Dealing with Contested Heritage

Dan Tyndall, Vicar of St Mary Redcliffe, and Chair of the Network, writes:

In June 2020 the statue of Edward Colston, slave trader and philanthropist, was tipped into Bristol harbour. The north transept window of St Mary Redcliffe was dedicated to Colston, showed the story of the Good Samaritan and bore his motto ‘Go and do likewise’.

Over the last three years we have held a competition for new designs, not for the whole window, but for the four panels at the base of the window which showed Colston’s motto, legend and dedication.

In August 2023, on the day of the 60th anniversary of the ending of the Bristol Bus Boycott (which was the same day as Martin Luther King’s ‘I have a dream’ speech) we revealed the new windows.

It turned out to be one of the most important events in the city this year: the sixtieth anniversary of the ending of the Bristol Bus Boycott, paving the way for the Race Relations Acts and then the Equalities Act of 2010 which provides rights for people with Protected Characteristics. 

Since then I have been asking if people have heard of either Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" speech or the Bristol Bus Boycott. Pretty much everyone has heard of the first and very few the second. There is a real need to reset this to show that both of these events are equally significant in the unfolding development of race relations in UK and abroad.

We welcomed Pioneers and Elders of the black community, some of whom organized and ran the original protest. It was a thrill to see the delight in their eyes when they saw the new window panels for the first time.

Jesus was asked "And who is my neighbour?" by the lawyer and Jesus tells the story of The Good Samaritan. The lawyer could not conceive of the possibility that any Samaritan might be 'good'. We are now faced with that same story and three others - the transatlantic trafficking of enslaved Africans, the Bristol Bus Boycott and Small Boats migration - with that same question ringing in our ears: And who is my neighbour?

And, as someone said "Of course, the power of that question is what happens when you flip it round and ask 'And who do we exclude?'"