window in Bristol Cathedral, other monuments. So he was a significant figure in the history of Bristol, but an increasingly controversial one.
00:06:09
Speaker
Now in 1895, there was a move to erect a statue to commemorate his life and his place as a benefactor to Bristolians. Out of place, close to what's called the Floating Harbour, it's the docks in Bristol where
00:06:36
Speaker
in Colston's lifetime the ships involved in the what's often called the slave trade triangle would have docked where you know enslaved African people who were being brought to England would have been disembarked. Colston was there on a plinth overlooking the docks in his you know full dress clothes bewigged and all the rest of it and this was put up in as I say in the mid 1890s
00:07:06
Speaker
interestingly, and perhaps as a measure of how Colston was already a controversial character, it was meant to have been put up by public subscription. In fact, the public subscription campaign failed because the GoFundMe campaign to put the statue up in 1895, it actually failed and it only went up because of the individual contributions of
00:07:30
Speaker
senior members of Bristol Society and Society of Merchant Venturers. So it can't be said that it was a popular statue in the first place. No. So it was people of his class celebrating actually their own class, really, because the guy was long dead.
The Fall of Colston's Statue
00:07:46
Speaker
That's a reasonable summary. That's a reasonable summary.
00:07:50
Speaker
Now, if we fast forward to the late 20th, early 21st century, Bristol has become a massively multicultural city. It's a very famous part of a city called St. Paul's, which became famous for being the area where a lot of black people moved to. It had a very vibrant cafe and music culture. I lived in Bristol in the early 80s and lived in St. Paul's.
00:08:20
Speaker
It was, you know, it was then as it is now, it was a very creative city, lots of artistic and media people, and animations, I believe.
00:08:29
Speaker
Aardman Animations, grew out of Bristol. It had a thriving theatre scene, a thriving band scene. And it was a very modern, very vibrant city. And with that came examinations and some quite hard examinations of Bristol's history.
00:08:54
Speaker
And the statue of Colston became a sort of touchstone, really, as to how Bristol was changing. Legibly, though, that it was this statue in a city full of statues. This is something that historian David Olusoga pointed out a couple of days ago. There was a reason for this statue becoming that touchstone. This wasn't like a citywide, you know, ire against public statuary, as it was.
00:09:22
Speaker
That's right. It was particularly Colston's links, direct links to being with direct responsibility in the enslavement of tens of hundreds of thousands of African people.
00:09:39
Speaker
And the idea that somebody who had committed what are now seen effectively as crime, well, genuinely, what are now seen as crime. Well, human trafficking. Human trafficking. Somebody, exactly. Someone who made a vast fortune out of human trafficking should be in a position of, you know, as you say, pride in the city, in the city for people to walk past and to look up, literally look up to, because it's high up on a
00:10:10
Speaker
So, cut into the chase, there have been campaigns over various areas that have the statue taken down.
00:10:17
Speaker
May 25th, 2020, as people may well remember, George Floyd, who's a black American, was murdered by a police officer who nails on his neck for eight minutes, 46 seconds and suffocate. Now, understandably, that court set off reverberations and revulsion around the world and kicked off the so-called Black Lives Matter movement.
00:10:45
Speaker
Well, it certainly gave it more energy, shall we say. I think it was already going before then. Well, yeah, it became an international movement and it included in Bristol. Now, Bristolians
00:11:03
Speaker
began to plan a Black Lives Matter protest for Sunday, June 7th. And that included promoting a petition to remove the statue of Colston. Now, the petition had actually been set up several years earlier on the 38 Degrees website, but it hadn't gained much traction, but suddenly it was gaining a lot of traction.
00:11:29
Speaker
The name of Colston was being mentioned in the Bristol media. Some places associated with Colston like schools had already changed their name to disassociate themselves from Colston.
00:11:45
Speaker
And the Colston Hall, which is one of the main concert halls in Bristol, had already announced it was going to be changing its name. It had just undergone a £50 million rebuild to bring it up to state of the art standards. And it was recognised that being named after a leading people trafficker and slave trader wasn't really a good look.
00:12:09
Speaker
So things were already starting to happen, but the statue was still there and there was no sign that the city authorities and the elected mayor were going to prioritise taking it down. On Sunday, June the 7th, there was a gathering of around 10 to 15,000 people who took part in the demonstration. And it appears that
00:12:38
Speaker
in the immediate period before demonstration, some people have decided that they were going to pull down the statute. Now, this is something that was already again going on in the States with some of these so-called Confederate statues.
