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Task A

1.
Outline the controversy about the Colston statue in Bristol as presented in the article.
(Comprehension) (12 Punkte)
2.
Analyse how the author presents his views. Focus on communicative strategies and use of language.
(Analysis) (16 Punkte)
Choose one of the following tasks:
3.1
According to David Olusoga the toppling of Edward Colston's statue "is one of those rare historic moments whose arrival means things can never go back to how they were" (ll. 69/70). Assess to what extent this view on the incidents in Bristol is a valid description of recent developments in multicultural Britain.
(Evaluation: comment) (14 Punkte)
OR

3.2
In the USA, journalists have been fired for criticising the violent tearing down of historical statues in their articles. In response, Jonathan Turley, Professor of Public Interest Law, warns, "We are experiencing one of the greatest threats to free speech in our history and it is coming, not from the government, but from the public." Referring to this statement, write a letter to Turley in which you reflect on the importance of free speech in the USA against the background of American myths and realities.
(Evaluation: re-creation of text) (14 Punkte)

Text:
David Olusoga, The toppling of Edward Colston's statue is not an attack on history. It is history.

1
For people who don't know Bristol, the real shock when they heard that the statue of
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a 17th-century slave trader had been torn from its plinth and thrown into the harbour
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was that 21st-century Bristol still had a statue of a slave trader on public display. [...]
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Edward Colston, the man in question, was a board member and ultimately the deputy
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governor of the Royal African Company. In those roles he helped to oversee the trans-
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portation into slavery of an estimated 84,000 Africans. Of them, it is believed, around
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19,000 died in the stagnant bellies of the company's slave ships during the infamous
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Middle Passage from the coast of Africa to the plantations of the new world. The bodies
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of the death were cast into the water where they were devoured by the sharks that, over
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the centuries of the Atlantic slave trade, learned to seek out slave ships and follow the
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bloody paths of slave routes across the ocean. This is the man who, for 125 years, has
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been honoured by Bristol. Put literally on a pedestal in the very heart of the city. But
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tonight Edward Colston sleeps with the fishes.
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The historical symmetry of this moment ist poetic. A bronze effigy of an infamous
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and prolific slave trader dragged through the streets of a city built on the wealth of that
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trade, and then dumped, like the victims of the Middle Passage, into the water. Colston
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lies at the bottom of a harbour in which the ships of the triangular slave trade once
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moored, by the dockside on to which their cargoes were unloaded. [...]
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The crowd who saw to it that Colston fell were of all races, but some were the de-
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scendants of the enslaved black and brown Bristolians whose ancestors were chained
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to the decks of Colston's ships. Ripped from his pedestal, Colston seemed smaller: di-
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minished in both size and potency. Lying flat, with his studied pensive pose, he looked
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suddenly preposterous. It was when the statue was in this position that one of the pro-
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testers made a grim but powerful gesture. By placing his knee over the bronze throat
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of Edward Colston, he reminded us of the unlikely catalyst for these remarkable events.
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The fact that a man who died 299 years ago is today on the front pages of most of
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Britain's newspapers suggests that Bristol has not been brilliant at coming to terms with
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its history. Despite the valiant and persistent efforts of campaigners, all attempts to have
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the statue peacefully removed were thwarted by Colston's legion of defenders. In 2019,
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attempts to fix a plaque to the pedestal collapsed after Bristol's Society of Merchant Venturers,
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the high priests of the Colston cult, insisted on watering down the text, add-
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ing qualifications that, it was felt, had the effect of minimising his crimes. Yet what
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repulsed many about the statue was not that it valorised Colston but that it was silent
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about his victims, those whose lives were destroyed to build the fortune he lavished
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upon the city.
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The long defence of the figure and Colston's reputation was overt and shameless,
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but not unique. In other British cities other men who grew rich through the trafficking
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of human beings or who defended the "respectable trade" are venerated in bronze and
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marble. In Edinburgh's St Andrew Square, on a pedestal 150 feet high, stands Viscount
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Melville, Henry Dundas, another of history's guilty men. His great contribution to
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civilisation was to water down and delay attempts to pass an act abolishing the slave
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trade. Historians struggle to estimate how many thousands died or were transported
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into slavery because of his actions. Already social media is ablaze with calls for Dundas
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to be thrown into the Forth.
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Today is the first full day since 1895 on which the effigy of a mass murderer does
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not cast its shadow over Bristol's city centre. Those who lament the dawning of this
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day, and who are appalled by what happened on Sunday, need to ask themselves some
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difficult questions.
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Do they honestly believe that Bristol was a better place yesterday because the figure
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of a slave trader stood at its centre? Are they genuinely unable - even now - to under-
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stand why those descended from Colston's victims have always regarded his statue as
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an outrage and for decades pleaded for its removal?
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If they do not confront such questions they risk becoming lost in the same labyrinth
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of moral bewilderment in which some of Colston's defenders became entrapped in
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2017. That year Colston Hall, Bristol's prime concert venue, and one of the many insti-
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tutions named after the slave trader, announced that it was to change its name. In re-
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sponse, a number of otherwise reasonable decent people announced that they would
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be boycotting the hall. Think about that for a moment. Rational, educated, 21st-century
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people earnestly concluded that they were taking a moral stance by refusing to listen
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to music performed within the walls of a concert hall unless that venue was named after
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a man who bought, sold and killed human beings.
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Now is not the time for those who for so long defended the indefensible to contort
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themselves into some new, supposedly moral stance, or play the victim. Their strategy
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of heel-dragging and obfuscation was predicated on one fudamental assumption: that
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what happened on Sunday would never happen. They were confident that black people
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and brown people who call Bristol their home would forever tolerate living under the
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shadow of a man who traded in human flesh, that the power to decide whether Colston
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stood or fell lay in their hands. They were wrong on every level. Whatever is said over
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the next few days, this was not an attack on history. This is history. It is one of those
70
rare historic moments whose arrival means things can never go back to how they were.
(973 words)
David Olusoga: "The toppling of Edward Colston's statue is not an attack on history. It is history", in: The Guardian, 8 June 2020, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jun/08/edwatd-colston-statue-history-slave-trader-bristol-protest - Copyright Guardian News & Media Ltd 2021

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