THE day before Edward Colston’s statue went for its unscheduled swim in Bristol harbour, people in Glasgow discovered signs giving alternative names some of the city centre’s finest streets.

Professional looking signs meant that, temporarily at least, Ingram Street became Harriet Tubman Street and Wilson Street became Rosa Parks Street. Buchanan Street’s grand thoroughfare was renamed for George Floyd.

Cochrane Street is now remembered Sheku Bayoh, the 32-year-old Kirkcaldy man who died in 2015 while being restrained by the police.

Black Panther Fred Hampton and Joseph Knight, whose case established that slavery was not recognised in Scots law were similar recipients of this sudden and entirely unofficial act of civic recognition.

Rather than being a city council initiative this was the work of Celtic fan group, the Green Brigade. You don’t have to be a Celtic fan (I’m not) to applaud their action. It was eye catching, perfectly timed and executed with style and wit.

Those whose status was being encroached on were all significant figures from Glasgow’s past. Generally and euphemistically known as Tobacco Lords, they were 18th-century merchants and plantation owners.

The vast wealth they used to develop the city came directly from slave labour. This is hardly a secret, but equally it’s not a fact that the city seems fit to give much recognition to.

While we should all applaud this stunt from the Green Brigade, changing street names permanently is a less clear cut proposition. Not least the possibility it allows those with influence to substitute symbolism for real action.

Obviously they are, like statues, signs of recognition of men who no-one should be holding in any sort of regard. But streets aren’t statues.

Statues are a standing, sometimes even mounted, insult. There is no mistaking who a statue is meant to honour. They are someone it has been decided to be put on a pedestal — literally.

Those upset at recent removals of statues give every impression at being upset — not at an erasure of history, more that history is being drawn attention to.

Street names, however, are generally a different matter. By definition, they are less representational and usually more obscure. Removing a statue changes the townscape — for the better. Changing a street named in the 18th century doesn’t and can’t have the same impact.

Should the city council go down this road it would doubtless be hailed as “a powerful symbol of our commitment tackling racism, delivering equality,” etc. Symbolic action of course doesn’t cost much. It’s not being particularly cynical to suggest that a cash-strapped local authority might see embracing such symbolic action as a way of drawing some attention away from how cuts impact on BAME communities or refugees.

It would also in many respects be a way avoiding, rather than engaging with, the source of the wealth that transformed, and in many ways created, the city we have. We could and, with next to no other public reminders, probably would all move on.

Not least it would further assist the myth peddled by some elements of the independence movement that Scots were the colonised rather than the colonisers.

Rather than changing the street names, arguably facing up to our past involves keeping them — but finding ways to make clear how and why these streets are known as they are.

Of course sometimes changing a street name can be exactly the right thing to do. In 1986 the Labour council in Glasgow decided St George’s Place would become Nelson Mandela Place.

The move didn’t lack for controversy. Nelson Mandela wasn’t at this point a renowned statesman. He was a jailed foreign terrorist. This though wasn’t a symbolic action. It was aimed at creating problems for St George’s Place tenants, the South African consulate — and it did.

In a similar vein it might give some people pause for thought if the roads leading up to Amazon “fulfilment centre” had a postal address of Exploitation Avenue or strip clubs had to advertise their address as Creepy Perv Street.

The structural racism that lies at the root of so much of the wealth is, unusually, in the spotlight. We must try to make sure it does not return to the shadows. As we do so we need to be careful that confronting the symbols of our hideous racist past does not become a substitute for tackling the problems of our hideous racist present.