00:12:51
Speaker
statues commemorating the slave owning class in the American Civil War. But again often often put up during Jim Crow, so again their historiosity is up for discussion and debate in terms of actually how how directly connected they are in fact to the Civil War as opposed to reinforcing a little bit like Colston and his class of merchants
00:13:14
Speaker
a status of a group of people, as opposed to actually memo realising a historical event or historical person. Anyway, so continue. That's right. So basically, the during the demonstration, a group of those people, quite a large group of those people put ropes around the neck of the statue, it was pulled down onto the ground, it was kicked.
00:13:40
Speaker
It was dogged with paint and it was dragged to Bristol Harbour and dumped in Bristol Harbour. The police chose not to intervene in this. It was an operational decision to avoid provoking the crowd, it would appear. Anyway,
00:14:08
Speaker
Even at Somerset Police, which is the police force that was responsible, announced afterwards that they were immediately beginning an investigation into possible criminal damage. Now, because it was a listed structure, there was an aggravating factor in that. It was the property of Bristol City Council who hold it in trust for the people of Bristol. So they were the aggrieved party, if you like, in this.
00:14:36
Speaker
But it immediately becomes again an international issue. The images, and I'm sure our viewers will be familiar with the images of the statue being pulled through the streets and then particularly dumped into the harbour. And then actually very swiftly afterwards, the day afterwards, lifted out again by Bristol Council. And the statue was lifted out and put into storage.
00:14:59
Speaker
After a police investigation and a referral to the Crown Prosecution Service, which is the way these things are done, and allegedly, let's say interventions by Priti Patel, the home secretary, the decision was made to prosecute four people.
00:15:25
Speaker
who had taken part in that action. Now, it is very clear from the number of people that were involved, as opposed to the number of people who were actually finally charged, that in a sense it was seen as a prosecution because they had to pour on Correjela's ultra.
00:15:51
Speaker
There was a debate that argued that would a prosecution be seen as defending effectively the reputation of a slave trader, a people trafficker, and was it appropriate? It was decided, for whatever reason, to undertake the prosecution, and just before Christmas
00:16:08
Speaker
four people were charged and brought before the Crown Court in Bristol, having elected to go to a Crown Court jury trial, not a magistrates trial, which would probably have seen them convicted and fined straight away. They chose to fight the case in front of the jury. Now it's worthwhile just saying
00:16:31
Speaker
This isn't just about defending the ownership of a statue of a slave trader. It is fair to say, and it is true to say, that they did destroy a listed monument that was owned by the city council.
00:16:46
Speaker
I made the point a little earlier that this is a city full of statues, but in this instance they directed their aggression against this particular statue for reasons that they deemed to be reasonable. But unless the prosecution
00:17:04
Speaker
I think is legitimate in so much as it was actually an act of vandalism against the protected monument owned for the public by the City Council. So it's not just that there's more going on than just whether or not it's right to defend the personage of Colton. Absolutely, absolutely. In objective terms, what happened was a heritage crime. Yes.
00:17:31
Speaker
and the four people, and the four people concerned that they've become known as the Colston Four. It's Milo Ponsford, Sage Willoughby, Jake Scuse, and Ryan Graham, who's become something of a spokesperson since the trial ended a few days ago. The four of them were charged with criminal damage, and face trial, as I say, in Bristol Crown
Legal and Cultural Implications
00:17:55
Speaker
Court. Now, on January the 5th, two days ago,
00:17:58
Speaker
um the jury was sent out to consider the verdict in the trial um which had uh gone on over several days over the over the Christmas period um witnesses what a Christmas present for them all well absolutely um
00:18:17
Speaker
But I mean, there are many accounts of the trial in the media, and there are accounts of evidence by people like David Orsuga, who's Bristolian himself and gave evidence for the defense on the on the role of cost and slave trade and so on. But basically, the jury, after only about two and a half hours deliberation,
00:18:42
Speaker
on a majority. So it means at least 10 of them were agreeing on the verdict. It wasn't a unanimous verdict. At least 10 of them agreed that Ponsford, Willoughby, Scuse and Graham were not guilty, which means they left the court without a stain on their character and they can't be tried for this again. Yeah. Much as certain parts of the media and the commentary act would
00:19:08
Speaker
quite like it's a happen and I think we're going to come on to that in a moment. Yeah it's an interesting one this because this morning for example I've been having a conversation with someone, I say a conversation it was a heated discussion with someone about this, simply on the basis of
00:19:31
Speaker
the notion of the destruction of history. And I hinted at this when it came to our Prime Minister writing a massive headline in the Daily Mail in shouty words, you know, they cannot change our history. But in this instance, we're talking about the toppling of a single statue in a city as a fall of statues.
