Labour Party member calls for removal of General Robert Clive statue in London

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer 's office on Monday rejected a specific request from Baroness Debbonaire, a Labour Party member who was Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport between 2023 and 2024. She called for the removal of the statue of General Robert Clive, which has stood outside the Foreign Office in London since the early ^20th century, accusing it of being historically "inaccurate" and "useless" in the context of relations between the United Kingdom and India.

"I'm not sure a statue of Robert Clive really belongs outside the Foreign Office ," she said at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, in comments reported by The Telegraph . " I walk past it and the frieze shows happy, smiling people, really pleased to see him. It's deeply damaging to think of India as a country that Britain has civilized."

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General Robert Clive, also known as Clive the Great in England, led the East India Company at the Battle of Plassey in 1757, which is still considered the beginning of British rule in India. There, he defeated the troops of Sirad Al-Dawla, then ruler of Bengal, before amassing a vast fortune in the region. The soldier is said to have been responsible for a major famine in Bengal that killed tens of millions of people.

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According to historical accounts, Robert Clive took his own life at the age of 49. A statue in his honor was erected by John Tweed in 1912 and moved to the front of the Foreign Office four years later. On one side of the sculpture's base is a fresco depicting the Mughal Emperor granting Robert Clive the right to collect the East India Company's revenues in 1765. "This statue continues to promote him in a victorious posture and as a symbol of a universally good cause," Baroness Debbonaire laments.

Before colonial rule, India was a highly developed country

Baroness Debbonaire, Labor Party member

The Labour member criticises the sculpture for not "contextualising or even honestly stating what Robert Clive's presence in India really brought." "Before colonial rule, India was a very developed country ," she continues. " It participated in free trade, it traded with its neighbours. The East India Company and other colonial forces managed to destroy all of that." She also notes that "since independence, India has developed economically, scientifically, technologically, digitally and artistically."

In the United Kingdom, General Robert Clive remains a highly controversial historical figure. In his writings, historian William Dalrymple, famous for his work on India, Pakistan, the Middle East, the Muslim world, and early Eastern Christianity, once called him an "unstable sociopath." In 2021, amid the Black Lives Matter protests, the soldier's name was removed from his former school. Meanwhile, Downing Street, the British Prime Minister's headquarters, declared that removing the statue "would serve no purpose."