Professor Fred Steward, Emeritus Professor in the School of Social Sciences, wrote an article for openDemocracy about building a memorial for the people that the UK enslaved.
Professor Fred Steward discussed the meaning of monuments and wrote: “Monuments matter. That’s why the current debate about statues is important. They are material expressions of memory in the public realm. Some are potent national symbols of celebration or commemoration, such as the statue of Nelson in Trafalgar Square or the Cenotaph war memorial in Whitehall. Less common are monuments of national contrition. The Holocaust memorial in Berlin is one of the best known.”
Discussing the UK’s history, Professor Steward wrote: “In the UK, there have been calls for several years for a national monument of atonement for the victims of transatlantic slavery. The case is compelling – our nation was by far the biggest trader in slaves shipped to North America and the Caribbean.
“It was directly responsible for the forced and brutal migration of more than three million enslaved Africans across the north Atlantic between the 17th and 19th centuries. Half a million died on the journey.
“Yet this reality remains largely hidden from history. Our national story has been much less focused on contrition for our responsibility in the formation of the slave trade than on celebration of its abolition. We cannot continue to gloss over our past.”
Read the full article on the openDemocracy website.
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