Rejected petition Remove all Statues of Slave Traders in the UK

Rejected on 22 June 2020

Statues do not teach history. Statues - quite literally - place figures on pedestals. To place a historical figure on a pedestal is to portray them as heroes - as people worthy of respect. For slave traders, this is simply not the case.

The UK must not shy from our colonial history. We cannot forget the atrocities commited; we cannot forget the role we played in the slave trade. However, we must stop placing slave traders in positions which portary them as worthy of respect.

A similar petition received over 100,000 signatures on change.org. I hope that it can gain some traction on here too.

Why was this petition rejected?

There’s already a petition about this issue. We cannot accept a new petition when we already have one about a very similar issue.

You are more likely to get action on this issue if you sign and share a single petition.

We have published the following petitions, which you might like to sign:

Encourage and support the removal of memorials that glorify the slave trade: https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/325449

Create an advisory board to review public statues and decide on their removal: https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/325673

We only reject petitions that don’t meet the petition standards.