Bristol Woke or Awake?

Photo: BBC

30.1.2024:  Boundaries always cause confusion and politicians love playing with them, back and forth. They are determined by topography, history, economics and constitutional issues to name but a few factors. Towns are essentially the accretion of population drawn to a particular area by trade and commerce. Bristol was no different being positioned on a navigable river (The Avon) that flowed to the sea via the Bristol Channel. Being on the West side of Britain, this made it ideal for trade to Ireland, the French and Iberian coast as well as further afield. This made it ideally placed as trade increased to the Americas in the 16th and 17th centuries including the notorious African/West Indies routes, that involved manufactured goods, slaves, sugar and tobacco on each of its stages, and provided great wealth and prosperity for the city and region. In the early English period and latterly, Bristol became the country's second city (with Norwich) to London. In response to its importance the Crown, in return for money, afforded it special status with a series of Charters which included in 1373 Edward III's, which declared it to be both 'City and County'. So from that time (apart from a brief period in the 1970's when it was part of the larger county of Avon) an autonimous county in its own right, separate administratively from both Somerset to its south and Gloucestershire to its north, from whom it has taken large chunks for its continued expansion. However this is then complicated insofar as many responsibilities, formerly undertaken by the County Borough have either been removed or shared with other areas (policing for example) and some functions such as relating to people census and registration may historically record Bristol addresses as Somerset and Gloucestershire, so good luck with your researches!

Bristol has character born of history, and much like people, it is diverse and complicated, operating on many levels. If we were to pull down every building with dubious moral origins, what would be left? I was employed by Bristol City Council for my first six years of my working life, so it is indelibly impressed on my memory. I have much to be grateful to it for - in fact my entire professional life. There are many things I miss about it, particularly its cosmopolitan vibe. However I quite regularly meet people who like me moved away and paint a grim picture of drugs, violence and crime. No doubt as with everything, the assessment much depends on who you are, and where you are, but if the Colston episode is anything to go by, Bristol is going through a phase of mid-life crisis! It may be as pointless and inane as the ubiquitous and ugly graffiti, that lays claim to art. Bristol needs to reconcile itself to its past and stop attempting to apologise for it. Then is not now, even if it created it. It is futile interpreting the past in the morality of the present, especially as the morality of the present is suffused with hypocrisy. There are of course far more 'slaves' - to drink, drugs, gambling, crime, sex and trafficking - today than there ever were in the 17th and 18th Centuries. Far better if those who consider themselves 'woke', took on the mantle of Wilberforce and others, to tackle these modern plagues, rather than luxuriating in the moral superiority of current entitlement.