ON JUNE 7, slave trader Edward Colston’s statue in Bristol was daubed with paint, pulled to the ground, jumped on by joyful protesters, rolled along to the harbour and dumped in the River Avon. 

The events caused quite a splash. As Colston sunk ignominiously to the bottom, what rose to the surface was a long overdue national debate about statues that grace or rather disgrace our towns and cities, and reinforce a dominant history.

Here is someone writing on this issue five years ago with some comments that are very pertinent for this moment: it’s Billy Bragg, in his foreword to the first edition of my book Rebel Footprints, which I had conceived of as a memorialisation of past struggles, in order to allow them to live and breathe in the present.

Bragg wrote: “Halfway up Whitehall, there’s a massive equestrian statue in the middle of the road. 

“A rotund figure sits astride his horse, nose in air, wearing a cocked hat, a field marshal’s uniform and sporting massive mutton chop sideburns. 

“Inspection of the plinth reveals this to be George, Duke of Cambridge. No, me neither.

“He’s one of a number of marshal figures impeding the traffic down Whitehall, few of whom would be readily recognisable to the British public. 

“Recent years have witnessed a laudable attempt to democratise this space, with statues to those who fought and served in the two world wars, but this is still a thoroughfare peopled with memorials to those who defended the British empire.

“Where are the statues to those who fought and struggled for the rights of the British people? Their memorials are all around us: the universal franchise; the eight-hour day; the NHS. 

“None of these great monuments bear the names of those who battled to win them.

“The stories of those men and women have been largely overlooked by imperial history…”

Bragg mourned their absence and what could have filled that void: “…the strong tradition of dissent that has shaped our history and made us who we are.”

There are certainly some statues in London (and other big cities) that could do with coming down. And the sooner the better. 

Whether we need to replace them, by putting up other individuals to be revered, to be literally placed on a pedestal, is another question completely.

I myself signed a petition on the very day that Colston’s statue came down, urging the local authority to replace it with a true local hero — Paul Stephenson — who led the 1963 Bristol bus boycott. 

Black workers in Bristol were refused work despite a worker shortage due to a resolution passed by the Transport and General Workers’ Union. 

The boycott of the city’s buses lasted four months until the company backed down and abolished their discriminatory policy.

At the moment I signed the petition, it had just over 350 signatures. A week later, it now stands at almost 57,000. 

Edward Beeston, who launched that petition, wrote: “It is time Bristol moves forward with its history in the slave trade, acknowledging the evil committed and how it can educate its citizens about black history.”

There can be very few people who would publicly state that they think Colston’s statue should be recovered, refurbished and remounted. 

I suspect that if a question was put to the general public about whether new statues of other more deserving people should be put up to replace the rogue representatives of a deeply oppressive history that is currently commemorated, a majority would probably support that.

I can think of several exceptional individuals that I celebrate in Rebel Footprints, who would be suitable candidates for new statues in London. 

They came from working-class and marginalised communities, such as: the black Chartist leader William Cuffay; or union activist Will Thorne who helped to win the eight-hour day for gasworkers in 1889; Mary MacArthur who founded the National Federation of Women Workers; Melvina Walker, a cleaner who was a dedicated activist for the East London Federation of Suffragettes.

But personally I still react instinctively against statues that invite us to look up to what Maya Angelou describes as “our heroes and she-roes.”

I actually prefer monuments to collective struggle such as the colourful and moving Cable Street mural, where you can almost hear the figures shouting and screaming, or the artistic monument to Spanish civil war volunteers in Jubilee Gardens, both of which celebrate those who challenged fascism. 

Or the mural on the bridge on Dudden Hill Lane round the corner to the Grunwick Film processing factory in Willesden, where a strike committee headed by Jayaben Desai led a courageous battle by mainly female Asian workers in the late 1970s against super-exploitative and inhumane employers.

These are monuments that invite you to directly identify with lives and struggles that were lived then, on matters that continue to plague the world in the present. 

These monuments honour ordinary people who who took up the fight of the oppressed against the oppressors. 

They inform, educate and give inspiration to those who will fight for a better world, where slavery, exploitation and oppression have finally been consigned to the past.

David Rosenberg blogs at rebellion602.wordpress.com.