The University of Northampton is not the first British institution to attempt to censor George Orwell’s work. In 2020 the British Library placed Orwell on a “shame” list because one of his great-grandfathers owned slaves in the Caribbean, despite the fact that Orwell was an avid anti-imperialist who repeatedly called out totalitarianism in his works.
The British Library apparently attempted to tarnish Orwell’s work by labelling it as “associated with wealth obtained from enslaved people or through colonial violence”. Yet, Orwell did not own any slaves himself, nor have any association with the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, which was outlawed in 1807, almost a hundred years before the British novelist was born.
