A LABOUR peer has been slapped down by Sir Keir Starmer after calling for the Clive of India statue outside the Foreign Office to be torn down.
Baroness Debbonaire branded the 1912 bronze “a shocking piece of sculpture” and said it was “not helpful” for Britain’s relationship with India.
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Clive of India was an East India Company clerk who became Governor of Bengal and led Britain’s expansion in the subcontinent.
But he is also blamed for mismanaging the Bengal famine, which killed millions.
His name was stripped from a house at his former private school in the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement.
The former shadow culture secretary and Bristol MP told a book festival: “I’m not sure that a statue of Clive should really have any place outside the Foreign Office.
“I walk past it and the frieze shows happy, smiling people really delighted to see him.
“And that’s just not historically accurate.
“It’s not helpful for our current relationship with India and it is deeply unhelpful to see India as a country that Britain civilised.”
But the PM’s spokesman distanced himself from her comments yesterday, saying: “I’m not sure you achieve very much by going round taking statues down, but I haven’t seen that.”
Baroness Debonnaire has previously campaigned against monuments, demanding slave trader Edward Colston’s statue be removed two years before it was toppled in Bristol in 2020.
At the time she said: “Having statues of people who oppressed us is not a good thing to be saying to black people in this city.”
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