Remove The Drax Slaver Memorials From St Anne and St Agnes Church AKA The Voces8 Centre In The City of London

St Anne and St Agnes church now houses the Voces8 Centre, a choir group and ‘educational’ charity that not only features the busts of the Drax slavers in a good number of promotional photographs currently to be found on its website and elsewhere, but also unapologetically promotes the building it is housed in as the work of slave trade investor Christopher Wren. Likewise the Voces8 Centre isn’t shy about featuring the coat of arms of Charles II in pictures of the interior of its building. Charles II is the monarch who issued the 1663 charter to the Royal Adventurers which marks the moment at which the transatlantic slave trade officially began, with royal approval, in the English (later British) Empire.

Freedom Awards Are The City Of London’s Anti-Democratic Roll Of Shame

Freedoms were issued from the thirteenth-century onwards as a form of recognition to ‘leading’ citizens of the City of London, but in 1674 their covert politicisation was made utterly overt when what was apparently the first honorary freedom was given to non-City resident King Charles II. This is the English king who officially began the transatlantic slave trade by issuing a human trafficking charter to the Royal Adventurers Into Africa. Thus from its very first recipient the City’s honorary freedom has been associated with authoritarianism, political repression and genocide. Historically thousands of those involved in the slave trade and colonial crimes were City freemen. In recent years paedophiles such as Hubert Chesshyre and sectarian politicians like Ian Paisley Junior have been awarded the Freedom of the City of London. Given all this, no one aware of who already holds the award and who isn’t a dyed-in-the-wool political reactionary would want to accept a Freedom of the City of London. The fact that one cannot stand for political office in the City until one has its Freedom effectively acts as a bar against those who adhere to modern democratic principles being elected to this civic authority.

Robert Aske & The Memorialisation Of City Of London Grandees Connected To The Slave Trade

While name changes for the Aske schools is something we wish to see happen, this and the renaming of places like Aske Gardens in Hackney, should only be a small part of a much broader process. The activities and ‘treasures’ of all City of London livery companies need to be thoroughly investigated and their charitable status properly scrutinised, as should be clear from our last post. The Aske schools aren’t the only ones the Haberdashers’ have a hand in and the ideological orientation of the education offered in institutions controlled by various livery companies and the City of London council is deeply problematic. A lot more than symbols need to be addressed to create an equitable world.

The City of London & The Slave Trade Part 6

Having spent five blog posts and many thousands of words listing those City of London aldermen (senior councillors) we could identify as directors of and investors in the slave trading Royal Africa Company, we feel we have sufficiently backed up the point made in part 2 of this series that in his tweet of 19 June 2020, the current City of London councillor Tijs Broeke cynically downplayed his predecessors role as key actors in the black holocaust. In that tweet Broeke disingenuously claimed Africa Company shareholders included just 15 lord mayors, 25 sheriffs and 38 aldermen. As can be seen from our recent posts the numbers are considerably higher than this and many senior councillors (aldermen) were directors of the Royal Africa Company, not just shareholders as Broeke – an apologist for the City of London council – spins it. What we have posted is very far from exhaustive and in due course we believe it will be possible to update it with more names. That said, we have done enough to demonstrate that Broeke’s tweet was a typically misleading piece of City of London propaganda.

The City of London & The Slave Trade Part 5

A continuation of sketches of senior City of London councillors (aldermen) who were directors of the slave trading Royal Africa Company (or investors in it) during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, alongside remarks on various contemporary organisations responsible for memorials and other references to them that require actions such as removal of object, renaming or a more rigorous historical framing. The contemporary organisations addressed in this post include the National Portrait Gallery, Art UK, British Museum, City of London Corporation, Haberdashers’ Company, Carpenters’ Company, Bank of England and Bank of England Museum.

The City of London & The Slave Trade Part 4

A continuation of sketches of senior City of London councillors (aldermen) who were directors of the slave trading Royal Africa Company in the seventeenth-century, alongside remarks on various contemporary organisations responsible for memorials and other references to them that require actions such as removal of object, renaming or a more rigorous historical framing. The contemporary organisations addressed in this post include the National Portrait Gallery, Art UK, Hermitage Museum, Guildhall Art Gallery, City of London Corporation, Bank of England and Bank of England Museum.

The City Of London & The Slave Trade Part 3

Sketches of senior City of London councillors (aldermen) who were directors of the slave trading Royal Africa Company in the seventeenth-century, alongside remarks on various contemporary organisations responsible for memorials and other references to them that require actions such as removal of object, renaming or a more rigorous historical framing. The contemporary organisations addressed include the National Portrait Gallery, Art UK, Milton Keynes Arts Centre, Royal Collection Trust, Metropolitan Museum of Art, National Gallery of Art, Guildhall Art Gallery, City of London Corporation, John Moore Foundation, Museum of the Home, Ironmongers’ Company and Sir Robert Geffery’s Trust.

The City of London & The Slave Trade Part 2

When we began our look at the huge overlap between the slave trading Royal Africa Company and the City of London council we quoted Historic England on this entanglement. We chose this particular source because it emphasised that the Guildhall (the City of London council offices) was a centre of the slave trade. That said we could see that the numbers used were drawn from the book The Royal African Company by K. G. Davies (Longmans Green, 1957), since on pages 68/69 Davies states: “Fifteen of the Lord Mayors of London, between the Restoration and the Revolution, and twenty-five of the Sheriffs were shareholders in the company, as were thirty-eight of the men elected or appointed aldermen between 1672 and 1690.” Historic England use the same figures and time frame in what we quoted from them. It’s important to understand that these numbers do not cover the overlaps between the City of London council and the Royal Africa Society during the entire history of this slave trading operation, just its earlier phase.

List of Memorials In The City of London Linked To Slavery, Colonialism & Racism

This is a partial list of public memorials in the City of London which commemorate individuals with links to slavery, colonialism and racism. We’ve drawn up this far from exhaustive inventory in part because we are not convinced the Tackling Racism Working Party announced by the City of London council on 11 June 2020 will deal effectively with this aspect of its remit (or indeed any aspect of it). Our lack of confidence is based on the council’s past record and in particular the ongoing refusal of Edward Lord as chair of the Establishment Committee to seriously address glass ceiling issues at the council. In contrast, until we see what it does we will withhold judgement on the Commission for Diversity in the Public Realm established by the Mayor of London Sadiq Khan on June 9, 2020 to review and access public tributes including statues and other landmarks. Both Khan’s Commission and the City’s Working Party ought to do much more than make recommendations on all the items listed beneath when it comes to dealing with the square mile. While it would be great to have all the memorials on our partial inventory removed or renamed, tackling other aspects of institutional racism and sexism is an even higher priority for us.

Remove The Racist Sculpture From Inner Temple Gardens, City of London

There are many monuments in the City of London that should be looked into as regards racism and with this post we will highlight a handful of them. One piece of public art that should be speedily removed and put into storage is an early eighteenth-century statue of a crouching young black man holding up a sundial in the Inner Temple Gardens. Two different Inner Temple websites make it clear that those caring for the gardens and the sculpture ought to know it is racist. The Inner Temple is one of the four Inns of Court, the professional associations for barristers in England and Wales. All barristers must belong to one of them. The Inner Temple is situated on the south-west side of the City of London.

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Charles II