SOME ANIMALS ARE MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS

2014, Oil on Italian Linen, 60 x 50cm

Something of an underachiever, William Pitt the Younger was elected Prime Minister of Great Britain at the age of twenty four. 

In power he provided a safe haven for French refugees fleeing the revolution and later joined the Third Coalition against Napoleon. But perhaps his most enduring legacy was campaigning with Wilberforce to end the United Kingdom’s slave trade - an achievement that only came into effect a year after his death at the ripe old age of 46. 

In Orwell’s allegorical novel Animal Farm, the pigs take power and then quickly assume the trappings of aristocracy, rationalizing their actions with the argument “Some animals are more equal than others” - the same excuse used for so long to justify slavery and racial exploitation.