International Women’s Day: putting up the statues?
International Women’s Day on 8th March doesn’t usually feature much discussion about statues but given the last year there is, rightly, more in 2021.
The focus has been on statues being taken down. So far there has only been notable example- that of Colston in Bristol- although some others have been moved (and some should have been such as the statue of the slave trader at the front of the Museum of the Home in Hackney).
The Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden has been clear that he is not in favour of taking down statues but is in favour of putting them up.
One example is the call from a number of right-wing Tory MPs, the self-styled ‘Common sense’ group for statues of those who received significant war honours to have memorials erected. These would be in the hundreds and while some might well be deserved others stretching back to the nineteenth century would be at best questionable. They are also nearly all men.
Meanwhile there are still few statues of significant women. Mrs Thatcher’s head will be erected in Grantham last this year while the statue of Mary Wollstonecraft on Newington Green has at last been put up-after much effort- but remains controversial in respect of its style.
Lots of other feminists, suffragettes, socialists and trade unionists have no memorial. Even Sylvia Pankhurst, the socialist suffragette, the subject of a new biography, still doesn’t have a statue on Clerkenwell Green (as planned)although progress has been made.
Perhaps Mr Dowden will use International Women’s Day to announce an initiative?….
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