00:19:53
Speaker
one statue on a day two years ago, which has not led to the destruction of our society. It hasn't become a slippery slope as was being described to me. And yeah, oddly enough, this is being described as something which is attempting to change or sanitize
00:20:13
Speaker
history, this notion that is trying to deny history, this toppling of a single statue, for very particular contextual reasons. And the thing that fascinates me archaeologically speaking, as I say, this is a heritage crime, and there are reasons to prosecute this without a doubt, and also I'm not necessarily saying that I would have done it myself. I don't think I would actually necessarily have wanted to do it like that myself. But again, it all depends on context, and how long you've been living there, and the communication
00:20:40
Speaker
to get the communal feeling to there was a statue, but archaeologically speaking, as objectively as I can, there are a few things that come to mind if you don't mind me rambling this for a little bit longer. No, I've rammed for quite a bit already. So, thing number one, archaeologically speaking, a statue that's still standing is almost certainly not yet at the end of its life.
00:21:04
Speaker
Statues are the focus of public and political and symbolic action all the time, so sometimes they are deliberately toppled, other times through wear and tear and erosion, statues fall.
00:21:21
Speaker
almost every, in fact, I'd be willing to bet 99% of Roman statues that we have in museums were found on their sides. So statues that are standing up are not at the end of their life, almost certainly. Second, in the case of Colston, and I am reading from some notes here, the sanitization of history, it occurs to me, was actually in erecting this statue decades after the man had died, in fact, more than 150 years after he had died,
00:21:50
Speaker
In the context of an empire where slavery had been apparently abolished in the early 1800s, that presented him as a figure of unalloyed admiration, as it were an inert symbol of a class of merchant without any other context. This was an empire without
00:22:13
Speaker
without most forms of slavery, as many people are quick to point out in these conversations, we abolish slavery. And yet, in this instance, we have a statue being put up without saying this guy, by the way, made most of his money, or a significant chunk of his money, I don't know the exact figures, from the trafficking of enslaved humans. So that there's a problem there, again, as objectively as I can muster.
00:22:38
Speaker
And finally, this notion of trying to sanitize history, that's sanitization, this notion of just presenting, oh, here's the merchant, he's a good merchant for the city of Bristol. On the charge of people who toppled him trying to destroy history,
00:22:53
Speaker
Not a single person there is wanting us to ignore Colston, ignore, as it were, as they might say, his crimes against humanity, or indeed to ignore the route by which so much wealth flowed into the city of Bristol.
00:23:11
Speaker
If anything, it's drawing attention to that fact. It's actually adding to the historical record and the narrative, as opposed to allowing people just to meander past Colston and think, what's a nice old man who brought lovely things to this city? That's not destroying or changing history. That's ensuring that the history is not forgotten.
00:23:32
Speaker
And one final thing, because again, often in these conversations, it's a very similar bunch of people. For example, recently we came head to head with such people over the notion of Magna Carta providing defense against COVID measures and closing of businesses.
00:23:49
Speaker
And in this instance we have a victory in court or we certainly had a conclusion to a trial with a jury of peers whose rights are actually set down in the version of Magna Carta that made it through to the final draft.
00:24:07
Speaker
So this is actually one of the fundamental rights in this country to be tried by a jury of peers. They elected to do that and they've been found not guilty. So if you love history, then you want more of it, surely. If you love this country, then you love our wonderful jury-led trial system and experts, judiciary.
00:24:37
Speaker
And if you're interested in Bristol's history and heritage and its ongoing story, then hopefully you're going to be engaging in a conversation about what happens next and also where maybe we put this statue so that we can reflect on it and to think about it and talk about it, as opposed to just wanting to put it back where it was and never talk about this problem again.
00:25:04
Speaker
I can't think of a reasonable objective stance other than that, because I'm not Bristolian, I'm not black African, but I can see that the argument for just ignoring it is deeply flawed. I'll hand back over to you.
00:25:24
Speaker
Okay, look. Hand over the hottest of pop potatoes. Case. No, look. Close. In the end, what we're dealing with here and the reactions we're dealing with here, and again, there is so much material out there that's come out in the last couple of days on both sides of the
00:25:53
Speaker
the argument on all sides of the argument. We are dealing with what has been set up as a battle in the so-called culture war.
