Students: Rename ‘slavery’ landmark

STUDENTS inspired by the Rhodes Must Fall movement have demanded that the University of Bristol rename one of the city’s most famous landmarks due to its alleged links to the slave trade.

The Wills Memorial Building, they claim, “glorifies” the slave trade because its namesake, Henry Overton Wills III, Bristol’s founding chancellor, used profits from the tobacco trade to fund the university’s royal charter. They add that the building undermines the commitment to “diversity and inclusivity” and symbolises a “toleration” of former slave masters.

However, the links between Wills and the slave trade remain fiercely disputed. British slave trading was abolished well before his birth, while he was just five years old when the Abolition of Slavery Act was passed in 1833.

However, some historians maintain that his family’s firm WD & HO Wills continued to buy tobacco from US slave plantations up until the American Civil War in 1865.

Should the university’s management bow to their demands, the protesters request that the Wills Tower be renamed after “somebody the entire university population can be proud of ”.

Launching a petition on Monday, the students said: “As honoured within the building itself, HO Wills is known best for being the first chancellor of the university; less people are aware that this position was granted to him after financing the university with slave-profited money.

“While we begrudgingly understand that Bristol has a historical connection to the slave trade, we find it hard to accept that the university still glorifies an individual who advocated such an immoral practice.”

Known as one of the last great Gothic structures to be built in England, the Grade II-listed building was designed by the architect Sir George Oatley and was opened to great fanfare in 1925 by King George V and Queen Mary.

It is now home to the law school and the department of earth sciences, and is used for graduation ceremonies and conferences.

A spokesman for the university said that it would be “disingenuous” to “cover up” the university’s historical relationship with the Wills family.