Dear Editor,
I read Jamie Grierson's piece on Edward Colston being dumped into Bristol harbour (The Guardian, 6th Jan 2022, link below) and, yes, he may have deserved that dumping but I cannot help but think that we are "hiding behind history" and our preoccupation with judgement on the crimes of the past (not just slavery!) distracts us from current injustice.
For example our neighbour across the corridor has seven packages stacked outside her door from various delivery services. Most of them from budget fashion outlets. And that is not unusual in our building where the delivery services are permanently ringing.
Most of those fashion-items are produced in ultra-low-wage countries and will be thrown away before the year is done.
So, yes, the slaves in Colston's day were horribly mistreated but we should not ignore that there are situations of rampant exploitation in our time too! Indeed, to give but one small example, the smart-phone images taken by those activists on that day were using coltan probably mined in crassly inhumane circumstances!
So people in glass houses should definitely not throw stones: Rather we (all of us!) should examine our own shortcomings!
PS: And the move to online shopping is a double-whammy because, alongside giving exploitative, tax-dodging transnational corporations massive profits, it also tolls the death-knell for local traders who are now slipping into bankruptcy.
Regards
