Britain beyond lockdown: can social and climate justice come together?

Communities in Bristol are devising their own solutions to problems linked with the city's role in slaveryDuring lockdown, the wild grass in Bristol's Greenbank cemetery has grown higher than many of the tombstones, transforming the land above the dead into a gothic meadow. Nominally closed to the public before 4pm each day, the grounds are a popular location for joggers, strollers and dog walkers, who enter through a gap in the fence. For Zakiya Mckenzie, a local writer, this is the furthest from home she has been in three months, but she has chosen this spot for an interview because of its historic symbolism - a subject that has has come to the fore like never before in the wake of the pandemic.She leads me down wooded slopes to a waist-high monument set in a glade, a little apart from the other tombs. It is the relocated grave of a group of Baptist people, including Fanny Coker, who was born a slave in the Caribbean island of Nevis in 1767 and died in Bristol in 1820, serving as a housemaid to one of Bristol's wealthiest plantation-owning families. Continue reading...