Race activists draw up hit list of statues

Columbus, Gladstone, Drake and even Britain’s abolitionist prime minister among the targets

Black Lives Matter supporters have drawn up a “hit list” of dozens of statues after the Mayor of London said controversial monuments should be torn down to avoid causing offence. Statues of leading historical figures including Sir Francis Drake, Nancy Astor, Christopher Columbus and William Gladstone should be toppled “for celebrating slavery and racism”, campaigners said last night. It came as councils and museums rushed to remove contentious statues.

BLACK Lives Matter supporters have drawn up a “hit list” of dozens of statues after Sadiq Khan, the Mayor of London, said controversial monuments should be removed to avoid causing offence. Statues of leading historical figures including Sir Francis Drake, Nancy Astor, Christopher Columbus and William Gladstone should be toppled “for celebrating slavery and racism”, campaigners said last night.

It came as councils and museums rushed to remove contentious statues after protesters threw a figure of Edward Colston, a 17th-century slave trader, into Bristol harbour on Sunday.

More than 100 Labour councils announced wide-ranging reviews of controversial landmarks, while Mr Khan said he “hoped” a new commission for diversity in the public realm would recommend the removal of memorials that “don’t accurately reflect our values”.

This could include the names of “certain institutions” thought to include bodies such as the Tate galleries and Guy’s Hospital, whose founders profited from slave labour.

Murals, street art, street names – thought to include Black Boy Lane in West Green, north London – statues and other memorials will also come under scrutiny, he added.

Mr Khan suggested that London had “an uncomfortable truth” with historical links to slavery. “Our nation and city owes a large part of its wealth to its role in the slave trade and while this is reflected in our public realm, the contribution of many of our communities to life in our capital has been wilfully ignored – this cannot continue,” he told the BBC.

London Assembly Tories hit out at the mayor’s plans, accusing him of “declaring war” on monuments.

“Instead of virtue-signalling and starting a divisive debate, Sadiq Khan should focus on his job,” said Susan Hall, an assembly member.

Boris Johnson told his Cabinet yesterday that protesters who break social distancing or attack public property or police “will face the full force of the law”.

However, anti-racism activists published a list of 60 statues, memorial plaques and monuments that “need to be removed so that Britain can finally face the truth about its past”.

Names on the list include historical figures accused of having “responsibility for colonial violence”. Astor, the first female MP, was “an anti-semite and a Nazi supporter”, the list says, while it criticises Drake for his involvement in the slave trade, Columbus for his role in colonising America and Gladstone, the Liberal prime minister, for his family’s slave-owning past.

Other names listed are Charles Oliver Cromwell and Lord Nelson.

Perhaps the most unexpected inclusion on the list is a monument in Newcastle to Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey, the former prime minister whose government oversaw the abolition of slavery in the British Empire in 1833.

His monument should be removed because “reparations were paid to white ex-slave owners instead of black ex-slaves”, the activists say.

The interactive map, called Topple the Racists, was set up by the Stop Trump Coalition in support of the Black Lives Matter movement, and invites people to add their own candidates for removal.

Last night, a statue of Robert Milligan, a wealthy Scottish merchant and slave owner, was removed from its plinth outside the Museum of London Docklands.

Born around 1746, Milligan was responsible for the construction of the West India Docks, which became the global trading hub of London, and oversaw his family’s two sugar plantations in Jamaica, which were worked by more than 500 slaves.

The Canal and River Trust, which owns the land, said it “recognised the wishes of the local community concerning the statue of Robert Milligan” in having it removed.

A petition to remove the statue was launched by Ehtasham Haque, a Tower Hamlets councillor, and received more than 1,000 signatures.

He said the “very existence of Robert Milligan’s statue to glorify slave trading in 2020” was “an insult to humanity”.

In Plymouth, councillors announced that a public square in the city centre named after Sir John Hawkins, the Elizabethan mariner and slave trader, would be renamed, while a separate petition was raised for the removal of statues of Drake in Plymouth and Tavistock.

In Edinburgh, city leaders announced that a plaque would be installed at a monument dedicated to Henry Dundas, 1st Viscount Melville, who delayed the abolition of slavery.