It was erected in 1872 to commemorate Queen Victoria’s late husband.
Royal Parks, the charity that cares for the most famous collection of urban parks in the UK, has declared the Prince Albert statue in London’s Kensington Gardens ‘offensive’.
The memorial reflects the expansive reach of the British Empire at the time of its construction and, according to Royal Parks, displays ‘controversial racial stereotypes with it’s depiction of barbarians being helped by white people’.
The monument commemorates the death of Prince Albert, who died of typhoid in 1861.
Queen Victoria commissioned the memorial in 1862, a year after her husband died. It cost £120,000 to build, which is roughly equivalent to £10,000,000 today.
According to LBC, Royal Parks have since removed the page on their website which described the statue as one that represents a “Victorian view of the world”, and could be deemed problematic by many.
The now-deleted statement from Royal Parks read: “Though the Empire has traditionally been celebrated as a symbol of British supremacy, many today consider this view as problematic because colonialism often relied on the oppression and exploitation of people, resources and cultures.”
Following the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020, calls have been made to denounce or take down statues or figures that symbolise racial subjugation and Britain’s links with slavery.
Most famously, the Edward Colston statue was toppled by anti-racism protestors in Bristol in 2020. Other buildings with links to Colston – a 17th-century slave driver – such as the city’s Colston Hall have since been renamed.
Bristol residents had tried for years to have the statue removed via petitions to no avail, and took matters into their own hands by toppling the statue.
Meanwhile, around the same time, protesters in London moved from the American embassy to Parliament square, vandalising the statue of former prime minister Winston Churchill, writing that he “was a racist” underneath his name.
The Prince Albert statue shows marble figures representing Europe, Asia, Africa and America representing manufacture, commerce, agriculture and engineering.
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This includes the figure of a European woman reading a book to an African man.
Near the top are gilded bronze statues of the angels and virtues.
The Royal Parks write up added: “Victorian guidebooks to the memorial describe how this ‘uncivilised’ man hunches over his bow. This pose was intended to represent him ‘rising up from barbarism’, thanks to his western teacher.”
