Removal of Chartist mural ‘shows a lack of respect’ Echoes

BACK in 2013 we reported on the demise of the Chartist mural in Newport.

With 22 left dead in a bloody battle to free political prisoners, the Chartist uprising in 1839 was the last armed rebellion to take place in Britain.

The event was painstakingly recreated in a 200,000-piece mural that has become part of the cultural fabric of Newport since it’s erection in 1978.

Now there is a battle on to save the artwork – which the council have listed for demolition

Oliver Budd, 52, the son of the mural’s creator Kenneth Budd, said his dad would “probably be spinning in his grave”.

His father, who died aged 69 in 1995, was upset whenever he saw a “threat” to his work. “That work has been there since 1977 or 1978,” Mr Budd said. “It is not a huge amount of time when you look at something like The Last Supper or other works of art that people take seriously. No-one would think of taking a hammer to them. “These pieces of his, give them 100 years and they may have that kind of respect, but why should it be time that dictates respect?” The council say the mural has to make way for a “much needed” shopping and leisure development and claim that Oliver Budd had also “favoured” a replica to be created on the wall of the museum and library. The mural – sited off the city’s John Frost Square – cost about £15,000 when it was constructed. The mural showing John Frost, who was the prominent Welsh leader of the British Chartist movement in the Newport Rising Two 11-year-old girls, Jackie Goldstein, of Picton Vale, Malpas, and Nicola Davies, of Birchgrove Close, Newport study the mural in October 1978