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Winston Churchill’s role in the Bengal famine has been debated by academics
A video installation at the National Portrait Gallery has been withdrawn after a row over Sir Winston Churchill’s role in the Bengal famine.
The 40-minute video by artist Helen Cammock at the central London gallery had referred to “the wilful starvation of the Indian population by Winston Churchill” in the 1943 famine.
It prompted an open letter to the gallery from Lord Roberts of Belgravia, a Churchill biographer – signed by more than 50 peers including Churchill’s grandson Sir Nicholas Soames – saying this was incorrect.
The gallery has told BBC News the artist has now removed her work from display, with Cammock saying it was not a documentary but people should “hear it out”.
Cammock, a Turner Prize-winning artist, said in a statement on Monday: “There is an incredible pressure on artists and arts institutions to bend to external pressure; to be benign at best and silent at worst.
“I do not accept this pressure. To question, challenge and explore ideas and histories is vital to a healthy society and art is intrinsic to this.”
She had worked on her video installation with the National Portrait Gallery, titled Persistence, since 2023. It had been on temporary display for 10 months, due to end in August, as part of an exhibition titled ‘Artists First: Contemporary Perspectives on Portraiture’.
In the work, which she narrated, she explored Oliver Cromwell’s 17th century military campaigns in Ireland, saying he “starved people, en masse” which was “a little like” Churchill in the Bengal famine.
An estimated three million people died in eastern India in the Bengal famine, but the nature of the wartime British prime minister’s role in it has long been subject to academic dispute.
The letter by Lord Roberts of Belgravia claimed the installation’s description of Churchill was an “ideologically motivated rant”.
Lord Roberts said the Bengal famine was caused by a typhoon and that Churchill told his war cabinet every effort must be made to help those affected, asking international leaders to send in grain. Some say Churchill’s policies contributed to the famine.
A member of the public also complained directly to the gallery and received a response, seen by the BBC, which defended the work as the artist’s personal reflections.
The row received widespread media coverage in national newspapers last week and on Monday the gallery said the work had now been withdrawn.
The gallery told the BBC: “Today, Helen Cammock decided to remove her film, Persistence, from display at the National Portrait Gallery. We respect her decision, just as we acknowledge the opinions of those who were offended by what was said in the film.
“The aim of this project was to give artists the opportunity to create works as personal and creative responses to our collection. The work was presented as an artistic piece, not a documentary, and the views expressed in the film do not necessarily reflect those of the NPG.”
It added that the gallery recognised “the legacy of those portrayed on our walls, just as we respect artistic expression”.
Cammock said her work was grounded in academia and “asks us to think about who is honoured and valorised and who is not; whose stories are told and whose are not”.
She added: “Nina Simone once said ‘An artist’s duty, as far as I’m concerned, is to reflect the times’ and sometimes this means revisiting, enquiry and challenge.”
