Monumental oversight

That authorities have been lax about downgrading monuments to historic figures compromised by profiting from the slave trade has incensed members of the public. What has attracted less public notice is the downgrading of some monuments that celebrate the abolition of slavery.

It seems odd that our Victorian forebears seem to have been more generous in their estimation of abolitionists than we are. One example is the treatment of the Buxton Memorial Fountain.

The fountain stands a stone’s throw from the House of Commons, in Victoria Tower Gardens. To the casual observer it looks like a Victorian folly. It is recognisable from a distance, festooned with glaring tiles that contrast with the monochrome façade of the Houses of Parliament. If passers-by were asked about its provenance most likely they would say it is a charming vestige of the Victorian penchant for architectural eclecticism. But the backstory of the Fountain is in full view, albeit only to someone who pauses to inspect the fountain from close-up.

The inscription on the fountain is dedicated to the memory of William Wilberforce, Thomas Clarkson, Thomas Fowell Buxton, Thomas Babington Macaulay, Henry Brougham and Stephen Lushington, leading abolitionists all.

The fountain was gifted by Charles Buxton, son of Thomas Fowell Buxton. Father and son hailed from the same stock: both were MPs, descended from a clan of Quakers that together with their cousins, the Barclays, transformed British banking, and who as Quakers were committed to the abolition of slavery. William Wilberforce still is remembered as an activist for the emancipation of slaves. But the other honorands did not rank far behind Wilberforce in the abolitionist movement.

Thomas Clarkson was a founder of the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade. Lord Brougham in 1811 had laid the Slave Trade Felony Act, and Stephen Lushington MP put forward the Slave Trade Act 1824. Lord Macaulay, the historian, also served as an MP and was a vocal advocate of minority rights.

The changing fortunes of the fountain itself are testimony to changes in the climate of public awareness of slavery.

The original location of the fountain was on Parliament Square where it was been inaugurated in 1866. Time and place could hardly have been accidental. 1866 was but a year after America’s Civil War had been concluded, a war where some sections of Britain’s elite had shown sympathy for the vanquished Confederacy. To all opponents of abolition, the fountain in full sight of anyone entering or leaving the Houses of Parliament must have been a daily reproach.

In 1957, the fountain was moved from its then location. At the time it was felt that the fountain’s Victorian style no longer suited contemporary aesthetics and when the move was mooted a member of the House noted, “the whirligig of time brings its revenges, and nowhere more than in artistic matters.” That the placing the Buxton Memorial Fountain on Parliament Square was an instance of in-your-face edginess no longer registered. The debates over slavery and abolition had gone away and become a non-issue.

Or so it was thought.

Now that the whirligig of times has moved on again, bringing with it a backlash of public opinion that cares less about aesthetics than about attitudes to slavery, this could be the right time for improving the signage of the Buxton Memorial Fountain, for example by adding information on the contributions of its honorands. Charles Buxton paid for gifting us the Fountain, surely a new generation could find the money to pay for telling us what it was about.