Memorial planned for victims of slave trade
DETAILS have emerged of a plan which was scrapped to install a plaque on the Barbican at Plymouth telling the story of Elizabethan seafarer Sir John Hawkins, considered a founder of England’s slave trade, and the city’s role in the campaign to abolish it.
But the city council has announced it is going ahead with a memorial to victims of the slave trade, including information about the anti-slavery campaign in Plymouth, in the Peace Garden on Plymouth Hoe.
Plymouth-born Hawkins, a second cousin of Sir Francis Drake, became the city’s MP and treasurer of the Royal Navy. He is considered to be the first captain to have transported captured Africans across the Atlantic to be sold into slavery in the Americas in the 16th Century.
The plaque was one of the initiatives being considered by the city council following the Black Lives Matter movement which swept across the country last summer with a wave of anti-racism protests, including in Plymouth.
A planning application for listed building consent to install the board on the harbour wall near the Mayflower Steps was submitted in December but withdrawn on Monday, five days after documents were published for consultation. The city council has confirmed the application was submitted in error after a decision was taken not to go ahead.
On Wednesday, the council released details of a memorial to victims of the slave trade which is to be installed on a limestone plinth in the Peace Garden on Plymouth Hoe. A plaque will commemorate the lives lost to the trade and the citizens of Plymouth who campaigned to end it. It will be unveiled on Thursday, March 25, to mark the International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade.
The plaque in the Peace Garden will include an image of the British slave ship Brookes, designed by Plymouth MP and artist William Elford. An image of the engraving had also been proposed for the Barbican information board which is not going ahead.
The drawing showed the terrible conditions in which captives were transported, and was first published in 1788 in a pamphlet by the Plymouth chapter of the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade. It became an iconic image in the campaign for abolition.
The city council’s leader Tudor Evans said in a statement on Wednesday: “It is so important that we recognise the role that Plymouth played in the Slave Trade and the devastation which this caused to lives and communities all over the world.
“Although slavery was abolished over 200 years ago the trauma of these atrocities, the legacy of racism and discrimination can still be felt today. As a city, we must not try to hide from our past. We must raise awareness of the horrors of this cruel trade and most importantly the people and communities it affected.”
The proposals for a memorial to victims of the slave trade in the Peace Garden on the Hoe was first put forward by the city council in June 2020 in response to concerns about racism and the portrayal of historic figures involved in slavery.