Slavery 'to blame' for social unrest amongst British African population » Communities » 24dash.com

All the social unrest in the British African population can be attributed to 200 years of slavery, a direct descendent of William Wilberforce claimed today.

Lady (Kate) Davson, the great-great-great granddaughter of the anti-slavery campaigner, made the comments at the unveiling by London Mayor Boris Johnson of a maquette of a planned slavery memorial in the capital.

She said: "The white population of Great Britain has got to be on its knees to make things right. The apology should be visible to show we accept that we effected the most awful wounds on a huge number of people."

As her husband's ancestors owned sugar estates in Guyana, she said that they "really have to grovel".

Britain's key role in both implementing and benefiting from the slave trade meant that the country must lead the way in apologising, she added.

Mr Johnson, who has claimed to be directly descended from slaves himself, said it was "vital" never to forget the role Britain played in slavery, when he unveiled the model of the planned memorial sculpture at City Hall in London.

He said: "It's vital that our children have a reminder of man's inhumanity to man."

He is supporting the campaign by voluntary group Memorial 2007 (named after the bi-centenary of the British parliamentary abolition of the slave trade), which wants to establish the first permanent national memorial in Britain to remember enslaved Africans and their descendants.

The model of the memorial sculpture, which it is hoped will be installed in the Rose Garden in London's Hyde Park by 2011, shows six human figures representing different aspects of the slave trade, standing atop a round plinth.

Sculptor Les Johnson, who created the model after winning a competition to design the memorial, said: "The important thing was to understand the brief and what the committee was aiming to commemorate with this memorial."

The maquette of his design will be exhibited at City Hall from today until December 1 to mark International Slavery Memorial Day on August 23.

Memorial 2007 said it needed to raise £1.5 million to fund the installation of the full-sized statue in Hyde Park, and is appealing for donations. A permanent site in the park, of about 1,080 square metres, has been negotiated with Government support.

Oku Ekpenyon, a Memorial 2007 organiser, said: "There is a lack of knowledge and understanding about the history of Africa, the repercussion of slavery and what it meant for Britain.

"This memorial will be an educational resource as the focus of curriculum-based and life-long learning.

"It will also serve within a broader context to highlight in a national and public setting the centrality of the experience of enslaved Africans and their descendants in the history of Britain. This in turn will function as a focus for family and local history researchers."

She said the statue would be the first permanent memorial in any capital city in the world that was involved in the slave trade.

The Mayor said: "Hyde Park is a fitting site for a permanent memorial to the millions who lost their lives and the courageous people who fought to end the brutal transatlantic slave trade."

Boris Johnson said in March that his great-great-grandmother was a Circassian slave (from a region in southern Russia), sold to his great-great-grandfather. He claimed that she was only set free when they married.

However, when the BBC studied Johnson's story for an edition of the BBC series Who Do You Think You Are? in which celebrities trace their family trees, it was unable to find proof.