Mayor of Grantham: We should welcome statue of Margaret Thatcher
THE £150,000 marble statue of Baroness Thatcher, which was decapitated by a protester armed with a cricket bat in 2002, is in storage in the House of Commons.
Now, however, there has been a flurry of reports suggesting it has been offered to Grantham, Lincolnshire, the town of Thatcher’s birth. It has sparked a fierce debate about whether the town wants it.
But the Mayor, Councillor Ian Stokes, has no doubt that any such offer should be taken up at once. “At the moment we celebrate Isaac Newton (another son of Grantham) more than Margaret Thatcher. There is a blue plaque outside her father’s shop but that’s probably the only thing we have, apart from a few items in the museum that opened last year.
“I think we should make more of her but there are difficulties. It can’t go outdoors because it’s made of a marble that weathers too easily so it has got to be in an indoor position. The museum is the obvious place but there may not be room for something of that size. I believe it’s about 8ft tall.”
He suggests that there are areas within the headquarters of South Kesteven District Council, such as the foyer or even outside the mayor’s offices in the Guildhall, where it would be possible to put the statue. “But it’s incredibly heavy and there would need to be some kind of sponsorship just to get it here so there are practicalities to consider. I heard the chair of the local Labour Party saying on Lincolnshire radio that she would like to smash it to smithereens and use it to fill the potholes, which I think is a disgrace.”
With the debate sure to continue, how do other home towns of former prime ministers honour the people who have been among their most famous sons?
Harold Wilson, who was born in Huddersfield in 1916, is commemorated by a statue in front of the town’s magnificent neo-classical railway station in St George’s Square. The 8ft bronze, depicting the two-time Labour PM striding out of the station, was sculpted by Ian Walters and unveiled by Tony Blair in 1999, five years after Wilson’s death. Controversy erupted when Kirklees Council announced plans to move it onto a mini-roundabout in 2007. But the idea was scrapped when Lady Wilson branded it “dreadful”.
In 2006 Blair unveiled another statue of Wilson outside the post office in Huyton, his Liverpool constituency. Lady Wilson was polite enough to say it was a good likeness but it’s probably lucky there’s also a plaque naming him.
Perhaps surprisingly, neither statue depicts Wilson smoking his trademark pipe – but in truth that’s fitting. The pipe was always just a prop to create a man of the people effect and he actually preferred cigars.
William Gladstone, four times Liberal prime minister, was born in Liverpool in 1809. He is commemorated by a monument in St John’s Gardens in the city centre, erected in 1904 and showing the bronze figure of the Liberal prime minister holding books and a roll of parchment, standing on a stone pedestal carved with female figures representing Truth and Justice.
More recently a fund has been opened to raise money to erect another Gladstone statue in the grounds of a church in Seaforth, the once fashionable seaside suburb north of Liverpool where his wealthy father took his young family to escape the city’s smoke. The likeness will be made by Tom Murphy, who also sculpted Wilson’s in Huyton.
Winston Churchill, the country’s greatest wartime prime minister, was born in the illustrious surroundings of Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire - by mistake. His parents were visiting relatives there and his mother went into labour two months early. Unperturbed by the accidental nature of Churchill’s birth there Blenheim Palace, now a World Heritage Site, has a permanent exhibition dedicated to him that includes the room where he was born in 1874.
Churchill’s adult home, Chartwell in Westerham, Kent, is another tourist attraction. Opened to the public by English Heritage, its rooms have been preserved exactly as they were when he lived there and there is a bronze statue of Sir Winston and his wife Clementine in the landscaped gardens.
As befits Churchill’s reputation there are a number of statues commemorating him, most notably the bronze sculpture created by Ivor Roberts-Jones depicting the leader in military coat and with a walking stick in London’s Parliament Square. It is on a spot referred to by Churchill in the Fifties as “where my statue will go”, although the Churchill Statue Committee originally complained the work made him look a little too like the Italian fascist dictator Mussolini.
Edward Heath, the Tory prime minister (1970-74) was born at Broadstairs, Kent, in 1916 but he had hoped to be remembered in Salisbury, Wiltshire, where he lived for his final 20 years.
He left his home, Arundells (which was formerly a medieval canonry) to the nation in his will so that it could become a museum dedicated to his career. However, the Sir Edward Heath Charitable Foundation announced last year that Arundells was to close after “disappointing” visitor numbers. Last year the foundation saw a loss of £97,000.
David Lloyd George, the Liberal prime minister lived in Llanystumdwy, a village on the Llyn Peninsula of Gwynedd in Wales, until he was 16. He is buried in the village (his grave was designed by Sir Clough Williams-Ellis) and there is a museum of Lloyd George memorabilia.
It wasn’t until 2007 that he was honoured with a 10ft bronze statue in Parliament Square. That followed a campaign by three former prime ministers after the omission was said to rankle with MPs as well as his family.
What of Surrey-born John Major, Edinburgh-born Tony Blair and Giffnock-born Gordon Brown? Major has a bust in the Speaker’s House in Parliament as well as a portrait in the National Portrait Gallery. He has nothing, so far, in his home town and nor do Blair or Brown in theirs.
All in good time, perhaps...