This afternoon I joined Councillor Asher Craig, Deputy Mayor of Bristol, at M Shed, ahead of tomorrow's launch of the Bristol Legacy Foundation: a new chapter in our city's journey in grappling with the legacies of slavery.

An extended 'history of protest' display, including the Colston statue, opens tomorrow at the same Bristol museum. In that exhibition, I offer these reflections on events before, during, and after its toppling:

"I have lots of thoughts and feelings about the Colston statue, what happened to it and what happened around it. Its place of honour in the middle of Bristol was objectionable to me. I'm Jamaican. He may have traded one of my ancestors. Having said that, as Mayor of the city, I cannot condone people taking ropes to haul it down. And yet, at the same time, I cannot help but see and feel the historical poetry in the way the statue was treated that day.

"I do think some people have failed to understand, or perhaps chosen to overlook, the dynamic that exists between me, as a mixed-race black man from a working-class family, and Mayor, and what happened to the statue. It is complicated.

"It was an event that offers the opportunity to peel the layers back for deeper insights. For example, the statue was pulled down by four white people in a pre-meditated act, in public, in full view of police, on camera. They were all charged with criminal damage and opted to plead not guilty, taking their cases to the Crown Court. Their defences included that their sensibilities were offended by the statue, and they criticised the city's elected black leadership for not doing enough on racism.

"So I ask whether four black people would have the confidence to take such a gamble and, if they had, would they have had the same likelihood of a not guilty verdict? If not, then what we saw was an exercise in middle-class white privilege, alongside a declaration of anti-racism. A number of things can be true at the same time.

"We have seen that dramatic symbolic acts can be important catalysts for change. For example, the Bristol Bus Boycott of 1963 led to two Race Relations Acts. But when symbolic acts are not accompanied by programmes of concrete action, they can be more about satisfying the immediate, emotional needs of members of privileged groups, than about changing the actual political and economic status of people in oppressed groups."