00:26:07
Speaker
And that is being used, that is being thrown up as chaff to obscure the legal realities of what's happened, of what that jury did. Yeah. And because it should be clear, this isn't inevitably going to lead down a slippery slope where things that are offensive.
00:26:27
Speaker
or things that are uncomfortable are destroyed. I often bring up in these conversations, I haven't yet brought up, but I often bring up the case of, for example, Liverpool, where they very carefully maintain symbols of slave trade in that city. So we don't forget. It's just that in this instance, this was a very particular figure and it was, as I say, historically inert. It was not holding him in the proper context. Sorry, go ahead.
00:26:51
Speaker
What I was going to say was, developing what you just pointed out, that as one of the defense barristers told the press afterwards, cases are decided on their evidence. The jury decided on the evidence that was put in front of them. The four were guilty of criminal damage as they'd been charged.
00:27:16
Speaker
And there were very specific chains of evidence that were put in front of them about Bristol, about Bristol's relationship with the slave trade, about Costa himself, about the Royal African Company, and so on and so on and so on. So it, contrary to what a lot of
00:27:34
Speaker
right-wing and pro-culture war commentators have been saying, and I'll just quote you, Michael Fabricans, conservative MP. I've tabled a written question to my home secretary, Priti Patel, asking whether she will amend the law on criminal damage following the acquittal of the quotes Colston fore on a legal loophole, as this could give rise to other statues being damaged. This obsession with statues, statues are being used as a proxy
00:28:02
Speaker
for basically ideas of history which I think are fantastic but you might not agree with.
00:28:11
Speaker
Fabrics is getting something fundamentally wrong there, as are many of the MPs who weighed in on this. Even some who are lawyers, Robert Jenrick, who recently left the cabinet, former community secretary. We undermine the rule of law, which underpins our democracy. If we accept vandalism and criminal damage, our acceptable forms of political protest, they aren't regardless of the intentions.
00:28:35
Speaker
this did not set a legal precedent. What happened was that jury, using rights, as you say, set out in Magna Carta, which underpinned the entire British legal system, that jury acted entirely within its rights to interpret the evidence that had been shown in a way which meant that it chose to acquit the foreaccused.
00:29:01
Speaker
No. That has happened. There is nothing quite rightly that the government can do about it, however much people might huff and puff. That is a done deal. Now, the thing that's interesting here, this is where I'm going to be slightly devil's advocate, it's just to return back to the simple fact that actually, by definition, vandalism occurred, destruction of public property occurred. So, it happened.
00:29:29
Speaker
but a jury of peers who actually, again, going back to a conversation I was having this morning, who actually do represent local people by definition, because they were trying to make the case that these four people didn't actually represent locals, that they were simply a loud minority. This jury
00:29:47
Speaker
in the context of the city and its history, its actual history, and the action in and around the statue on that day, decided to deem them not guilty. Now, I don't know to what extent you know this, but I'm just going to ask, do we know whether it was essentially a notion of mitigating factors? Is that kind of what we're getting at here?
00:30:17
Speaker
Right. Okay. Again, there's another fundamental thing about jury trials in that juries never give their reasons for their verdicts.
00:30:28
Speaker
and it is actually illegal to try and find out or to talk about the deliberations of the jury. Right, okay. It is absolutely, it is seen as absolutely fundamental to the purity and effectiveness of the jury system that jurors have that protection. Okay, right. But as a matter of public record, we know what they were presented with and we know the conclusion they came to.
00:30:52
Speaker
Precisely. We can speculate what the discussion was. And in fact, anyone who wants to learn more about this and understand the legal background of this, there is a very, it's quite a long read, but it's a very lucidly written read by the blogger called The Secret Barista. Some people out there may have read one of The Secret Barista's books. There are two now talking about the legal system.
00:31:23
Speaker
It's something that's up to date and sharp and thoughtful legal commentary there is. And there is this blog post about specifically about the Colston trial, which we'll link to below the line. But it goes into all the potential legal arguments and how they might have been seen by the jury, but basically ending up, we don't know. No, no.
00:31:46
Speaker
What is absolutely clear is that two things. One, it's not a precedent in legal terms. And secondly, it's not an affront to the rule of law.
Public Reactions and Historical Narrative
00:31:58
Speaker
In fact, it shows that the rule of law is actually working.
