The City of London & The Slave Trade Part 8

Here look at City of London councillors who were independent slave traders. This is a a more difficult area to research than those involved with the Royal Africa Company. That said, after we began this series the project Structures & Significance of British Investment in the Transatlantic Slave Trade, c. 1550-1807 was announced. This is funded to the tune of over a million pounds by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and is due to publish its results both online and in book form with biographies of all those implicated in these crimes against humanity in 2024. Rather than attempting to be comprehensive, we will simply use this instalment to look at three senior City councillors we know to have been independent slave traders. The results of the academic research due for publication in three years time will undoubtedly be more comprehensive than anything we can do. That said, even with entries on just three City councillors who were independent slave traders this post does serve to highlight the problematic nature of the City of London council’s art collection held at the Guildhall Art Gallery.

Jamie Ingham Clark Lacks Credibility As New Chair Of City Of London Finance Committee

The City of London council’s resident electors – as opposed to its undemocratic business voters – can have no faith in members of its Finance Committee with links to the big four accountancy firms. Rather than trumpeting the connections of its new chair Jamie Ingham Clark to Ernst & Young, if the City council actually wanted to raise public confidence in itself then it would find a head for its Finance Committee who didn’t suffer from the perceptual biases and potential conflicts of interest of those linked to the big four. Ingham Clark and all other members with big four connections should resign from the Finance Committee with immediate effect.

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.

City Of London Still Feudal In Both Business & Politics

Recently the media has been covering sexism in the City of London, with many women in the finance industry suffering harassment in the workplace and being held back by a glass ceiling that prevents them getting top jobs. What is true of the firms given the business votes that enable them to control the City of London council, is also true of the local authority that works on their behalf and against the interests of those who actually live in the UK’s last rotten borough. We have posted repeatedly about the fact that top jobs at the council are monopolised by the men only Guildhall Lodge 3116 of freemasons, who are allowed to meet for free on the local authority’s premises despite this being a class ceiling issue – since only two women have ever been Lord Mayor, while more than two thirds of the men holding this top post since the founding of Lodge 3116 in 1905 have belonged to it. For now let’s focus on media coverage of sexual harassment in the finance industry, knowing it won’t be long until journalists wise up to sexism and glass ceiling issues in City of London politics too.

History Is Against The City Of London & Will Judge It Harshly

The City of London has been playing a confidence trick on people in the UK and across the world for years with its claims of generating wealth for everyone when it actually impoverishes most of us. Should the City’s financial power dry up it will no longer be able to keep up the charade of pretending to benefit anyone beyond a tiny rich elite, nor fund its glossy and expensive PR campaigns on behalf of the wealthy few. It’s high time the City of London as we know it became history and this local authority was replaced with democratic institutions. Right now everything is coming together very nicely to make such change not just possible but likely.

Sue Langley, Aldermen & The City of London’s Rotten Political System

Until the City of London is democratically reformed with the abolition of business votes and a reduction in the number of its councillors to a level commensurate with its residential electorate, its political system will provide an attractive target for those inclined to manipulate voting systems and seeking an easy route to power and influence. We will continue to keep an eye on upcoming City of London elections. Later this year Matthew Richardson is scheduled to step down as Billingsgate alderman. An election in that ward might well be of wider interest than the alderman contests we’ve reported in recent posts.

City of London Planning Committee Roll of Shame

An application to build a luxury apartment block on the site of Bernard Morgan House in Golden Lane was approved by the City of London Planning and Transportation Committee on 23 May 2017. Thirteen of those present voted in favour and ten against. This development will steal light and sunshine from local homes, a park and three local schools. We don’t currently know the identities of all those who voted in favour of this application but we will add them to our role of shame as and when we can. In the meantime, we understand these members of the committee voted for the proposal, so this is our initial role of shame: Christopher Hayward, Michael Bear, Mark Boleat, Andy Mayer,
Brian Mooney, James Thomson.

RECLAIM EC1

No To Business Votes, Yes To Democracy!