Pankhurst statue move is ‘act of vandalism against women’s history’, say campaigners

A ROW has erupted over plans to “banish” a statue celebrating the suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst from outside the Palace of Westminster.

In what campaigners claim is an “act of vandalism against women’s history”, the Emmeline Pankhurst Trust has applied to relocate the statue to Regent’s University London in Regent’s Park.

The Pankhurst sculpture, funded by suffragettes, was unveiled in Victoria Tower Gardens, near the House of Lords, in 1930. The Pankhurst Trust, set up by Sir Neil Thorne, a former Tory MP, had tried to get that statue moved to a more prominent position in Parliament Square.

However, the Fawcett Society was campaigning at the time for a sculpture of Millicent Fawcett, the suffragist, to be installed in the same place.

Attempts to unite the two groups and for both statues to be positioned in nearby Canning Green failed amid claims they fell out irrevocably. In April, a bronze statue of Fawcett was unveiled in Parliament Square, the first sculpture there to celebrate a woman.

The proposal to move Pankhurst has enraged campaigners, including Caroline Criado Perez, who led the Fawcett campaign, and who said that any attempt to move it was “an act of vandalism against women’s history”.

Sir Neil told The Daily Telegraph: “I’m amazed Ms Criado Perez has taken objection to this”, and insisted the statue’s proposed new site was open to the public 24 hours a day and would be floodlit.