00:32:03
Speaker
Yeah, so someone couldn't use this case as a defence for toppling, say, Winston Churchill. It'd have to be judged on its merits. Absolutely. As the defence barrister said, every case is decided on the evidence within that case. Finally, a question that I brought to you, or that I pointed out to you just before we started recording. Should we consider the judge in this case to be a leftist stooge? For goodness sake.
00:32:35
Speaker
um answer the question andy some paperwork just read the secret comparisons block now yeah this um this was the british legal establishment british legal system at work um the point is that people who
00:33:02
Speaker
And I'm using the words of the secret barista piece here. People who disagreed with the verdict of the jury seem to be eliding the rule of law in quote marks.
00:33:19
Speaker
for, in quote marks, an outcome I agree with. In other words, had they been convicted, it would have been a fantastic example of the rule of law punishing the guilty. They threw their book at them. Yeah. Precisely. Yeah. And in fact, the judge, if you read the judges summing up the judge
00:33:38
Speaker
was absolutely clear that the jury should make the decision based on the law and the evidence as it had been presented to them, exactly what they're supposed to do. There was no hint that there was any kind of sympathy for it. It's nonsensical to suggest that if you read what was actually said, it's nonsensical to make suggestions like that.
00:34:03
Speaker
I've seen people falling back on commentary about woke police not intervening, woke judges overseeing a system that's in the front of the rule of law. It's nonsense. The system worked as it is supposed to. One of the questions is whether the home secretary intervened inappropriately right at the beginning of the process to ensure that there were prosecutions.
00:34:30
Speaker
That is something that will be worked out over the next weeks and months as people find out more about what actually went on behind the scenes. The media have been somewhat hobbled in discussing those sorts of issues while the trial's in preparation because of consent laws. And now that the trial's concluded, things like that can be actually discussed in more detail. We found out just this morning, for example,
00:34:56
Speaker
that GB News and also actually, to be fair, a local news website almost faced contempt of court charges for their coverage of the trial. Interesting.
00:35:12
Speaker
So, you know, and more like I was saying, particularly the involvement of Whitehall and particularly the Home Secretary, Preet Patel, she is alleged to have spoken to the Chief Constable of Avon and Somerset and, shall we say, suggested that it will be, the government will be very happy if prosecutions took place and in fact that they had to take place. Good boy, good boy. Yeah, okay, interesting, interesting.
00:35:41
Speaker
Well, what's a way to start the year, Andy? Happy New Year indeed, 2022. It's a bright new, shiny, uncontroversial watching brief for everyone to watch at home and to listen to, obviously, where you can get hold of this in audio form. I suppose just very finally, we are at the end of our time. Is there any final thing that you would say to this in terms of, you know, any final comments that maybe haven't occurred to you in the context of our conversation?
00:36:12
Speaker
No, I mean, we did discuss this at the time. We'll link to that at the top of it. Yeah, absolutely. Our original watching brief discussion about the constant statue. As somebody here today who's lived in Bristol, who likes Bristol very much as a city, but also as a historian and archaeologist, somebody who cares about the past, I think this is probably the right
00:36:41
Speaker
the right ending for this particular story. The statue is still available. It is back in storage at the moment, but it has been on display. I've no doubt it will go on display again. Interestingly and quite amusingly, Rhian Graham, the one of the cost of thought, has done an op-ed piece for The Guardian, where she writes that, although they couldn't mention it at the time, they were told when they were preparing their defense,
00:37:08
Speaker
that in purely monetary terms the cost of statute is now worth more now and it's been toppled and it's set in storage door with paint than it was when it sat on top of that plinth. It was a late 19th century civic statue it's more valuable now than it was previously. I mean that that's kind of by the by there isn't it really in terms of
00:37:30
Speaker
I think it's important to stress that the statute was not destroyed. It was forcibly moved from where it was and then picked out the docks by the council and taken to where it is now in the council museum store. But nothing has been destroyed, nothing has been suppressed.
00:37:56
Speaker
if anything can still talk about it. Yeah, it's amazing. And if anything, if anything can be it can be talked about more openly. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I suppose the final thing I would say is just hopefully, hopefully people have watched all of this video before they commented below.
Societal Reflections and Closing Thoughts
00:38:15
Speaker
because, for example, as I say, I'm not remotely trying to say that technically at the moment of it occurring that people couldn't have known that laws were possibly being broken, if you see what I mean. Yeah, I'm not trying to overturn the jury there. What I'm saying is, you know, there's a reason arguably why it went to trial. And... Look, OK, let's put it into a time line. Yeah.
