Time runs out for town’s 250-year-old ‘racist’ clock statue
A COUNCIL has been accused of trying to ‘remove history’ by voting to take down a statue of a black boy from a historic building.
The potential removal of the ‘racist’ Blackboy clock statue in Stroud, Gloucestershire, comes after campaigners argued it was ‘traumatic for people of colour’.
But the town’s Conservative MP, Siobhan Baillie, said: ‘I oppose [the] removal of history and statues.
‘To do so serves no purpose other than to allow some people to decide or be selective with history, or decide what is most comfortable and causes no offence.’
Stroud District Council voted overwhelmingly to ‘pursue’ taking down the 250-yearold statue, which depicts a child with red lips and a leaf skirt holding a club.
But the council – run by a Labour-led coalition – may not have the power to compel the Blackboy Clock Trust, which owns the clock on a Grade II listed building, to remove it. And the decision can be blocked by Communities Secretary Michael Gove if there is an objection from Historic England, under a law passed last year.
The heritage body has said taking it down would ‘harm both the significance of the listed building and the character of the conservation area and would also seriously damage the integrity of the clock itself’.
A council meeting on Thursday heard that removing the statue and placing it in a museum, which councillors ‘strongly recommended’, would cost £33,500. Labour councillor Natalie Bennett said: ‘As far as we know there has been no precedent set for this because the change in the law is so recent, so it would probably be a test case.’
More than 1,600 residents took part in an eight-week consultation and 77 per cent said they wanted it removed.
Council leader Doina Cornell said the decision was ‘us listening to the community’. But Tory councillor Haydn Sutton said: ‘Why are we sweeping history under the carpet? I’ve spoken to lots of people and they say it should stay.’
The clock, created in 1774, is one of Britain’s 20 surviving jack clocks, which feature a moving figure striking a bell on the hour. The first complaint about the statue came last year by an activist inspired by Black Lives Matter protests.
Polly Stratton, of Stroud Against Racism, said the statue was ‘traumatic for people of colour’. She added: ‘We’re not trying to hide it or tear it down. We want it on public display in a museum.’