Radio 1Xtra presenter Sideman says he can no longer work for broadcaster after ‘slap in the face’
A BBC radio presenter has quit his job after the corporation defended its decision to broadcast the N-word in a television news broadcast.
Radio 1Xtra presenter Sideman said he no longer felt comfortable working for the national broadcaster after it stuck by the decision to broadcast the language in a report on a racially motivated hit-and-run attack.
Continue reading...A Black Lives Matter protester, Jen Reid, says she 'shed a tear' when she saw a sculpture of her replace that of the slave trader Edward Colston in Bristol on Wednesday.
The artist Marc Quinn had the new statue installed without council permission. It replicates a photograph of Reid with her fist raised taken after the statue of Colston, a 17th-century merchant, was toppled by Black Lives Matter demonstrators in June.
Arriving in two lorries before 5am, a team of 10 people worked quickly to install the figure of Reid, who said she had been secretly working with Quinn on the idea for weeks
Continue reading...Exclusive: Artist Marc Quinn leads secret mission to install resin-and-steel figure of Jen Reid at site of toppled Bristol slave trader
The statue of slave trader Edward Colston was replaced in Bristol on Wednesday morning – with a sculpture of one of the protesters whose anger brought him down.
The figure of Jen Reid, who was photographed standing on the plinth with her fist raised after the 17th century merchant was toppled by Black Lives Matter demonstrators last month, was erected at dawn by a team directed by the artist Marc Quinn.
Continue reading...Avon and Somerset police say they have no choice but try to trace individuals due to criminal damage
Detectives have released images of 15 people they want to trace over the Black Lives Matter protest in Bristol in which the statue of the slave trader Edward Colston was toppled and thrown into the harbour.
Avon and Somerset police published the images of the men and women, arguing that in law, a crime – criminal damage – had been committed and it had no choice but to investigate. The force also said it had consulted with the Crown Prosecution Service about its investigation.
Continue reading...Bristol man sees official record of his age as five years older than he says as theft of his identity
A young man who was given permission to stay in the UK after fleeing Gaza has been on hunger strike for more than 90 days in protest at what he sees as the “theft” of his true identity on his official records.
The man, who has learning disabilities and post-traumatic stress disorder, says he was wrongly assessed as being five years older than he is when he arrived in the UK. He regards his date of birth as a crucial part of his identity and a vital link to his late parents.
Continue reading...Few imperial icons, including Churchill, will escape the need to reappraise Britain’s past
The toppling of slaver Edward Colston’s statue has electrified a longer term – and already deeply polarised – debate among British historians and academics, with some celebrating a “moment of history” as others warned of dark consequences for society.
Inaction over figures such as Colston had bred anger that would be felt “all over Britain”, said Andrea Livesey, a historian specialising in the study of slavery and its legacies and who described the events in Bristol as “wholly justified”.
Continue reading...Force of history demands re-evaluation of colonial statues and street names
Cities have always been about apportioning and memorialising power; about writing force into space. Britain’s colonial and imperial past is inscribed into the bricks and mortar of every city and town in the country. Mostly this hidden text of power relations and wealth acquisition lies dormant in the half-forgotten significance of street names, in the knotty iconography of grand facades, in the barely read inscriptions on memorials and sculptures, in the nomenclature of grand public buildings. Forming the backdrop of lived lives, these omnipresent clues are rarely fully decoded. The most monumental of sculptures has a habit of fading away to near invisibility if it is sufficiently familiar.
At times, though, such associations are activated and become urgent. So it has been in the case of the long-running affair of Edward Colston, who made his fortune in the 17th century from the enslavement of thousands of Africans.
Continue reading...Black Lives Matters protesters in Bristol have pulled down a statue of the slave trader Edward Colston, whose company transported more than 100,000 slaves from West Africa to the Caribbean and the Americas between 1672 and 1689. Demonstrators attached a rope to the Grade II-listed statue, pulled it down and rolled it into the city's harbour. It follows the toppling of several Confederate statues during Black Lives Matter protests in the US
Warning after crimes including theft of oxygen canisters and puncturing of ambulance tyres
Police chiefs have warned the coronavirus pandemic could “bring out the worst in humanity” after a spate of opportunistic crimes hindered efforts to control the crisis.
The theft of oxygen canisters from a hospital, the puncturing of ambulance tyres and the raiding of food banks by thieves were among the “worrying isolated incidents” in recent days raised by the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC).
Continue reading...Disabled mother and son claim Somerset and Avon police have not helped to stop the abuse and violence they are suffering
A UK police force is facing fresh questions over its approach to vulnerable individuals after it emerged a disabled mother and son have endured years of abuse and violence, near to where a disabled refugee was murdered in 2013.
Ruth and Zac Jones, from Bristol, say they have had a brick thrown through their window and four vehicles set on fire, among a series of targeted attacks similar to those that preceded the death of Bijan Ebrahimi in 2013.
Continue reading...Piece, which appears to be a nod to Valentine’s Day, has graffiti scrawled across it
A piece of street art in Bristol that was this week confirmed as being by Banksy has been vandalised.
A picture shared on social media showed “BCC wankers” scrawled across the artwork, which shows a young girl firing a slingshot filled with flowers.
Continue reading...Anastasia Uglow, 17, of Bristol grammar school, was found unresponsive in her hotel room
A 17-year-old British girl has died during a school trip to New York, the Foreign Office has confirmed.
Anastasia Uglow was found unconscious and unresponsive on the morning of 19 December in her room at the Holiday Inn Express in Midtown, Manhattan, where the touring group was staying.
Continue reading...Protesters ranged from students at the prime minister’s old Oxford college to retired teachers, children and activists
In Cambridge’s Market Square, a crowd of families, young people and silver-haired academics listened as Percy Bysshe Shelley’s The Masque of Anarchy was read out. Many joined in, from memory, making a collective appeal for non-violent resistance: “Rise, like lions after slumber... Ye are many – they are few.” There were moments of more garrulous protest too. During a speech criticising Boris Johnson, someone shouted: “Off with his head!”
From Bodmin to Berlin, Bristol to Oxford, tens of thousands of people took to the streets in towns and cities across England, Scotland and Wales on Saturday to vent their fury at Johnson’s plan to suspend parliament. Around 1,200 people attended the rally in Cambridge, where they booed the prime minister and his adviser Dominic Cummings as though they were pantomime villains.
Continue reading...Over 6,000 guests gathered in Bristol’s St Marks Road on Thursday night, invited by local Muslim groups to join in the breaking of the fast during the holy month of Ramadan
Continue reading...Temple Quarter’s rich past includes housing squatters, Royal Mail, a factory and cattle market
Demolition work is under way at Bristol’s most famous eyesore, bringing an end to a sprawling, derelict building that became a playground for squatters, illegal ravers and graffiti artists.
The former Royal Mail sorting office, which was once reportedly likened by the former prime minister David Cameron to the “entrance to a war zone”, is to be brought down to make way for a new university campus.
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