Casting a light on dark history of UK politics

The United Kingdom’s Parliament is updating its historical art collection to tell the whole story of its most celebrated members with dark pasts in light of the Black Lives Matter movement.

At the initiative of the Speaker of the House of Commons, Rt Hon Lindsay Hoyle, the Speaker's Advisory Committee on Works of Art has undertaken a comprehensive review of the parliamentary art collection to identify portraits or statues of historical figures linked to slavery and put them into context.

With over 9,500 pieces accumulated since 1840, the walls, corridors and archives of Parliament, which encompasses the House of Commons and the House of Lords, are full of tributes to politicians whose achievements, until now, have only been celebrated, with the omission of questionable legacies.

The UK became involved in the slave trade of Africans in 1562 and by 1730 was a world leader, until it was abolished in 1833 following slave revolts in the colonies and pressure from the abolitionist movement at home. "It's about telling the whole story," Hoyle told Efe. “So if there are artefacts relating to slavery, we tell the people what happened, the consequences from it, how that came about, and how we ended slavery.”

An initial audit by the Committee led by Welsh MP Hywel Williams has found 232 monuments, oil paintings, engravings and objects related to the transatlantic slave trade, and of those pieces, 189 depict 24 people who had ties to the slave trade and just 40 pieces represent 14 people who were abolitionists.

Some of these celebrated dignitaries with contentious biographies include the former Mayor of London William Beckford (1709-1770), who became rich as a slave-driver in Jamaica, and Conservative MP William Mackinnon, who, like many colleagues, received compensation for lost profits when slavery was abolished. In addition to completing this inventory, the commission, in consultation with experts, will design a plan to improve the explanation of the works to the public, remove offensive language and increase the representation of ethnic minorities in the collection.

The UK government has made its stance on controversial statues clear, saying they should be "retained and explained." This position became a source of tension in June when the statue of slave-owner Edward Colston (1636-1721) in the English city of Bristol was thrown into the river by demonstrators who were protesting in the wake of the killing of African-American man George Floyd by a white policeman in the United States.

This spontaneous act prompted several campaigns in the UK to rename buildings and remove statues dedicated to slave-owning or supremacist politicians and businessmen, such as that of imperialist Cecil Rhodes at Oxford University. “We must ensure that the artwork is put in an appropriate, historical context.

The Committee has been clear — this review is not about tearing down artwork, but about finding ways to better explain the lives of the subjects, including the controversial and unacceptable aspects of their lives," Williams told Efe. The intention, he added, is to diversify the people portrayed and the artists who commission work for Parliament, so that the collection “reflects and celebrates the diversity of all who contribute to Parliament.”

Diversity representation is scarce, but among the works are a few dedicated to black politicians, hanging in Portcullis House, the modern wing of Parliament. These include portraits of the first black British MPs: Labour's Bernie Grant — elected in 1987, Paul Boateng — who became the first black cabinet minister in 2002, and Diane Abbott, the first black woman elected to Parliament, a seat she has held since 1987.

In an interview with Efe, Boateng, 69, who sits in the House of Lords, recalled the racism that prevailed in the UK and other countries during the time of the Apartheid in South Africa, when he arrived from Ghana as a political refugee in 1966. As a teenager, he experienced racial insults and abuse, and as a Member of Parliament; threats, hate mail and random acts of harassment.

"I remember when I first became a minister, on my first week in office... my driver, in my official car, and I noticed a strange smell in the car... and we then discovered that someone had put a packet of frozen Brussel sprouts under the seat and strapped them there so it would rot and smell. And that had been done quite deliberately," Boateng told Efe.

"So there was that degree of pathological hatred. I’m afraid it still exists. It goes on, it doesn’t stop. Racism is a great evil. It doesn’t go away. You have to confront it," he said, emphasising that today's milestones didn't come out of nowhere, but are the fruits of past struggles.

Boateng added that even nowadays black people in Western countries still have to work harder to achieve their goals, but he sees the Black Lives Matter movement as a source of hope because it is led by young people and because it’s "an activist movement, a movement for change, fueled by righteous anger.”

He said the aim of the art collection review should be about transparency. “It's not about demonising people, it isn't about taking down pictures necessarily, but it is about telling the full story, not editing the story in a way that glosses over uncomfortable truths.” In his opinion, the future parliamentary collection should reflect the racial and cultural diversity of today's government, from MPs to the clerks, librarians, cleaners, police officers and the voters themselves, as well as more artists from ethnic minority backgrounds.