Presiding Officer hosts ‘Story of Wales and Slavery’ exhibition
13 October 2009
Wales’s involvement in the abolition of the slave trade will be revealed at a new exhibition coming to the National Assembly for Wales.
From Monday 19th October the Senedd will be the venue for ‘Bittersweet: Sugar, tea and slavery’, which details the history of Wales’s part in slavery and its eventual outlawing.
The exhibition is being arranged by the Gateway Gardens Trust and is part of Black History Month which is held every year in October.
“In 2007 we marked the 200th anniversary of the abolition of slavery. But we shouldn’t wait another century before we mark this occasion again. That’s why Black History Month and exhibitions like this are important,” said Lord Dafydd Elis-Thomas, Presiding Officer for the National Assembly for Wales.
The Bittersweet exhibition is the culmination of two years work by the Gateway Gardens Trust which takes groups around homes and gardens of Wales and explains their links to the slave trade.
The trust is funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund and was first established in 2000.
Slavery was eventually banned in the UK with the Slave Trade Act of 1807.