The removal of a statue commemorating a slave trader was an 'iconic moment' for Bristol, according to the city's Mayor, who thanked protesters over the weekend.
Bristol Mayor Marvin Rees, who is of Jamaican heritage, told the BBC he could not pretend to "have any real sense of loss for the statue".
"I cannot pretend it was anything other than a personal affront to me to have it in the middle of Bristol, the city in which I grew up," he said."That statue is now under water, which is a piece of historical irony because undoubtedly people would've been thrown off the sides of the ships during that journey and there would be many African bodies on the bottom of the water.
"We're preserving #BlackLivesMatter signs left at the former site of the #Colston statue so we can tell the story of this historic moment for our city," Mr Rees tweeted.He thanked protesters "who took part peacefully and respected the need to protect their communities as the COVID-19 pandemic continues" and said it was "important to listen to those who found the statue to represent an affront to humanity".
"The argument about whether he should be there, memorialised in a statue, is separate from whether we allow groups of people just to go about doing as they wish," he told the BBC.
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