Tear down statue of my ancestor? He helped to END the slave trade
In highly personal intervention, Harry’s friend says anti-racists have got their history wrong
HE is the 18th Century politician known as both the ‘Grand Manager’ and ‘Great Tyrant’ of Scotland.
Henry Dundas, 1st Viscount Melville, was a prominent advocate and politician, yet his legacy is shrouded in controversy – with historians claiming he was instrumental in deferring the abolition of the Atlantic slave trade.
But now, with his statue in Edinburgh’s St Andrew Square on a ‘Topple the Racists’ hit list, his descendent, Bobby Dundas, the 10th Viscount Melville, says that far from being a supporter of the slave trade, his seven-times greatgrandfather played a key role in ending the practice.
Henry Dundas, whose monument towers 150ft above the capital, has been blamed for amending William Wilberforce’s 1792 abolition Bill to ensure a ‘gradual’ end to slavery.
Detractors argue that he delayed a ban for 15 years, during which time more than 600,000 people were transported into slavery.
But the present Viscount, 36 – a friend of Prince Harry – argues the Bill had already been rejected by the House of Commons, so slavery would not have been ended at all without his ancestor’s intervention.
He sees Dundas as a pragmatist who realised that the only way to pass the Bill and ban slavery was to add the word ‘gradually’. The Viscount said: ‘Henry Dundas was an abolitionist. He was for the abolition of the slave trade. That has been written about by countless people.
‘There was one failed attempt to get the Bill through Parliament and the realistic and pragmatic approach that Dundas took was the only way to make sure the vision and final goal was achieved.’
The current Viscount, a professional polo player and entrepreneur, who once rowed 3,000 miles across the Atlantic in a tiny boat, says those who claim the 1st Viscount supported slavery do him a ‘profound injustice’.
His intervention comes amid debate over whether those memorialised in some of Britain’s most prominent statues were heroes or racists. The neoclassical Melville Monument in St Andrew Square, is a key target for campaigners, who want to see it removed.
It was funded by voluntary contributions from officers, petty officers, seamen and marines.
The column was erected in 1821, with the statue placed on top in 1827. The present Viscount admits that Dundas – an MP and Scottish Lord Advocate – was a contentious figure who defended and expanded the British empire, imposing colonial rule on indigenous peoples.
He said: ‘He certainly wasn’t a saint. But currently there is only one side of the man being shown. ‘Fundamentally he was a politician and in the Admiralty quelled all-out war and kept Scotland in the Union. So there’s a lot that Scots do not know about a man who has done a lot, I think, for Scotland. What I’ve always been in favour of is a wider conversation and education on it.’
Viscount Melville added: ‘After one failed attempt already made by Wilberforce to get the abolition Bill through Parliament, and with so much power and financial interests involved in the West Indian plantations and the slave trade as a whole, the only way to get it abolished and a majority vote through Parliament was to insert the word ‘gradual’.
‘Had it not been for his amendment, the slave trade could have been about for decades to come.’
Asked how Dundas would view the current protests, the Viscount said: ‘I genuinely think he would be on the streets. One hundred per cent. All lives matter. It’s absolutely horrific what happened to George Floyd. Racism is systemic and it’s institutional within politics and culture, our social environment in the 21st Century.
‘It’s great what’s going on and it’s great that it’s being shown.
‘What’s not great is the thuggery and extremism that takes to spray cans and vandalism.’
There is very little information on the monument itself to say who it commemorates and why.
City of Edinburgh Council last week approved a plaque which will dedicate it to ‘the memory of more than half a million Africans whose enslavement was a consequence of Henry Dundas’s actions’.
However, Viscount Melville claimed that this wording contains ‘historical inaccuracies’. He said: ‘It is untrue that the postponement of the ban on the slave trade to 1807 was the result of any executive action by Henry Dundas, notwithstanding the fact that he left government in 1801.
‘He had no personal involvement in the slave trade and when asked by William Pitt to support the abolition, his motion is the reason millions were spared a part in a horrific trade and dark period in UK history.
‘Any attempt to inscribe words on the statue giving people the idea he was in favour of slavery would be a profound injustice.
‘To retain public respect for its decision, City of Edinburgh Council should not ignore such plain facts but make sure the inscription respects them.’
‘He’d be on streets with the protesters’