Report On City Of London Council’s Historic Links To The Slave Trade Underlines The Need For This Local Authority To Apologise For Its Role In The Black Holocaust

As we previously reported, the leadership of the City of London Corporation (= Council) in 2024 commissioned a report from Professor William Pettigrew on “Assessing the Connections between the Transatlantic Traffic in Enslaved African People and the City of London Corporation”. They did this as a reputation washing initiative that seemed like a good idea at the time. When the report was recently produced, however, its content turned out to be more problematic for the Corporation than its short-sighted leadership had expected. They accordingly decided on 9 July to delay publication until some time in September, expressly to enable them to make preparations to “contextualise” it. They were right to be alarmed by the report’s content. The City Corporation has promoted its long history as an essential part of the reason for its present existence. So when that history is shown to be shameful, the Corporation’s continued existence is called into question. Any discussion of this existential…