Maggie statue? No, we’ve already got enough monuments
A PROPOSED Margaret Thatcher statue in Parliament Square looks set to be rejected because officials say there are too many other monuments there.
Tory-run Westminster Council also hinted at the threat of vandalism by hard-Left activists, saying no statues should be erected for ten years after a person’s death to ‘allow partisan passions to cool’.
Campaigners had hoped to install a ten-foot bronze of Britain’s first woman prime minister opposite Parliament but planning officials say the £300,000 project would breach Westminster’s guidelines for its ‘Monument Saturation Zone’. This covers most of Whitehall and St James’s, prohibiting new monuments unless there is ‘an exceptionally good reason’.
Despite the council’s ten years after death rule, a statue of Nelson Mandela was erected at Parliament Square in 2007 – six years before the anti-apartheid leader died. Further statues are planned in the square later this year for women’s rights campaigner Millicent Fawcett and, at some stage, for suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst.
The latest setback comes just months after the Royal Parks quango, which owns the land on which the statue was due to be situated, declined to back the plan, saying it had not received the support of Baroness Thatcher’s family.
And a local residents’ association objected on the grounds that the former Tory leader was ‘ controversial enough to risk vandalism’.
In 2002 a £150,000 marble statue of Baroness Thatcher, who died five years ago, was decapitated at an art gallery in central London.
The plans for the statue have already been redesigned at the request of police after they raised concerns over civil disobedience. It includes a smooth plinth without ledges or hand-holds to prevent protesters climbing on it.
Tory MP Andrew Bridgen said of the rejection: ‘It’s disgraceful. She is the country’s first ever female prime minister and probably the greatest leader since the Winston Churchill.’
The Public Monuments Appeal, which commissioned sculptor Douglas Jennings to design the statue of Baroness Thatcher, said it would be a ‘fitting tribute to her social and economic achievements’. But officials from Westminster Council said the square already contained statues of Abraham Lincoln, General Smuts, Winston Churchill, David Lloyd George, Mahatma Gandhi and Mr Mandela.
Westminster Council papers for the meeting next Tuesday list the issues ‘ for the committee’s consideration’. In their report, planning officers advised councillors to ‘refuse permission’ and tell the project backers to come back with ‘a more appropriate design for the statue and evidence of support from the Thatcher family’ after the ten-year rule was up.
The papers show that planning officials have told councillors: ‘It would not be appropriate for two large statues to be located so close to each other in this sensitive location.’ But Tory MP Andrew Rosindell said ‘there was loads of room’ on the ‘left and side of the square opposite Churchill’.
The council papers also state: ‘[The ten-year rule] was put in place for good reason in order to allow partisan passions to cool and enable sober reflection.’
Council planning chairman Richard Beddoe said: ‘ This scheme will be considered on its merits and in line with council policy at our planning committee on January 23.’
‘Allow partisan passions to cool’