'Cult of Colston' & the 'Constipated Clerks'

by Brian Bamford
In a comment on this NV Blog John Pearson said:
 'The British ruling class can take lessons from no-one on efforts to "bury the past, hide it, and sanitize it".

 & that
'Those Black Lives Matter protesters in Bristol, descendants of slaves, many of whom will have been trafficked by Colston's company, were not erasing history they were making history.' *

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THE LAST time I was in Bristol it was at the invite of the Bristol Radical History Group at a Bookfair in 2011 to give a talk on 'The varieties of historical investigation and experience'.  The Bristol Radical History Group has been at the forefront of the campaign against the slave trader Edward Colston whose statue was recently toppled in Bristol. **


Marxists writers often vary between those like John Pearson, who credit the British ruling class as superbly cunning little Machiavellian's, and those who rate the boss class as little more than incompetent buffoons.

In Bristol it was, where over recent years my friend Roger Ball would take folk on a pedestrian stroll round the city to appraise and provide an alternative view of the ‘cult of Colston’ that was said to "form part of our city’s ‘identity’."*  Only to culminate at Bristol Cathedral, to discuss 'how the institutions of the Church of England and the Merchant Venturers collide within the education of our children to promote Colston as a Parable of the Good Samaritan.'


George Orwell once remarked that 'whether the British ruling class are wicked or merely stupid is one of the most difficult questions of our time, and at certain moments a very important question.'

As long as I have lived my life the British Empire has been in a state of decline.  Men like Edward Colston, were a  bygone thing even between the wars.  As Orwell argued in The Lion & The Unicorn:  'Men like Clive, Nelson, Nicholson, Gordon would find no place for themselves in the modern British Empire.  By 1920 nearly every inch of the colonial empire was in the grip of Whitehall.' [1941]

Yet it is unlikely that either Comrade Pearson or Dr. Ball would ever venture to unleash their passions against the constipated clerks who had by then taken over from the empire builders of yesterday.  So as long as I have been alive its been the clerks that have been in the driving seat, but no one is going to launch a war against these clerks and managers, because these are the very people who sign the cheques and give the research grants so that these post-modern historians can get awarded their PhDs.  These constipated clerks are the modern managerial class who have taken over not just in the universities; and you just don't look a gift horse in the mouth.

Instinctively both John Pearson and Roger Ball will identify with the clerks who among other things administer our universities and so vividly contrast with the one-time empire builders, because it is now as fashionable as it was in the 1930s for the shallow leftists to look down on physical prowess and snigger at the very idea of Englishness.

The last time I saw Roger Ball was at the Casa Club in Liverpool on the 8th, June 2018, at an event organised by Ian Gwinn and was entitled 'Fuck May 1968'; at that time Roger had been anxiously scouring the thoroughfares of the city looking for suitable architectural monuments to condemn owing to their links with slavery.  Though I have great respect for the research work Roger Ball has put into this issue, I do share the concerns of others like Derek Pattison and Les May about as to what will be the logical outcome of this kind of fetish for censorship.

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*    After popular demand the Countering-Colston group are re-running their recent history walk.

Starting with St Mary Redcliffe church, this walk takes in other historic Diocese of Bristol churches in the city centre where ‘the life and work’ of Edward Colston is still provided religious legitimacy on an annual basis.

Along the way we will share the most recent historical research regarding this man’s involvement with the transatlantic slave trade and discover how the Victorian elite created a ‘cult of Colston’ that is now said to form part of our city’s ‘identity’.

At our final stop, Bristol Cathedral, we discuss how the institutions of the Church of England and the Merchant Venturers collide within the education of our children to promote Colston as a Parable of the Good Samaritan.

**https://twitter.com/i/status/1269634408069435392

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