The founder of modern conservatism has been implicated in a legislative debate concerning slavery’s historical ties.
Because Edmund Burke’s younger brother benefited from Caribbean plantations, MPs singled out portraits and sculptures of the well-known anti-slavery activist in a report.
The study lists legislative artworks that are somehow or other connected to the dark arts.
Because his father received compensation after slavery was abolished in the UK in 1833, works that include William Gladstone are also on the list of prohibited materials.
Early in his tenure, the Victorian-era prime minister supported payments to slave owners, but later he called it “the foulest wickedness.”
The prime ministers Robert Peel and Robert Walpole, as well as Kings Charles II and James II, are among the other figures mentioned by the committee of MPs.
‘It is utterly ludicrous to tie indirectly all sorts of great historical individuals via familial connections to the slave trade,’ said Sir John Hayes, head of the Common Sense Group of Tory MPs.
Burke, a political philosopher and MP from 1766 until 1794, was a vocal opponent of the French Revolution and is widely regarded as the father of conservatism.