Pioneering still: statue is first of female in square
STATUE OF WOMEN’S VOTE CAMPAIGNER TAKES ITS PLACE OUTSIDE PARLIAMENT
FINALLY a monument of one of British history’s famous women will stand in Parliament Square.
It took a change.org petition, by campaigner Caroline Criado-Perez, to make it happen but a statue of suffragist leader Millicent Fawcett will be the first-ever female statue to stand in the Westminster square of fame.
The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, as well as 14-18 NOW, which commissions artwork inspired by the First World War period, the art gallery Firstsite and Iniva, the Institute of International Visual Art, got behind the campaign.
Turner-prize winning artist, Gillian Wearing OBE, was then commissioned to make the monument.
Members of the public attended the grand unveiling of the finished work at 11am in Parliament Square yesterday (Tuesday.)
Dame Millicent Fawcett (June 11, 1847 – August 5, 1929) identified as a suffragist – classed as being more moderate than a suffragette – and was a tireless campaigner for women’s rights and to get British women the vote.
Alongside Fawcett, the names and portraits of 59 men and women who campaigned for women’s suffrage are inscribed on the plinth.
The statue was commissioned to commemorate the centenary of the Representation of the People Act 1918, through the Government’s national centenary fund.