Suzanne Shep­pard

A cam­paign in the Unit­ed King­dom for the re­moval of all memo­ri­als to Sir Thomas Pic­ton, a for­mer British gov­er­nor of Trinidad, is be­gin­ning to gain trac­tion lo­cal­ly with calls for the re­nam­ing of Pic­ton Street in Port-of-Spain.

Pic­ton be­came known as the “Tyrant of Trinidad” be­cause of his cru­el­ty and iron-fist­ed rule over this coun­try. Dur­ing his five-year au­thor­i­tar­i­an regime, he over­saw the bru­tal ex­e­cu­tion and tor­ture of sev­er­al African slaves.

In re­cent days, in re­sponse to the Black Lives Mat­ter (BLM) protests, a pe­ti­tion call­ing for the re­moval of a 25-me­tre high obelisk erect­ed in Pic­ton’s ho­n­our in Car­marthen, a town in Wales, has gained more than 1,000 sig­na­tures.

Pic­ton, a Napoleon­ic-era sol­dier, was a con­tro­ver­sial fig­ure who ac­quired much of his wealth from deal­ing in slaves. He came to this coun­try as part of Sir Ralph Aber­crom­by’s ex­pe­di­tion which took Trinidad from Spain in Feb­ru­ary 1797 and was left here by Aber­crom­by as gov­er­nor.

He used strong-hand­ed meth­ods against any­one he sus­pect­ed of try­ing to un­der­mine his gov­ern­ment and even erect­ed gal­lows on the premis­es of Gov­ern­ment House. He al­so built he built Fort Pic­ton on the Laven­tille Hills but it was lat­er nick­named Pic­ton’s Fol­ly be­cause he nev­er had to use it.

Pic­ton’s bru­tal tenure as gov­er­nor was de­fined by his phi­los­o­phy of “let them hate so long as they fear.”

The in­ci­dent that led to his re­moval as gov­er­nor was the use of tor­ture to ex­tract a con­fes­sion of theft from a free mixed-race girl, 14-year-old Luisa Calderón

Pic­ton grant­ed per­mis­sion to the in­ves­ti­gat­ing mag­is­trate to ob­tain a con­fes­sion through the use of pick­et­ing, a prac­tice wide­ly used as a pun­ish­ment in the British army. It in­volved the vic­tim be­ing sus­pend­ed off the ground by the wrist, with their on­ly means of sup­port­ing their weight be­ing to stand on an up­turned peg. The peg was not sharp enough to break the skin and in­flict per­ma­nent in­jury but caused the vic­tim ex­cru­ci­at­ing pain.

The in­ci­dent was in­ves­ti­gat­ed by a com­mis­sion head­ed by William Fullar­ton and in 1803 Pic­ton was or­dered home to stand tri­al in Lon­don for ex­ces­sive cru­el­ty, ex­e­cu­tions with­out due process, and for tor­tur­ing Calderón. Tor­ture was con­trary to British law, and Pic­ton was court-mar­tialed but he was treat­ed with some le­nien­cy by the British court and his con­vic­tion was lat­er over­turned.

He was killed at the Bat­tle of Wa­ter­loo in 1815.

In re­cent days, some of the fo­cus of the Black Lives Move­ment protests has shift­ed to some his­tor­i­cal fig­ures linked to the slave trade. On Sun­day, in Bris­tol, Eng­land, pro­test­ers pulled down the stat­ue of Ed­ward Col­ston, a promi­nent 17th-cen­tu­ry slave trad­er and dumped it in the har­bour.

The on­line pe­ti­tion for the re­moval of Pic­ton’s stat­ue states that “it is un­think­ably in­ap­pro­pri­ate, ig­no­rant and struc­tural­ly racist to be ho­n­our­ing the achieve­ments of an in­ex­plic­a­bly evil in­di­vid­ual, and im­plies that the Welsh state does not care enough about the im­por­tance of re­mem­ber­ing the strug­gles of colo­nial sub­jects, but al­so black lives in gen­er­al” and calls for “an end to such re­pug­nant cel­e­bra­tions of a racist mur­der­er.”

May­or of Cardiff Dan De’ath has called for the re­moval of Pic­ton from a He­roes of Wales col­lec­tion in Cardiff City Hall.