Information board planned for Shrewsbury Clive statue

An information board will be put up next to Shrewsbury’s Clive of India statue in the next few weeks, more than a year after councillors voted not to have the controversial figure removed.

Shropshire Council says the final designs and wording of the interpretation panel have been signed off and a contractor appointed to carry out the installation.

The project has been funded thanks to a £7,000 grant from the West Midlands Museum Development Recovery Grants Scheme, and was due to be completed by this April.

It follows a series of debates among councillors last summer over the future of the monument, which was the subject of multiple petitions and campaigns both for its removal and retention.

Councillors voted in support of keeping the statue in the Square, where it has stood since 1860, but agreed that information about Clive’s history as a key figure in establishing British colonial control over India should be presented alongside it.

The project has also involved updating hundreds of records and displays of items relating to colonialism in Shrewsbury Museum and Art Gallery.

Elsewhere, other councils have faced the same or similar situations with statuary erected many years ago - In Edinburgh, a statue of Henry Dundas, Lord Melville, who took action to delay the abolition of the slave trade, is now accompanied by a sign which explains that a new plaque for the statue has been commissioned to detail the impact of his actions, and gives the wording which will be on the new plaque.