A Ballad for Edward Colston
I wrote this poem in response to the recent Black Lives Matter protesters, rightly removing the statue of Edward Colston — a 17th century slave trader and a member of the Royal African Company
This poem is also inspired from ‘I Ain’t Being Racist But’ by Riz MC, AKA writer-actor Riz Ahmed
I’m not being racist but…
there’s no slaves anymore, let’s face it
did you really have to deface this
try telling that to those descended from plantations
who lost their language, whose familes were Jamaican and Bajan,
and none of this is taught in schools, or at those ivory universities
but folks brand those protesting racism with CRIMINALITY
like slaves, as pot-bellied Peter down yonder plays his drum
ready to chirpse Cecil Rhodes, Churchill and Robert Milligan
how Colston made his money is excused as commerce
but now he’s floating in Bristolian waters
swimming with the slaves in it
folks crying about statues, that it’s ruining shit
“I didn’t commit those atrocities, so it’s not my fault is it?”
at schools, they don’t teach how Liz Virginia ruled the waves
and how she sanctioned Hawkins to be cruel to slaves
not how this country created race in white and black
but they tell you how we abolished with freedom legistlation acts
good memories when it comes to our moral mission
telling how we freed the slaves, but forgetting the commission
of paying the plantocrats a deed of slave compensation
and this is what built the “great” British nation
but slavery gave us sugar, “you mean they were thieves?”
Ed Colston, kings, queens and the Royal African Company
we wrotes novels calling Africans savages
today we teach them as classics, no discourse on the damages
so I’m quite happy to let dead Ed float
and open a conversation about the guilty ghosts
of colonialism and Britain’s Empire
to study the histories of that white cricket attire
and how imperialism impacts our ways and laws
even down to racial thinking during the First World War
yet ya know, folks saying we should be grateful for the colonies
not like Africans had economies or invented philosophy
not like we had lives before the days of the Slave Trade
but Britain perpetuates these ideas of the “great days”
only after Africa’s days of indigenous mathematical systems
in black hairstyling, but seemingly whites keep saying we have to listen —
enslaving Black Africans to work crop across sugar plantations
but now we build statues like racists built civilisation
they treated us worse than their dogs; worse than their pets
because colonialism fostered a white superiority complex
but when the wind rushed into Tilbury Docks
“we made them British” and history forgot
forcing them into low-paid, but essential jobs
called them “monkey”, “coon”, “nigger” and “wog”
as Powell, BNP and the English Defense League
prepared for battle to devestate communities
but Ed Cols stood tall in Bristol City
while pitiful curricula lines brains with grease
sharpening their teeth, Gove and crew
sacrificed British education in lieu
refuse to sanction Black history and immigration
no wonder the public no nothing about this nation
so you’re saying early Britons were brown originally
Cheddar Man, Beachy Head Woman, you’re kidding me
no wonder they don’t want children to see
how this country has always welcomed ethnic diversity
as there were Black Africans in 1500s Edinburgh
but as you can see history has been furloughed, so…
why do we build effigies to people like Ed
when Black British history has so much to be said
for itself, from Black Tudors to Moors on Hardians Wall
this is what we should teach children at school
that whilst we can teach Britain’s empire burning
we need to look before colonialism, to Africa’s higher learning
and in the early 1900s, Walter Tull fought the fight
as C. L. R James furthered the agenda on human rights
Walter, one of the first half-Black footballers, brilliant
and was army officer in a time when he was one in a million
so why Edward Colston…
wouldn’t Tull have been more wholesome
even more so when he played in that Bristol game
fighting racism in his slave grandfather’s namesake
but there’s nothing more British than looking back
and that’s building statues to prejudice the Blacks
