Museum of the Home: Slave-trader statue not removed despite pledge

The museum has still not removed the statue despite promising to relocate it last year

The Museum of the Home in London has still not removed a statue of slaver Sir Robert Geffrye from its entrance - despite pledging to do so a year ago.

Geffrye made part of his fortune from the Royal African Company, which shipped 84,000 people into enslavement.

He was also involved with the East India Company.

Campaigners called the statue an "insult" to black and Asian visitors, and the museum, in Hackney, has renewed its promise to remove it.

The statue is positioned over the entrance of the building, which was an almshouse that Geffrye funded before the museum was founded there.

The museum stressed: "There is no connection between Geffrye and the founding of the museum and its collections."

The museum wants to move the statue to a "less prominent place"

But Hackney Stand Up to Racism (HSUTR) has said the "honoured position" of the statue is "offensive", and fails to reflect the "diversity and multicultural nature" of London, according to the Local Democracy Reporting Service.

The campaign group have staged multiple protests at the museum, and the National Education Union also joined a boycott, with members pledging not to take school trips there.

• What was the slave trade?

• Museum to keep slave-trader statue on building

The museum first promised to remove the statue after a consultation of more than 2,000 people in 2020.

It decided to move the statue to a "less prominent space, where we can better tell the full story of the history of the buildings and Robert Geffrye's life, including his involvement in transatlantic slavery."

The museum will not be able to relocate the statue without listed building consent

The statue remains at the entrance, however, after the former culture secretary, Oliver Dowden, encouraged the museum to keep the statue in 2020.

The minister wrote that although "confronting our past may be difficult at times", we cannot "pretend to have a different history".

Museum staff have been working with young people from Hackney to look at "the possible relocation, display and interpretation" of the statue and Hackney Mayor Philip Glanville has said he will continue to work with the museum to "make sure that Hackney's public spaces are representative of the communities that live in the borough".

Listed building consent would have to be given before the statue could be moved.

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