Call for Bristol slavery reparations goes 'unheard', says councillor

Cleo Lake said the council should be discuss the matter "in front of its citizens."

Calls to lobby the prime minister for action over slavery reparations have not been heard properly by Bristol's mayor, a city councillor has claimed.

Cleo Lake wants a commission to be set up to "acknowledge, apologise and instigate" reparations for the UK's role in the transatlantic slave trade.

She called for mayor Marvin Rees to urge the government to set one up during a council meeting on Wednesday.

Mr Rees has agreed to discuss her proposal further.

But he added she should have "booked in to talk about it over the past four years".

Green Party councillor Miss Lake said the mayor was "not hearing us".

"It was pretty clear he hadn't read the reparations motion which made a number of actionable points on a local and national level," she said.

'Starting dialogue'

Miss Lake is part of the Stop The Maangamizi Campaign, which organises an annual march in London asking for the establishment of an all-party parliamentary commission of "inquiry for truth and reparatory justice for the African Holocaust".

She said the term reparations was "not just about money and business" but about "starting dialogue" and supporting and giving back to black communities on a "local level".

Mr Rees said he was working with local black-led organisations and has set up programmes and initiatives tackling racial inequality.

"Unless you have that political and economic understanding that racism is about power, you'll end up with a solution that may sound good, but is more symbolic than practical," he added.

The issue has been in the spotlight following the recent Black Lives Matter protest in Bristol which saw the statue of former slave trader Edward Colston thrown into the harbour.

Jendayi Serwah said Bristol's mayor needs to do more to start "real dialogue on the matter locally".

The leader of the Stop The Maangamizi International Campaign, Jendayi Serweh, said reparations meant recognising what had been lost due to slavery and "what it's going to take to restore it" and "what cannot be restored through money".

Miss Serwah said: "Marvin will call city leaders from corporations and institutions together if he needs to to talk about transport or health so why can't he do that for other things?"