In the context of Statue of Robert Clive, London, explore the 21st century of the History.
At the beginning of the 21st century, the statue was singled out for criticism by Nick Robins in his history of the East India Company, The Corporation that Changed the World. In the book, he argued that "the fact that one of Britain's greatest corporate rogues continues to have pride of place at the heart of government suggests that the British elite has not yet confronted its corporate and imperial past." The book concluded by calling for the statue to be removed to a museum.In June 2020, calls were made for the statue's removal after a wave of anti-racism protests in which a statue of the slave trader Edward Colston in Bristol was pulled down. The Labour politician Lord Adonis asked the Government to begin a public consultation on the statue. Clive's statue will be considered in a review of London's public monuments ordered by Sadiq Khan, the Mayor of London. With Andrew Simms, Nick Robins repeated his call for the statue to be removed and replaced with a monument celebrating a new generation of diverse global heroes. The historian William Dalrymple compared the statue's 20th-century memorialisation of Clive to the Confederate monuments erected in the Southern United States well into the civil rights era. The writer Afua Hirsch similarly said that the statue was "not a piece of history but an attempt – when it was erected centuries after Clive's death – to rewrite it" and called Clive "a symbol of the most morally bankrupt excesses of Empire".
Afua Hirsch India statue of the slave trader Edward Colston Bristol Southern United States Lord Adonis Sadiq Khan William Dalrymple Confederate monuments Labour wave of anti-racism protests London civil rights era Mayor of London