For a small town in Lincolnshire, England, which former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher once called home, it has been an issue as divisive as Brexit: Should Grantham erect a statue commemorating the UK’s first female prime minister?
It is a simple enough question, but the process of erecting a statue of the “Iron Lady,” created by sculptor Douglas Jennings, has been a long, painstaking and arduous process.
The statue was rejected by Westminster City Council in central London in 2018 because councilors feared it would be a magnet for vandalism and protests.
Photo: AFP
It was then offered to her home town of Grantham and, following a brisk debate by the planning committee, was approved in 2018.
Some hoped that would be the end of it, but the statue remained stored away.
The council’s controversial decision to underwrite a ￡100,000 (US$133,915) unveiling ceremony on Tuesday then reignited the debate on whether the statue should be erected. The vote, in the middle of a global pandemic that has sparked the deepest recession in a generation, has been heavily criticized.
“We find that in the middle of a pandemic, when the public coffers both on a national level and a local level are emptying very quickly, their sense of priorities to be absolutely perverse,” Grantham Labour Party chairman Lee Steptoe said. “She was arguably the most divisive prime minister this country has ever had and this is an incredibly divisive decision by the local Tories [Conservative Party].”
For Amanda Schonhut, director of fundraising for Grantham Museum, which had been pushing to have the statue situated on a green midway between two existing statues, one of 19th-century lawmaker Frederick James Tollemache and another of Sir Isaac Newton, it is an important step forward.
“It’s been a long hard road. There’s been a few knocks and bumps along the way,” Schonhut said. “It’s nice to see things finally coming to fruition.”
She was keen to stress that the cost of the unveiling would come from private donations, but accepts the issue would continue to divide the town.
“It’s been a bit like a mini Brexit,” she said.
She hopes the statue would attract visitors to the museum and the local area.
The Labour Party have called for the statue to be displayed within the museum.
Adam Burgess, who lives in Stamford, said that he was ashamed by the announcement that the council would underwrite the unveiling.
“In the area we’re living in we’re seeing a huge number of homeless people, we’re seeing food banks springing up all over the place,” Burgess said.
Given Thatcher’s controversial legacy, it was a “poorly judged decision” to push ahead with the statue, he said.
“There’s got to be better ways to spend that money. To erect a statue of someone who was so divisive and caused a lot of heartache for the working class just seemed like a pretty shit decision, to be honest,” he added.
Ralph Harrison, a retired civil servant who lives in Grantham, disagreed and was pleased that the statue would soon be unveiled.
“It’s a relatively small town that has produced somebody that is known in the world stage and will be in the history books,” Harrison said. “I appreciate there are lots of different views on Margaret Thatcher, she is a very controversial figure, but it’s a question of achievement. She achieved something when becoming the first woman prime minister.”
Independent Grantham councilor Ashley Baxter said that there had been two notable changes since the council gave permission for the statue to be erected.
“The first significant change is that we are now being told that there is a risk that we will have to underwrite the cost of the unveiling event. And the second thing is the whole statue controversy, leading with Black Lives Matter and the [slave trader] Edward Coulson statue incident in Bristol, and statues around the world. People are questioning a lot more the merit of having statues of divisive figures,” Baxter said. “I think we really need to think carefully before we go ahead with this, in terms of the policing, in terms of security, in terms of the reputation of the town, there are questions to be asked.”
South Korea’s air force yesterday apologized for a 2021 midair collision involving two fighter jets, a day after auditors said the pilots were taking selfies and filming during the flight and held them responsible for the accident. “We sincerely apologize to the public for the concern caused by the accident that occurred in 2021,” an air force spokesman told a news conference, adding that one of the pilots involved had been suspended from flying duties, received severe disciplinary action and has since left the military. The apology followed a report released on Wednesday by the South Korean Board of Audit and Inspection,
About 240 Indians claiming descent from a Biblical tribe landed at Tel Aviv airport on Thursday as part of a government operation to relocate them to Israel. The newcomers passed under a balloon arch in blue and white, the colors of the Israeli flag, as dozens of well-wishers welcomed them with a traditional Jewish song. They were the first “bnei Menashe” (“sons of Manasseh”) to arrive in Israel since the government in November last year announced funding for the immigration of about 6,000 members of the community from the states of Manipur and Mizoram in northeast India. The community claims to descend from
Indonesian police have arrested 13 people after shocking images of alleged abuse against small children at a daycare center went viral, sparking outrage across the nation, officials said on Monday. Police on Friday last week raided Little Aresha, a daycare center in Yogyakarta on Java island, following a report from a former employee. CCTV footage circulating on social media showed children, most younger than two, lying on the floor wearing only diapers, their hands and feet bound with rags. The police have confirmed that the footage is authentic. Police said they also found 20 children crammed into a room just 3m by 3m. “So
‘TROUBLING’: The firing of Phelan, who was an adviser to a nonprofit that supported the defense of Taiwan, was another example of ‘dysfunction’ under Trump, a US senator said US Secretary of the Navy John Phelan has been fired, a US official and a person familiar with the matter said on Wednesday, in another wartime shakeup at the Pentagon coming just weeks after US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth ousted the Army’s top general. The Pentagon announced his departure in a brief statement, saying he was leaving the administration “effective immediately,” but it did not provide a reason or say whether it was his decision to go. The sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Phelan was dismissed in part because he was moving too slowly to implement reforms to
RSS