For good reason. The wording had been sanitised by a small group of Tory councillors and their financial backers, without the approval of a larger group.
They had gone ahead and cast the plaque, hoping to make
their decision permanent.
But Bristol Mayor Marvin Rees, and others, saw the wording and objected, and complained that key people in the debate in the city had not been kept up to date with the final proposed wording before the plaque was made.
Mr Rees said the Merchant Venturers were ‘extremely naive’ if they thought they would have the final say on the plaque, ‘without reference to the communities of descendants of those Africans who were enslaved and treated as commodities by merchants like Colston’.
https://www.bristolpost.co.uk/news/bristol-news/second-colston-statue-plaque-not-2682813
By 'The mob', you mean the Tory councillors and the Merchant Venturers?
Those behind the project accused Mr Greenacre and the Merchant Venturers of 'sanitising' Colston's involvement in the slave trade,
You do like to put your own spin on history. That's cancel culture in action.