Patrick West

Holland Park must not fall

(Photo: iStock)

The latest victim in this summer’s mania could be the name of one of London’s best-known and wealthiest areas: Holland Park, in the west of the capital.

A monument in the park itself, of the 19th-century politician Henry Vassall-Fox, the third Baron Holland, was splattered with red paint on Wednesday. After, the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea suggested that the park, underground station and entire district could end up being renamed.

The park and neighbourhood was named after Henry Fox, the first Baron Holland. His descendent, the third Baron, technically owned slaves and dozens of plantations in Jamaica through his wife’s estate. Hence this weeks’ desecration, with a cardboard sign left perched in the bronze statue’s arms reading ‘I owned 401 slaves.’

The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea now says that the statue could be placed under review as part of a ‘conversation about the figures we see in our public realm’. A spokesman said: ‘In London we must oppose racism in all its forms and we fully support everyone’s right to protest peacefully. The Mayor of London has launched his London-wide public realm review and we expect this to consider station names, statues and street names.’

But not for the first time among the iconoclasts and policy makers, there is a large degree of historical ignorance afoot. While Henry Vassall-Fox was indeed a plantation owner through marriage, he consistently and actively opposed slavery. As a statesman in the Lords from 1796 until his death in 1840 he helped to abolish the slave trade and then slavery itself in most of the colonies as part of the 1807 and 1833 governments (Vassall-Fox was Lord Privy Seal from 1806 to 1807, and Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster between 1830 and 1834).

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