The Melville Monument

The Edinburgh Press are reporting today that Edinburgh City Council have now approved plans to add a new plaque to the Melville Monument, which stands prominently in St Andrew Square. 
The monument comprises the statue of Henry Dundas, 1st Viscount Melville (1742 – 1811) sitting on a150ft column  - Dundas was the Scottish Lord Advocate and an MP and a contentious figure, provoking controversies that resonate to this day. While Home Secretary in 1792 and first Secretary of State for War in 1796 he was instrumental in deferring the abolition of the Atlantic slave trade. Slave trading by British ships was not abolished until 1807. As a result of this delay, more than half a million enslaved Africans crossed the Atlantic. Dundas also curbed democratic dissent in Scotland.
The monument was vandalised during a June 2020 Black Lives Matter demonstration.
The Council approved the installation of a plaque that will clarify Dundas' misdeeds.
The wording of the plaque reads:
 “At the top of this neoclassical column stands a statue of Henry Dundas, 1st Viscount Melville (1742-1811).
“He was the Scottish Lord Advocate, an MP for Edinburgh and Midlothian, and the First Lord of the Admiralty.
“Dundas was a contentious figure, provoking controversies that resonate to this day.
“While Home Secretary in 1792, and first Secretary of State for War in 1796 he was instrumental in deferring the abolition of the Atlantic slave trade.
“Slave trading by British ships was not abolished until 1807. As a result of this delay, more than half a million enslaved Africans crossed the Atlantic.
“Dundas also curbed democratic dissent in Scotland, and both defended and expanded the British empire, imposing colonial rule on indigenous peoples.
“He was impeached in the United Kingdom for misappropriation of public money, and, although acquitted, he never held public office again.
“Despite this, the monument before you was funded by voluntary contributions from British naval officers, petty officers, seamen, and marines and was erected in 1821, with the statue placed on top in 1827.
“In 2020 this plaque was dedicated to the memory of the more than half-a-million Africans whose enslavement was a consequence of Henry Dundas’s actions.”