On Tuesday 2nd March, three men and a woman pleaded not guilty to a charge of criminal damage over their alleged role in the toppling of Edward Colston’s statue in Bristol last year. The statue was pulled down and thrown into Bristol harbour during an anti-racism demonstration in June earlier last year as part of Black Lives Matter protests.
Rhian Graham, Milo Ponsford, Jake Skuse and Sage Willoughby, all in their 20s or 30s, were charged with criminal damage in December and appeared at Bristol Crown Court on Tuesday. After hearing their pleas of not guilty, judge Peter Blair set December 13 as the start date for their trial, which is expected to last seven or eight days.
Series of other memorials of figures linked to the slave trade were being taken down or their future being debated, triggering a backlash from government ministers who said this amounted to censoring history. After a few days at the bottom of the harbour, the statue was retrieved by city authorities and put into storage. It is expected to eventually be exhibited in a museum. In September, a concert hall that was named after Colston renamed itself the Bristol Beacon.
