Artwork removed from National Portrait Gallery after row over Churchill’s role in Bengal famine

Turner prize winner Helen Cammock withdraws piece after 50 peers criticise claim former PM ‘starved people’

An artwork by a Turner prize-winning artist has been removed from the National Portrait Gallery (NPG) after a row about the role Winston Churchill played in the 1943 Bengal famine.

The Persistence video installation by Helen Cammock was taken down on Monday after a week of criticism as pressure mounted on the gallery.

The NPG faced calls for its removal from a group of 50 peers, including Churchill’s grandson Sir Nicholas Soames, who objected to a line in the piece about his grandfather’s role in the event.

In the work, Cammock, who narrates the 40-minute piece, discusses Oliver Cromwell’s campaigns in Ireland, saying “he starved people, en masse, a little like the wilful starvation of the Indian population by Winston Churchill”.

The line was at the centre of a row that escalated when a letter – signed by 50 peers – was sent to the gallery’s board by the historian and peer Andrew Roberts, who claimed the installation’s description of Churchill was an “ideologically motivated rant”.

Cammock’s work was also criticised by the Telegraph, which called her assertion that Churchill caused the famine “incorrect”. The artist and gallery had initially defended the work but on Monday evening the NPG confirmed it had been removed at Cammock’s request.

“We respect her decision,” the gallery said in a statement. “Just as we acknowledge the opinions of those who were offended by what was said in the film.”

Cammock said in a statement: “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.”

Churchill’s role in the tragedy, in which an estimated 3 million people in eastern India died, is fiercely debated by academics. The Telegraph described the famine as “a lethal food shortage caused by natural disasters and exacerbated by local mismanagement and wartime supply problems”.

However, other academics argue that Churchill ignored warnings about rice shortages, which were made worse by diverting food across the British empire during the conflict rather than keeping it in India.

Cammock, who jointly won the Turner prize in 2019, had been invited to create a work that responded to the NPG’s collection. Persistence had been on temporary display for 10 months and was due to finish in August.

The NPG said: “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: “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.”