Statue surplus means no room for Thatcher
A PROPOSAL to erect a statue of Margaret Thatcher in Parliament Square is to be rejected because there are already “too many statues” in the area.
Westminster council looks set to turn down the plan for a £300,000 statue of Baroness Thatcher on a 13fthigh granite plinth, with officials saying it would breach Westminster’s guidelines for what it calls the “monument saturation zone”, which covers most of Whitehall and St James’s.
Council officials point out that there are already statues of Abraham Lincoln, General Smuts, Winston Churchill, David Lloyd George, Nelson Mandela and Mahatma Gandhi in Parliament Square, with one of Millicent Fawcett, the feminist and trade union leader, planned for later this year.
A statue of Emmeline Pankhurst, the suffragette leader, is also planned for the square and 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.”
Critics of moves to reject the statue of Lady Thatcher say it would be a snub to one of the country’s greatest prime ministers and “smacks of political bias”. The Public Monuments Appeal, which commissioned Douglas Jennings, the sculptor, to design the statue of Lady Thatcher, said it would be a “fitting tribute to her social and economic achievements”.
The statue would also breach Westminster’s “10-year rule”, under which monuments are erected to individuals only a decade after their deaths, with the exception of outstanding leaders, such as Mandela.
Planning officials fear that erecting a statue to Lady Thatcher only five years after her death would prompt renewed protests and demonstrations against her controversial policies.
The Metropolitan Police and other organisations, such as the Royal Parks Agency and the Department for Digital Culture, Media and Sport, have already warned the statue would face protests and potential vandalism if it were erected.