Descendants of Home Secretary Henry Dundas have moved a step closer to having a contentious plaque removed from the side of the 150ft monument commemorating him in Edinburgh. 

The inscription accuses the 18th-century politician of delaying the abolition of the slave trade. However, his family claim that is “cartoonishly inaccurate."

They have applied for and received listed building consent.

While that means that technically the plaque could be removed, it does not necessarily mean that it will. It is a decision for the landlords of the buildings around St Andrew Square, who are the owners of the monument.

It is unlikely they will agree. 

The plaque claims Sir Henry “was instrumental in deferring the abolition of the Atlantic slave trade.”

It goes on: “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.”

It was crafted by a committee comprising of city councillors, Scotland's first black professor, Sir Geoff Palmer, and another academic. None of them were historians.

That led to Sir Tom Devine, widely regarded as the country's leading historian, comparing them to a "kangaroo court" who were rushing to judgment "on a complex set of questions without taking the advice of any real expert."

He said that it was "bad history" to pin the enslavement of half a million people on Dundas alone. 

The professor said had the Tory never existed, the slave trade would have continued through the 1790s because "forces political, economic and military were so potent that there was no way a British government would want to get abolition over the line." 

A spokesperson for the Henry Dundas Committee for Public Education on Historic Scotland said they were “very relieved at this decision."

She said the plaque was "cartoonishly inaccurate" and that "even the most anti-Dundas historians do not hold him responsible for the trafficking of more than 500,000 Africans and a 15-year delay in abolition."

She added: "It was unfair to the public and hurtful to our family for it to remain in place.

"The plaque never should have been fixed directly onto the monument. The city leases the square. It doesn’t own it or the monument. It was not the city’s monument to deface and damage, with bolts piercing the outer surface to attach a metal plate. It was obviously the right decision to remove it.”

Councillor Chas Booth, Edinburgh Greens spokesperson on planning, said that legally councillors were unable to oppose the application.

He also said those opposed to the plaque were attempting to “whitewash” the role of the capital’s most prominent citizens in prolonging the slave trade.

Taking to Twitter, he wrote: “This decision does not mean the plaque will be removed, nor should it be. Because planning cannot take a view on the wording of the plaque, and only looks at the preservation of the historic structure, there were no valid planning reasons to refuse this application.

“This decision does not reverse the previous planning permission to install the plaque, which was agreed unanimously by planning committee in March 2021. Perhaps perversely, the planning system allows two contradictory permissions to both be valid at the same time. 

“This removal can only be carried out with the permission of the owner. The owners of the Melville monument approved the installation of this plaque, and the council, who are responsible for the maintenance of the monument, clearly supported the plaque, so it should remain.

“It’s vital that the city acknowledges and addresses our role in slavery and racism in our colonial past. Any attempt to whitewash the role that Henry Dundas or any other prominent citizens played in the slave trade should be resisted.” 

Sir Tom praised the decision. He said it would be "welcomed by all those who value historical accuracy, reasoned analysis and carefully researched historical enquiry."

"The original was the work of a kangaroo court led by the activist Geoffrey Palmer, the then Leader of Edinburgh City Council, Adam McVey and a few others.

"No historian was consulted and this clique then brazenly refused to consider the views of professionally qualified individuals who regarded the wording of the plaque as grotesquely bad history and as an odious blot on the landscape of the great city of the Scottish Enlightenment.

"Professor Angela McCarthy of Otago University NZ is owed the warm thanks of her fellow scholars because it was she in her research-based articles in the academic journal Scottish Affairs who laid bare the untruths and effectively demonstrated the arrant fabrications in the plaque.

"The issue now is will Edinburgh City Council follow the advice of its planning officials and planning sub-committee and consign the offending object to the municipal dump? Given the controversial saga of this whole affair, no confident answer can be given to that crucial question at the present time."

A City of Edinburgh Council spokesperson said: “Through the approval of the application for removal of the plaque at the Melville Statue, it was confirmed that technically the plaque could be removed.

"The application however was not from the owner of the statue and therefore doesn’t mean any further action will be taken. As caretakers of the statue since 1822, and following positive engagement with the proprietors of St Andrew Square, the Council agreed the new plaque and wording in June 2020.”