A charity attempting to have a memorial built to the victims of the transatlantic slave trade in London has accused the government of discrimination after it refused public funding for the project.

In 2008, Boris Johnson endorsed the proposal for a £4m bronze statue depicting the history of slavery, saying Hyde Park was “a fitting site for a permanent memorial to the millions who lost their lives”. But last month his government refused funding, which meant its planning permission has lapsed and its future is in doubt.

The memorial is being backed by prominent black Britons including Lenny Henry, Baroness Doreen Lawrence and Linford Christie. Patrons include the archbishop of York, John Sentamu, and Lady Davson, the great great great-granddaughter of William Wilberforce, the Hull MP who led the parliamentary campaign to end the slave trade in the British empire, resulting in its abolition in 1807.

Last month, Johnson’s government denied funding for the memorial although James Younger, the minister for communities and faith, said the government valued the charity’s efforts partly because “slavery and the slave trade were amongst the most appalling tragedies in history”.

The charity was granted consent to erect the statue in the Rose Garden of Hyde Park but it has managed to raise only £70,000 through donations. The design consists of six free-standing figures, each representing part of the slave story, led by an enslaved African man holding aloft a pair of manacles.

The government has supported memorials to the first world war, the Nazi holocaust and the massacre at of Bosnian Muslims at Srebrenica in 1995, but no project for slave trade victims, the backers of the slavery memorial say.

They fear that reluctance to fund the memorial may be because slavery was “our own atrocity” and “it is easy to take the moral high ground about someone else’s atrocity”.

Earlier this year, Theresa May promised an additional £25m for a new Holocaust memorial and learning centre on Victoria Gardens, beside the Palace of Westminster, bringing its state funding to £75m. The backers of the slavery memorial have no objection to public funding for the Holocaust memorial, but believe they also deserve support.

“It’s not good saying they don’t have the funds [for us] when three months later they produce £25m,” said Oku Ekpenyon,the founder and trustee of Memorial 2007, which was originally set up to try to erect a memorial to mark the bicentennial of the abolition of the slave trade in Britain 12 years ago.

Ekpenyon said incidents such as the alleged racial abuse of a black footballer in the Manchester derby last Saturday highlighted the impact of failing to fund a project aimed at educating the nation about the history of enslaved Africans. Following the match, the pundit Gary Neville blamed politicians including Boris Johnson for creating a climate where racism was more acceptable.

“Racism as we saw at the weekend is not just confined to football, it’s a societal issue and the government should be taking a lead on this,” she said. “The transatlantic slave trade was based on racism. How can we eradicate racism if we are not prepared to face up to it? The black community are taxpayers as well and we are subsidising other memorials and we are not getting anything for ourselves.”

Madge Dresser, a honorary professor of history at Bristol university who specialises in the history of the slave trade and is Jewish, said: “It is important to memorialise both the Holocaust and the enslavement of Africans and they should not be in competition. In the interests of community cohesion the government needs to fund a proper memorial to the victims of the Atlantic slave trade.”

A spokesperson for the ministry of housing, communities and local government said there was no money available. They highlighted the government’s introduction of the Modern Slavery Act 2015 “to stamp out modern day slavery and protect victims” and added: “The government supports the International Slavery Museum [in Liverpool] which acts as a hub for resources on as well as examining aspects of historical and contemporary slavery.”



