Discussions to resume to reflect the city's slave trade history at the Melville Monument.
Council Leader, Adam McVey, said: “When we scratch beneath the surface of our city’s long history – the sweeping streets of the New Town, some of the statues in our squares – we must face an uncomfortable truth. Edinburgh was, in part, built on wealth created by the slave trade. For too long this part of our City’s history has been hidden but we are starting to confront our past and need to go further.
“The Council has already begun to address this gap, for example through the powerful work by Kayus Bankole from Young Fathers, which was projected on the front of the City Chambers in January. In it, he called out those who profited from the 18th century slave trade, whose names still define our maps via landmarks and street names.
“A huge part of the global Black Lives Matter movement is calling for people to speak up and call out inequality. The stirring scenes we witnessed this weekend of thousands of people taking part in peaceful protests up and down the UK, including in Edinburgh, prove the power of collective action.
“We need to take action as a City now to tackle racism and that includes acknowledging the involvement of some of our City’s historical figures in the slave trade and the failure to abolish it sooner. The statue of Henry Dundas in St Andrew Square at the very least requires a more representative story to be told on-site and, although the statue doesn’t belong to the Council, we’ve previously done what we can to facilitate discussions around how this might look.
"While a consensus wasn’t achieved with a previous approach, we need a resolution now to make a change and I have called a meeting of Edinburgh World Heritage, Prof Geoffrey Palmer and an expert from the University of Edinburgh with a view to agreeing a new form of words as quickly as possible.”