00:38:42
Speaker
The statue existed. The statue was pulled down. There was a prima facie case for criminal damage. The statue existed. The statue was listed. The statue was pulled down. Yes, the statue was pulled down. There was a prima facie case for criminal damage of which a representative way, a sample of the people who were involved in that process were put on trial. They opted to go to a jury trial.
00:39:11
Speaker
The evidence was put before the jury. The judge told the jury to make their judgement on the law and on the evidence Labour has been presented with and the jury, as is absolutely their right, even though the defendants had admitted their participation, not their guilt, their participation, the jury chose to acquit.
00:39:35
Speaker
That is the system working. And I think there's one other piece of historical perspective I would add, just to finish, and that is anybody who has studied the history of monumentalization, of commemoration in the public sphere, will be familiar with a concept that in Latin is called Damatio Memoriae.
00:39:58
Speaker
It was done in Egypt, it was done in Rome, where that particular phrase comes from. It was that if somebody, for whatever reason, offended the state, the law, whatever, they could be literally written out. Their monuments would be destroyed or repurposed. The cartouches of pharaohs like Akhenaten are literally just chiseled out on their monuments. Yeah, names removed, names removed, yeah.
00:40:26
Speaker
Absolutely. And in fact, one of the most famous symbols of Roman Britain, the head of the Emperor Claudius, that was pulled out of a river near Colchester, was probably from a statue that was destroyed by Boudicca's rebels. So this is not new. No, it's not new. If it's not something that started with Black Lives Matter,
00:40:53
Speaker
No, no. And as I say, archaeologically, if anything, it is inevitable that statues are acted upon and the statues end up on their side, if not. Exactly. Exactly. They're very public statements and touchstones, which makes them uniquely available for people to make very physical comments on. And that's what happened here. And the jury decided, as is entirely proper, that the four people who were charged did nothing wrong. No.
00:41:18
Speaker
And the second and final thing I was going to say was just, it's very simple. Historians and archaeologists are not in the business of erasing history. The more voices there are, the wider the historical narrative becomes. And if anything, I suppose what I would encourage people to consider is the simple fact that the notion of a true history
00:41:46
Speaker
is one that is very difficult to stack up. If one person is telling you what history is, or if one group of people are telling you what history is, then there's probably more to the story. And that is what an honest historian and archaeologist is interested in. And that's, in this instance, primarily what I'm interested in, as opposed to having preconceived ideas as to what is valid. What I'm interested in is what's happened and what does it tell us about?
00:42:14
Speaker
the context of what happened and why it happened and who it happened to and so on and in many ways as you say the value has been added to in terms of military value but you know I mean NFTs are a thing at the moment so who knows what that actually any of that actually means but but but but as a story as a future historical story this is interesting it's really interesting and hopefully uh you know in the future people will be able to look at this as a historical event
00:42:43
Speaker
Anyway, you probably need to go and chillax and prepare for your oncoming date with Corona, possibly, being in the plague city such as you are. And to be fair, I've had a terrible cold over the weekend as well. So it's just as well that we should bring you to a close. Do keep an eye out, guys, for a potential livestream later this month.
00:43:11
Speaker
We do want to do that quiz and have a bit of fun so we'll give that a go. Any word on what next week's story might be and your stories?
00:43:24
Speaker
No, in a word. As well as the regular archaeology news, we're going to be doing a media pick as well in the near future. There's been a lot of archaeology TV on recently, so we're going to be talking about that. No doubt there will be a piece of extreme muppetry will occur at some point. But there are pipeline stories coming up. There are things in the pipeline.
00:43:54
Speaker
I see what you did there. I was about to do the same thing. That's right. There's a number of what I think could be quite significant stories coming up. So we'll watch this space. And in the meantime, the cost is always fascinating. Read the Secret Barristers blog because that is probably the best exposition of the legal issues.
00:44:33
Speaker
This podcast episode has been produced by the Archaeology Podcast Network in collaboration with Archaeosoup Productions. Find out more podcasts at www.archaeologypodcastnetwork.com
00:44:50
Speaker
This has been a presentation of the Archaeology Podcast Network. Visit us on the web for show notes and other podcasts at www.archpodnet.com. Contact us at chrisatarchaeologypodcastnetwork.com.