The statue of the 18th-century plantation owner William Beckford, which stands in Guildhall in London, will be recontextualised rather than permanently removed, says the City of London Corporation. A plaque will be placed alongside the statue explaining its connection to the transatlantic chattel slave trade. To me – a descendant of the people he enslaved – the decision feels like a moral failure.
Last year, I was involved in some of the discussions with the Ironmonger’s Company and other stakeholders in the statue. It became apparent that after the decision in 2021 that the figure would remain in the Great Hall, there was not as much resistance as I would have expected. But as a Jamaican-British man and a descendant of those whom Beckford exploited and murdered, I believe that leaving the statue in a prestigious place, even with a note of explanation, is morally reprehensible. Or, in the words of my Jamaican grandparents, it is “devilish”. The decision, which I am sure was the culmination of serious deliberations, underplays the radical evil of slavery’s racial capitalism and its continuing destructive consequences for people racialised as Black.
