Before the fall: the Edward Colston bronze [Photo: Simon Cobb Wikimedia Commons/Detail]

• SLAVE-trading is as repulsive today as it was in Edward Colston’s time (1636-1721).

So why does lawyer Raj Chada not use his legal skills to bring down present day slavers in the various hell holes around the world where they still flourish? (‘Seeing the Colston 4 walk free… this was a good day’, January 13).

It takes courage to fight in a timely manner when real injustice is staring you in the face. Tiptoeing up when it’s all over and having a tantrum with an inanimate object is pathetic.

And why stop at Colston? Maybe other statues deserve a good rollicking. Oliver Cromwell’s, for example, on the grounds that he was horrid to the Irish 400 years ago.

Because everybody hates somebody we would soon end up in an endless cycle of tit-for-tat statue-bashing, all of which would achieve precisely nothing.

MARTIN KENNEDY
Brewer Street, W1