Calls for the Robert Peel statue to be removed from Piccadilly Gardens

There have been calls for the statue of Robert Peel in Piccadilly Gardens to be removed.

The former British Prime Minister is credited with creating the first proper police force in the UK, with the foundation of the Metropolitan Police Service during his time in office.

Another statue of the politician, who was born in Bury, was vandalised up in Glasgow over the weekend, with the words ACAB (All Cops Are B***ards) spray painted onto it.

Cllr Euan Blockley / @EuanBlockley

As well as the statues in Manchester and Glasgow, Peel also has monuments in Bury and London’s Parliament Square.

The petition to remove the Piccadilly Gardens statue reads: “I am starting this petition and the #RepealPeel movement to highlight the endemic racism that continues to plague Manchester and the fact that this city was built on slavery.

“I recognise and remember the often-ignored black victims of Manchester’s involvement in the slave trade and the plantation economy to accumulate its obscene wealth, historic cultural institutions and powerful centres of knowledge.

“As a society, we have a duty to question police brutality and a moral obligation to consider why there is a statue dedicated to Robert Peel in the centre of our city. Black Lives Matter.”

David Dixon / Geograph

It continues: “The aim is to help bring down the statue of Robert Peel Junior, who created the modern police force in 1829, his father was actively proslavery and circulated a proslavery petition in 1806, a mere year before the abolition of the slave trade.

“In a speech to Parliament in 1794, he warned of the dangerous consequences that would envelop the colonies because of abolitionism, inferring that Africans were content being slaves.

“This just tells you what kind of people both Peels were when the majority of the city supported abolition, they both saw emancipation as dangerous, we don’t have to intellectually pretzel ourselves to recognise the connections between the legacies of slavery, policing and racialised brutality.

“We have to defund Greater Manchester Police and get rid of that Robert Peel statue. I call on those with the power, all free people to remove this icon of hate and racism.”

The person behind the petition wants Manchester City Council and Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham to remove the statue and ‘give the space to black artists and creators’.

It comes as a statue of 17th Century slave trader Edward Colston was pulled down by protesters in Bristol and thrown in the harbour.