Boris Johnson Has Broken His Promise to Fund a Memorial to the Victims of Slavery, Citing Insufficient Funds

The future of a proposed
memorial for the victims of the transatlantic slave trade is in
doubt, after the UK government declined last month to provide
public funding for its realization. 

The recent denial of funds is in
direct contradiction to current Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s 2008
endorsement for the project. Johnson, who was then the mayor of
London, even praised the prospective location of Hyde Park for the
statue, calling it “a fitting site for a permanent memorial to the
millions who lost their lives.” 

Now, Johnson’s government is
withholding funding despite claiming, via James Younger, the minister for communities and
faith, that the government still believes in the project
because “slavery and the slave trade were amongst the
most appalling tragedies in history”.

The memorial, designed by Les
Johnson, would depict a group of six figures—each of whom
symbolizes a part of the history of slavery—led by an enslaved
African man raising a pair of shackles above his head. “What
is certain is that far into the future, the name at the bottom of
the sculpture, Memorial 2007, will be of little
significance,” the artist wrote in a statement about his proposed
work. “It will not be the artist, whatever his culture, color or
creed, but the memorial itself and those to whom it is dedicated,
that will live on….I do not want to create anything that is
lessened by being subservient to today’s whim and fashion. My sole
aim is to create a thing of truth and beauty that serves its
subject well.”

Though permission to mount the
statue in the Rose Garden of Hyde Park was indeed granted, the lack
of government funding presents a massive challenge to complete the
project, which would cost roughly £4 million ($5,258,640) to produce. At the moment, the
charity behind the memorial has raised a mere £70,000 ($91,954)
through donations.

In comparison, the Holocaust
Memorial located beside the Palace of Westminster has been
allocated £75 million ($98,522,625) in state funding—nearly 19
times what it would cost to produce the slavery memorial. While
both tragic events are obviously worthy of attention, backers of
the slavery sculpture worry that the hesitance to fund the latter
memorial is due to the fact that slavery “was our own atrocity,”
adding that “it is easy to take the moral high ground about someone
else’s atrocity,” according to the Guardian.

The interest in public monuments
to victims of the transatlantic slave trade has only risen in
recent years. Kara Walker’s working fountain Fons Americanus, currently on view at Tate Modern’s Turbine
Hall, was inspired by the Victoria Memorial in front of Buckingham
Palace, and explores the history of the slave trade within and
between Africa, America, and Europe, using water as a key facet in
the project. 

“There’s something subversive
about having water included in your work as a black artist,” Walker
told the Guardian, “because you’re obviously dealing with issues
around the transatlantic slave trade.” 

As for the slavery memorial
whose funding is now being withheld, a spokesperson for the
ministry of housing, communities, and local government simply said
there was no money available, adding that “the government supports
the International Slavery Museum, which acts as a hub for resources on as
well as examining aspects of historical and contemporary
slavery.”

The post Boris Johnson Has Broken His Promise to Fund a
Memorial to the Victims of Slavery, Citing Insufficient Funds
appeared first on artnet News.