Overview

• On 11 August 2025 Baroness Debbonaire called on the Government to remove the Grade II-listed statue of Robert Clive from outside the Foreign Office.
• She criticized the monument’s frieze for depicting ‘tiny, subservient’ Indians as distorting colonial history and harming modern diplomatic ties.
• The statue was first unveiled in 1912 and relocated to its current Whitehall plinth in 1916.
• Historians link Clive’s tenure with the East India Company to the 1770 Bengal Famine, which is estimated to have killed up to ten million people.
• The removal campaign has gained momentum since the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests, with figures like Sir Keir Starmer backing the relocation of contested imperial monuments to museums.