On 13 October, The Sunday Telegraph carried a report of the removal of a portrait of Gladstone from 10 Downing Street. It quoted comments by Alistair Lexden taken from the piece below, which he supplied to the paper at its request.
A prime minister who removes a portrait of Gladstone, one of the greatest men to serve our country, makes a grave error. Known as ‘the People’s William’, he served four terms as prime minister, and unlike any of his successors today drew vast crowds to his meetings whenever he spoke. His great mission was to pacify Ireland by giving it home rule. Though success eluded him, he is an enduring source of inspiration to those who want close relations between the UK and Ireland, of whom Keir Starmer professes to be one.
I hope that he is not bowing the knee to those who attack Gladstone as a supporter of slavery. As a very young man acting on the orders of a dominating father, Glastone briefly backed calls for compensation for the owners of plantations in the West Indies when slavery was abolished. It was short-lived. In 1839 he became one of the founders of the Society for the Extinction of the Slave Trade and the Civilisation of Africa. He denounced slavery in the American Confederate states as “detestable.”
