Slave traders like Edward Colston should not be forgotten | Letters
Unlike many of the (mainly) students who campaigned to get the name of Colston Hall changed (Hall drops slave trader's name after years of bitter debate in Bristol, 27 April), I am a Bristolian born and bred, and I am so incensed that the management has kowtowed to these so-called activists. I have to reluctantly agree for the first time with the former Bristol Conservative leader Richard Eddy that we cannot change history, and that place names give us a link with the past. Edward Colston gave the land on which the eponymous hall stands for the building of a school for orphaned and destitute boys. This is still thriving today, in a different part of the city. He also left money for almshouses for the poor, and with the residue of his fortune a girls' school was founded (which, incidentally, one of the spokespeople for the anti-Colston name brigade attended, and presumably benefited from its excellent education).
Many cities and towns in Britain have monuments and buildings dedicated to people who were not 100% PC to our modern overtender sensibilities - leaders of industry in the north, who allowed children down mines, or forced them to crawl under looms. They did not all give part of their wealth to alleviate the lot of the poor of their cities as Colston did. Where does this nonsense end?
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